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Motor Coil Gun

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windozeuser

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I was at the scrap yard and thought of an intresting idea. You get about 5, 1/2 horsepower electric motors. Then you take out the rotor/Armature. and replace with a long PVC pipe. In effect, the stator windings will be around the PVC pipe. Then I'll have very powerful electromagnets for a coil gun. The problem is how would I energize the stators? I would need some kind of timer and switching circuit, and should I use photo capacitors?

Please comment on this idea.

Thanks!
 
first off, it would be a coil gun, a rail gun is something entirely different.

it would be easier to just wind your own coils around the pipe with wire, than trying to adapt a motor to work... and I think you'd be rather unimpressed using photo flash capacitors to switch that large of a coil gun... The number of capacitors needed to fire a coilgun with a barrel as large as a piece of PVC pipe with any significant velocity could probably fill a small closet.

coilgun design depends very heavily on the placement, design, and control of the coils themselves, and I think that trying to us the coils from a motor, which are designed and placed completely differently, would yield poor results. You should look at some of the existing coilgun designs on the web to get an idea of design.
 
Such an setup would have to much inductance wich means to slow discharge whith meas a slow shot or no shot at all.

You need thick magnet wire around 1mm.I have wire from a powerful 3 phase motor.

Then one photoflash cap is not going to provide much power you need a bank of these.

Then we come to the barel. I found platic pen cases work perfectly.For i projectile i use a large nail whith its head cut off.

For a start puting two wires togeter to triger will work.But the wires will weld togeter.An much beter solution is a SCR the gun will then be very silent and no welded wires.

Then you also need an charging cirucit to charge up the caps this has to be some DC suply just under the caps voltage you may use the camera flash charger but they dont provide much curent so the charge will be slow.

I made a coilgun its in the projects.

Oh and a rail gun is a whole difrent concept.There you have two rails over wich the curent is aplyed and an stong magent under it These need lots more power.
 
Yeah the rail gun was a typo, wasn't thinking. Thanks for the advice. What about using an optoisolator for the trigger?

*And the PVC pipe is only half an inch in diameter
 
I sugest making a single stage for a start where you dotn need to detect the projetiles position.
 
Just curious, what kind of machine did you find the motor in? I've been in the market for some heavy coils myself.
 
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