Non-ferrous rifled barrel (titanium?)

Jerengineer

Jerengineer

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I’m searching for someone who can make a non-ferrous rifle barrel. The barrel must be non-magnetic and very thin walled so it does not interfere with the magnetic fields generated by the coils of a multi stage magnetic pulse rifle. Barrel will also be ported for various sensors. The material will likely be titanium, however I am still looking into other materials.
Suggestions on the rifle design welcome.
 
Does it absolutely have to be non-ferrous? There are a number of Non-magnetic stainless steels that could be used. I doubt you will find any barrel maker willing to make a titanium rifle barrel, and those that might will charge you an extremely hefty premium.
 
Suggest you quit watching the SYFY Channel. You may want to look into the cost of a shrink first too. Oh and Ti runs from $20 to $200 US per kilo and requires ECM or EDM machines to work it.
 
Sunray go back to sleep....JEEEZZZEEE.......Ron Smith cut rifled a titanium blank for a feather weight black powder rifle a few years back, it wasn't cheap but he did it, so I know it can be done. A close friend of mine drilled and reamed the blank first as apparently Ron would not do that. Either that or Ron just did the rifling because you can't button rifle Ti and my buddy did all the rest of the work on it. What size or caliber are we talking?
 
sunray said:
Suggest you quit watching the SYFY Channel. You may want to look into the cost of a shrink first too. Oh and Ti runs from $20 to $200 US per kilo and requires ECM or EDM machines to work it.
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Fail. Titanium can be machined using all conventional methods, however use of carbide and ceramic tooling is necessary for efficient machining.
 
c-fbmi said:
Sunray go back to sleep....JEEEZZZEEE.......Ron Smith cut rifled a titanium blank for a feather weight black powder rifle a few years back, it wasn't cheap but he did it, so I know it can be done. A close friend of mine drilled and reamed the blank first as apparently Ron would not do that. Either that or Ron just did the rifling because you can't button rifle Ti and my buddy did all the rest of the work on it. What size or caliber are we talking?
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Probably 30 cal around 1 meter in length. Who is this Ron Smith fellow? And what do you mean by "button rifle"? I'll create a drawing with all the dimensions but for now I just want to get in contact with someone to see if its possible and price.

Jer
 
Ron Smith; Canadian made single-point cut-rifled barrels. If you are making an electro-magnetic "weapon", I would recommend getting a Gain twist barrel, as the forces required to start the object down the bore are much less than with a regular twist barrel. 1-403-631-2405

Having said that, pre-rifled projectiles mike be your best bet. No deformation to get your rotation going that way.
 
yes I've been wonder about how to over come that initial energy needed to deform the bullet as it enters the rifling and keep the thing moving. I don't want to use rifled bullets because I want to use off the shelf bullets. I notice that some full metal jacket rounds that I recently purchased from cannadammo are ferrous.
 
Why would the barrel have to be very strong....there would be minimal pressure involved if it is ported and I would suggest a non-metal ie: electrical insulator material to avoid induced eddy currents in the barrel which may be problematic.
 
sunray said:
Suggest you quit watching the SYFY Channel. You may want to look into the cost of a shrink first too. Oh and Ti runs from $20 to $200 US per kilo and requires ECM or EDM machines to work it.
Click to expand...

no it doesn't. it can be turned and milled like any other material, just need the correct speeds and feeds and lots of coolant. the Swarf must also stay cool or it can catch fire.
 
Thanks for the gain twist rifling tip. Did not know about that.

Edit - I should have reloaded the page before replying, didn't see some of the new posts. The barrel material does not need to be "normal rifle" strong as there is no expanding gasses. It needs to be a material that will not interfere with the induced magnetic fields. If it has any iron in it the fields will be effectively blocked. I do not believe that ill have an induced EMF from a titanium barrel, though I still need to confirm that. A plastic would be fine except I still need bullet spin for it to be accurate. My basic goal is to see how efficiently i can translate the electrical energy into bullet kinetic energy at speeds that are comparable to hunting rounds. It may not be possible (within reasonable budget and physical size), but I want to see if I can send a 30 cal bullet down range above 2500 fps.
 
