Doing trim work I would often hit the deck and reload my nail gun in the most dramatic fashion possible. Pissed everyone off but fuck did I think it was funny.
It’s almost like going back to the days of the blunderbuss. Out of “official” ammo? Just use whatever will fit! Really cool to see how quickly they’ve improved the tech
why a clone? he is Gun-Jesus, he just has to descend from heaven at that time for a review? or maybe use divine Wi-Fi if he can't be bothered to come down here? :p
Weren't there some staplers that used electromagnets or whatever to do the work? I seem to remember there being 90s staplers like that... back when paper was a thing...
I'm sure some industrious individual could simply include a speaker and project whatever firing sound they want. Star wars blaster sounds. 50cal, whip sound, clown springs, fapping noises. Idk... Bottom line, could be a future market for gauss gun firing noises. Ideally though, no sound on later versions will make it a snipers dream.
Even if this doesn't take off, coilguns are cool as hell, one of my favorite bits of sci-fi tech, and it's awesome to see it actually making its way into the real world. It's also cool as hell getting to see a firearm expert's views on something like this.
I could see coil guns being used by law enforcement as a form of less lethal. Though not this one specifically. I saw one that fires metal disks at quite some speed. It wouldn't be lethal, but they'd hurt like hell. And being able to shoot 50+ of those things per magazine, I think it would be a lot more efficient than beanbags
@@LeeAndersonMusic not a bad idea. Like a little plastic shell for pepperspray, or a beanbag you mentioned. Maybe even a long range, no wire taser would be cool. I wanted to make a “sabot/flechette” thingy for a ar-15. You put it on the end of the barrel, like a rifle grenade, and the bullet is caught, and the taser thing is launched. So you could theoretically tase someone 4x the distance.
i think it might take off due to cheap reusable ammo and relatively not a lot of complex parts cheap, versatile, very quiet and low recoil make them good for stealth, and no flash to give away your position all in all if one ever gets mass produced the army would probably contract it
@@Ribbons0121R121 this should take off like a rocket for exactly the reasons you mentioned. The ammo will be so cheap. It doesn't need complex chemicals engineered like a bullet. Those batteries are good for 300 rounds. This is the near future. Silent. No recoil. No moving parts. Nothing to clean. Zero maintenance. The few parts it has are cheap and easy to swap out by the user. I would expect to see several designs within 3 years. Multiple low number test weapons. And full production within less than 10 years of different types. It's already working, but it needs higher speeds and better aiming.
Another neat thing about it, at least in this current form, would be that you can just... go and collect and reuse most of the ammo if you've got a decent magnet broom
>Sees there is now copper-bearing PLA filament for 3D printers >Sees EMG-02 >Sees uses same battery as my power tools "Can I... 3D print shotcups and projectiles?" >Sees I can just shoot the piles of broken star-head screw driver bits I have "I am never going to financially recover from this"
The year is 2052 and a now late 60’s Ian is regaling how after the apocalypse there was a period when powder weapons reigned supreme until ammunition ran out, then the weapon you could power from the sun and would fire almost any chunk of steel came into its own and became the weapon of choice!
The only problem with this is unlike a powder-based weapon in which anyone with a lathe can make one, to make an electromagnetic weapon you need computer parts and chips, you need a really good quality electro magnets, incredibly energy dense power cells, and a lot of other materials that frankly are not easily produced on your own or downright impossible for your average joe in his basement shelter.
I've been tinkering with this concept since the latter half of the 90s. One thing I've noticed with coil guns that most others have built, is that they seem to mostly use electrolytic capacitors and coils with higher resistances, (wound with more turns of thinner wire). The best, (and scariest), results I ever had was when I used pulse capacitors with 3 stages of lower resistance coils, (wound with fewer turns of much thicker wire). Of course this comes with its own set of problems, (mainly with switching due to the extremely high voltages and currents), but heat management was less of a problem. The projectile I mostly used was a specialized iron 'dart' coated in PCL thermoplastic. From about ten meters it could easily penetrate 3/4 inch plywood and leave a deep pock in the concrete wall behind it. The last test resulted in the recoil ripping the coils off their mounts and sending one of them flying backwards in the opposite direction of the projectile, but the projectile penetrated the same 3/4 inch plywood and embedded a little over halfway into a Jacksonville Florida phone book. After that, I just never got around to rebuilding it. I've always been really fascinated with high energy/high voltage applications, but I don't really forsee myself building anything else like that in the near future, but maybe other tinkerers here can make use of this information and succeed where I failed. 😉
@@shmillbe3390 Welllll... I suppose you're not wrong. 🤷♀ I wish that phone cameras were a thing back in 1998-99. ...Although I probably wouldn't have been able to afford one at that time.
what type of capacitors did you use? "pulse capacitors" unfortunately doesn't tell much to me. Film capacitors? what kind of film, what nominal voltage? etc.
I realize that it's a cool thing to have buttons and a digital screen to select your mode and to keep track of your rounds/speed. But I suspect if one of these things makes it into practical use, those things will probably be the first things to go. You can easily replace mode selection with a selector switch to input into the digital system and program whatever it is running the system on the gun to take that sort of input. That way instead of squinting down at your screen trying to figure out if you're in burst, you can easily tell where you're at with the position of the switch without even looking.
Having a screen to show the charge level still seems like it would be useful. Definitely a physical switch for fire mode and safe would be more practical though
What I was thinking as well. You need to do a lot of work to make a screen legible in daylight (you essentially need it to be brighter than the Sun which is pretty bright I'm told by people who actually go outside). My initial thought was to make a hooded recess with LEDs next to labels, but a simple mechanical switch is a much better idea. Charge levels can be represented with an array of LEDs or something. Other data seems to be mostly for debugging, but I'm no expert in coilguns. Overall, this is obviously a prototype that was designed and tested indoors, and it's pretty great. Would be interesting to see how they go about stabilising the projectile.
Probably, but iirc they likened these to the wright brother's aircraft vs an ar15's jet fighter; that screen is there to show the user the 'debug' stuff as much as anything. When the next gen/more reliably ones start turning up, then I'll be surprised if you're not right and it gets replaced.
Microwave safe, just wait until the Boston Dynamic dogs get one mounted with AI doing the automatic targeti while addressing citizens to stand down they're breaking curfew .
You could use it as a grenade when you feel it getting really hot, just lob your weapon at the enemy, who, never seeing anything like it, will pick it up and 'play' with it... BOOOM!
@@dlmsarge8329 the electrical-side can be upgraded so much more! Right with you with being so curious as to see where it will be in the years and even months to come 😃
@@calmsoul772 Given that Ian said that drill battery is good for about 300 rounds, I think we've got quite a bit of leeway in current battery tech before it starts limiting development.
300 full power shots on one battery is pretty legit, considering a standard rifleman combat load is 210 to 300, rounds. Now they just need to get the muzzle velocity up a bit and we're good to go. Love it. And this was 8 months ago! Can't wait for the next one.
@@markthompson8656 according to a quick search it's up to 75m/s or about 246 freedoms per second, so it's got a little ways to go. I imagine they're refining the system at a civilian sales safe level (since this is barely scratching airsoft guns, just with much heavier projectiles) before they start ramping it up. I give it.... two years maybe.
"... up a bit"? Ya Think? My Daisy Red Ryder spring operated BB gun has a higher muzzle velocity. I ain't shitty you..... 85 to 90 m/s when well oiled with a new spring. This glorified rubber band shooter is only a threat to balloons, glass windows, and stationary insects.
@@bigdickpornsuperstar the original guns were bamboo rods firing rocks, things take time to get better. This is clearly still a work in progress and definitely not ready for military use.
Ways to tell a rail gun from a coil gun: If the projectile is fired between two conductive rails, it's a rail gun. If the projectile is fired through coils, it's a coil gun. If the choice of material for the projectile depends on its electrical conductivity, it's a rail gun. If the choice of material for the projectile depends on its magnetic properties, it's a coil gun. If upon firing the gun there's a bright flash of light and a loud bang: - If the designers go "YEAH BABY!" ... it's a rail gun. - If the designers go "OH GOD WHAT HAPPENED?!?" ... it *was* a coil gun.
@@joeparker9516 yeah, rail guns are like coil guns if your goal is to hit your target, several dozen feet of reinforced concrete, and bury the payload several dozen more feet under a bus sized crater… depending on the size of the payload.
@@matthewnienkirchen8083A coil gun isn't _necessarily_ slower than a rail gun, but it gets more and more complicated the higher you want the projectile speed to be because driving the coils with the correct timing to track the accelerating projectile gets more and more precise, and will require increasingly large voltage to change the magnetic fields rapidly enough (resulting in increased flashover risks). A rail gun doesn't have this particular problem since its fields naturally follow the projectile without requiring any external timing, though to compensate a railgun is just a much bigger headache overall, especially if you were hoping it fire it more than once ;-)
@@bubba200874426 the trillions in the M.I.C will pour in and solve that issue pretty fast, if a tech is promising enough the DoD/MIC will jump in on it before completion.
@@peasantjeff4731 I imagine you could just spin the projectile up on a motorized platter which grips it magnetically (mounted normal to the barrel at the rear of the chamber), then release it and have the coils pull the now-spinning projectile down the barrel like usual. No rifling needed if the forces are well-balanced and the alignment is good.
Railgun: A quarterback holds the ball and charges forward. The quarterback tends to tear his arms and legs apart in the process. Coilgun: Several golfers line up and hit the ball as it passes by them. They must be in perfect synchronization or it doesn't work. In either case, one can hit the ball harder or accelerate it over a greater distance.
And both get harder to make work well the faster you're aiming for, either way. The railgun because it erodes faster, the coilgun because the faster the projectile is moving, the narrower the timing of the coil switching needs to get for that perfect synch.
@@Plotatothewondercat The timing of the coils isn't really the issue, microcontrollers can read sensors, calculate data, then control the coils many orders of magnitude faster than a coil gun can accelerate a projectile. The biggest issue is a power source able to provide the necessary current.
So my question is the large hadron collider a looped rail gun or a looped coil gun? I know it uses electromagnets to fly the particles around it and make it collide with other particles but is it rail or coil?
I am eager to have the answer on whether or not this will become a legit lethal and useful thing or if it'll remain a gimmick. Only time will tell UNLESS there's a proper scientific research that talk about it (but I don't have any link, hence the comment :) )
Its still science fiction. Not nearly a usable weapon and I dont see any improvement of that in the foreseeable future. US Navy already created a large version of an electromagnetic gun... and it kinda sucks. Big, impractical and not much effect.
@@termitreter6545 its called a "proof of concept".do we have the tech to make this? Yes. Is it an effective weapon system yet? No, but we're getting there. The one built by the navy sucks, yeah. But thats cuz its a railgun and as such the rails burn out from friction, and its not that powerful as it is. Give it a few decades and we'll have decent coilgun tech.
@@Wesmancan lmao. I don't even play quake. its an iconic part of game history and it's refrenced everywhere. how bout you turn your screen off instead of tellin folks what to do with their spare time?
