Garage built portable Railgun

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**Gwaihirsbrother**

Some guy used a 3d printer and some easily available additional parts to build his own railgun. It fires ammunition in the neighborhood of 560 MPH.

Article says military grade shoots around 13000 MPH. Common rifles shoot much faster than 560. Is this really a big deal? Says he can shoot plasma with it also.

**Co'tor Shas**

Eh, the mechanics of a railgun aren't really that complicated. What's the stopping point is energy use. That and degradation of the rails themselves because of friction.

**Grey Templar**

Its definitely a step closer to man portable railguns. But of course its still way too impractical. Way bigger than most man portable weapons and nowhere near as powerful.

As Co'tor said, we need to fix the energy storage and needing to replace the barrels every couple uses.

A railgun on a ship at least has the benefit of having a nice nuclear reactor to power it.

**Peter Wiggin**

My buddy build a functional railgun in his backyard when we were 20. The fundamentals of the technology aren't exactly new. THe form factor from 3D printed parts is pretty rad but I'm confused as to why the video goes from talking about aluminum rods used for projectiles (which sounds odd when you think about it....) to some type of reference to "plasma"?

I'd also like to see a close up of the target he shot, post impact.

**Grey Templar**

The plasma is really just a by-product of the internal mechanisms getting shaved away and the matter lost getting turned into plasma by the friction.

Its why the naval railgun videos have fire when the thing gets shot even though there is no explosion.

**Jefffar**

It doesn't look Strength 10 to me

**Peregrine**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Eh, the mechanics of a railgun aren't really that complicated. What's the stopping point is energy use. That and degradation of the rails themselves because of friction.

Pretty much. Plans for building railguns have been available on the internet for almost as long as there's been an internet to find them on. The concept is very simple if you're willing to risk working with high-voltage capacitors that can kill you if you mistreat them and are willing to invest a bunch of time and money into something that is little more than a cool science demo. The hard part with railguns isn't building one that functions, it's building one that can match conventional guns in size to performance ratio and doesn't wear out after a shot or two.

**Freakazoitt**

I had gaussian rifle. It was soooo weak to penetrate anything than 1 paper.

**Tactical_Spam**

Does anyone know if Tungsten is magnetic? Because if it is, that would have been better ammunition than aluminum albeit illegal

**LordofHats**

Tactical_Spam wrote:
Does anyone know if Tungsten is magnetic? Because if it is, that would have been better ammunition than aluminum albeit illegal

Googlefu says no

**Co'tor Shas**

It is "paramagnetic".

Also why would that be illegal?

**LordofHats**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
It is "paramagnetic".

Also why would that be illegal?

Using Tungsten ammunition is illegal in a lot of countries (namely because Tungsten rounds is just a silly way of saying Armor Piercing Bullet).

Granted... Not sure if Rail Guns are covered by anyone's gun control laws

**Grey Templar**

Tactical_Spam wrote:
Does anyone know if Tungsten is magnetic? Because if it is, that would have been better ammunition than aluminum albeit illegal

Its not, but you can cheat by having the Tungsten rod actually be a Tunsten core surrounded by steel.

**Ribon Fox**

True rail weapons don't need a magnetic capable slug, that's not how they work, that's a Gauss weapon.
The rail slug only needs to be conductive.