This 3D Printed Railgun Fires Plasma Rounds At 560 mph
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Dagra Dai MC. VSO. said:
It's is a factual error. I mean, it is blatantly wrong. (or was)
Yes, I'm being harsh, but this has been going on forever. The standards for articles around here are atrocious, and you know, after years of seeing it I find it a bit tiresome.
Besides, I happen to have a science background, and a basic thing they teach you is... Sanity check your numbers.
3000 kj is not a trivial amount of energy to use. (As I pointed out trying to calculate the implications, if that had to be generated in one second, that would require the total energy provisions for 5-10 houses).
given the actual figure (according to the source... I mean, you can track down the source but can't be bothered to check what it says?) is 1.8 kj, which not only is an antirely different number, but also happens to be 3 orders of magnitude lower...
Let's just say it irks me to see a mistake with those kinds of implications.
And you passing it off as nothing also annoys me.
It's like confusing a hand grenade for a nuke, and then shrugging and saying 'well, they both explode, right? What's the big deal?'
What's the point? A weapon is supposed to be useful and practical. It if isn't, then no amount of "cool points" matter. It's still useless. Muskets are more practical than this.
Well, I doubt this particular build is meant to be a weapon. Actually it remains to be seen if it even is a railgun.Adam Jensen said:
But emplaced electric propulsion weapons can manage accuracy, speed, and distance with much lower projectile costs compared to standard weapons. Handheld versions don't make much sense and certainly aren't viable at this time. That doesn't mean they aren't fun to build and mess with as non-weaponized versions.
When is teflon known as plasma?Fanghawk said:
As far as I knew, that's just the stuff they put on frying pans to make them non-stick...
It's definitely impressive for a home build but I don't think that you could really call this a railgun so much as a compressed air cannon.
And;
Both designs have benefits and drawbacks, the railgun is slightly easier to produce mechanically because it's got really only 3 major components, the magnet, the rails and the projectile. However at higher muzzle energies you can get the projectile arc welded to the rails or the rails can become warped due to frictional heating.
On the contrary, a gauss weapon takes a lot of skill to construct because everything should be precisely constructed to perform properly, as well as this it needs a computer to control the magnet's polarity. Once built however it can fire any ferromagnet, rare earth magnet or anything with a static electric or magnetic charge.
And;
Gauss weapons are a specific design where your electromagnets switch polarity rapidly so that they are always either pushing or pulling the charged projectile along the barrel, it's similar to the idea behind particle accelerators. Railguns however use the principle of force on a wire where they pass a current accross the projectile between two rails and have a magnetic field perpendicular to the barrel, this results in a force on the projectile along the barrel which causes acceleration.Smooth Operator said:
Both designs have benefits and drawbacks, the railgun is slightly easier to produce mechanically because it's got really only 3 major components, the magnet, the rails and the projectile. However at higher muzzle energies you can get the projectile arc welded to the rails or the rails can become warped due to frictional heating.
On the contrary, a gauss weapon takes a lot of skill to construct because everything should be precisely constructed to perform properly, as well as this it needs a computer to control the magnet's polarity. Once built however it can fire any ferromagnet, rare earth magnet or anything with a static electric or magnetic charge.
The introduction of the error actually comes from Yahoo but that actually makes it all the worse for me as that means that the article was written directly from another article as opposed to reading the source. While I don't expect the article to dissect the functionality of the gun in question, I do expect more than an article that has the same amount of work put into it as someone posting on my facebook feed.Dagra Dai MC. VSO. said:
CrystalShadow said:
Going to have to agree with you, and also add that the "3D-Printed" and "Plasma" parts are also misleading. By 3D printed, they mean that they made custom parts with a 3D printer. They didn't 3D print the capacitors, the wiring, etc. I know that 3D printers are a big "thing" (Or at least they were a while back), but this isn't really all that much to do with them. Even if the makers shared the blueprints of the parts, it's a lot more complicated than that. It really, really doesn't matter to the story, it really doesn't add anything, except a click-bait title. I know that this can be done better.