This thing’s like a predecessor to a weapon my dad made up for an old sci-fi tabletop rpg he and some friends made. It was this but smaller with a super high fire rate, with a hose running from a backpack carrying thousands a lil ball bearings. It was meant to disable control panels and stuff inside ships and didn’t do much damage to enemies.
an interesting thing to note is that a penumatic gun exists that uses 6mm bearings for that very purpose, breaking car windows or the like without being lethal. So your Dad was definately onto something there. using a backpack allows for much larger batteries, too.
This was my thought in testing this weapon. We don't get a very goo idea of what it's capable of when it's shot at a flimsy target. Another thought I had is if it was possible to belt feed it or otherwise extend it's magazine size.
If we knew the mass of the bullets we could pretty easily compute the kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2) and compare it to a more conventional bullet. My guess is it's not very damaging. I mean, I still wouldn't want to get hit by it, but I kind of doubt it's lethal. I'm guessing somewhere around pellet gun, maybe less.
It is far from supersonic (it has hunting bow arrow speeds), and no explosion to propel the projectile. The clicking sounds you hear when it fires are likely just mechanical parts, and my guess it is all just the magazine.
@@louisvictor3473 if it has the same firing system as the previous one, the click is likely the solenoid smacking the back of the projectile into the coils to launch them. other than that there really shouldn't be any noise at all.
@@BetaBreaking eh, I doubt this will every become viable outside of space warfare where the vacuum environment and thin protection makes these viable. And that assumes we are sending humans to fight in space, where a drone/missile of some kind will be far more effective. I mean, even denying oxygen resupply would be enough to kill your enemy lol.
I'm really glad that Arcflash is still continuing these products and research into electrically powered guns. There will come a time when these are viable replacements to traditional firearms. Arcflash I think will always be a name to remember as an innovator in this field.
Just think, I can purchase 1000 bullets from my favorite reloading company for $119. This literally makes ammo cheap lol 😂. I can see a Mega Chad at a Tesla recharging station like, “charging up my XJ556 Rifle”. While holding up the line of Tesla car owners in his Ford Raptor. Lol 😂
@@letsgowinnietheflu5439 by that logic the military shouldn’t use radios, GPS, computers, modern aircraft or any other electronic devices. EMPs don’t work like that.
That's quite the improvement for such a short length of time. The design is definitely sleeker, and I'm left stunned at the improvement in recharge rate, though I do have some safety concerns about the capacitor being seated right next to the shooter's chest, as much as it makes sense engineering-wise. I would suppose it's okay for a civilian product, though. It's really nice how much more "weaponlike" the form factor has become now, too. An actually usable handguard might arguably be this revision's biggest improvement, and the battery being seated at the bottom of the pistol grip seems like an excellent way to balance the weight distribution (the genius decision to incorporate cordless drill batteries aside). Ace Hardware is going to wonder where the hell these gun nuts suddenly buying up all their screwheads, drill bits, and dowel pins all suddenly started coming from. C'mon, DARPA. You just *know* you want to dump a billion dollars on these guys.
Some sort of cage+venting structure should allow for preventing physical damage to the capacitor and containing any fragmentation from a burst capacitor while also not allowing pressure to build up into a bomb. Still, I bet the thing is heavy enough as-is, although a polymer structure probably isn't that heavy anyways. It could also make a more ergonomic/adjustable stock too, or have storage etc available.
Well, it's not like the capacitor on a radar transmitter charged up to lethal voltages. 60v stings but that's about it. The drill battery prevents the cap from being charged in reverse.
@@eloiseharbeson2483 more than the shock, is about the explosion if it gets damaged by any bump, even a small capacitor gets propelled when exploding and it can poke an eye out, pretty sure they will adress that in the future tho.
On that note, could they load like a pack of needles or something in a nonmagnetic holder to make it a single-shot flechettes shotgun (single shot because the nonmagnetic holder needs to be ejected each time from the magazine). I don't know if it would even be possible to have a low-magnetism holder to shoot it at the same time as the needles but at a lower speed and distance?
I'm loving how the charging cable is using a B&C connector, I used to have a laserdisc player that used the same connection type. I'm loving the whole sci-fi aesthetic at work here!
I love how common that type of screen is getting - I have several exactly like it in some projects. Fun fact, they don't play nice with cameras because only one pixel is lit at any given moment, it just scans really fast. Your shutter has to be open for at least ~16ms (1/60th) to capture the whole image.
I love how the only actual sound it makes is a light clicking from the trigger being pulled. Kinda freaky to think that it can get such good speeds while barely making any sound.
If they were ever to get to a point where the projectiles are supersonic like normal bullets, I'm sure it'd be a fair bit louder, but yeah it's cool how it just ticks at you like a sewing machine.
there's also a strong solenoid pushing the projectile into the first accelerator coil. The clicking you hear is the solenoid activating, not the trigger.
I don't claim to be a clairvoyant, but I could imagine the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s when we have batteries that are powerful enough to deliver serious kinetic energy out of a railgun or a coilgun? (I'm not talking .22LR energy, I'm talking scary levels of energy, enough to impale someone into a wall or a tree with metal rods like the flechette artillery rounds from Vietnam). Don't get me wrong, the Arcflash rifles are cool as hell, and are very promising first steps towards man portable coilguns, so I'm not bashing them. But their "stopping power" is limited. I think once they become more powerful, smaller and advanced as battery tech advances (hydrogen cells, beta radiation batteries like Americium batteries, solid state batteries, etc)? The first military units who will adopt them will be special forces/SF guys. Think about it. You could have a railgun/coilgun that fires a bullet the size and weight of a 7.62x39mm bullet, and delivers similar kinetic energy. But the magazines will only have to be as long as handgun magazines because there's no need for a case, just the bullet. You could carry far more rounds that deliver similar energy, and you have a rifle that is almost completely silent, requires less maintenance (no carbon fowling in the barrel or gas systems, because there's no combustion!), you could theoretically make your own ammo in the field if you had to, and for the purposes of clandestine operations? You leave little ballistic trace. No gunshot residue, no casings, no sign that a gunfight even occurred, all your enemy sees after you leave is a bunch of dead guys and strange 7.62mm bullets they've never seen before, or if you're using metal rods? A couple of dead dudes who've been impaled into a wall or a bed. It could be an ideal special forces weapon for those reasons, plus the one you mentioned. It will likely be quieter than any suppressed combustion firearm (other than subsonic .22s) and has the potential to be far more powerful.
@@keithm5378 i can imagine similar weapons being used on vehicle mounted mode taking energy from the vehicle it self, like a minigun for example In such a configuration for example it won't need the battery and it won't really need to be that accurate either taking to account the amount o projectiles it can produce 😁
Would interesting to see them have a polycarb or whatever barrel, that was rifled / threaded - and the bolts come with that threading so that instead of interference rifling , you'd have spin induced by some sort of low drag threading
@@gabriellang7998That was the point, both barrel and projectile being rifled, just used "threaded". However at anything close to this power stage, I'm doubtful that would work. Because it would introduce a comparatively huge amount of friction, whereas these current models practically has no friction at all.
Wonder if you could make the dowel spin before it's pulled into the "barrel". Something like electric motor & rubber disc pushed against next dowel in the magazine before firing. If the system really is low friction it could keep the spin going.
This is essentially the matchlock musket of coilguns, an piss-poor start but with lots of future potential. I'd love to see the potential future designs
If they made a coil gun with a back pack battery that might be enough to make them lethal, the back pack would be bulky but the silence of the weapon would make it really good for stealth operations.
@@Dagrizzb i’d give it 20 years tops. we probably already have the technology to make a proper coil gun. humans have greater knowledge and technology than we did back when the first firearms came out, so it shouldn’t take as long to start inventing a viable coil gun
Ian (or anyone who owns one of these) should invest in a magnetic ground-sweeper; that way they could reuse the projectiles (rather than having to reload the spent cases!)
@@lucasblanchard47 I think their point was that magnet sweeping for coilgun projectiles is the closest recycling equivalent of brass reloading for firearms, not that you'd have to reload cases for this.
@@robertpatter5509 I wonder how long/ if it is possible to produce a coilgun for actual combat. I know rn there's many constraints on batteries which restricts weapons like this but they are very cool.
@@collinb.8542 i bet a large military contractor could make something like this work for a military application today. the lithium power pack for hand tools hold enough energy to be within the realm of feaseable for a combat loadout. 2-3 battery packs to 6-12 mags with about 150-200 rounds of ammo is not out of the question. making it more powerful is straightforward. making it accurate isnt impossible, but is a bit tricky, thats where the larger budget would come in.
@@collinb.8542 Waiting for more breakthroughs in super conductor materials that don't have to be super cooled, this one thing is holding back an actual shittonne of already proven and viable tech, some of it decades old, that's how long that one problem has been holding stuff back, otherwise we would now have fast efficient magnetic levitation (MAglev) trains and cars everywhere.
Wanted to build one of these gauss guns 13 years ago with a friend. i was 14 at the time. We knew how it worked but we haven't had the skills for it sadly. very nice to see it in action.
never too late to get back into it, after my daughter showed some interest in robotics I realized hobbies become addictions real quick when you make decent money. coil gun and rail gun is getting awful close on my list of projects. I'll be doing a RC controled turret for sure.
20th century: “I’ll never trust an auto loader theres no way it’ll be reliable.” 21st century:”I’ll never trust a battery powered gun its to reliant on ext power.”
A bit more like... Mid-19th Century: "I'll never trust an auto-loader, they get gummed up too easily and are not reliable." (Before smokeless powder was invented) Late-19th Century: "I'll never trust a machine gun, it's just not feasible to provide that much ammunition to just one firearm and it's too wasteful." Early-20th Century: "I'll never trust a gas operated firearm with a gas porn in the barrel, it obviously will reduce velocity, energy, and accuracy." Mid-20th Century: "I'll never trust sub-.30 cal ammunition, it is not sufficiently lethal." Late-20th Century: ... people still arguing about 'unreliable' AR vs 'inaccurate' AK, and 'weak' 9mm vs 'slow' .45... Early-21st Century: "I'll never trust a battery-powered gun, it's too reliant on external power..." And people are still arguing about AR vs AK and 9mm vs .45.
Ian's little chuckle at the end is awesome. That being said though, while I know traditional firearms can explode if you do something dumb, I have seen big capacitors explode after literally no provocation (I was trying to clean up the aftermath of a capacitor failure in a big VFD just a couple of weeks ago) and I would be REALLY uncomfortable with having a big one like that inches from my face.
Ohh yeah, that bad boy pops and it's gonna be bad. I've also seen a good many videos of traditional magazines just exploding because of a very rare fault. High-density energy storage is dangerous, especially when you want to use a lot of it at once. It's just SO cool though!
You should feel it swell in time to drop it and run before it blows. Still, that plus the possibility of some wires coming loose and shocking you... I don't like it at all tbh, big capacitors are scary
I still remember 10 years ago people said something like this would never be hand held, practical, nor commercially available, with actual military use a pipe dream confined to science fiction. That was only ten years ago and we already have something they said couldn’t be done, I can’t wait to see what this will be capable of in 20 years
Half of what you said still isn't applicable to this. It's not practical or anywhere near being useable as an infantry weapon. Still, maybe in 15-30 years.... Maybe?
