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Using magnets in a coilgun can be benefitial to both the beginner and the more advanced
experimenter in coilguns. For the beginner using a magnet as the projectile in a coilgun
it will make easier getting a coilgun to work. Placing a magnet with the same polarity
as the coil on the exit end of the coil past the center will repell the magnet projectile
from the center and out of the coil. This will make a coilgun much more easier to work
with because you do not have to deal with turn off/time to escape the suck back force
from when the projectile past's the center of the solenoid.
As a more advanced experimenter, you allready know how to determine the correct off time of the coil to loose the suck back effect. Using a magnet as the projectile will give you a much more advanced increase in efficiency, upto 40% as I have found so. The more a force is than another force in polarity such as the polarity in magnetics, the more the 2 force's are attracted to echother. When using a magnet the pos/neg polarized coil will attract a magnet which is polarized to the complete opoosite as the coil. So instead of using a kind of neutral of the 2 polarities such as steel, using a magnet will increase the performance generously due to this improved attraction between the two forces.
Going even further to increase performance/efficiency, we can polarize the coil first to attract the projectile, then as it past's the centerpoint of the coil we turn reverse the polarity to repell the projectile. I have found in experimenting the best way to do this is to have 2 power source's preferably capacitors, 1 for each phase of the polarity of the coil. |