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My 330V 78Joule Coilgun

last photo ←

I built this for a school project faire. It has slots for different size coils so I am not limited to one barrel. It has a custom built control box with: Power, HV in, 2 switches to control which capacitor bank to charge, and a firing switch... As you can see I also made the power supply too. I bought the metal case at fry's electronics down in burbank, CA. It has a power indicator and charge indicator LED to tell when the capacitors have reached maximum charge. It takes about 30seconds for one bank to charge. Each capacitor bank consists of 6 330VDC 120uF flash capacitors.

24 comments

Jul 3, 2011. 6:26 PMtazerboy says:

will somebody get this dude a silicon controlled rectifier

Sep 2, 2011. 4:19 PMMudbud (author) says:

lol :P

Apr 29, 2011. 12:28 AMARJOON says:

very cool. check mine i just made one

Apr 4, 2011. 10:14 PMJustdoofus says:

(removed by author or community request)

Apr 17, 2011. 6:51 PMnagasgura says:

"sparky" can be charged with a camera circuit as long as you hook it up to a voltmeter to make sure it doesn't overcharge.

Mar 9, 2011. 5:19 AMARJOON says:

lol. same handwritting as mine. however you could have used acrylic sheets for more aesthetic view. nice control panel awsome. a better work could have been done with your coil. what type of wire did you use

Mar 9, 2011. 9:52 AMMudbud (author) says:

the one that's on it now is 30AWG

Mar 5, 2011. 6:33 PMrtty21 says:

Neat control panel! I see you use the TV connectors for power supply! lol, I do too! They work really great.

How many Amps are the Caps being charged with? and, by extension, how many watts are the Caps being charged with?

Mar 7, 2011. 5:14 PMMudbud (author) says:

300Volts at 0.16amps (16ma) wich equals to 48 watts.. Its not much I know but its only 1 flash curcuit, Im actually making a new charger that can handle 500VDC at 5 amps, I also bought some giant 2400uF 500WVDC capacitors too. I will post some pics later.

Mar 7, 2011. 5:24 PMrtty21 says:

0.16 amps actually equals 160 mAh.
500V 5A?? thats insane. do it!

Mar 7, 2011. 9:36 PMMudbud (author) says:

yeah that was a typo, sorry about that :) And yes, 500V at 5 amps will be EPIC! I am almost done getting all the parts together...

Mar 8, 2011. 6:49 AMrtty21 says:

Damn straight it will be epic! post some pics of how far the nail lodges into the 2x4 !!

Mar 8, 2011. 8:51 AMMudbud (author) says:

LOL ok!

Mar 7, 2011. 9:03 AMMudbud (author) says:

I don't know exactly but its less than one.. I will get my ampmeter out and test it...Along with the watts, how do I calculate that??

Mar 7, 2011. 9:24 AMrtty21 says:

Watts = Voltage x Amperage
So if I have a line with 110 volts and 20 amps, it can deliver 2200 Watts.