This awesome DIY railgun fires rounds with 27,000 joules of force
Used to be that if you wanted to fire off a few high-velocity rounds with an electromagnetic railgun, you'd have to land a commission aboard the USS Ponce. That is, until YouTuber Ziggy Zee went ahead and built one from scratch -- no 3D printing required. The 250 pound device utilizes 56, 480-joule capacitors driven by a 400-volt power source to launch its aluminium projectiles with a staggering 27,000 joules of force.
The projectile is first accelerated to 50 MPH using a CO2-based propellant. As the 22g aluminum slug passes through the subsequent pair of copper rails, the capacitors discharge, forcing it out of the muzzle with more than 900 pounds of force. This discharge is so powerful, in fact, that it causes the slug to partially melt as it travels down the rails.
Zee has already run more than a dozen tests on the weapon, to great success, and has created an imgur post illustrating the build process. That poor, poor piggy bank.
[Image Credit: Ziggy Zee - Imgur]
