The next gen coil accelerator to replace the CA-09. More info on https://coilaccelerator.com

Looks like a lot of changes, especially the projectile size/dimensions and fps. Unknown release date.

Title

The navy did not completely abandon the railgun as they claimed. They are built into the deck of the Gerald R Ford supercarrier(s). Instead of inert slugs, these railguns fire airplanes in the form of an eletromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMAL), a very clever use of the technology.

Does the size of the contact area of the rails, increase or decrease energy transfer vs things like friction and lorentz forces?

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should i try to make my rails real narrow or almost wrap around my projectile?

I've been doing research into these and it seems like people build them about the same except some have a row of magnets under them and some don't. It seems to work just fine without the magnets and I was wondering what difference they made. I asked a friend and he said I should put them on the top and bottom of the rails, but nobody else seems to do this. Can anyone help me understand what effects they have?

I think it would be cool to make an arcade game with a small railgun shooting the tokens. I only need them to travel like 70fps (as fast as a nerf gun) and travel a measly 4ft or so tops. The thing also needs to shoot thousands of times without burning up the rails. Is it possible to make a circuit or something that slows down the current inrush from instantly to like 250ms instead?

Usually the projectile closes the circuit, but it's the field that actually imparts the motion right? So couldn't you have a switch turn it on instead?

Hi, this is kind of a noob question. I know that it's important for capacitors to have high voltage, but what about capacitance? When calculating for small capacitance you get small energy and vice versa, but everytime I see a railgun, it has some beefy capacitors with relatively small capacitance. For example, rig I am planning to buy would have 1760 J with one capacitor (400V, 22mF) but capacitors people use have 400V and like 2000uF which is obviously a lot less energy. What is the reason for this and what option should I choose?