👨🏼‍🍳 🎊 ✍️ Gauss gun 👩🏽‍⚕️ 😭 💫

Hamsters greet the inhabitants of the third planet from the sun.

Today's post will focus on the creation of the Gauss Electromagnetic Gun. In the process, we will analyze how to configure the system and perform some calculations on the effectiveness. Since this is a gun, it should look accordingly. We will draw a future sketch, and then we will try to bring it to life by assembling a case from improvised furniture material. We will make shells armor-piercing, from nails. For comparison, we will check the air gun for penetration and find out which bullet is fraught with the greatest potential.

The classic Gauss Cannon consists of five main blocks.Let's go in order: the power source, in our case, the battery powers the converter, which in turn charges the high-voltage assembly of electrolytic capacitors. The next task is to discharge all the accumulated charge into the coil through a powerful key. As a result, the generated magnetic field will transmit a certain acceleration to the iron pool.

The rate of fire of such a device depends on the power of the converter. The more powerful it is, the faster it will be able to charge the assembly of capacitors.

The heart of the converter is a transformer with a W-shaped ferrite core. We will wind the coil with a copper 0.35 mm wire. First, we wind the secondary winding with a double wire, this is necessary to increase the output current. The number of turns is approximately 60. We insulate each wound layer with polyester tape.

We wind the primary winding with the same 0.35 mm wire in only 6 cores. So that they do not unravel, twist them into a twist. So we increased the cross-sectional area of the wire. In general, exactly 9 turns were located on the coil stud. This means that the ratio of the turns of the primary and secondary windings turned out to be about 1: 6.

An important detail is that in order for the transformer to maintain its characteristics, it must be impregnated with epoxy, after which it will not emit whistles and squeaks during operation.

The single-cycle transformer is ready, it will be controlled by the same single-cycle inverter on the uc3845 chip. Further work consists in wiring the board for all components of the circuit. Its board is always more technological, at least I want to believe in it.

If everything is done correctly, then such a circuit will consume about 3.7 A at a supply voltage of 12 V. Multiplying the first by the second, we obtain 44 W of power consumption. The signal in this case will be in the form of a meander with 50 percent filling, this is how the uc3845 driver works. With proper settings, the radiator on the transistor will be almost cold. The only thing that will warm up is the snubber resistor for the output of the circuit.

Also in the circuit there is a voltage limitation of the charge, which protects the capacitor from overcharging, which can lead to explosion or degradation of the capacitance. This threshold is set using the tuning feedback resistor circuit. The value can vary from 200 to 500 volts. We don’t need so much, so we set the value to 397 volts, 3 volts we give the margin.

Now go directly to the capacitors.As I said, the capacity here is slightly higher, 1000 uF. Our cannon will use 10 such cans, they will be included in parallel to increase the total capacity. For the convenience of installing capacitors, a small board with fairly thick tracks was made. As a result, the assembly came out compact and weighty. The measurements showed the total capacity of the cans at 8950 uF, which is normal, given the variation in capacitance, and it has long been clear to everyone that the spread is not in our direction ...

When I tried to discharge the charged capacitance through a light bulb, instead of touching the wire to a massive contact, my hand missed and touched track. This instantly led to a loud explosion that provoked a shootout between gangs in neighboring areas. The track disappeared in a matter of seconds.

The solution was to increase the thickness of the tracks using a double copper wire with a cross section of 3 squares each. It will be difficult to solder, due to the high heat capacity. But if you have a gas burner in your household, then this will be nothing.

It is time to check how fast the inverter is able to charge such an assembly. The timer is running. We are waiting for the charge limiter to work and stop the timer. The time from the beginning of the process to the end took 36 seconds. Of course you can’t get a machine gun from such a gun, but the more rich you are, the more happy. We are going further.

Now all the stored energy needs to be discharged into a coil.The coil should be made of thick wire, in this example copper 1.7 mm in diameter was used. The shape, number of turns and layers were taken from the ceiling. Before the test, several samples were wound to test the effectiveness of the fields affecting the metal sample inside. Each sample gave the iron pool a different acceleration. The coil No. 1, wound in 200 turns and having 5 layers, showed itself best.

The strength in it is what is needed, but when discharged, each turn with the appearance of a magnetic field tries to push off from its neighbor, which, when fired, gives an insignificant deformation with good clap. You can get rid of this effect with the help of epoxy resin, it will impregnate the layers and fasten them tightly.

We forgot to mention one important detail.Namely, the element that commutes all the stored energy in the capacitors to the coil. As a key for such purposes, powerful thyristors are used. They come in different designs, it all depends on their characteristics and direction of use.

In further experiments, the thyristor had to be fired after the thyristor in order to understand which one would be the strongest. T143-800 turned out to be the most powerful, and the number 800 means the maximum allowable current.

Similar modern thyristors are worth a fortune, so we are looking for Soviet ones.The only problem with such a case is that it has no mounting contacts, except for the control electrode of course. Such instances are fastened with special clamping mechanisms, which have a large contact area, in order to increase the capacity of large currents. You need to do something similar from the means at hand.

For this, a stainless steel sheet of 3 mm thickness was found. Cutting it was a pleasure. It took about an hour and 3 hacksaw blades to cut 25 cm of this breed. The result is such a sandwich.

