Make your own Coilgun 

I remember my first coil gun about 15 years ago. I used disposable cameras for the capacitor bank [about 8 i think] and the charge circuit, a pen for the barrel, drill parts for the handle and trigger... I wish I hadn't lost it.

When I was experimenting with my own coilgun I used transformer inductor with circuit from the old camera flashlight which was increasing voltage up to 300V and firing 7mm steel BB from the single coil. Now It's stored in my eletronic box so I'll build it up again very soon and possibly make a video about it

"all that was missing was the start button" Windows 8 in a nutshell.

I thought this was going to be about a gun that creates coils, but this is even better :D

Nice! But i want to see a new coilgun capable of "destroying" objects. So, do it with some powerfull capacitators. Pls, as soon as possible

This could be really cool if you were to turn it into an hour clock, make the gun shoot vertical, and add a plexiglass tube to the end with a bell at the top, at the end of the hour the bolt would shoot up through the tube and ring the bell and fall back down to be shot at the next hour!

NO!! THE STUDIO LIGHT HAD SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR!!

I just realized that I’ve been watching videos from this channel for at least a week and just now subscribed. Don’t forget to subscribe!

I just want to say I have 0.5% understanding of what is going on but I love how deep your explanations are. 1% of the time I'm like " hey I know them words ". love the videos keep them up

Could you please do a series where you make diys which are quite easy to build plus cheap....

good explanation

just a thought here, instead of turning off the flow of energy at mid-point, wouldnt it be possible to reverse the flow, and therefore the magnetic charge to "push" rather than pull the rod and giving it even more boost?

Reduce the diameter, reduce mass of sharpnel, increase the number of windings , keep constant input voltage, or use big caps for more efficient gun

From your explanation demo where you made it fire by touching together the wires briefly , Made me think a simple momentary switch alone would function for the 1st coil .

You actually are a genius...

This may have been said before, but those blue screw terminals can be connected to each other before soldering. Each has a tongue and groove so you can make them whatever length you want before soldering them in. The slots are just so small they're hard to notice.

You really are Genius Mate! Can you make a DC to AC converter to use appliances running on car battery can be used at home? Thank you Scott!!

How do you understand any of this? I want to get into this kind of electronic stuff but I cannot even comprehend what you are doing. I know capacitors store electricity and that batteries provide power. How do I start to understand this kind of stuff?

Great but... Why, why Arduino? Would it not be mush more intresting if you had used classical ICs? Every video on electronics is with microcontrollers now, i miss the old analogic stuff :/

"Those bullies won't bother me now!"

Cool! I think I'll try this concept to create a impact tester for composite panels. I'm curious how consistent the velocity is.

If the size and position of the projectile is a known, you don't need any kind of feedback, just a potentiometer to adjust the delay.

Winding coils in parallel is much better than in series, if we want to reach very high current with low voltage.

I made a stronger version of the coil gun and it can shatter glass cups. It did not break my LCD tv but it did damage it but not as much as I wanted.

Who came from ElectroBoom?

if we did some complicated simulation of magnetic field and attraction of the projectile we should be able to find the exact right capacity for the capacitor it so we dont have to turn it of again, cause voltage will be at almoust zero when the projectile is in the middle of the coil.

Don't come to electrical engineering class tomorrow.

I love the yes brand battery.

What if you used a metal barrel? Would it still work? And how about you use this system not to get the projectile moving but to get a piston moving that in turn shoots out the projectile by using air pressure? So basically an air rifle.

Greatscott is gonna kill us all :D

I think it's better to make the videos a bit longer with more details, like 10 minutes or so. These videos are really cool !

"And i will see you next time" thats why im here :D

Let me guess the mass of your projectiles is too great so you can't get better distance out of it.

To get more patreon subscribers I'd say to create exclusive videos for them or release them early... Id personally like to see longer projects like you making a cnc mill or something.

IR sensor problem can be resolved with an IR receiver/emitter setup. The issue with this setup, is that the emitter and receiver are in the same spot, which makes it so hard to fine tune. Material reflectivity can cause misfires. If you have the emitter and receiver opposite to each other, it only depends on the projectile blocking the light ports on each side, eliminating the issue.

now we just need 20 tons of coil and a million volts and we have a railgun

I made my own coil gun and she shoots up to 600foot with 10 coils and 10 compositors and each compasiter shoots out 400v and 20amps and than to that is 3 lithium battles and all 3 together is 9500 Miller amps :)) and in each coil there is a sencer so there is no need to estermate where the metal nail is as she knows where the nail is

