Praise be to Gun Jesus!
The absolute mad lad Ian McCollum, curator of Forgotten Weapons (for the 3 of you who follow my channel and somehow don't know who this man is heh), not only landed an interview with ArcFlash Labs who have a prototype commercial friggin' gauss rifle but managed to get one of the prototypes to go over it features but also get some live firing of it at the gun range. He also took it to a BUG match (not sure how a 20lbs brick is a back up gun but I mean he has a gauss rifle. Your objections are irreverent).
So yeah, I'm geeking out a bit so just a fun little post today. Here's the two videos he has up right now covering the interview and the firing. Tech Level 9 is getting closer and closer lads.
I'm actually curious what would happen if this thing will dump whole battery charge in to one shot.
ReplyDeleteAlso, now we see that projectile don't touch the barrel and that it can use rounds with very variable length.
Assuming a breaker isn't tripped, you're biggest limit to how powerful of a shot you'll get (assuming it gets to that point) is the battery surviving have all it's energy dumped at once. Chances are it'll pop first. The next limit is how well the wiring can handle all that energy without melting or catching fire. The Third and next biggest limit limit is the capacitors, they'll probably go boom before it the energy gets anywhere near the coils (and given that the first one is right next to your face when aiming....) The final limit is how strong the mounting for the magnets are (while the bullet doesn't touch the barrel, force is still transferred to the coils which could either blow them apart or ripped them from their mounting points). So best you get a shot at maybe 10% the energy density of the battery, which assuming a low end battery at about half a kilo would give you crazy 9kj! The gun would of course be ruined after that. Of course the most likely scenario is that that battery pops from the amperage and then bursts into flames.
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