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Dimensional-Phantom — Coil Gun
Published: 2004-02-08 01:40:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 3576; Favourites: 25; Downloads: 598
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Description
You may have heard of a Gauss rifle, or a Rail Gun...surprisingly: Their the same thing! A Gauss rifle is also the same as a Coil gun...but a Coil gun is different than a Rail gun.Alright, what the hell am I rambling about?
A Gauss weapon refers to something that uses electricity to propell a projectile forwards. A Rail rifle and a Coil Gun just use different methods.
A Rail Rifle uses a system similar to how Six Flags park launches their "Superman" ride. Magnetic rails simply hold the round in question, and accelerate it forwards.
A Coil gun however, uses the solenoid principal. Solenoids use electromagnets to push, or pull a ferrous object when activated. This motion can be used as a switch. But the fun part, is when you link them in series controlled by a computer to constantly push the ferrous projectile forwards. Since nothing, except the air touches the projectile, it can achieve great speeds. But...it's not as accurate as the rail principle. Ahh well, compromises.
This I drew for a different RPG called "Orion Force". Sci-fi/fantasy goodness. So, without further rambling, here's the picture
Oh: Original Line art by me
Colour done by the talented: Bryan Rogers
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Comments: 24
what if the reversed 'buffer' was actually an air driving piston, the firing of the weapon would forcibly compress air (a cooling effect) and blow it through the heat sink vanes. with separate "super capacitors" one could rapidly fire a rail gun, cooled in this way, perhaps even enjoying an "AUTO-FIRE" mode as the depleted capacitors are recharged by the soldier's EXO-skelleton. RE: future soldier program, warrior web program, Both projects of D.A.R.P.A.
feel free to watch this clip: [link]
Side track: Carbon takes many forms, soft as coal to hard as diamonds. 2-d nanomaterial version of carbon is Graphene. as it turns out, we are learning about all of it's amazng properties, like say conducting heat. Very thin slivers of 'synthetic diamond' (still carbon) are easy to produce, very strong, very light, and is a far better heat conductor than copper.
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Reverse the ammo feed, use a calico arms helical magazine on top to feed a round downward in the rear breach. This will improve balance. as a rail gun, you don't have; cases to eject, moving parts, propellant fouling. the electronics can fit in the hand grip, the capacitor bank is below the barrel and in front of the hand grip. a second reversed rail system drives back a much heavier buffer against a powerful spring in an effort to reduce recoil/kick/barrel rise. the barrel has to be cooled for rapid firing, so the barrel and recoil reducer will be inside something that looks like a thermos. This canister around the barrel can use one of the folowing or a combination; liquid nitrogen, monofilament diamond heat sinks, or air compression from the recoil reducer.
such weapons will likely have I.F.F. smart targeting, non-visible laser light target painting, a gyro-stabilizer mount, and the soldier might have an (H.a.L. or H.u.l.c.) EXO arm assist to cary the weapon as if it was weightless. advances in meta-materials, supercapacitors, and superconductors will make a weapon like this a reality.
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Hey, thanks for the comment!
I appreciate the ideas, but they do run slightly counter-intuitive to my design philosophies. In the idea of the Helical magazine style, I've always had issue with the size of the magazine itself. I am not a person who likes a "bulky" weapon. I like things pared down to the essentials of what is necessary. Secondly, is that a helical magazine, as the ammunition is used, will greatly change the center of gravity on the entire weapon, due to the shifting nature of the mass. This makes it harder to have a natural point of aim with the weapon, as your first reaction will have to be corrected as the mass in the magazine shifts, and the overall weight of the weapon is reduced. This is why I prefer the vertical magazine, you have one variable, instead of two.
The addition of a secondary rail system to me, is sort of counter-intuitive as well. It will reduce, or eliminate the recoil of the shot fired, but then the system needs to reset. On a single shot basis with time between shots fired, this can be done unnoticeably by slowing the reset down over time. But in automatic fire, you then have to reset this heavy mass quickly, which is just going to introduce recoil of vector on the weapon anyways. The only way to eliminate recoil, is to provide an equal and opposite reaction, such as that of a recoiless gun where a secondary mass is ejected from the weapon, or to convert the kinetic energy into another form of energy, usually heat through friction or compression of a medium. All of this adds weight or complexity that I choose to avoid.
Cooling is...whatever it is. To be honest, as stated elsewhere, this weapon was designed for a game set in the 27th century. A point where technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic from our reference point.
Though I did design this in the basis that it could be used assisted, or unassisted as the case may be.
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Oh? You do know the sweet science. Cool. To offer support of my comment, I can point to the MP90. The magazine is on top of the weapon, from front to back. It is my opinion also that the MP90 is a very effective weapon for the missions it is designed for. I personally do not like vertical spring feeding magazines from my 16 years of service (Chair farce 8yrs, Army 6yrs, and two years tasked out to marines; iraq, fob timberwolf 'haditha').
ultimately, the best measure for who would be right would be have guard units go to the range with both types of weapons (asuming optimal conditions on on these separate days) and allow the scores and shot grouping to show us who is right. I would propose such an experiment be repeated independently for aditional verification. until then, we do not know for certain.
