Heya, nice project. My friend made a railgun for his final project at school. It didn’t shoot though, anyway, I was wandering how do you know if the caps are charged?

Thanks for the comment Axim,

When the caps are charging they make a high pitched buzzing sound, when they are charged this sound dies down. Also I timed how long it took to charge using a stop watch and my multi meter, so I can approximate how long it’s going to take using that time.

Wicked! I’d really like to see a picture of the can after it was shot, though…

that is pretty awesome there. what’s the range on the projectile, and, can it break skin?
not that i plan on using this as a weapon or anything, just curious…

What kind of current is coming out of the ten capacitors in parallel?

Sweet. Im going to build one right now. What gauge magnet wire did you use?

ok now think about it from a physics perspective. and newtons laws. with out mounting the “gun” to a solid system you are loosing a large percentage of the force. i am assumin of cource that your “gun” is heavier than you “bullet”. if you were to mount the “gun” to a solid fixture and then fire at somthing all of the energy would be tranfered into the bullet and not into moving the gun. when you look at from the video it doesnt look like a large loss of energy but i could be. also if you were to use a magnitese projectial and then fire it will the opisite polarity you may have better results. and if your really really ambitious try multi stage. it is more effectent but also more messy.

Hey sweet project, but i have a question, what is the voltage and uf on each capacitor? iam trying to do some math as i am cheap and am using old capacitors off a psu. also what is more important the uf or voltage? and how does it all add up? 200 volts + 200volts = 400? or 200 uf + 200 uf = 400? oh also the capacitor my camera came with was 330 volts, 80 uf. (also i just want you to know that ur website kicks ass)(subnote: you kickass)(subsubnote: your gf kicks ass)

Hey Om, When capacitors are hooked up in parallel the voltage is the same across all the caps, my multi meter goes up to 2000 volts but this setup goes over that, so I really have no idea what the voltage is lol, but its a lot. Also when wiring capacitors in parallel the capacitances add, aka 100uf + 100uf = 200uf in series the capacitances are added using the formula, 1/Ctotal = 1/C1 + 1/C2 … aka. the total capacitance goes down. Thanks for the compliments on the site lol, I do what I can, hopefully its not painfully slow, godaddy is being a real bitch to me this week, I have to give them a call. Peace Om thanks for visiting!

Oh and about the capacitors being rated for only 330 volts… i just hope to god that they don’t blow lol, they are usually ok, only 1 has ever in my life, and the whole setup is inside the box so you should be ok, just make sure your protected lol.

hey matt um… does the voltage determin how powerfull it is or the uf.. if it is the voltage i need a couple more psu’s as i only have 400 volts.

Both the voltage and the capacitance determine the overall power, the formula for energy in a capacitor is Ec = 1/2 CV^2 aka the voltage matters more than the capacitance. Every time the voltage doubles the energy quadruples. Peace Om.