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Jerengineer said:
yes I've been wonder about how to over come that initial energy needed to deform the bullet as it enters the rifling and keep the thing moving. I don't want to use rifled bullets because I want to use off the shelf bullets. I notice that some full metal jacket rounds that I recently purchased from cannadammo are ferrous.
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But pre-rifling helps to solve that. It simply requires you to swage your bullets through a rifled die to imprint the rifling onto the projectile. After that you need only insert and index the projectile into the rifled bore and you'll be good to go.
 
The 57mm M18 recoiless rifle uses the pre-rifled principal. As gas sealing is unimportant, your grooves can be somewhat oversize to reduce friction.

57mm-proj.jpg
 
Ah, I see what your saying. Well that's not so bad. Thought I would have to make the bullet myself. Running the bullet through a die isn't much trouble. But does it impart the same RPM to the bullet as a rifled barrel? Assuming same twist.

Edit - I re-read your post and see I misunderstood the first time. Your saying rifle both the barrel and bullet so they match up. I'll keep that in mind if I find the bullet is getting stuck at the beginning of the rifling.
 
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Jerengineer said:
I’m searching for someone who can make a non-ferrous rifle barrel. The barrel must be non-magnetic and very thin walled so it does not interfere with the magnetic fields generated by the coils of a multi stage magnetic pulse rifle. Barrel will also be ported for various sensors. The material will likely be titanium, however I am still looking into other materials.
Suggestions on the rifle design welcome.
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Here's my two bits.

Before you dump any money into getting a thin wall tube custom rifled for your experiment, order some thin walled Ti tubing from Aircraft Spruce or off Ebay, and make the gun work.
Want to know if it will interfere, drop a magnet down the tube. If it passes through, at speed, then eddy currents are not a problem. My money, though, is that it does the same as any other non-ferrous material, which is, the magnet goes through in slow motion, meaning all sorts of generated currents in the tube.

Maybe consider some glass.

Once you get it to work, at least well enough to say that it does, then make some fin stabilized ammo for it. When you get all that working well, then look for someone that wants the mild misery of dealing with Inventors.

Seriously. Thin walled Ti. Hydraulic tubing is pretty easy to get. Finding anyone willing to rifle it, not so much. If you get it to work at all, you may actually be a step closer to finding and interesting someone in dealing with the stuff.

It machines just fine, until you run a dull or chipped tool across it and work harden it, then it's sheer misery!

Cheers
Trev
 
OP.....I have worked in the trade for more than 40 years now and I can tell you that any material that will conduct electricity will create a counter emf (my original ticket is in motor winding) ferrous or not. What you are thinking about I presume, is non magnetic metals will not magnetize like ferrous will when subjected to a strong magnetic field, which is true and why we use stainless steel for lift and dump electro magnets. However they most certainly will create a counter emf as a magnetic field is passed by. All conductors do, insulators do not, therefore you need to work with a non conductive material that is very thin as insulators also tend to insulate against magnetic fields as well as electricity. Hope this info is of assistance, and I'm not talking through my hat here, this is what I have done for a living for 40 years and was considered very good at. Everything you are doing here is covered under electric motor design and theory...........it would be possible to spin the bullet with the magnetic fields as well just like an electric motor does. Something to think about.....
 
Jerengineer said:
yes I've been wonder about how to over come that initial energy needed to deform the bullet as it enters the rifling and keep the thing moving. I don't want to use rifled bullets because I want to use off the shelf bullets. I notice that some full metal jacket rounds that I recently purchased from cannadammo are ferrous.
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There are two kinds of bullets that might fit this description. Those with a steel penetrator (armour piercing) and those with a steel jacket (cheap surplus crap). I suspect that neither will produce enough movement or force in a magnetic field to move down a barrel. I also suspect you are greatly underestimating the force required to get a bullet to engrave into a barrel.

Before you go all McGiver on this project, I suggest you try and push a bullet down a bore by hand. Then consider that a steel jacketed bullet is going to require more force to engrave into the rifling than a copper jacketed one.

The reason a rail gun is called a rail gun is that they don't use a conventional barrel or projectile. They also require HUGE amounts of electricity to run. Somehow I don't think the CDN government is going to agree to let you fire up a nuclear reactor in your back yard.
 
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