And that really isn't what people mean by "Plasma". Teflon coated rounds is not what people are expecting, they're not expecting the brief creation of plasma during firing, they're expecting a projectile that is made from a Plasma, as in the state of matter. They're expecting something like Star Wars or Halo. And that is hypothetically a possibility(Not that it'd look like Star Wars or Halo), you can manipulate plasma with a magnetic field. So the article misleads people into thinking that we have some sort of Star Wars blaster, and instead we seem to have a Teflon coated Aluminium slug which gets burned by the temporary creation of plasma caused by the magnetic field created. That's really, really weak.
Small railguns are toys, look at the effort going into capacitors to produce such an unsatisfying result.
It's not. You can get plasma-treated Teflon, but that doesn't seem to be what they're talking about here. If you watch the video, the projectile sustains burns and the guy refers to it as "Plasma damage". As in actual plasma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)). It's like a really hot, ionized gas, and it can result from strong magnetic fields (Like the ones involved in a rail gun). I don't know enough about Plasma myself to know if I'd expect it from a device this small, it could just as easily be the burning of the coating from exposure to current.kimiyoribaka said:
Alternatively, a bit of reading says that apparently some people use a Plasma as the armature in a railgun, at which point I can safely say I have no idea what's going on, but it's not like the article explains this either, they just wanted Plasma in the title.
At no point does the gun shape an ionized gas to use as a projectile. At no point does it fire a round that is made up of even Blood Plasma. At no point does it fire anything but a small pellet.
Sure, but there's a very big difference between accidentally creating a small amount of plasma that burns the projectile being fired, and actually firing a projectile composed of plasma. The article claims the latter, which is factually wrong in at least three different ways (first, the video doesn't claim any such thing it just says the projectile was damaged by plasma, second teflon is not ever "also known as plasma", and third he certainly hasn't tested this gun with "rods of plasma").Loonyyy said:
Plasma is simply an ionised gas, it doesn't have to be hot; you can get plasmas of pretty much any temperature. They are generally easier to create using high temperatures, but low pressure will do the job just as well - interstellar space and nebulae are mainly low temperature plasmas.
You create plasma when you light a match, so size isn't really relevant. The question is rather the claimed amount and mechanism for creating it. An electric spark is a plasma (that is, the blue spark you can actually see is a plasma created by the actual electric discharge; lightning is the same thing on a larger scale), so he could easily be creating something that could technically be called "plasma damage" simply by having bad wiring or the rails too close together.
Railguns usually work by either directly accelerating a metal projectile along the rails, or alternatively by having a piece of metal attached to the rails (called an armature) which is used to push the projectile, which allows you to use projectiles of any material. A plasma armature is like the latter, but instead of using a piece of metal you create a plasma and accelerate that down the rails, which pushes the projectile in the same way the expanding gas in a gunpowder one does. It's a lot trickier, but solves some of the problems associated with physical moving parts at high speeds (such as arc-welding the moving part to the rails, as someone mentioned above). I'm pretty this is not being done in the video in question.
That was actually the point of my post. The headline, and the bolded text in the article, is misleading. I'm not so much having a go at the video maker, he's made quite an impressive project, as having a go at the poor reporting of it, which sells short the achievement by not explaining the sort of work that goes into it in favour of 560 mph, ooh, big number, and 3D Printed, because those will get clicks. If you're going to run a science and tech column, it'd be nice if I learnt something by reading it, and more so if it wasn't wrong about high school science, and even nicer if it respected the very thing it purports to be about.Kahani said:
Yes, but typically, on earth, you're going to be dealing with hot plasma, especially in this case, where we're talking about standard pressure, not low pressure, and a weapon application, where presumably, the aim is to burn someone with a projectile. I'm fairly skeptical about using plasma as a projectile anyway, unless you're getting a lot of heat, I can't imagine that the dispersion, reduced range, loss of kinetic energy, etc, makes a better projectile than a solid projectile.