Man, he speaks singing😂

how u dint get shock with ur bare hands touching the copper on running voltage current im a newbie so explain in a way ill understand

can you change the arduino with an ATtiny85 with the same codes ?

i saw some hate in the comments, i just want to say that your content is great and in my opinion keeps getting better, i actually would enjoy more complicated projects and look forward to every next video of yours , you are doing great work

codys lab made a fairly large one today. :D

some time ago I wanted to make a coilgun with a bunch of big coils and big capacitors where the metal projectile would touch some contacts to activate the coil, that would create some frition losses but make the thing simpler (and possibly melt the contacts)

What sort of delta printer do you own Oh ja und gruss aus der Schweiz

Superb project again Scott. I wonder if you can detect the passage of the projectile past the coil centre electrically, by detecting a change in coil voltage or current? Ultimately you could remove the opto switch, but for now it could be valuable as a trigger source for investigating how the coil current and voltage change.

every time watch your videos I realize how much stupid I am!!!

Didn't understood anything but still liked the video because he did a lot of hard work

Are you from germany I ask because of the Ja batteries u used

Don't the coils have to be accurately wrapped in a line?

How come dancing asses and silly prank videos get more views than this?

To add more Uhmpf, just use a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER and a capacitor bank.

That's cool, but could be more dangerous =3

great project with lots of possibilities. There are power tool batteries from a hardware store that should match your power needs to make the project more portable.

Come on go for banks of capacitor.

I wonder if it could be improved by maybe using an opamp on the secondary coil to detect the induced rising edge as the projectile enters it. That could then be used as the trigger to avoid having to cut in to the barrel or use IR sensors.

don't try this with AC. LOL

yes, the videos are getting better and better

If built on a larger scale, I wonder if we could send an object to space using this idea.

Even though electroboom was good i love great scot for his explanation with practical ❤️

using a flyback diode makes the magnet field collapse very slow since it limits the coil voltage to ~0.7V, many mosfets are avalanche rated so you can skip the diode and get a much faster collapse by letting the voltage rise until the mosfet clamps it at Vbrdss

What happens when you reverse the current after the metal pass through the center point?

Can you please make some videos about the maths behind electrical engineering. eg determining the strength of coils or determining the efficiency of a circuit.

The time the coils need to be on could be calculated or expimentally determined. perhaps a dual 555 timer chip could replace the microcontroller logic. pots on the timer could fine tune the projectile velocity. Sound like a great AP physics project.

technical term ty is rail gun... something to do with internal sliders allowing for more power and velocity and accuracy

Wouldn't it be more efficient to place the sensors at the back of the coils because the magnetic field needs time to dissipate so if it's at the front the magnetic field will slow down the iron bar?

By adding a spring in the back and taking off excess weight to the bullet you could've reduced the coil and input voltage considerably as well as putting limit switches instead of optical sensors

Isn't it easier to wind the copper wire coil if you chuck one end of the plastic rod in a drill and turn it slowly while winding the coil?

There is probably a delay of magnetic field when turning the magnet off. slightly longer bar or placing sensor closer could test this theory.

I have two questions perhaps someone can answer: -Would it be possible to use an Interrrupt to detect the optical sensors or would that be still to slow? -Does it make sense to use direct pin manipulation (like that PORTB |= 0x20) instead of using the arduino funtions digitalwrite and read or is there no significant gain in speed? Great project btw thanks for sharing with us.

I cannot find irs2001 driver in our country or tc4422 /mic4422.. is there any other driver ic to drive this MOSFET or is there any other diy way to build driver for this MOSFET..

Yes HV caps for steering the coils are much bette way ,can brake the steel can.

Your little coil gun is very pretty. But I didn't understand wherefore you have not use a inerrupts of Arduino Nano for drive the mosfet with reliability instead to use a incrementing. Excuse me for spelling erro, I don't speak english.

great project! just an idea.. but since the projectile is a naked steelbar why not just using simple conductive sensor to triger any digital I/O pin of arduino.. :) maybe just using 2 ends of contacting wire, when the projectile passing between the wire... ?

Finally someone that clearly explained how to make a coil gun! Will you be making another video in the future explaining how to use capacitors?

Dude! Thanks so much for the simple explanation!

Hi, Can you please elaborate on the MOSFET driver. Why adding this extra IC makes things faster? It is still the Arduino that sends the stop command (based the optical sensor), so I am a bit confused.

If you just turn of the electricity for a moment not so long that The electromagnet pulls it back but only long enough that it pulls it forward then turn it off you can Technically make a rail gun 0:36

I'm not on nearly the same level as you when it comes to electronics and such. However one question I have is how come you used a IR sensor and not say for example an inductive sensor? Wouldn't that eliminate the work of fine tuning the sensor? Cheers!