@@LegendStormcrow I've seen a a hobbyist here on youtube make his own gauss rifle with reasonable power. Problem is by the third round the barrel e.g the rails and the magnets, melt.
im so impressed by the creativity of this firearm. Like the steps between the EMG01 to this latest model is huge in such a small time! I'm amazed to see what the future holds in store!
You've heard of the Mozambique drill firing technique? Well, now we have access to the Phillips, the Flathead, the Hex, and the Proprietary Bit Without a Standardized Name. And, if you're more the homemade ammo type, the Chopped Up Ikea Wrench Bits.
Between the drill battery and the drill bit projectiles this feels like a weapon made for Tim "The Toolman" Taylor in that god awful Home Improvement video game
Plus it just using a dowl pin. Imagine making a vaned flechette round for this. All you need is ferris metal and I'm sure someone could mill someone that flies more accurately and has better penetration.
no where near practical. airsoft guns literteally hit harder. its shooting a 9 gram bullet at 71m/s thats less than one joul of kinetic energy. a .22 is about 170 joules. for referenc.e high power airsoft guns can easily get into 2-3 joules of energy if using the heavier .3g or .4g bb's
I would love to see what the "rounds" look like after hitting the steel plate. I would image that the ones on the paper target would be reusable, just difficult to find.
The neat thing about this is that after you're done shooting you can walk up to the Target and throw down one of those magnets that magnet fishing people use and pick up all of your ammunition
@@Noxis07 Easy eyeball scan should sort that. Anything that looks too damaged you just dump, what looks fine will probably be fine to launch. Remember, no pressure or barrel dimensions to worry too much about. And steel projectiles tend to be more resilient than lead-copper variants.
@@Noxis07 you can still approximately re-grind them to the right shape. since there's no direct contact beetween projectile and a barrel, the shape doesn't need to be as exact and perfect as on a firearm
I watched the original gauss gun video long ago. I felt obligated to watch the upgrade. I would NEVER put a cap that big next to my body. You are a brave man.
I think you'd be better off with self-stabilizing shapes like those used for shotgun slugs. Maybe even just drilling out a deep dimple on the back end of the projectile would give you better flight performance.
What I thought they could do is use finned projectiles and have rails on the barrel that input a rotation onto the projectile, you could still use improvised ammo, but actual ammo could be stabilized
The fire rate is much improved! Looks aesthetically much better as well... I remember watching people build their own little coil guns at home years and years ago, this is definitely the most advanced one so far.
Love the 3d printed body, really looks like a project you could find schematics for on thingiverse/printables, very inspiring to see how far the designers came from to get to this.
I get the vibe that this thing is about, where 3D printing was 6 or 7 years ago. Functional and useable by the general consumer, but a bit clunkier and with less "polish" than a mass-market product. That's not at all a knock on it either. These things take time and they are clearly approaching their goals.
Yeah, I saw the flaws too, but then I imagine a team working on different bits and just getting to a point where it works for a proof of concept. I'm sure they have better versions going now and in their heads.
There's quite a lot of progress towards usability too which is good to see. Just sort of got to figure out a way of finding an ammo that doesn't keyhole as much, I wasn't hugely impressed with the Mk1 but they're getting there
I'm just afraid that some of the fundamental limitations (can't rifle the barrel 'cause that's not how the barrel works, etc) will curtail the potential on the design as a whole.
Not really A REAL railgun fires Thousands of Rounds per minute..no resistance, Eddy Current Attenuation can go ANY Direction depending on polarity...think of a Fast moving " River of magnetism " ..
@@mjolnirswrath23 I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The fact that they managed to get this gun working with auto and burst fire is a big deal for its commercial viability, not for coil gun technology in general. I figured that was so obvious it didn't need to be said.
I like your hat Ian. Looks good on you. Your videos always teach us something new. No bragging or pride in your videos. Just an excellent technical analysis.
Consider that it probably has almost zero recoil. The only thing pushing the gun backward toward you is conservation of momentum, since it has to push mass out the front.
I am wondering if that has something to do with the coils discharging so quickly it generates a field that keeps the projectiles in that tighter group.
I'm wondering if the projectiles cannot be round for electromagnetic effects to work properly, and ArcLabs should already know the answer to that question. If they don't, however, then testing is the only solution.
@@dionh70 its more of a practical thing because adding a hopper to the top of the gun with another 5lbs of projectiles would call for a redesign of the coils, loading mechanism so on and so forth. it would probably be best for them to start from the ground up if they were to use spherical projectiles. it would make for a very good lmg type design though.
There's no reason a paintball gun wouldnt launch a steel ball anyways. As long as its the correct size for the barrel, itll go. I thought of using marbles but afraid the marker might chop it to bits.
@@burgerbait probably not, a steel ball the size of a paintball would be dozens of times heavier than a paintball. But idk, that sounds like a job for someone who knows physics
I think my big issue with the capacitor being at the back like that is if the capacitor fails then the explosion is going straight into your chest. I've seen a capacitor failure at a similar size and it's like a small breaching charge going off.
I believe the next models are going to change to a backpack + feeding belt mechanism, more or less like a XM556 Microgun: the gun would be lighter, the capacitors could be bigger but better protected and, finally, bigger projectiles could be stored in great numbers
Ian I would suggest ArcFlash Labs include a large magnet on a stick ( like the ones roofer use to collect nails on the ground ) . You can then collect all your spent rounds and reload the magazines! 🤠👍
One thing about having a single larger capacitor at the back is that it makes it easier to maintain but also vastly more dangerous in the case of a catastrophic failure. If one capacitor blows up at the front you might have to go to the hospital to fix your hand but probably won't have lasting injuries, if one huge capacitor blows up right next to your face that's a mortal danger. Hopefully by the time they release it they will have compiled a set of procedures to inspect the capacitor.
I couldn’t agree more. I work with those things often. It should have a blast exhaust port to prevent a pipe bomb situation, large capacitors have a overpressure port usually. But if it’s enclosed it won’t be good.
Agreed. But the software could monitor the capacitor and calculate its ESR, then warn the user and disable charging if it gets too high. It won't catch all catastrophes, but that is the usual indicator of a failing cap.
In fact it comes with a five-year guarantee that if the capacitor fails they'll send you a new one free of charge, *and* they'll also send a team to help find your head ! 😁
Reminds me of those self contained reloading muskets he showcased before, which you revolved a lever to reload the powder and the shot, but had all the gunpowder stored in the stock, so if it wasn’t absolutely perfectly machined it would basically explode
I wonder if they’d make a backpack version with larger capacitors and batteries stored in the pack for greater muzzle velocity. Be hella heavy but I’d love to see something like that. Ghostbuster style coil gun
The 'backpack version' springs to mind the Soviet shock troops from the game 'Command & Conquer: Red Alert' who had a large capacitor backpack, and killed with a directional Tesla coil.
might actually shoot as hard as an airsoft gun if they did that, hopefully we will find some new way to make more effective capacitors and figure out graphene batteries fully soon so these can be closer to weapon than toy
@@Jordan-zk2rf I mean, it already fires as hard as airsoft guns, except its firing heavy steel bolts. if you give the gun a bigger capacitor it will only be able to fire heavier ammo as he said in the video. if you want faster muzzle velocity you need to increase the density of the coils or extend the barrel adding more coils. if the gun is big enough the muzzle velocity can easily reach the km/s... though it will be a bit hard to carry around.
need smaller projectiles and a feature that allows all the energy to be used in ONE shot. needs a electromagnetic barrel that allows for it to be turned off and on in sections making the projectile spin fast while sending it down the barrel making it very powerful and accurate. maybe magnetic projectiles so it can help with its own propulsion and stabilization.
Considering this is a privateer working entirely from scratch, thats a clean build. Transition to a markforged or similar printer and it'd be really impressive!
@@lucky43113 Since a capacitor that size could easily decapitate you if it were to explode since they completely blocked the pressure release point, you should be scared.
It's a bit like that, but I'm still waiting on practical flying cars, personal jetpacks and some of the other stuff Popular Mechanics showed us back then.
@@VosperCDN Flying Cars will probably never happen on a mass scale because that would be an absolute nightmare. Unless, maybe, they were completely non-pilotable and were automated only. I can't imagine anything else being even remotely acceptable with the way people drive right now.
@@JohnnyShagbot AVs from Cyberpunk and Spinners from Blade Runner both fit this description. Both *can* be manually piloted with certain models, but 99% of them are totally autonomous. The ones that are manually flown are often much hard to get, as it's basically a Driver's AND Pilot's liscense... That said, it's probably not much harder than nowadays, just that people of the time grew up not needing to learn to drive at all.
I kinda want one now but it would be nice to have a protective "stock" around that capacitor since people tend to not be the most careful. Plus a protective case around it would shield you if the Cap explodes.
@@TheDsRequiem Maybe if it was designed w an intentional weak point that's away from the chest or to the side it would be....slightly less likely to kill you. lol
Which direction are you going to vent it? I has to go somewhere. Anyone drive an electric car, you're sitting on all the 'energy' and you have other motorists targeting you...
@@tfxreference8562 I'm thinking closer to a .22 short, but especially with the ammo tumbling the way it does, you might be closer to right on that. It's an awesome idea to handheld projectile launchers, but I don't think the tech is quite there yet. I'm excited to see where this line weaponry will be in another 5 years.
I agree! I want to see how well it penetrates clothing covered gel, and maybe a watermelon. I can't quite grok how damaging those slugs are at ~200 ft per second... if they hit like say an arrow maybe you could use it as is to keep squirrels away from the bird feeder.
The projectile is traveling at 71 m/ sec. Paintballs travel at 90 m/ sec. For comparison, Ruger 10/22 are 400+ m/sec. AR-15, 1500+ m/sec This thing? It most likely won't even break the skin. Put on a thick and loose flannel jacket and you might not even feel it hit you. Against bare skin, you'll most likely get a welt.
In the future this weapon will be more accurate and extremely dangerous if you're on the receiving end. Then it probably will get banned due to its being so quiet.
Admittedly I know almost nothing about future weapon tech. I just stumbled upon this video and am blown away. I don't know what the limitations of a hand held coil gun are but if they can be made lethal and accurate... holy crap. Almost silent, no recoil and you could even pick some fired ammunition back up and reuse it!
It's a very interesting topic! The navy even funded railguns for a bit before it got cancelled. Unfortunately it's going to be many decades before anything like this becomes close to being practical.
At first I was like "Ehh having to have two sources of ammunition for the same gun..." but then he started firing drill bits. He turned drill bits into ammunition on the fly.
Maybe a smaller battery could be housed in the base of the magazine. Something good for say 100 shots. So a 20 round magazine could be refilled up to 5 times on a single charge. Carrying multiple magazines has got to be easier than carrying spare battery packs. You could even have a reserve battery on the gun itself for additional shots once the mags are depleted.
