Where We Want to Go
With the success of our prototype this time around being limited, we've spent some time thinking about what we want to have in the future and how to get there. We definitely want to try to get this to work the way its supposed to, and we think the best way for us to get there is to machine cut (laser or otherwise) the housing for the rails, including computer dimensioned depressions in the acrylic or polycarbonate for the rail to sit in, and a section of the rail in front of the actual conductive part to guide the projectile into the system. This section will be a part of the housing.
We will likely incorporate a spring load system to supply the initial velocity, and have the rail system (barrel) sit on top of the capacitor bank to form a more typical 'gun' shape.
Once we have the rail gun functioning as it should, we want to extend the idea to a controlled acceleration environment more suitable for transportation. We will use Arduino or a similar C/C++ platform to control arrays of capacitors with different capacitance to supply variable current to an extended system (longer, like a train track, for example). The variable current will start low and gradually increase until the system is moving at high speeds. Ultimately, we want to be able to switch the direction of the current to supply non-lethal (comparably) deceleration to the system.
We have a lot of ideas for the future, and a lot of time to research and implement them. We look forward to see what we can make out of this.
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