Full auto Gauss gun

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From the ATF website:
"The term “firearm” is defined in the Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. Section 921(a)(3), to include (A) any weapon (including a starter gun), which will, or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon…. Based on Section 921(a)(3), air guns, because they use compressed air and not an explosive to expel a projectile, do not constitute firearms under Federal law — unless they are manufactured with the frames or receivers of an actual firearm. Accordingly, the domestic sale and possession of air guns is normally unregulated under the Federal firearms laws enforced by ATF."

I could see this changing in the future.
*I know this section of text is referring to air guns but the same principle applies.
 
I've seen some of these, really neat concept. I don't see how they could really expand the definition of a firearm without encompassing a lot of non-firearm related items.
 
Interesting. I can see the liberals demanding an entire new bureau within BATF just to try and CONTROL emerging technologies. "Can't have people making their own guns!"
 
It is surprising to see those steel rods @ 140 fps making it through pop cans and computer screens like that.

Treating them as 6.5mm round nose rods, they ought to make it through about 9.4" (according to the MacPherson bullet penetration model) to 10.2" (according to the Schwartz bullet penetration model) of soft tissue.

Even with common, non-high-performance electronic components, the technology looks pretty feasible.

Imagine what these 'arms' could do with just a little more refinement. :D

More here: http://www.deltaveng.com/gauss-machine-gun/
 
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The Navy railgun projects stabilized the projectile using it's sort-of-finned shape and a Sabot

Scoop the rear out of those metal rods, leave the ring at the back and hollow it out for feeding, If needed could fill those divots with shaped ABS or other materials, could make your own personal loads using capsules with the ferrous materials in the Sabot alone...

I'll take a rail, and one Girandoni air rifle and pump for when the power runs out.
 
There's nothing preventing the barrel itself from being rifled. Coilguns like this are made using a non-ferrous tubular barrel. It COULD be rifled, ideally with polygonal rifling, but the ability to do this is generally beyond the means of most home builders.

It's not powerful enough yet to be an effective handheld weapon, but with improved battery packs and more powerful capacitors, it could be.
 
Going even more into the "unnecessarily complicated" (as long as we're looking at futureweapons here) plenty of room for an electronically triggered Gyrojet in a projectile that size.

Ignoring cost and convenience, a big problem was the low power before a gyrojet round could accelerate properly. A magnetically-accelerated round with gyrojet stabilization for spin could be a fun "what if?"

More realistically I think you could adapt a modern mechanical broadhead into a spring-fin system

Could also load a paintball-hopper full of ball bearings and just pour them downrange, trusting to volume of fire instead of accuracy.

Such fertile ground if the requirements become "ferrous and fits inside the barrel"
 
Fascinating. One thing that I was thinking about, all the racket it was making was the "bolts" hitting the targets. I would love to see how much noise it makes outside upon firing, most likely just the clicking of the switches. No more ear plugs :).

As he was stating on his website, I wouldn't mind tacking on an additional 12" of coil and barrel for increased velocity, and I would drop projectile size down by half (and make attempts to stabilize it in flight). Regardless of being an effective weapon, it would be a blast to shoot!
 
I suspect the evidence of keyholing means no rifling and like most builds along the same lines, minimal penetration due to the relatively low power output. I'd be willing to bet full auto decreases velocity/penetration along those lines. Nice proof of concept, however.
 
For this particular gun, I think ball bearings would work better overall. I know a ball is hardly an idea projectile, but it's better than a tumbling rod. Paintball markers can get pretty accurate, at least.

It will be a bit of technology before these are acceptably accurate through rifling, because nonferrous materials kind of suck for that right now. It will mean a good hard ceramic or something, matched with thinner, compressible driving bands or sabots, or something like shaped rounds to match the rifling and a way to index them to it.

Or just something with fins.
 
Could probably rifle the bullets them selves like they do with shotgun slugs. Not sure if there is enough velocity to make that particular method effective, however.
 
Thinking outside the box - can the magnets be set up in a rotating order to impart a spin? If the projo is a bi-metal layering of ferrous/non ferrous material, so it rotates to the new magnetic 'grip"? Just a thought.
I love the idea, and agree, might work very well with round ball at short range, sort of a "room broom" scatter gun idea.
 