@@bluesrocker91 If you're still engaging after 300 shots, you have a bigger problem. Not saying your ideas are bad by any means, but if you get 300 shots per battery, that's 20 mags. Not sure how many mags a marine carries right now, but it's probably less than half that (to account for differences in capacity).
@@bluesrocker91 Not a bad idea, to be honest. As a bonus, and to keep the “plug and play” benefits of the drill battery, they could literally use the same batteries used for E-Flite type micro helicopters - then you could charge the mags using a little E-Flite USB charger.
@@shadowmancy9183 also the mags on this thing are smaller because they don't need to have their own propellant so a marine could actually carry more ammo with this configuration and just a handfull of batteries Imaginé a future where a single soldiers can carry thousands of rounds of ammunition that don't weight any more than what they are already carrying
Spherical projectiles are terrible in coil guns. The way a sphere interacts with magnetic flux is such that it tends to disperse the electromagnetic energy, instead of being propelled by it.
@@tonymorris3935 What about small thin needle-like projectiles? A "needler" used to be a pretty common weapon in sci-fi novels (Niven and Pournelle especially I think), and often relied more on a shotgun-like spray rather than a single precision shot. Seems like it might be a good fit for something like this... well, you know, assuming that a needle style of ammo would actually work! ^_^
Finally, after all those times pretending to reload the battery of a hand drill like it's a real gun comes into play.
lol iv done that a few times
Doing trim work I would often hit the deck and reload my nail gun in the most dramatic fashion possible. Pissed everyone off but fuck did I think it was funny.
👍😆
@@hazloner117 I've done that with a staple gun
Firearm fans in China.exe
Never would I have imagined watching Ian fire drill bits from a 3D printed coilgun powered by a powertool battery
Yeah that was an odd combination on the bingo card, but we got it
Legit sounds like a mad lib
At least he can go pick up the bits and use them in the shop.
The future is now, old man.
then you just werent imagining hard enough
It’s almost like going back to the days of the blunderbuss. Out of “official” ammo? Just use whatever will fit! Really cool to see how quickly they’ve improved the tech
Not really "whatever" will fit. It needs to be a ferrous material.
@@chris101ward You can buy stock tubes of iron and steel at most hardware stores so, just chop them to length and you're good to go
Indeed! And with the pins tumbling through the air, I actually wonder if "ball shot" wouldn't offer better aerodynamics.
@@Aethgeir like ball bearings?
They just need to make it shoot about six times as fast...
As a T800 infiltration unit, I'm pleased to see we're one step closer to having a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range.
underated comment
I was thinking it's more like a m41a pulse rifle caseless
absolutely underrated comment
You know your weapons, buddy.
Sounds aweful to use something like this in modern combat just throw an emp and your whole squad is done
“This thing can actually fire drill bits”
Finally, a reason for me to keep up with all the hundreds of standard flats I’ve lost over the years.
@@robinpage2730 I gave you a thumbs, but methinks you’re a bot.
@@robinpage2730 Well Thankya.
Ar last! A use for all the poorly-hardened, worn out screw driver bits I've trashed in my time.
@@charlesprokopp276 good god if thats the case ive got a tool box full of spot-weld drill bits / newfound ammo in my garage 0_o
@@robinpage2730 Aren't we a bit too far into the future for using C?
Looking forward to Ian's clone in 2122 doing a video about early coilguns of the early 21st century and their development before WW3
By that point Gun Jesus will be preaching to his flock of wastelanders outside of the bunker doors of the Titan missile museum.
@@IAssassinII Instead of worshipping a nuclear bomb Ian's followers will gesticulate before "the Holy Show-Show".
@@IAssassinII The same bunker breached and secured by a fireteam of LPL clones towards the end of the war.
why a clone? he is Gun-Jesus, he just has to descend from heaven at that time for a review? or maybe use divine Wi-Fi if he can't be bothered to come down here? :p
you mean ww5
Coilgun appearance: looks like its from the future
Coilgun sounds: Like a stapler
This exactly
So accurate.
Weren't there some staplers that used electromagnets or whatever to do the work? I seem to remember there being 90s staplers like that... back when paper was a thing...
My stapler. Can I have my stapler?
I'm sure some industrious individual could simply include a speaker and project whatever firing sound they want. Star wars blaster sounds. 50cal, whip sound, clown springs, fapping noises. Idk... Bottom line, could be a future market for gauss gun firing noises. Ideally though, no sound on later versions will make it a snipers dream.
Ian maxed out guns, putting skill points in science now.
Energy weapons and science?
Fallout reference?
"This thing will fire drill bits." If you can't rifle the barrel just rifle the bullets 😂
Shot gun slugs
That's what I was thinking, could dowel pins with rifling grooves embedded in them self stabilize in flight?
@@saint-cetacean You'd actually be better served with fin stabilization since the projectile never physically touches the barrel.
@@1337penguinman APFSDS coilgun? ;)
Fin stablized sabotted rounds?
Ian is really out here testing futuristic guns while having a haircut and beard straight from the 1870's.
When you buy a high tier item as a low tier
LMAO
Living the steam/ cyber punk dream
Man living the fps life
" I'm your huckleberry "
Even if this doesn't take off, coilguns are cool as hell, one of my favorite bits of sci-fi tech, and it's awesome to see it actually making its way into the real world. It's also cool as hell getting to see a firearm expert's views on something like this.
I could see coil guns being used by law enforcement as a form of less lethal. Though not this one specifically. I saw one that fires metal disks at quite some speed. It wouldn't be lethal, but they'd hurt like hell. And being able to shoot 50+ of those things per magazine, I think it would be a lot more efficient than beanbags
One advantage is, you can take a large magnet and run it around the target gong area and recover your ammo!
@@LeeAndersonMusic not a bad idea. Like a little plastic shell for pepperspray, or a beanbag you mentioned. Maybe even a long range, no wire taser would be cool. I wanted to make a “sabot/flechette” thingy for a ar-15. You put it on the end of the barrel, like a rifle grenade, and the bullet is caught, and the taser thing is launched. So you could theoretically tase someone 4x the distance.
i think it might take off due to cheap reusable ammo and relatively not a lot of complex parts
cheap, versatile, very quiet and low recoil make them good for stealth, and no flash to give away your position
all in all if one ever gets mass produced the army would probably contract it
@@Ribbons0121R121 this should take off like a rocket for exactly the reasons you mentioned. The ammo will be so cheap. It doesn't need complex chemicals engineered like a bullet. Those batteries are good for 300 rounds.
This is the near future.
Silent.
No recoil.
No moving parts.
Nothing to clean.
Zero maintenance.
The few parts it has are cheap and easy to swap out by the user.
I would expect to see several designs within 3 years. Multiple low number test weapons. And full production within less than 10 years of different types.
It's already working, but it needs higher speeds and better aiming.
Another neat thing about it, at least in this current form, would be that you can just... go and collect and reuse most of the ammo if you've got a decent magnet broom
>Sees there is now copper-bearing PLA filament for 3D printers
>Sees EMG-02
>Sees uses same battery as my power tools
"Can I... 3D print shotcups and projectiles?"
>Sees I can just shoot the piles of broken star-head screw driver bits I have
"I am never going to financially recover from this"
There are 3D steel printers out there.
0:23 If we can’t technically call it a “Gauss Rifle” could we call it a “Gauss Musket”? Because that still sounds sweet.
Not a musket.
Gauss Blaster!
Mass Driver?
Particle accelerator?
or just Gauss Gun? "Say hello to GG."
@@GeomancerHT How is it not a musket? Essentially the difference between a musket and a rifle is the lack of rifling
The year is 2052 and a now late 60’s Ian is regaling how after the apocalypse there was a period when powder weapons reigned supreme until ammunition ran out, then the weapon you could power from the sun and would fire almost any chunk of steel came into its own and became the weapon of choice!
Firing drill bits is right out of fallout
@@StoutProper good stuff lol
@@StoutProper Firing drill bits makes home depot and lowes ammunition stores as well
The only problem with this is unlike a powder-based weapon in which anyone with a lathe can make one, to make an electromagnetic weapon you need computer parts and chips, you need a really good quality electro magnets, incredibly energy dense power cells, and a lot of other materials that frankly are not easily produced on your own or downright impossible for your average joe in his basement shelter.
@@Shinzon23 That's why on their store they sell it for 2.5k
I've been tinkering with this concept since the latter half of the 90s. One thing I've noticed with coil guns that most others have built, is that they seem to mostly use electrolytic capacitors and coils with higher resistances, (wound with more turns of thinner wire). The best, (and scariest), results I ever had was when I used pulse capacitors with 3 stages of lower resistance coils, (wound with fewer turns of much thicker wire). Of course this comes with its own set of problems, (mainly with switching due to the extremely high voltages and currents), but heat management was less of a problem. The projectile I mostly used was a specialized iron 'dart' coated in PCL thermoplastic. From about ten meters it could easily penetrate 3/4 inch plywood and leave a deep pock in the concrete wall behind it. The last test resulted in the recoil ripping the coils off their mounts and sending one of them flying backwards in the opposite direction of the projectile, but the projectile penetrated the same 3/4 inch plywood and embedded a little over halfway into a Jacksonville Florida phone book. After that, I just never got around to rebuilding it. I've always been really fascinated with high energy/high voltage applications, but I don't really forsee myself building anything else like that in the near future, but maybe other tinkerers here can make use of this information and succeed where I failed. 😉
Pics or it didn't happen
@@shmillbe3390 Welllll... I suppose you're not wrong. 🤷♀ I wish that phone cameras were a thing back in 1998-99. ...Although I probably wouldn't have been able to afford one at that time.
Well I know you are lying so there's that.
what type of capacitors did you use?
"pulse capacitors" unfortunately doesn't tell much to me.
Film capacitors? what kind of film, what nominal voltage? etc.
please elaborate on your design
I realize that it's a cool thing to have buttons and a digital screen to select your mode and to keep track of your rounds/speed. But I suspect if one of these things makes it into practical use, those things will probably be the first things to go. You can easily replace mode selection with a selector switch to input into the digital system and program whatever it is running the system on the gun to take that sort of input. That way instead of squinting down at your screen trying to figure out if you're in burst, you can easily tell where you're at with the position of the switch without even looking.
Having a screen to show the charge level still seems like it would be useful. Definitely a physical switch for fire mode and safe would be more practical though
@@Duck_Destroyer_88 Most powertools use LEDs to show charge level - that would probably make the most sense here too.
Many of those kind of powertool batteries even have charge indicator LEDs built in.
What I was thinking as well. You need to do a lot of work to make a screen legible in daylight (you essentially need it to be brighter than the Sun which is pretty bright I'm told by people who actually go outside). My initial thought was to make a hooded recess with LEDs next to labels, but a simple mechanical switch is a much better idea. Charge levels can be represented with an array of LEDs or something. Other data seems to be mostly for debugging, but I'm no expert in coilguns.
Overall, this is obviously a prototype that was designed and tested indoors, and it's pretty great. Would be interesting to see how they go about stabilising the projectile.
