Magnetic Powered Paintball Guns

[genericpaintbal]

After playing Metal Gear Solid again, I thought of how paintballs could work like a rail gun. The gun would be electro powered with like no gases needed. The rails would be different poles and detract from each other slinging out the paint.Balls would be placed in a rail system that might make the standard hopper obsolete. It would be like that Superman Roller Coaster.

[Wat]

Rail guns really don't work the way most people think they do. Two rails are placed parallel. A conductive projectile slug is place between the rails. Then, you pass a large amount of current quicktly up one rail, through the slug back down the other rail. The sudden current creates a sudden change in magnetic field through electric loop which creates a force that pushes out. It pushes the slug down the barrel. Friction btw the slug and the rail would usually weld them together, so usually they use a copper fuze that melts and turns into a conductive ionized gas which then pushes the slug.

The reason why rail guns are good for hyper velocity is that the force accelerating the slug acts the entire length of the rail. Longer rail, higher velocities.

The reason why rails are a pain in the butt is that the same force that accelerates the slug also pushes against the rails. The longer the rails, the more force being applied to push the rails apart. Rail guns that had reasonable life expectancies were unreasonably huge.

As for other ways to propel the ball, the problem with any solution that is electric isn't a matter of control or efficiency, but of energy storage. The amount of energy stored in a 3000psi tank is orders of magnitude more than can be stored in a battery. Same reason why electric cars are so difficult. A cup of gasoline hold more energy than 100lbs of battery.

[FutureMagOwner]

also it would be beyond orl ife time because right now rail guns have an effeciency and accuracy of about .5%. if you think of it thats similar to why its less accurate when your shootin at 400 fps compared to 280 or so because a slight breeze would blow it away. and you would need a massivly thick shell because as he said it would melt and you would need some way besides the wind to cool off the ball because you can shoot flaming balls at people

[xatle]

the idea behind magnetically fired projectiles is to surpass the velocity limitation of expanding gas wich is somewhere around 5000 fps. for some reason, useing an idea designed to propel an object 5000+ fps to fire a paint round at 300 fps seems messed up to me, besides, the only way you could work the power source small enough would be to use some pretty kickin capacitors, like a couple farads worth, and they would have a brutally long charge time between each shot fired, nobody will take a gun onto the field that has a rate of fire thats counted per minute, this is a game of seconds and fractions there of.

[sniper1rfa]

another reason railguns are cool...

the prjectile accelerates at an exponential rate. now so does a gun, but the graph is opposite. basically, the faster a projectile in a railgun goes, the faster it accelerates, so the faster it goes, so the faster it accelerates. good fun in a short amount of time. :-)

[mykroft]

Well, a coil gun type system would work better. No friction issues (Big problem with rail guns is massive friction, causing heat & wear). The Coil gun is the usual design for most big linear accelerators, and the 'Moon Catapult' from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'

[314159]

coil guns require a projectile to be attracted to a magnatic field (i got plans to make a small coil gun that fires bb's fast enough to dent a pop can if any are intrested).

rail guns require a projectile to be magnetically conductive.

the easiest way to do this, would to put ferrite particles in the paintball for the coil gun, or a ferrite shell for the paintball for the rail gun. if you are reading this far and saying, "yeah, yeah, ok....", you're nuts .

on the other hand, there is a type of energy weapon called an exploding water gun. you have a barrel, and a litte chamber at the end to hold water at the brech end with a spark gap. you discharge a large amount of current/voltage through the spark gap to break the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in the water. this gas would propell the ball.

if you look past how much energy it takes to break apart the hydrogen and the oxygen to make enough gas to shoot the paintball out at 280 fps, and the explosive byproducts, and the energy loss, and the storage/ weight of batteries. this might seem like a good idea

note: for legal purposes, if you kill yourself with any of the above information, it is darwin's fault, and not mine.

[einhander619]

3141459, can I just call you pi? Anyways, I'm doing physics homework here and I was wondering, do you have any idea what kind of kilojoules that reaction would need to propel a paintball at 280 fps? It would be the equilvalent to combusting the same amounst of oxygen and hydrogen as you create in the process, wouldn't it?