Non-ferrous rifled barrel (titanium?)

[BCRider]

I was going to bring up the same concerns as c-fbmi did above. I'm another that worked in radio and other electronics their whole working life.

Basically if it helps your metal barrel will act like the secondary winding of a transformer that is shorted out. So a lot of the power that SHOULD go into the emf currents and counter magnetic field from the projectile itself will be absorbed by the metal of the barrel. What you need is a barrel bore that is totally non conductive as well as being non magnetic.

If you're hoping to use off the shelf bullets be sure that they are made with a heavy copper jacket. The thin plated over lead bullets won't have enough current capacity in the thin jackets and you'll get less back EMF and thus less back magnetism.

In the end you may find that you're better off to work with some of the heavy copper jackets with the lead removed so it looks sort of like a hollow back pointed front bucket. The hollow shape will provide a fin like stability without the need for spin from rifling. That would let you get away with a non metallic tube of some form. Perhaps something ceramic?

 

[Jeff000]

.it would be possible to spin the bullet with the magnetic fields as well just like an electric motor does. Something to think about.....

This is what I was thinking, why not get the field to spin the bullet?

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.

I'd say capacitors will be used in great amounts. It's not hard to build what he is talking about. Sending something like a 200 grain projectile at 3000fps would be pretty easy, probably not that hard to get it reasonably accurate at 300 meters even. It'll never be any kind of portable though.
There isn't enough ferris mass in off the shelf bullets to do anything without a really long barrel.

It'll be way cheaper to have projectiles machined exactly how you want them and fire them out of a Duracon barrel. Also I think you might need more than a meter to get this projectile going.

 

[porpoise]

dont use a barrel just levitate your bullet.

 

[burnt_servo]

i wonder if some sort of ceramic / epoxy mixture might work to build a barrel .

or maybe a Kevlar / carbon fiber / epoxy mixture ?

 

[SandRoad]

Using "off the shelf" bullets is the very least of your concerns.

Enthusiasm is great, but you really need to do the design and calculations first. Why not mock up a prototype and just use short pieces of steel rod to start (hint, steel won't work). Forget about rifling and using "bullets". Get it working with any projectile, and then figure out how shoot accurately. Why introduce all that friction of bullets engaging rifling when you don't need to? Use smoothbore and a sabot, but actually you will need rails.

Besides, you don't want a steel projectile, it has to be diamagnetic, not magnetic. The projectile has to be repulsed, not attracted to be anywhere near efficient. Meaning aluminium or copper, etc.

As noted above, if you use any type of metal, for the barrel, ferrous or not, you need to design the "barrel" as part,nor the core of electro magnetic system.

Also, stock up on huge capacitors. You will need electric current in the tens or hundreds of thousands of amps range.

EDIT: You should be able to build a magnetic gun based on magnetic attraction (linear induction motor), however you will need several dozen (hundred) magnets along the length of your "barrel", and each magnet is "fired", in sequence and then turned off as the magnetic bullet approaches the magnet. Each magnet will need a microsecond accuracy controller capable of handling tens of thousands of amps to fire the magnet.

Here's some reading http://www.happyhacker.org/gtmhh/EML/index.shtml