Probably, but iirc they likened these to the wright brother's aircraft vs an ar15's jet fighter; that screen is there to show the user the 'debug' stuff as much as anything. When the next gen/more reliably ones start turning up, then I'll be surprised if you're not right and it gets replaced.
To anyone who understands capacitors _at all,_ that huge capacitor on the back of the new model is _absolutely fucking terrifying._
i agree lmao
cap explosion will be the new garand finger and revolver drum chain firing
Microwave safe, just wait until the Boston Dynamic dogs get one mounted with AI doing the automatic targeti while addressing citizens to stand down they're breaking curfew .
You could use it as a grenade when you feel it getting really hot, just lob your weapon at the enemy, who, never seeing anything like it, will pick it up and 'play' with it... BOOOM!
@@PeterMaddison2483 "...a real killer ... would've immediately asked about the little red button on the bottom of the gun..."
I'm so impressed with how much progress has been made since version one! It looks so much handier and more practical.
And the fire-rate is much improved. Excited to see the third version!
Makes you wonder where they'll be in 1yr , 5 yrs? I for one am staying tuned!
@@dlmsarge8329 the electrical-side can be upgraded so much more! Right with you with being so curious as to see where it will be in the years and even months to come 😃
@@dlmsarge8329 Unfortunately, couple of decades likely. We are limit by battery and capacitor technology by a lot and I mean a lot
@@calmsoul772 Given that Ian said that drill battery is good for about 300 rounds, I think we've got quite a bit of leeway in current battery tech before it starts limiting development.
300 full power shots on one battery is pretty legit, considering a standard rifleman combat load is 210 to 300, rounds. Now they just need to get the muzzle velocity up a bit and we're good to go. Love it. And this was 8 months ago! Can't wait for the next one.
hell yea. get muzzle velocity up to over 1000fps and you have a winner!
@@markthompson8656 according to a quick search it's up to 75m/s or about 246 freedoms per second, so it's got a little ways to go. I imagine they're refining the system at a civilian sales safe level (since this is barely scratching airsoft guns, just with much heavier projectiles) before they start ramping it up. I give it.... two years maybe.
I can see the muzzle velocity getting higher pretty easily. Hacksmith did it, so can they.
"... up a bit"? Ya Think?
My Daisy Red Ryder spring operated BB gun has a higher muzzle velocity.
I ain't shitty you..... 85 to 90 m/s when well oiled with a new spring.
This glorified rubber band shooter is only a threat to balloons, glass windows, and stationary insects.
@@bigdickpornsuperstar the original guns were bamboo rods firing rocks, things take time to get better. This is clearly still a work in progress and definitely not ready for military use.
Ways to tell a rail gun from a coil gun:
If the projectile is fired between two conductive rails, it's a rail gun.
If the projectile is fired through coils, it's a coil gun.
If the choice of material for the projectile depends on its electrical conductivity, it's a rail gun.
If the choice of material for the projectile depends on its magnetic properties, it's a coil gun.
If upon firing the gun there's a bright flash of light and a loud bang:
- If the designers go "YEAH BABY!" ... it's a rail gun.
- If the designers go "OH GOD WHAT HAPPENED?!?" ... it *was* a coil gun.
That and if the power supply is the size of a conventional US navy ship nuclear reactor. (Talking about the rail gun)
@@Triumvirately oh there are ways to get that power consumption way way down lol
Interesting information. I have designed three coil guns, but called them rail guns by mistake... OOPS!
@@joeparker9516 yeah, rail guns are like coil guns if your goal is to hit your target, several dozen feet of reinforced concrete, and bury the payload several dozen more feet under a bus sized crater… depending on the size of the payload.
@@matthewnienkirchen8083A coil gun isn't _necessarily_ slower than a rail gun, but it gets more and more complicated the higher you want the projectile speed to be because driving the coils with the correct timing to track the accelerating projectile gets more and more precise, and will require increasingly large voltage to change the magnetic fields rapidly enough (resulting in increased flashover risks). A rail gun doesn't have this particular problem since its fields naturally follow the projectile without requiring any external timing, though to compensate a railgun is just a much bigger headache overall, especially if you were hoping it fire it more than once ;-)
Imagine what kind of leaps and bounds this design can make with graphene capacitors and solid state batteries.
Once that happens, you can bet this will enter the military fast!
@@peasantjeff4731 They'll need to solve projectile stabilization, or it will never be accurate enough for military adoption.
@@bubba200874426 the trillions in the M.I.C will pour in and solve that issue pretty fast, if a tech is promising enough the DoD/MIC will jump in on it before completion.
@@peasantjeff4731 I imagine you could just spin the projectile up on a motorized platter which grips it magnetically (mounted normal to the barrel at the rear of the chamber), then release it and have the coils pull the now-spinning projectile down the barrel like usual. No rifling needed if the forces are well-balanced and the alignment is good.
@@bubba200874426 sabots with darts in them. Think miniature AFPDS rounds. Stabilization is relatively easy to fix.
Railgun: A quarterback holds the ball and charges forward. The quarterback tends to tear his arms and legs apart in the process.
Coilgun: Several golfers line up and hit the ball as it passes by them. They must be in perfect synchronization or it doesn't work.
In either case, one can hit the ball harder or accelerate it over a greater distance.
And both get harder to make work well the faster you're aiming for, either way. The railgun because it erodes faster, the coilgun because the faster the projectile is moving, the narrower the timing of the coil switching needs to get for that perfect synch.
@@Plotatothewondercat The timing of the coils isn't really the issue, microcontrollers can read sensors, calculate data, then control the coils many orders of magnitude faster than a coil gun can accelerate a projectile. The biggest issue is a power source able to provide the necessary current.
Rail guns in future will have some kind of super alloy possibly for the conductor rails or if not maybe quick swap rail conductors
So my question is the large hadron collider a looped rail gun or a looped coil gun?
I know it uses electromagnets to fly the particles around it and make it collide with other particles but is it rail or coil?
@@pihermoso11 coils, the particles arente touching anything before the impact.
Powered by a drill battery and firing drill bits. DEWALT GET ON THIS
The accuracy, style, and penetration on this thing makes me wonder if it's X-Com standard issue...
Definitely something X-Com would field. 99% chance to hit with this baby and it would still miss 😆
@@dvpant3651 LOL I call Xcom "the miss game"
I immediately thought of Fallout.
It really needs the sweet sound effects of Long War’s Gauss Rifles. 😛
lol. yes
I'd love to see the ballistics gel test just for the pure ridiculousness of all of this. Gotta admit this is awesome.
I am eager to have the answer on whether or not this will become a legit lethal and useful thing or if it'll remain a gimmick. Only time will tell UNLESS there's a proper scientific research that talk about it (but I don't have any link, hence the comment :) )
pretty sure a winter jacket is gonna be enough to protect you lol.
@@justpette1503 not really a gimmick it's just selling R and D
pretty sure it would just bounce off
oof it'd be gnarly
I really like the look of this, it is so cool to see development of things you thought you would only see in science fiction
@_____ you mean nightmares?
Its still science fiction. Not nearly a usable weapon and I dont see any improvement of that in the foreseeable future.
US Navy already created a large version of an electromagnetic gun... and it kinda sucks. Big, impractical and not much effect.
@@termitreter6545 I still wouldn't want to be hit by it if I was just wearing a bandoleer, a mohawk and wielding a baseball bat.
@@jayhom5385 But you wouldnt mind getting hit if you had a thick leather jacket too ;)
@@termitreter6545 its called a "proof of concept".do we have the tech to make this? Yes. Is it an effective weapon system yet? No, but we're getting there. The one built by the navy sucks, yeah. But thats cuz its a railgun and as such the rails burn out from friction, and its not that powerful as it is. Give it a few decades and we'll have decent coilgun tech.
Ian's pure pleasure at firing this contraption is downright infectious.
now all they need to do is make one that can fire hardware store nail strips and we can finally have the Quake Nailgun.
that would be sweet.
More to life than video games. Turn it off.
@@Wesmancan dude chill we are talking a sciFi weapon.
@@Wesmancan lmao. I don't even play quake. its an iconic part of game history and it's refrenced everywhere.
how bout you turn your screen off instead of tellin folks what to do with their spare time?
@@Wesmancan you know people are allowed to have fun, y'know?
This thing’s like a predecessor to a weapon my dad made up for an old sci-fi tabletop rpg he and some friends made. It was this but smaller with a super high fire rate, with a hose running from a backpack carrying thousands a lil ball bearings. It was meant to disable control panels and stuff inside ships and didn’t do much damage to enemies.
an interesting thing to note is that a penumatic gun exists that uses 6mm bearings for that very purpose, breaking car windows or the like without being lethal. So your Dad was definately onto something there. using a backpack allows for much larger batteries, too.
Flip the magazine (or add a top port) and let gravity feed improvised ammo into the gun on full auto.
@@DFX2KX that's really just an airsoft gun firing ball bearings
Plasma rifle is even cooler!
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 Also knows as a BB gun...
For your next test, you should try shooting rounds in to ballistics gel to see what kind of damage rounds from that gun can do.
Probably nothing, when you see the paper target the bullet just spinned in the air and landed on it's side, it's a sign of low power.
200ft/s is lower end speed of airsoft shot, here 16:23 at 0.25 speed it is possible to count flying bullets, visually
@@alexpetrov8871 ya there were a few points in the video when you could see the round in the air for a fraction of a second.
This was my thought in testing this weapon. We don't get a very goo idea of what it's capable of when it's shot at a flimsy target. Another thought I had is if it was possible to belt feed it or otherwise extend it's magazine size.
If we knew the mass of the bullets we could pretty easily compute the kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2) and compare it to a more conventional bullet. My guess is it's not very damaging. I mean, I still wouldn't want to get hit by it, but I kind of doubt it's lethal. I'm guessing somewhere around pellet gun, maybe less.
It is amazing how quiet that thing is. The ping on the target is significantly louder than the actual gauss cannon
It is far from supersonic (it has hunting bow arrow speeds), and no explosion to propel the projectile. The clicking sounds you hear when it fires are likely just mechanical parts, and my guess it is all just the magazine.
@@louisvictor3473 if it has the same firing system as the previous one, the click is likely the solenoid smacking the back of the projectile into the coils to launch them. other than that there really shouldn't be any noise at all.
@@rathkiee That is the one I was trying to remember. The magazine has moving parts, but yeah, definitelly not the dominant sound.
That may be the only upside of this weapon.
Man this video is going to be in historic archives for thousands of years if we make it that long.
As long as we can continue to make new and innovative ways to delete people we'll definitely make it that long lol.
Ian's grandchild will be making videos about this weapon.
primate man inspects a crude, homemade predecessor to the ancient coilgun gun, circa 2022
@@Klaaism Maybe, maybe. Look here:
! New: Apocalypse Coilgun, Fallout Coilgun
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See also: Portable Super Coilgun:
th-cam.com/video/rclLsQ9nyeg/w-d-xo.html&feature=youtu.be
th-cam.com/video/-mjDqp_oWZk/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/YLOYxsqvjw0/w-d-xo.html
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th-cam.com/video/OFIQ3pcFZpU/w-d-xo.html
This is a mix of sci-fi, musket level accuracy, and the fire rate of a modern assault rifle.