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Well which is better, a very accurate weapon that requires time to cool down, or a less accurate, but more efficient and reliable weapon? Railguns will overheat after prolonged use (explains why the tau rail rifle from 40,000 has the "Get's Hot!" special rule), but coil guns make an easy trade between prolonged reliability and accuracy in comparison.
As amusing as it seems in terms of firepower through energy, you'd need a backback-sized battery to make a laser weapon have the same firepower as an M16 nowadays, but they're only getting better by the year - hopefully.
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Thanks for the +fav man.
Personally I feel that a soldiers weapon should be reliable first and foremost. A soldier with a broken weapon is as just about as useless as a dead soldier. Overall however, I don't think accuracy would be all to horribly affected by a coil-gun principle, but it is, an as yet unknown tested factor as far as I am aware.
Heh, I think you might need more power than that to make a useful laser, but I am not sure. Never really researched it.
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With regards to the power requirements for a laser rifle, this is also in reference to the literature side of Warhammer 40,000 where lasguns can blast an unarmoured man's arm off (really, the weapon in-game doesn't make such a dramatic effect). It also depends on what type of battery we're referring to as well - whether it's an alkaline battery or acid battery might influence the results.
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Yeah, I've never really fllowed anything WH40k. It's the designs of everything that turn me off personally.
I wish I knew more about electronics, and electric principles so that I could figure out how much wattage is needed to have a laser that could kill in 1 well aimed shot. Thus providing the basis for how much battery power it would take to operate.
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We're looking in the range of between 250-350kW if I recall correctly. Remember that a watt is one joule (unit of energy) over time (Sorry - I just completed Gr11 Physics.) It also depends on how concentrated the beam is, since more damage can be done by using finer lenses in the laser.
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From everything I have read, a pulsed amplitude of the wavelength is what will cause "violent" damage.
We currently use CO2 lasers in the 100-300watt range for surgical purposes apparently, and around 1500watts for industrial cutting lasers.
I used to work at a factory with an industrial CO2 Laser that could cut steel up to an inch thick I believe it was, but I know not the wattage. I do know that it generated a lot of heat in the machine itself, and had a large cooling unit attached.
Over all, I think 1.5-3 kW pulsed would be able to inflict a good deal of damage...but then again, is that enough to cause a "bullet like" 1 hit kill? Man....I want Mythbusters to figure this out!
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It's not so much the amplitude that will determine how powerful the beam will be, but the frequency. The higher the frequency, the higher the pulse rate.
Of course, we still have many years to go before gauss-type weapons, lasers, and maybe even fusion-based weapons can start to be put into mass production. It's not so much the technology that is hard to achieve, but the equipment associated with the technology (battery cells, cooling systems, electromagnetic containment and the like).
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So how many 'darts/bullets' and of what size does that weapon take?
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I had originally conceived that it would use 7.62x40mm powdered-steel "darts" I've always been a believed in "large bore" vs "small bore".
And while 40mm might seem rather..long, and that the darts would weight a lot; it must be considered that they would be made from powdered steel, vs lead, tungsten, or copper.
As well, the shape of the dart would be different from that of a traditional bullet. A longer, more gentle ogive would lead to the lands, which would then flow into an extended tail section, minimizing turbulence and drag, improving the ballistic properties.
So why powdered steel? When a solenoid is activated, the magnetic fields can produce a circulating current on the surface of the projectile which absorbs a small amount of the energy in use.
However, researchers found that using a non-unifom surface, such as sintered/powdered metal can elminate this current generation, thus leading to higher efficiency of the solenoid.
However, I do now think that 40mm might be slightly on the long side.
Also, the magazine is designed to hold 40-45 darts. Extended magazines would be easy to accomodate.
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woooow.... Intellectual on deviant art, i'm in heaven.
now there is still hope for the moronic fan girls.
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Wait....I'm an intellectual?
...If I am, please don't send the moronic 14 year old fan girls! They're illegal!
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Yep. Which all weapons should be; only as large as they need to be. Adding volume to a weapon doesn't make it function any better than one slimmed down to bare essentials. As an added benefit, you save weight, and in the case of firearms; make it likely easier to shoulder, and offers better peripheral view. Thanks for the comment!
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Realistically, though, it's too small to house a sufficient power source to accelerate a moderate projectile to lethal velocity. And the barrel is too short for the same reason; not enough length to allow for "complete" acceleration. Sure, you could make up for that with a stronger magnetic field, but that just brings the issue back to inadequet size and power supply.
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This is true for anything in the remotely foreseeable future. Any form of power supply between now and then next 200 or so years is entirely unlikely to be able to power this rifle. I drew it however for a game set in the 27th century. Having a setting where technology is at a level where it is incomprehensible, allows one to shrug and just B.S. some points where reality determines plausibility.
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