It is very important to isolate the mounting screws that will connect the plates by wearing heat shrink from the side of the cap. In general, it is necessary to completely eliminate contact with iron on the one hand, otherwise there will be a short circuit of the anode and cathode on the thyristor.

The circuit is ready for operation, but before firing, you need to know what voltage has accumulated on the capacitors. For these purposes, it is quite possible to use a penny volt-amperemeter, but it has one drawback. The limit of the measured voltage is limited to a bar of one hundred volts. But we have a bar 4 times higher, what to do ?!

It's simple, you need a voltage divider.You can make it from two resistors, the first will be 100 kOhm, the second will be 10 kOhm, at the midpoint between them we will get a voltage 10 times less than the one you need to measure. Usually a resistor with a lower resistance is made variable, this makes it possible to fine tune it. Now the voltmeter is capable of showing a constant voltage value of up to 1000 V. When it displays 20.0 V on the indicator, this means 200 V, and if you wish, you can even turn off the dot separating the numbers so as not to get confused.

So, in order to shoot, any weapon needs ammunition. With the Gauss Cannon, everything is simpler, only bullets are needed here. The material must be made of magnetic material, brass and other non-ferrous metals will not work. In the nearest building shop, iron nails were purchased, the size of a hundredth, a diameter of 4 mm.

Initially, the shells will be 30 mm long. The edges of the metal disc also need to be processed, they should be as smooth as possible, so that they slide like clockwork in the barrel bore.

Curious, what is the force acting on this piece of metal ?! First, let's look at the waveform of the current pulse in the coil. For these purposes, a digital oscilloscope is best suited, as it is capable of recording a signal at the time it appears. We fire a shot and the current signal is recorded.

I want to note in advance that it is desirable to carry out such an operation with isolation on a chain, otherwise you can burn an expensive device.You can untie the chain with the usual ferrite ring worn on the power line. We wind one turn of wire onto the ring, and shunt it with a small resistor, say 10 ohms. And already from it we remove the signal that arose in the circuit.

Measurements showed that the average pulse duration is about 6 μs. For example, in one second, a million microseconds. This means that capacitors can deliver all their stored energy in a very short time.

At this stage, all this heap of iron can hardly be called the Gauss Cannon. For proper perception and intimidation, the first sketches of the future case, which consisted of pieces of chipboard, were made on a sheet of paper.

Then we transfer the sizes there and start working on wood ...

The dirtiest process is behind, we move on to the next stage.As a power source we will use high-current batteries of the 18650 format. LG company, marking LGDBHG 21865. The capacity of this is 3 A * h. The maximum current that an element is capable of delivering is 20 A. The best batteries ~~today are~~ for the price - quality.

So, what happened with us. On the side there is a fuse button that charges the capacitors, for operation it must be constantly kept. For convenience, you can use a clothespin. After the charge, remove the clip from the button and fire a shot.

Since the Gauss Gun is an electromagnetic gun, it would be nice to emphasize this with an icon with a magnet and a unique sign that warns that cows are falling nearby.

After a couple of primitive calculations, we were able to find out the initial velocity of the bullet, its energy stored in the capacitors and the efficiency of the device as a whole. As we learned this, everything is simple, with the help of the classic ballistic pendulum, which enjoyed its popularity many centuries ago.

To start the calculations, you need to find out the mass of the bullet, in our case it is 2.6 grams, the weight of the pendulum is 391.9 grams, the length of the suspension, which in our case is exactly 70 cm. You also need to know the distance of the deflection of the pendulum when a bullet hits it. On the reverse side, we will place a ruler and a small piece of polystyrene foam, which will move as far as we need. Based on these figures, we will conduct the calculation.

Let's see what we got according to the results of the vote.Comparison of two guns was carried out in the same conditions and in compliance with all safety measures.

This is a weapon, not a toy, remember this!

The calculation results were as follows: a Gaussian bullet had an initial speed of 42 m / S, while pneumatic produced a speed of 3.5 times more, 152 m / S. The same was true for bullet energy, for its mass and speed, a bullet from a pneumatic gun has an energy of 3.2 joules, while Gauss showed this value one less.

They also calculated the total charge of the capacitors, and the energy that they are able to accumulate.

Then we hit religion, and decided to see what the program that was specially created for the Gauss Cannon calculations shows us.We enter there all the necessary parameters, including the thickness of the coil wire, the capacitance of the capacitors and other previously known parameters. So, with a bullet length of 45 mm, the maximum efficiency that we managed to squeeze out 0.46 percent from the program.

Now let's check it in practice.We cut a piece from a nail 45 mm long and weighed, the mass of the bullet is 4.14 grams, all the other parameters are already known to us. We fire a shot. The measurement results of the program and the ballistic pendulum were close to each other, 0.46% versus 0.44%. What does this mean, but that, 99.5 percent of the energy stored in capacitors, only 0.44 percent passes into the bullet through the energy of the magnetic field that occurs in the coil. For the most part, a powerful impulse simply dissipates in the air without performing any beneficial action. That is why the efficiency of the Gauss Cannons rarely exceed 2%.

An important point when setting up! When the transformer is wound, it is important to connect it with the correct polarity, roughly speaking, if you run the circuit, the current consumption is crazy and the light bulb is barely lit, then you need to swap one of the ends of the windings.

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