So basically it's never going to see real use.
@@thenecromancer8805 in its current iteration, no. It is currently too crude to be of any practical use past 20yds
@@Sean_XT still a pretty neat futuristic musket
@@BetaBreaking eh, I doubt this will every become viable outside of space warfare where the vacuum environment and thin protection makes these viable. And that assumes we are sending humans to fight in space, where a drone/missile of some kind will be far more effective. I mean, even denying oxygen resupply would be enough to kill your enemy lol.
@@checker297 conventional firearms would work in space so you dont even really need something like this
I'm really glad that Arcflash is still continuing these products and research into electrically powered guns. There will come a time when these are viable replacements to traditional firearms. Arcflash I think will always be a name to remember as an innovator in this field.
To protect from EMP pulse makes them impractical for any large scale military or law enforcement use.
@@letsgowinnietheflu5439 Just make the outer layer sheetmetal instead of plastic?
Just think, I can purchase 1000 bullets from my favorite reloading company for $119. This literally makes ammo cheap lol 😂. I can see a Mega Chad at a Tesla recharging station like, “charging up my XJ556 Rifle”. While holding up the line of Tesla car owners in his Ford Raptor. Lol 😂
@@codebebop yeah, wait till government ban lead and powder because environment hazard
@@letsgowinnietheflu5439 by that logic the military shouldn’t use radios, GPS, computers, modern aircraft or any other electronic devices. EMPs don’t work like that.
Will this now be featured in those ads where you can use 1 battery for your drill, saw, sander etc?
That's quite the improvement for such a short length of time. The design is definitely sleeker, and I'm left stunned at the improvement in recharge rate, though I do have some safety concerns about the capacitor being seated right next to the shooter's chest, as much as it makes sense engineering-wise. I would suppose it's okay for a civilian product, though. It's really nice how much more "weaponlike" the form factor has become now, too. An actually usable handguard might arguably be this revision's biggest improvement, and the battery being seated at the bottom of the pistol grip seems like an excellent way to balance the weight distribution (the genius decision to incorporate cordless drill batteries aside).
Ace Hardware is going to wonder where the hell these gun nuts suddenly buying up all their screwheads, drill bits, and dowel pins all suddenly started coming from.
C'mon, DARPA. You just *know* you want to dump a billion dollars on these guys.
Some sort of cage+venting structure should allow for preventing physical damage to the capacitor and containing any fragmentation from a burst capacitor while also not allowing pressure to build up into a bomb. Still, I bet the thing is heavy enough as-is, although a polymer structure probably isn't that heavy anyways. It could also make a more ergonomic/adjustable stock too, or have storage etc available.
Well, it's not like the capacitor on a radar transmitter charged up to lethal voltages. 60v stings but that's about it. The drill battery prevents the cap from being charged in reverse.
@@eloiseharbeson2483 more than the shock, is about the explosion if it gets damaged by any bump, even a small capacitor gets propelled when exploding and it can poke an eye out, pretty sure they will adress that in the future tho.
@@viriatrix9874 this, I remember blowing up capacitors in electronics class, when this one goes I wouldn't want my face there.
Let's keep anything federal government related the Hell away from this stuff.
I think the biggest improvement would be a robot voice that says things like "ammunition depleted"
"Double whammy"
Then swap to your trusty crowbar
@J Cal just have it Bluetooth to your earpiece. No need for them to hear a damn thing. You could even program it to have a countdown for every bullet.
half life type beat
@J Cal so have a setting to turn the voice off
I’m just waiting for the day we hear Ian saying: “today we’ll be looking at a shotgun coilgun”
space blunderbuss!
Envisioning it as a muzzle loader.
Today I fire the Wave Motion Cannon
Project SPIW revisited.
On that note, could they load like a pack of needles or something in a nonmagnetic holder to make it a single-shot flechettes shotgun (single shot because the nonmagnetic holder needs to be ejected each time from the magazine).
I don't know if it would even be possible to have a low-magnetism holder to shoot it at the same time as the needles but at a lower speed and distance?
I'm loving how the charging cable is using a B&C connector, I used to have a laserdisc player that used the same connection type. I'm loving the whole sci-fi aesthetic at work here!
BNC
I love how common that type of screen is getting - I have several exactly like it in some projects. Fun fact, they don't play nice with cameras because only one pixel is lit at any given moment, it just scans really fast. Your shutter has to be open for at least ~16ms (1/60th) to capture the whole image.
Do you have a preferred source for them? I've seen a lot of sketchy looking offerings.
@@JBloodthorn Unfortunately no, all of mine have been kinda weird ;) Banggood seems to have some less sketch ones, but then again it is banggood lol
That's why the screen was visible indoors, where it was darker. In the bright sun the shutter was much faster and we could see just one line. :D
I'm considering either this or a phased plasma rifle in the 40W range for home defense
"I use a railgun for home defense since that's what the founding fathers intended"
I'd go with the plasma rifle personally. More stopping power.
@@Greeev did you consider the gooey mess you have to clean up?
WRONG
@@Theonixco if by that you mean the lack of identifiable remains/evidence, yes.
I love how the only actual sound it makes is a light clicking from the trigger being pulled. Kinda freaky to think that it can get such good speeds while barely making any sound.
If they were ever to get to a point where the projectiles are supersonic like normal bullets, I'm sure it'd be a fair bit louder, but yeah it's cool how it just ticks at you like a sewing machine.
there's also a strong solenoid pushing the projectile into the first accelerator coil. The clicking you hear is the solenoid activating, not the trigger.
I don't claim to be a clairvoyant, but I could imagine the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s when we have batteries that are powerful enough to deliver serious kinetic energy out of a railgun or a coilgun? (I'm not talking .22LR energy, I'm talking scary levels of energy, enough to impale someone into a wall or a tree with metal rods like the flechette artillery rounds from Vietnam). Don't get me wrong, the Arcflash rifles are cool as hell, and are very promising first steps towards man portable coilguns, so I'm not bashing them. But their "stopping power" is limited.
I think once they become more powerful, smaller and advanced as battery tech advances (hydrogen cells, beta radiation batteries like Americium batteries, solid state batteries, etc)? The first military units who will adopt them will be special forces/SF guys. Think about it. You could have a railgun/coilgun that fires a bullet the size and weight of a 7.62x39mm bullet, and delivers similar kinetic energy. But the magazines will only have to be as long as handgun magazines because there's no need for a case, just the bullet. You could carry far more rounds that deliver similar energy, and you have a rifle that is almost completely silent, requires less maintenance (no carbon fowling in the barrel or gas systems, because there's no combustion!), you could theoretically make your own ammo in the field if you had to, and for the purposes of clandestine operations? You leave little ballistic trace. No gunshot residue, no casings, no sign that a gunfight even occurred, all your enemy sees after you leave is a bunch of dead guys and strange 7.62mm bullets they've never seen before, or if you're using metal rods? A couple of dead dudes who've been impaled into a wall or a bed. It could be an ideal special forces weapon for those reasons, plus the one you mentioned. It will likely be quieter than any suppressed combustion firearm (other than subsonic .22s) and has the potential to be far more powerful.
If the make these powerful enough to stay just under the sound barrier(1080fps I believe) these thing will be scary
@@keithm5378 i can imagine similar weapons being used on vehicle mounted mode taking energy from the vehicle it self, like a minigun for example
In such a configuration for example it won't need the battery and it won't really need to be that accurate either taking to account the amount o projectiles it can produce 😁
Would interesting to see them have a polycarb or whatever barrel, that was rifled / threaded - and the bolts come with that threading so that instead of interference rifling , you'd have spin induced by some sort of low drag threading
or you can rifle the bullets?
@@gabriellang7998That was the point, both barrel and projectile being rifled, just used "threaded". However at anything close to this power stage, I'm doubtful that would work. Because it would introduce a comparatively huge amount of friction, whereas these current models practically has no friction at all.
Wonder if you could make the dowel spin before it's pulled into the "barrel". Something like electric motor & rubber disc pushed against next dowel in the magazine before firing. If the system really is low friction it could keep the spin going.
This is essentially the matchlock musket of coilguns, an piss-poor start but with lots of future potential. I'd love to see the potential future designs
(Within)100 years till proper coil gun.
My guess.
Greater velocity and drum mag!
If they made a coil gun with a back pack battery that might be enough to make them lethal, the back pack would be bulky but the silence of the weapon would make it really good for stealth operations.
@@Dagrizzb i’d give it 20 years tops. we probably already have the technology to make a proper coil gun. humans have greater knowledge and technology than we did back when the first firearms came out, so it shouldn’t take as long to start inventing a viable coil gun
Exactly
Ian (or anyone who owns one of these) should invest in a magnetic ground-sweeper; that way they could reuse the projectiles (rather than having to reload the spent cases!)
Fortunately dowel pins are stupid cheap. Probably only worth the effort to collect them if you're firing hundreds or thousands.
Unless it hits something and deforms
Always a good idea to keep your range as tidy as possible.
@@lucasblanchard47 I think their point was that magnet sweeping for coilgun projectiles is the closest recycling equivalent of brass reloading for firearms, not that you'd have to reload cases for this.
@@lucasblanchard47 Thank Buddha it doesn't use lead. See, another aspect of a weapon transitioning from the status quo.
DANGER: This weapon is dangerous and absolutely, *unspeakably* Cool.
Their GR-1 model has 75 ft lbs of energy. Which is closer to being lethal. I think 80 ft lbs of energy has a 20% lethality rate.
@@robertpatter5509 I wonder how long/ if it is possible to produce a coilgun for actual combat. I know rn there's many constraints on batteries which restricts weapons like this but they are very cool.
@@collinb.8542 i bet a large military contractor could make something like this work for a military application today. the lithium power pack for hand tools hold enough energy to be within the realm of feaseable for a combat loadout. 2-3 battery packs to 6-12 mags with about 150-200 rounds of ammo is not out of the question. making it more powerful is straightforward. making it accurate isnt impossible, but is a bit tricky, thats where the larger budget would come in.
@@collinb.8542 Waiting for more breakthroughs in super conductor materials that don't have to be super cooled, this one thing is holding back an actual shittonne of already proven and viable tech, some of it decades old, that's how long that one problem has been holding stuff back, otherwise we would now have fast efficient magnetic levitation (MAglev) trains and cars everywhere.
@@collinb.8542 its possible now, you just need to put a lot of amps through those coils and it will move a bullet
Wanted to build one of these gauss guns 13 years ago with a friend. i was 14 at the time. We knew how it worked but we haven't had the skills for it sadly. very nice to see it in action.
never too late to get back into it, after my daughter showed some interest in robotics I realized hobbies become addictions real quick when you make decent money. coil gun and rail gun is getting awful close on my list of projects. I'll be doing a RC controled turret for sure.
20th century: “I’ll never trust an auto loader theres no way it’ll be reliable.”
21st century:”I’ll never trust a battery powered gun its to reliant on ext power.”
