blastron

The trick here is to not use compressed air. Mods that use compressed air already exist, and I want to try something different.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already have two Mavericks that I'm working with, and would prefer to spend my money on more parts instead of more guns. Plus, the sidearm of choice at my college is the Maverick, so making an awesome Maverick mod would probably get me a bit more geek cred.

This is likely to involve very large capacitors as an immediate power source, likely charged by 9-volt batteries. As I'm working through this, I'm realizing how impractically heavy this thing might end up being. I'll experiment with winding the solenoids tonight and tomorrow to see if I can come anywhere close to the amount of force necessary without making the solenoid ridiculously huge. I've already looked into things such as linear actuators, and those are slightly too expensive for my tastes. If I can't get anywhere with this, I will likely spend time attempting to design a motor-driven cocking mechanism.

At least there's a lot of room in the Maverick to tuck things away...

Alright, I am in need of some help here. After lots of Wikipedia work and some deriving, I came up with the equation (where F is the force, L is the length of the solenoid, μ is the permeability constant of free space, N is the number of turns, and A is the area) to calculate the amount of current needed in order to exert as much force as I want. The units work out nicely, but when I plug in my numbers, I get ridiculously high values for either my number of coils or the current required.

F = 50 newtons
L = 1.75 inches = 0.04445 m
μ = 4π E-7 Henries/meter
A = .0625*π square in. = 0.00012667687 square meters
N and I variable.

The way things are looking now, I will either have to get a very good conductor or wrap a lot of wire in order to get 11 pounds of force over 1.75 inches. I've already looked into linear actuators and other motor-driven solutions, and those are far too expensive for my tastes.

For constructing this solenoid, I was originally intending on using a 7/16" steel rod inside a 1/2" PVC pipe, wrapped with however much wire I needed.

Are my numbers off somewhere?

Don't solenoids actuate pretty fast? Why not replace the spring with a soloniod?

I thought about this, and decided against it for three reasons: 1, because I want to still be able to fire this without a battery, and removing the spring altogether would prevent that; 2, because I would have to make the back of the Maverick longer in order to fit the solenoid; and 3, because I really want the slide to be thrown back during the firing process to make the blaster more handgun-like.

Why don't you just hang paper clips on a string off of your maverick until it cocks. Then see if your solonoid can lift that much weight? That should be a fairly accurate way of finding out that information. You should probably start with one pound weights, then when you have enough 1lb's to cock it, remove one and start with the paper clips (or something similar) until you can narrow it down to the exact force. Then it's just a few simple calculations and you're done.

Ah, thank you, that would work nicely. Now to find some paperclips, string, and a scale! I'll be sure to post approximately how much force it takes to cock the slider, in case anyone else happens to need that information.

A solenoid is a coil of wire...electric wire is bendy. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to fire. The solenoid would just coil tighter and stay that way.

Actually, the solenoid would generate a magnetic field that would push a metal bar forward. The coil itself wouldn't do any physical pushing, so it doesn't matter how bendy it is.

Edit 1:

Rounding up to compensate for errors in measurement (I used a fairly inaccurate bathroom scale, as that's the best my parents' house has to offer), it takes about 50 newtons (or 11 pounds) of force to pull back the slider on my Maverick.

Edit 2:

I apologize for my ignorance, but should I keep using this thread for further questions and updates relating to this mod, or should I create a new thread?