How's this compare to a paintball gun loaded with ball bearings?

Also, I thought a Gauss gun was a rail gun, as oppsesed to a coil gun like shown in the video. Rail gun's are capable of way scarier velocities with enough power.

I'd love to be that guy's neighbor or landlord, BTW :rolleyes:

TCB
 
Thinking outside the box - can the magnets be set up in a rotating order to impart a spin? If the projo is a bi-metal layering of ferrous/non ferrous material, so it rotates to the new magnetic 'grip"?
Click to expand...


I'm afraid not, I was thinking the same way originally. When the coils generate the magnetic pulse down the barrel, it's a field that propagates evenly (remember the Right Hand Rule for magnetic field?) when the current travels down the coils. You *could* set it up so the pulse follows separate coils wound into a rifling shape to impart a spin, but since the projectile isn't directly in the epicenter of the magnetic field, there will be a dramatic loss in velocity.

Personally, after seeing his solenoid-esque feeding system, I would set up the "bolt carrier" itself impart a spin on the projectile just as it is tucked into the barrel and trips the IR sensor. On a simpler scale, imagine having a power drill with a very light grip on the bullet, spinning it at full RPM, then a little linear actuator giving it a little poke on the tail of the bullet to push it out of the jaws and into the IR field, starting the sequence and flinging it down the super-smooth Teflon barrel. Eh? Do you think that would be an effective starting point? Granted it would slow the full-auto sequence way down as well as total lock time, but it would allow you to make good, well placed shots... Just thinking out loud.

Regardless, this is still very impressive after him building the thing in his college apartment with hand tools. I'm really from the same crowd as him, and I would love to have a go at one, building off of his design (as he wants everyone to do). Plus, I'm no longer on a college budget :). I'll happily buy coils that are more than $15 apiece :)
 
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How's this compare to a paintball gun loaded with ball bearings?
Click to expand...

Only in what kind of accuracy it's capable of without further technology.
My point was, that a gun powered by a turbulent gas firing imperfect balls filled with an inertia-dampening fluid can hit pie pans at 100 yards. This means that a gun firing a solid ball largely without initial turbulence could be made quite respectably accurate--for the current purpose--with only some fine tuning, instead of demanding more advanced technology.
 
I didn't see anyone else mention, so I will. A "gauss gun" is an entirely different animal from a "rail gun".

A Gauss gun is essentially a magnetic-field accelerator. The projectile passes through a series of magnetic fields, picking up a bit of acceleration with each one.
This is comparatively gentle, and the idea has been proposed for launching very large projectiles....IE=Spaceships... Into orbit.

A Rail gun is a much different device. A massive charge is held in capacitors, and suddenly collapsed down the "rails" of the device, carrying the projectile with it.
The projectile is normally held in a "discarding sabot" sort of affair, which actually contacts the rails. As soon as it's clear, it falls away and leaves the projectile to proceed to the target. Most all the prototype projectiles I've seen very much resemble the DU "penetrator" rounds used by contemporary battle tanks... A fin-stabilized spike of depleted uranium or some similarly-dense substance.
Velocity capabilities are very, very high.
 
Put me in the round ball camp; at least for the prototypes.
I think rifling would put too much frictional drag on the projectile, even if preengraved.

No doubt the scaled up atmospheric engagement model will be of large enough caliber to have folding fins. The exoatmospheric model will be back with round balls.
 
With enough power a round ball could be very powerful, like this picture I saw recently http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/O...pervelocity_impacts_and_protecting_spacecraft

Of course that is much faster. I very much like the idea of using a non-ferrous rifle barrel, that is a neat idea.

Going off of what Bikewer said, rail guns are super scary. Its a similar theory in that magnetism is used to fire the projectile, but in this instead of coils floating a projectile, the projectile completes a circuit between parallel rails that then creates a magnetic field. Another version which I think the navy is testing uses the electric current to create a jet of plasma which launches the missile similar to a normal canon, but with plasma instead of gunpowder.
 
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