Auto loaders are still pretty sus on tanks but it sure is better to have a extra tank crew for every 3-4 autoloader tank crews as compared to manual
22th century: "I'll never trust a gun powered by biologically engineered mechanical pistol shrimp pneumatic mechanism"
Couldn’t an EMP be an issue without some some sort of faraday cage around the thing?
A bit more like...
Mid-19th Century: "I'll never trust an auto-loader, they get gummed up too easily and are not reliable." (Before smokeless powder was invented)
Late-19th Century: "I'll never trust a machine gun, it's just not feasible to provide that much ammunition to just one firearm and it's too wasteful."
Early-20th Century: "I'll never trust a gas operated firearm with a gas porn in the barrel, it obviously will reduce velocity, energy, and accuracy."
Mid-20th Century: "I'll never trust sub-.30 cal ammunition, it is not sufficiently lethal."
Late-20th Century: ... people still arguing about 'unreliable' AR vs 'inaccurate' AK, and 'weak' 9mm vs 'slow' .45...
Early-21st Century: "I'll never trust a battery-powered gun, it's too reliant on external power..." And people are still arguing about AR vs AK and 9mm vs .45.
too*
Ian's little chuckle at the end is awesome.
That being said though, while I know traditional firearms can explode if you do something dumb, I have seen big capacitors explode after literally no provocation (I was trying to clean up the aftermath of a capacitor failure in a big VFD just a couple of weeks ago) and I would be REALLY uncomfortable with having a big one like that inches from my face.
That's the first thing I thought of. If that thing pops, at the very least you're going to lose your hearing.
Ohh yeah, that bad boy pops and it's gonna be bad. I've also seen a good many videos of traditional magazines just exploding because of a very rare fault. High-density energy storage is dangerous, especially when you want to use a lot of it at once. It's just SO cool though!
Good thing I'd rather just have a PCP air rifle than this thing... any day of the week.
FUSE, but then again with contemporary guns you literally have EXPLOSIONS near your face ... so .. yeah :D
You should feel it swell in time to drop it and run before it blows. Still, that plus the possibility of some wires coming loose and shocking you... I don't like it at all tbh, big capacitors are scary
I still remember 10 years ago people said something like this would never be hand held, practical, nor commercially available, with actual military use a pipe dream confined to science fiction.
That was only ten years ago and we already have something they said couldn’t be done, I can’t wait to see what this will be capable of in 20 years
Half of what you said still isn't applicable to this. It's not practical or anywhere near being useable as an infantry weapon. Still, maybe in 15-30 years.... Maybe?
Not really bud not enough power to be useful for anything !!!
It sounded like a bb gun ringing off that steel
@@LegendStormcrow I've seen a a hobbyist here on youtube make his own gauss rifle with reasonable power.
Problem is by the third round the barrel e.g the rails and the magnets, melt.
mass effect guns
im so impressed by the creativity of this firearm. Like the steps between the EMG01 to this latest model is huge in such a small time! I'm amazed to see what the future holds in store!
You've heard of the Mozambique drill firing technique? Well, now we have access to the Phillips, the Flathead, the Hex, and the Proprietary Bit Without a Standardized Name. And, if you're more the homemade ammo type, the Chopped Up Ikea Wrench Bits.
Between the drill battery and the drill bit projectiles this feels like a weapon made for Tim "The Toolman" Taylor in that god awful Home Improvement video game
Hell, it's like something he built in a fever dream of a weekend
Imagine the last thing you hear before getting capped by a coil gun being Tim's weird "EEEEUUUGHHHHHH".
But his wife was hot 🔥
Yes of course. Maybe, maybe.
See also:
New! Apocalypse Coilgun, Fallout Coilgun
th-cam.com/video/G9-jKWPyMFoS/w-d-xo.html
There was a Home Improvement video game?
Fascinating to see weapons like this starting to get almost practical.
Yes but it’s potentially several hundred times the projectile mass so that changes things.
@GunGirl1997 clearly just a proof of concept. with a military budget I can easily see how this could be made into an incredibly powerful weapon.
Plus it just using a dowl pin. Imagine making a vaned flechette round for this. All you need is ferris metal and I'm sure someone could mill someone that flies more accurately and has better penetration.
no where near practical. airsoft guns literteally hit harder. its shooting a 9 gram bullet at 71m/s thats less than one joul of kinetic energy. a .22 is about 170 joules. for referenc.e high power airsoft guns can easily get into 2-3 joules of energy if using the heavier .3g or .4g bb's
@@sexkrazedpanda vaned flechette like a tank round?
This is why I like the Star wars term "slug throwers" it applies to rifles and coil guns.
Being able to pick up the spent rounds with a magnet is somewhat helpful on the range!
That was my first thought as well, all that ammunition is reusable if recovered and simply wiped off.
I would love to see what the "rounds" look like after hitting the steel plate. I would image that the ones on the paper target would be reusable, just difficult to find.
Well this gun has something good compared to standard rifles. Weight and ammo that weight less. The only thing is battery...
@@Wolfshead009 Look up 52100 steel. It's what most dowel pins and berings are made of.
The neat thing about this is that after you're done shooting you can walk up to the Target and throw down one of those magnets that magnet fishing people use and pick up all of your ammunition
My thoughts exactly. And no more lead exposure at the range...
@@Noxis07 Easy eyeball scan should sort that. Anything that looks too damaged you just dump, what looks fine will probably be fine to launch. Remember, no pressure or barrel dimensions to worry too much about. And steel projectiles tend to be more resilient than lead-copper variants.
@@Noxis07 you can still approximately re-grind them to the right shape. since there's no direct contact beetween projectile and a barrel, the shape doesn't need to be as exact and perfect as on a firearm
Just like the post-nerf-battle dart hunts of old.
You must be from California to take "lead exposure at the range" as a serious concern.
I love how almost every part is just hobbyist grade stuff, excluding the massive capacitor, which a hobbyist could probably still find
I think that's a car audio capacitor, they're pretty cheap and easy to find too
@@shivdag It is. probably 63000uf.
You can buy them off Digikey.
@@kriswingert1662 from the size of it i guess is more than 100000uf
Or build one
You could probably walk around NYC with that gun and people would probably assume you had a toy and doing cosplay.
For greater accuracy when shooting drill bits, start by shooting a centrepunch bit.
(yes, I know it's a screwdriver bit)
I wonder how an actual drill bit would fly? Would it get appreciable spin or still tumble like other rounds?
@@Liethen Not fast enough, or stable enough, for the flutes of the drill to impart spin.
After having worked with capacitors and seeing them explode, I get an eerie feeling with a capacitor this size held to the shoulder.
That was my thought too, potentially considerably more dangerous than what's coming out the other end.
Yeah, that makes me nervous as hell. I like the gun, but I'd be very wary of it, when that capacitor is charged.
Personally I would consider a small backpack and a wiring, being able to place the capacitor in an armored box
Wait till you hear about how cartridges in traditional firearms can explode
@@jamesthomas6234 they tend to be not that close to your face, I believe
Was NOT expecting that full auto mode. Really remarkable work, yet again.
I watched the original gauss gun video long ago. I felt obligated to watch the upgrade.
I would NEVER put a cap that big next to my body.
You are a brave man.
I love that it runs off a cordless drill battery
And that it fires drillbits
I don’t think this is OSHA certified
It's green 😂 the next generation is going to have a wind turbine attached to it too
@@hashbrown777 I'd buy the same diameter steel rods and make my own ammo with an abrasive chop saw
@@zekeyeager1458 Most the stuff I do isn’t OSHA certified.
I think you'd be better off with self-stabilizing shapes like those used for shotgun slugs. Maybe even just drilling out a deep dimple on the back end of the projectile would give you better flight performance.
I bet they know, it's just not important yet)
Yeah, something like a stretched diablo pellet should work. And can be cheaply formed on a lathe in a single cut with custom cutting bit.
What I thought they could do is use finned projectiles and have rails on the barrel that input a rotation onto the projectile, you could still use improvised ammo, but actual ammo could be stabilized
This would probably work for higher speeds, but at 200 ft/s, I’m not sure you could get any substantial spin into the projectile.
or steel ball bearings and a "hop up"
The fire rate is much improved! Looks aesthetically much better as well... I remember watching people build their own little coil guns at home years and years ago, this is definitely the most advanced one so far.
Love the 3d printed body, really looks like a project you could find schematics for on thingiverse/printables, very inspiring to see how far the designers came from to get to this.
I get the vibe that this thing is about, where 3D printing was 6 or 7 years ago. Functional and useable by the general consumer, but a bit clunkier and with less "polish" than a mass-market product. That's not at all a knock on it either. These things take time and they are clearly approaching their goals.
Yeah, I saw the flaws too, but then I imagine a team working on different bits and just getting to a point where it works for a proof of concept. I'm sure they have better versions going now and in their heads.
There's quite a lot of progress towards usability too which is good to see. Just sort of got to figure out a way of finding an ammo that doesn't keyhole as much, I wasn't hugely impressed with the Mk1 but they're getting there
Should have recruited a high-school-er to do the modeling .
ELECTRIC GUNS CANT BEAT A BIG BLOK CHEVY
I'm just afraid that some of the fundamental limitations (can't rifle the barrel 'cause that's not how the barrel works, etc) will curtail the potential on the design as a whole.
This feels as what the musket was in its time, the relatively primitive beginning of a new era.
This is super cool. The fact that they sped up the recharge rate enough to allow for burst and auto fire is a huge deal.
Not really A REAL railgun fires Thousands of Rounds per minute..no resistance, Eddy Current Attenuation can go ANY Direction depending on polarity...think of a Fast moving " River of magnetism " ..
He’s talking about a COILGUN not a railgun
@@mjolnirswrath23 I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The fact that they managed to get this gun working with auto and burst fire is a big deal for its commercial viability, not for coil gun technology in general. I figured that was so obvious it didn't need to be said.
I like your hat Ian. Looks good on you. Your videos always teach us something new. No bragging or pride in your videos. Just an excellent technical analysis.
If nothing else, that auto grouping is impressive. Always learn, always enjoy. Kudos
Consider that it probably has almost zero recoil. The only thing pushing the gun backward toward you is conservation of momentum, since it has to push mass out the front.
I am wondering if that has something to do with the coils discharging so quickly it generates a field that keeps the projectiles in that tighter group.
@@Paul-cu9lu Nah it's just that you can see the stream and aim it like a hose - he says as much in the vid.
LMAO Ian's reaction to firing it in full auto was amazing, it was ridiculous and cool at the same time.
Now that they've got more battery than bullets, they need to put a paintball hopper full of steel ball bearings on top of that thing.
I'm wondering if the projectiles cannot be round for electromagnetic effects to work properly, and ArcLabs should already know the answer to that question. If they don't, however, then testing is the only solution.
@@dionh70 its more of a practical thing because adding a hopper to the top of the gun with another 5lbs of projectiles would call for a redesign of the coils, loading mechanism so on and so forth. it would probably be best for them to start from the ground up if they were to use spherical projectiles. it would make for a very good lmg type design though.
