This would appear to be one of the best homemade coil guns in the world right now. And the creator is nice enough to give you a complete tour of the guts so you can see exactly how it works:

It starts with a 12 volt battery pack. The battery’s power is used in three different ways:

• It powers a 3 volt regulator to fire the SCR
• It powers a 5 volt regulator to power the voltage meter on the capacitor bank
• It powers a high-voltage circuit that produces 400 volts to charge the capacitor bank.

When it is time to fire, a 3 volt signal from the trigger activates the SCR, which dumps the contents of the capacitors into a 33-coil inductor in 2.68 milliseconds. This energizes the bullet and shoots it out of the gun.

Portable coil guns will not be replacing real guns anytime soon. Compared to a real gun-powder-powered gun, coil guns are big, bulky, slow to charge and low on muzzle velocity. But they are still fascinating, and at a large scale they may eventually replace naval guns.

That’s because, if you have enough electricity, you can create unbelievable muzzle velocities.

See also:
- How Rail Guns Work
- Guns

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