Inspired by the world famous. ELECTROBOOM

Hi, what is the purpose of the capacitors in this circuit, so why not directly connected to the power supply, there are capacitors. I searched the internet and other sources but I couldn't find a clear answer. I'd appreciate it if you answered.

I may not understand anything you're saying but, its pretty cool.

Since you didn't answer my question i am asking again.I have a Sealed Lead acid Battery.I only want to know if it needs a overcharge/overdischarge protection circuit and which one do you reccomend. Thanks

Couldn't you have used a capasitor? A big enough one to time it to the moment the pice of metal is in the middle of the coil

Nobody: Me at 3 am : i goatha build myself a Rail gun.

Great !!!!! Now build an overhead gravity feed magazine and set it up for cyclical auto . Sharpen your darts and up the power. BTW , make a ceramic barrel...

Just as some constructive criticism (I am extremely annoying) but the correct term is railgun but otherwise the rest of the terms are correct

Excuse me I want to build this, but do I need the sensor? Can't I just write the code in order to make the current flow for just some milliseconds?

hey Scott I don't miss anyone of your videos I really have interest in electronic. now I am in 12th and after it I will go for engineering mostly which will deal with electronics stuffs, but I am confused which subject I should take which will deal with electronics stuffs. and I am interested to do creative thinking with electronics so plzz if you have any suggestion plzz give me

I've been watching a lot of coil gun videos for a possible project, and this is the best one. Great job. Although I gotta say that 3D print left a lot to be desired x-P! If you never got around to designing an upgrade and want to revisit it let me know I'm a currently unemployed engineer with a lot of time and modeling software!

Great video... In order to increase kinetic energy what will you do? Increasing voltage or current? or maybe add more loops? thank you

I made one of these years ago with the flash circuit from a disposable camera. It's limited to single-stage, but you get a lot more power out of the high voltage strobe capacitor, and you can just wire the coil in series with the xenon strobe tube for switching (tube doesn't conduct until triggered). I got mine to shoot little pieces of coat hanger wire across my bedroom. If I added more capacitors to it (from more disposable film camera flash units), it's likely that I could have gotten it to shoot those pieces of coat hanger wire clear thru a soda can (maybe even both sides). Best part? I got the disposable cameras for FREE. Just go to a place that still processes 35mm film and ask them for some "junk" disposable cameras without the film. Seriously, it's worth asking for those "junked" disposable cameras even if you only want the capacitor in them. You can't buy something for less than free, and the worst they can say is "no". Bank up a bunch of them and you could make some really dangerous high power electronic devices, like a soda can imploder or aluminum plate launcher. To be honest, the hardest part to source for my "scrapheap coilgun" was the magnet wire. If you can find a junked CRT computer monitor, you can probably salvage the magnet wire from the degaussing coil. Some CRT TVs might have a degaussing coil as well, but in my experience you're better off looking for a computer monitor. If you want to build a big coilgun, the hardest part to source will be the thing that switches the current to the coil(s). Best bet is likely to be building your own triggered spark gap. Not too hard to do and can be done with hardware store parts and TIG welding electrodes as the spark gap electrodes.

Who's the best? ONLY GreatScott! Can you build 6-digit nixie clock with old TTL's?

That is cool. I suck at analog electronics so here's how mine is going to work: And thanks for the schematics btw. For any given projectile one could tune the coil firing like this: Optimise the 1st on time to impart the maximum amount of enery to the projectile. This might need distance measuring or with a radar or anothe coil could be done electronically. Once this is maximized, then set the firing of the second coil and on time so as to further maximize the projectile's energy (measured by either its speed, or distance traveled). If you have more coils, then repeat the process. Hint: we know that each subsequent coil will be on for a shorter period as the projectile travels at a higher speed through it. IF you have enought battery energy, then you can turn all the coil on at the same time and only worry bout the off timing. Also to recycle some energy, you can recapture the magnetic field collaps in a cap and reuse that.

So is it possible to get 50v from connecting some batteries to one cable?

Would you not get a stronger magnetic field with an iron pipe?

You can 3D print anything you want and you print a tube and a box? I think you could've made it look a lot cooler

sehr gutes video. kann man aber das projektiel irgentwie verleichtern oder die spulen stärker machen???

Would a smaller diameter of enameled copper wire produce a stronger magnetic field?

Very cool,, but is all that steps and machinary needed?

Can you make a hybrid between a bow and coilgun?