There's no reason a paintball gun wouldnt launch a steel ball anyways. As long as its the correct size for the barrel, itll go. I thought of using marbles but afraid the marker might chop it to bits.
A paintball gun would probably fire them at a similar speed to the EMG-02 as well.
@@burgerbait probably not, a steel ball the size of a paintball would be dozens of times heavier than a paintball. But idk, that sounds like a job for someone who knows physics
200 feet per second?? Thats softer than my airsoft gun...
One day its obscure WWII era weapons, the next its future tech
I LOVE THIS CHANNEL
It's like the Discovery Channel, for gun nuts.
the real question we all should be asking is... does it have a Makita/DeWalt conversion mod?
Milwaukee or bust
@@leotenenbaum6806 Milfukie and DeWilt have nothing on the the real mans tools Cryoby.
You can but a slot on battery converter depending on your battery on Amazon
It already uses the DeWalt style battery locking tab, a DeWalt 60V should slot in with no modification
Yeah this is identical to the Dewalt Flex Volt 6.0 battery.
I think my big issue with the capacitor being at the back like that is if the capacitor fails then the explosion is going straight into your chest. I've seen a capacitor failure at a similar size and it's like a small breaching charge going off.
yeah definitely needs bulletproof casing that can vent the explosion away from the user
Into their hands, legs or head?
@@snedfed6023 into their best friend standing behind him whom he discovered was secretly bonking his wife.
@@snedfed6023 if you used the cap as a stock like he does, into your shoulder.
I believe the next models are going to change to a backpack + feeding belt mechanism, more or less like a XM556 Microgun: the gun would be lighter, the capacitors could be bigger but better protected and, finally, bigger projectiles could be stored in great numbers
Ian I would suggest ArcFlash Labs include a large magnet on a stick ( like the ones roofer use to collect nails on the ground ) . You can then collect all your spent rounds and reload the magazines! 🤠👍
One thing about having a single larger capacitor at the back is that it makes it easier to maintain but also vastly more dangerous in the case of a catastrophic failure. If one capacitor blows up at the front you might have to go to the hospital to fix your hand but probably won't have lasting injuries, if one huge capacitor blows up right next to your face that's a mortal danger. Hopefully by the time they release it they will have compiled a set of procedures to inspect the capacitor.
I couldn’t agree more. I work with those things often. It should have a blast exhaust port to prevent a pipe bomb situation, large capacitors have a overpressure port usually. But if it’s enclosed it won’t be good.
Agreed. But the software could monitor the capacitor and calculate its ESR, then warn the user and disable charging if it gets too high. It won't catch all catastrophes, but that is the usual indicator of a failing cap.
In fact it comes with a five-year guarantee that if the capacitor fails they'll send you a new one free of charge, *and* they'll also send a team to help find your head ! 😁
@@Kevin-mx1vi what’s left of it anyway
Reminds me of those self contained reloading muskets he showcased before, which you revolved a lever to reload the powder and the shot, but had all the gunpowder stored in the stock, so if it wasn’t absolutely perfectly machined it would basically explode
I wonder if they’d make a backpack version with larger capacitors and batteries stored in the pack for greater muzzle velocity. Be hella heavy but I’d love to see something like that. Ghostbuster style coil gun
The 'backpack version' springs to mind the Soviet shock troops from the game 'Command & Conquer: Red Alert' who had a large capacitor backpack, and killed with a directional Tesla coil.
might actually shoot as hard as an airsoft gun if they did that, hopefully we will find some new way to make more effective capacitors and figure out graphene batteries fully soon so these can be closer to weapon than toy
@@Jordan-zk2rf I mean, it already fires as hard as airsoft guns, except its firing heavy steel bolts. if you give the gun a bigger capacitor it will only be able to fire heavier ammo as he said in the video. if you want faster muzzle velocity you need to increase the density of the coils or extend the barrel adding more coils. if the gun is big enough the muzzle velocity can easily reach the km/s... though it will be a bit hard to carry around.
The capacitor isn't the limiting factor, it's the coils.
If its backpack mounted might aswell gatling gun it
"Does it take Glock mags?" will be replaced by "Does it take Bosch Batts?"
need smaller projectiles and a feature that allows all the energy to be used in ONE shot. needs a electromagnetic barrel that allows for it to be turned off and on in sections making the projectile spin fast while sending it down the barrel making it very powerful and accurate. maybe magnetic projectiles so it can help with its own propulsion and stabilization.
Considering this is a privateer working entirely from scratch, thats a clean build. Transition to a markforged or similar printer and it'd be really impressive!
Putting a cheek weld on that capacitor kinda scares me. I still want one.
Yeah absolutely terrified to use that
@@murphy7801 Quit being scared
@@lucky43113 Since a capacitor that size could easily decapitate you if it were to explode since they completely blocked the pressure release point, you should be scared.
I've always imagined a screwdriver bit being fired from a gun. I just never thought I would witness it being fired from an electric gun.
That's a tight ass shot grouping in automatic mode.
You've actually found a use for all the useless flat head bits acquired over the years. Well done sir
or those cheap packs of like 30 phillips head bits.
Would love to see this tested with ballistic gel
It would still probably just bounce off, on real body I would expect it to be weaker than a bean bag.
There is some seconds of gel shots 1:18 into Arcflash labs TH-cam video "EMG-02: The Next Level".
@John Smith sounds like sweater + t shirt against gauss rifle = kevlar against 9mm.
What was said: We're starting to transition to solar-powered weaponry.
What I heard: Humanity has reached level 58 and has learned solar beam.
"First time?" -- Archimedes
With solar power guns it makes sense to have showdowns at high noon.
Everytime I see innovations like these, I can't help but feel like I've finally arrived to the future.
It's a bit like that, but I'm still waiting on practical flying cars, personal jetpacks and some of the other stuff Popular Mechanics showed us back then.
@@VosperCDN Flying Cars will probably never happen on a mass scale because that would be an absolute nightmare. Unless, maybe, they were completely non-pilotable and were automated only. I can't imagine anything else being even remotely acceptable with the way people drive right now.
@@JohnnyShagbot
Indeed they would be automatic.
But then again, _cars_ will hopefully be fully automatic sooner.
@@JohnnyShagbot
AVs from Cyberpunk and Spinners from Blade Runner both fit this description.
Both *can* be manually piloted with certain models, but 99% of them are totally autonomous.
The ones that are manually flown are often much hard to get, as it's basically a Driver's AND Pilot's liscense... That said, it's probably not much harder than nowadays, just that people of the time grew up not needing to learn to drive at all.
We are " the future" of 80s science fiction, we just haven't realised it
I kinda want one now but it would be nice to have a protective "stock" around that capacitor since people tend to not be the most careful. Plus a protective case around it would shield you if the Cap explodes.
Need one hell of a material to make a difference with that size of a capacitor.
@@seanpeery7780 Only if you don't like shrapnel.
My guy. It's pressed to his CHEST. Nothing is going to help if it explodes.
@@TheDsRequiem Maybe if it was designed w an intentional weak point that's away from the chest or to the side it would be....slightly less likely to kill you. lol
Which direction are you going to vent it? I has to go somewhere. Anyone drive an electric car, you're sitting on all the 'energy' and you have other motorists targeting you...
I'd be curious to see a test with a ballistic gell target.
id expect the results of a bb gun
@@tfxreference8562 I'm thinking closer to a .22 short, but especially with the ammo tumbling the way it does, you might be closer to right on that.
It's an awesome idea to handheld projectile launchers, but I don't think the tech is quite there yet. I'm excited to see where this line weaponry will be in another 5 years.
I agree! I want to see how well it penetrates clothing covered gel, and maybe a watermelon. I can't quite grok how damaging those slugs are at ~200 ft per second... if they hit like say an arrow maybe you could use it as is to keep squirrels away from the bird feeder.
i'd be curious to know if he's going to get prosecuted for shouldering, or using at all, an "any other weapon" without a tax stamp
The projectile is traveling at 71 m/ sec. Paintballs travel at 90 m/ sec.
For comparison, Ruger 10/22 are 400+ m/sec. AR-15, 1500+ m/sec
This thing? It most likely won't even break the skin. Put on a thick and loose flannel jacket and you might not even feel it hit you. Against bare skin, you'll most likely get a welt.
In the future this weapon will be more accurate and extremely dangerous if you're on the receiving end. Then it probably will get banned due to its being so quiet.
Admittedly I know almost nothing about future weapon tech. I just stumbled upon this video and am blown away. I don't know what the limitations of a hand held coil gun are but if they can be made lethal and accurate... holy crap. Almost silent, no recoil and you could even pick some fired ammunition back up and reuse it!
It's a very interesting topic! The navy even funded railguns for a bit before it got cancelled. Unfortunately it's going to be many decades before anything like this becomes close to being practical.
the limitations are carrying huge ass capacitors which quickly turn into grenades when damaged
@@31sebman videogame weakpoint irl
@@Jester4460bro got that Half-Life Alyx grunt air tank
Your sarcastic bot comments are just phenomenal , so much improvement over the last two years.
At first I was like "Ehh having to have two sources of ammunition for the same gun..."
but then he started firing drill bits. He turned drill bits into ammunition on the fly.
Drill bits...cool...only spin on contact...not accurate but great wound channeling...
Maybe a smaller battery could be housed in the base of the magazine. Something good for say 100 shots. So a 20 round magazine could be refilled up to 5 times on a single charge. Carrying multiple magazines has got to be easier than carrying spare battery packs. You could even have a reserve battery on the gun itself for additional shots once the mags are depleted.
@@bluesrocker91 If you're still engaging after 300 shots, you have a bigger problem. Not saying your ideas are bad by any means, but if you get 300 shots per battery, that's 20 mags. Not sure how many mags a marine carries right now, but it's probably less than half that (to account for differences in capacity).
@@bluesrocker91 Not a bad idea, to be honest. As a bonus, and to keep the “plug and play” benefits of the drill battery, they could literally use the same batteries used for E-Flite type micro helicopters - then you could charge the mags using a little E-Flite USB charger.
@@shadowmancy9183 also the mags on this thing are smaller because they don't need to have their own propellant so a marine could actually carry more ammo with this configuration and just a handfull of batteries
Imaginé a future where a single soldiers can carry thousands of rounds of ammunition that don't weight any more than what they are already carrying
I'd love to see an EMG-03 that shoots ball bearings! Full auto, top fed like a paintball gun.
Please make it so.
Yes big and bulky is the way go go 😆
Spherical projectiles are terrible in coil guns. The way a sphere interacts with magnetic flux is such that it tends to disperse the electromagnetic energy, instead of being propelled by it.
@@tonymorris3935 What about small thin needle-like projectiles? A "needler" used to be a pretty common weapon in sci-fi novels (Niven and Pournelle especially I think), and often relied more on a shotgun-like spray rather than a single precision shot. Seems like it might be a good fit for something like this... well, you know, assuming that a needle style of ammo would actually work! ^_^
@@olencone4005
I thought FLECHETTES was a needle type ammo.
Ok plug it up to the wall 220volt, I want a charging system that allows you to use up all the energy in one shot.