for the projectile, try to use a tiny nail and for the barrell, use the ink tube inside the pen, just pull out the ink roller. that should allow you to have more coils and a light projectile with a much smaller impact point. should get the projectile moving a lot faster and might be able to penetrate the can!

this is pretty neat for the price you paid! every consider doing this with a large capacitor, such as a cap used in car audio?

Hey Dan, thanks for the comment. So about using a small nail, I’m not sure that it would have any more momentum or speed then a larger projectile due to the friction in the barrel. I think if you use a medium sized projectile, more “magnetic energy” would be transferred to the projectile, therefor the affect of friction on the larger projectile would be minor compared to that of the small nail. As for the car radio cap… ya I’ve thought about using some 1.6 farad ones that I saw were for sale at my local electronics store, but they are way out of my budget. (I’m a poor university student lol). Thanks for checking out the site, hopefully I’ll have a lot more projects up soon.

It would seriously impede the portability of the gun, but could you use an old-fashioned car ignition distributor to fire multiple coils in sequence?

As a hack you could just crank the distributor by hand and then fire the coil. For maximum efficiency, you’d need an electric motor to crank the distributor, and then tweak the motor to just the right speed.

Hi! Nice work, but I’ve got a little suggestion for you: if you fix the gun itself, it won’t move while shooting, thus the projectile will receive the maximum energy (a part of the energy is absorbed by the movement of the gun).

(Excuse my sentences, I’m not english)

Tru said Dhab, I need to make some sort of mount on the side of the box i think. It definitely would give it a lot more power. Damn you Newton’s 3rd law!

I say make a longer barrel and make a spiral groove inside it so the projectile spins then make alternating coils so the projectile is being pulled as well as pushed but make the pulling coils weaker than the pushing ones.

If you used a narrower barrel, you could easily use Air Gun Pellets.

Ever consider making a bigger version? I would but I don’t have the guts to. That spark scared the #%@& out of me! You are lucky, I hope you had a fire extinguisher nearby! And shouldn’t you be wearing large, thick rubber gloves?

Know any other ways those fancy camera caps would come in handy? Some less dangerous but equally satisfying ways?

You coil gun has only one stage. You’ll get a much greater muzzle velocity using each of your capacitors to drive a separate coil in sequence and spacing them out down the barrel. There’s enough energy in that cap bank to rival a small handgun if you use it right!

Forget using a car distributor (not fast enough) a simple circuit with a few 556’s and some scr’s could be made for under $10. Put some pots on the 556 stages and you can tweak firring times with simple dials to get the most speed.

Why did you take apart cameras instead of just buying capacitors? a quick google search shows many places to buy from.
Also (trying to remember PHYS 232) but don’t more coils = better output. wouldn’t it be simple to just wrap the wire around it many many more times?