March 31, 2014

And Now A Moment of "PEW! PEW! PEW!"

A working gauss gun.



OK, it doesn't penetrate the laptop screen, but the damage it does to the cans argues against shooting it in the apartment. I'm guessing it doesn't have much velocity but those long pellets might tumble quite effectively.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:20 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

1

I think the thing that's most noteworthy is how quiet it is.

I don't see any reason why that thing couldn't be scaled up to lethal energies.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Mon Mar 31 07:42:30 2014 (+rSRq)

2 pew pew pew

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Apr 1 05:13:21 2014 (PiXy!)

3 He's got some serious stabilization problems, given how many of those projectiles are flying sideways by the time they cross the room.

Posted by: Mauser at Tue Apr 1 05:23:39 2014 (TJ7ih)

4 It's probably a smoothbore, and the coils won't impart significant RPMs. No spin and no fins gives you the aerodynamic stability of a falling brick.  

Posted by: Mikeski at Tue Apr 1 17:08:57 2014 (Zlc1W)

5 Yes and the fact that he's using spritzer style bullets exacerbates the effect. ferromagnetic musket balls would be much better.

OTOH the bullet has no problem tumbling so it might inflict a surprisingly nasty wound if it penetrated.

With a bit more power and either fins or some way to set the projectile spinning this would be reasonably effective. I dont think the energy density is there yet.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Apr 1 17:52:57 2014 (DnAJl)

6 I don't think you could use fins. The projectile fits tightly in the firing tube; fins would require the tube to be much bigger, and the projectile would rattle around.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tue Apr 1 18:54:04 2014 (+rSRq)

7 Isn't that what sabots are for?

Posted by: RickC at Tue Apr 1 19:18:05 2014 (0a7VZ)

8

It is, but sabots complicate your bullet manufacturing by quite a bit...  one-piece lathe-turned things are pretty easy to make.

Posted by: Mikeski at Wed Apr 2 17:21:36 2014 (Zlc1W)

9 (was too lazy to log in.)

I was joking, but I wonder if a discarding sabot would be all that difficult to make.

Posted by: Rick C at Fri Apr 4 22:09:33 2014 (0a7VZ)

10

I gather that it's easy to make them but hard to make them work right. The problem is that if the sabots don't discard cleanly, they deflect the projectile.

I think it would be challenging to make them feed out of a spring-loaded magazine, too.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Apr 5 17:56:04 2014 (+rSRq)

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