Need Help With Coil Gun!!

[Samantha21]

I am making a Coil gun for a final project in my electronics class. i have limited time so instead of building a charging circuit from scratch i am going to steal one out of a disposable camera. anyone done this before? i am having problems with the discharging, a camera flash goes so fast i think the capacitors will have enough time to move a nail, let alone shoot it. so wont i have to build in a resistive circuit to slow down the discharge time or is this a non issue? btw i would love to see a schismatic of one that was build effectively.

 

[steveB]

i would love to see a schismatic of one that was build effectively.

The man who succeeded this put a nail through his heart before he could commit the schematic to paper.

 

[Mike_2545]

schismatic

What does the Catholic Chuch have to do with your coil gun?

 

[tcmtech]

Dont you know the catholic rules? Never read it, never think about it, just ask someone else who asked someone else who asked someone else who knows someone that read about it and was rummered to have thought about it!

 

[Leftyretro]

I suspect you are going to be disappointed in the final grade this project will earn you. A camera flash circuit will just not have the energy required to move much of any practical mass. Maybe shoot a sewing needle a fraction of an inch.

Lefty

 

[duffy]

Aww, I shot a nail clear across two rooms with one of those when I was a kid.

You want to avoid the resistor if you can. It increases RC, but decreases L/R, and generally just eats power. Tune the coil so you form a LC tank that corresponds to the impulse. Impulse is the integral of the coil's magnetic force with respect to acceleration time. Acceleration time is based on the displacement of the initial position of the projectile from coil center.

 

[tcmtech]

Perhaps use the camera flash charger to charge up a bigger capacitor or a set of capacitors. I used a camara charger to run a 3600 uF 450 volt up to around 375 volts.
The flash charger circuit seemed to be fine doing it but I could have taken a short nap durring the charge up cycle.