True, but I'm not sure that the burns on the projectile are the result of "plasma damage", and not just burns from current being passed through the projectile, and since the article doesn't mention any of the details, that's worse. I don't know enough about the apparatus, or plasma, to predict if there's enough plasma to cause the burns, and some railguns have been designed to use the projectile are a conductor (That's your basic high school railgun). It's a nitpick, but I think it's important, since this is the only part of the cited source material that mentions plasma. Again, I'm basically ripping into the article. In the video they present, the only plasma mentioned is possible plasma damage to the projectile. At no point are we talking "Firing a plasma round". We're talking "Firing an Aluminium slug, which maybe has been burned by plasma generated by the electromagnets, or might be being used as a conductor in a railgun without an armature, fuck you, you work it out". Funnily enough, that wasn't the headline. They heard the word plasma, took it out and put it in the headline and the article to sell a fake news story.
That's very interesting, I was wondering how that's done. I've build a regular one in Physics way back with two rails and a armature/projectile, and was aware of the regular armature ones, but had only just seen the plasma ones. Out of curiosity, how would they generate the plasma there? I'm wondering whether they use more electromagnets, and what happens to the low pressure behind it. It's been noted by a few that there's a compressed air tank in there doing something, which I haven't quite puzzled out, I thought it might be for returning the armature.
Body looks good. Actual mechanism is questionable.
Even a mass that small (looks to between .1 -> 1 gram range, given it's aluminum) accelerated to 560mph over that short a distance should have torn through that cantaloupe sideways or not.
I've made rubberband staple guns that penetrated better than that, and for far less energy.
Even a mass that small (looks to between .1 -> 1 gram range, given it's aluminum) accelerated to 560mph over that short a distance should have torn through that cantaloupe sideways or not.
I've made rubberband staple guns that penetrated better than that, and for far less energy.
I'm impressed yet disappointed. For a homemade, non-military grade device it is pretty cool, but I was expecting the thing to fire a molten chunk of metal. I was a little disappointed that the bullet maintained its shape. It is also highly likely I am misunderstanding how railguns ammunition works (I am aware of how railgun firing functionality works).
7/10. Would fire again.
7/10. Would fire again.
Well, I'm sorry, but that's a misleading title. When you're talking about a gun that shoots plasma, what you should ALWAYS mean is...
OR
OR EVEN
...but not a solid ammo weapon based upon the magnetic projectile driving system found in railguns. After all, this is a gaming site. You know what we're thinking. Even still, I've seen some sweet homemade railgun action. Pretty cool stuff. Worries me that someone managed to do it with 3D printing now.
ADDITIONAL PLASMA FOOTAGE:
Captcha: Steam punk
I...don't think so.
OR
OR EVEN
...but not a solid ammo weapon based upon the magnetic projectile driving system found in railguns. After all, this is a gaming site. You know what we're thinking. Even still, I've seen some sweet homemade railgun action. Pretty cool stuff. Worries me that someone managed to do it with 3D printing now.
ADDITIONAL PLASMA FOOTAGE:
Captcha: Steam punk
I...don't think so.
Well I got curious on the topic of what it takes to make one of these things, turns out the only parts you need for a basic railgun are actually just 3 metal pieces, doesn't even matter what kind.FalloutJack said:
Two of them make the rails and one sits in the middle that gets propelled as you run electricity through the rails, and the more electricity you get in there the faster it goes. That is it, the entire trick, consequently also means your basic plastic printer can't make the vital parts at all.
The vital components, naturally, must be metal, but it's not as though metal bars are difficult to acquire. Mostly, I was remarking - as I have in the past - about how I am displeased that people are making guns with 3D printers. True, perhaps the pioneering Japanese man was seeing if it could be done, but now we've seen and now people start experimenting. I'm not harping on those who make hobby devices. To quote Vash The Stampede, "Dangeorus toys can be fun, but you could get hurt.". Those who are irresponsible or deliberately dangerous can use the technology improperly. It bothers me.Smooth Operator said: