After years of research and development we've created an automatic fully
electric electromagnetically accelerated projectile weapon based on the Halo MA5
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When you think of futuristic warfare and pretty much any science fiction movie, technology has
advanced to the point where using any sort of black powder or explosive fuel seems downright
silly and wasteful. From laser weapons to plasma to magnetically accelerated projectiles, the future is
in pure renewable power in fact we've been messing around with sci-fi energy weaponry for years now
from Iron Man's plasma gauntlet to his repulsor to Zarya's laser bazooka to our various lightsabers
though the latest iteration still uses a type of fuel but what if we had enough electricity
in a small enough form factor to power pretty much anything turns out we almost do
Unlimited Power!
Years ago Ian and I built an electromagnetic railgun as a science experiment
basically trying to recreate the ones used on navy warships
it worked but despite the giant 400 volt capacitors it wasn't very impressive. Fast forward
a few months and while interviewing potential co-ops we met Charles. Why should we hire you
You start on Monday.
We basically hired him on the spot and we started building our
very first electromagnetically accelerated projectile weapon
alas due to canadian laws we had to make it less powerful than we had hoped but all
in all it worked quite well though it was only single shot that wasn't enough for Charles and
he continued researching and planning version 2.0 for the next few years while he finished school
today he's a full-time employee here and I decided it's about time to give him another shot
and since Halo Infinite just came out and since we already did the spartan helmet complete with
a heads up display and a real-life plasma energy sword we might as well base our new energy weapon
on the Halo MA5 let's see what he can come up with let me explain how this is going to work we'll be
using 13 electromagnetic coils each to pull the projectile faster and faster as it moves down
our barrel typically each coil is only able to draw in a magnetic projectile towards its center
electromagnets don't know that we only want the projectile to go in one direction
so we have to design the ma5 to turn our coils on pull the projectile forwards then turn the
coil off before it starts to suck the projectile backwards again that means each of the 13 stages
requires controllers that determine when to turn the power on and off since this is happening at
projectile speeds we have to program the MA5 to sequence the coil stages automatically to know
where the projectile is we have an LED and a light sensor at each stage as a projectile interrupts
the light beam we want the controller to shut off the current coil and magnetize the next coil ahead
these need to be timed precisely or the coils will instead slow the projectile down make it
shoot backwards or possibly even catch fire now you might be thinking that sounds pretty simple
it isn't in fact this is the most complicated thing I have ever designed so what makes it so
difficult you may remember back in 2019 we did something an awful lot like this
that one was great but it left a lot to be desired it was crazy heavy could only fire one shot at a
time needed an external battery pack and it kept catching fire i've been thinking about how to make
this better for the two years since here's where it gets hard i only have to replace the batteries
bus bars controllers coils chassis grips switches and software really i have to replace everything
first to get it to stop catching fire I've got to redesign the switches to more reliably handle
the 500 amps of current passing through them this thing uses more power than our original
light saber when you pull the trigger and that was challenging last time to redesign
the switches I of course used Altium Designer the industry standard in printed circuit board design
problem two getting rid of the power purse I want this thing to be powerful and portable I need to
find a way to fit powerful enough batteries in the chassis so I don't need to tote a tote into battle
problem number three i want to make it fire multiple shots without reloading to do that i'm
gonna have to design some sort of magazine into the back end. Finally the weight issue won't go
away in one fell swoop the 2019 model was made out of 1/8th inch steel plate i'm going to use aluminum
and make it thinner also the coils had to have a whole bunch of wraps of copper on them to produce
the current something the batteries and switches could survive which made them heavy and we had to
add an extra cosmetic wrap of copper on some of them which made them even heavier since we have
better switches and better batteries we can use fewer turns of copper and with the benefit of
hindsight and having a big ass lathe I can just make them look pretty in the first place. Dialing
in those smaller coils took some doing I ran a crapload of magnetic stimulations balancing
the weight against the risk of it melting into a puddle in my hands. We're gonna want exactly
eight meters of wire on each one of these coils i've got this jig that we can put our mandrels in
and i've got these reels that are ready to go with eight meters of wire that we cut off yesterday so
what do you say? Let's go build some coils! This is really sketchy so don't do it at home
Okay now I just need to do that 12 more times
Coils are done now we just need a switch that can turn them on and off
This is a MOSFET a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor it can comfortably fit on the
tip of my finger and it can switch enough power to start your car. On each stage we're going to
have two pcbs if there's going to be 13 stages then I guess I need to solder up 26 pcbs but
before we do that I have to test something we're in the semiconductor shortage right now and when
I tried to order the part I actually wanted here it was on back order until 2023 so I
ordered some compromised parts and we're gonna have to test those before we can actually make
all 13 of these I know I could calculate this out if I took a couple of days and simulated it
but it's probably a heck of a lot faster and far more entertaining if i just plug
it in and see if it explodes so let's do that. To see the full schematic diagram
check out the project on maker.io link in the description below. Three two one
That's what I was afraid would happen apparently I've got some work to do
we'll sort that out and then solder up a bunch of circuit boards, crap.
A hundred thousand dollars imagine what I could do with that
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Let's assemble the barrel
okay
oh shoot Rhiannon uh disaster averted that would have been bad that would have been so bad i have the entire thing hooked up
backwards every single one of these would have burst into flames. Okay we should be good to go now just need to plug the battery in
All right it's all ready to go we just need something to shoot at and
this cardboard box ought to get the job done. Load that in right there
oh man I hope this works
okay three two one
okay well something went wrong but didn't go that wrong
okay so I just pulled off the battery connectors and I see this little pock mark where it looks
like there's just a bad connection in between the bus bar and the electrical terminal that
was the only problem which I think it was because nothing's on fire I'm just going to tighten the
screws tighter this time and that's all I can really think to do, three two one
well something's burned pretty good um
oh my god that is vile.
okay yeah so um this stage failed closed which means that the magnet just stayed on which means
projectile just stayed there the entire time
don't know why that would happen so I need to take this back up to the lab
and run a bit of a postmortem and then once I've got that sorted out um the whole thing should be
good to go but there's one little issue and that's that i don't think i can feed these guys into the
back of it fast enough for us to get what we want so we're gonna need some sort of automatic feed
yeah we'll get to that next. We need a magazine here's one I prepared earlier
it's a box with a spring inside of it that shoves a bunch of projectiles upwards
whenever we pull the trigger the topmost projectile is going to get shoved
out of the magazine and into the back of the accelerator
I've got all the parts together I need to assemble the core of the MA5 we have the
accelerator which I've gone and got anodized to change the outside colour to black we've got
the battery pack, got a magazine got the lower receiver frame, got the grip, the lower receiver
side panels, the main controller, the power supply, and the upper receiver let's put it all together
It's getting a bit heavy
This is our battery pack and blue just doesn't match the whole MA5 aesthetic
and now the secret ingredient these three Gensace redline lithium polymer high voltage batteries
the functional unit is ready and it looks fantastic but it doesn't look halo luckily Tyler's gone
and 3d printed us all these parts that will really sell the ma5 aesthetic
as an added bonus Chelsea who earlier made the heads-up display from Halo
made up this little module that we're going to mount inside of the display
and it's gonna show us the round counter and our compass heading just like in Halo
Here it is the Halo MA5 with this Chief is ready to take on the banished
After weeks of hard work it's finally ready to test and who
better to have test it than Master Chief himself
Come on, that ain't it Chief, that ain't it.
We just need to reload
You put it in from the back side with the filleted end towards the flat
no no
push it down you put the thing in the hole you push it
Can you believe that guy?
It's getting a- it's getting a little toasty just from all the current that's running through
these coils because there's something like 400 500 amps in there and that's
a heck of a lot of juice in a small space so we're just gonna help it out a bit
Magazine got stuck. We knew this would happen on one of them we just-
I didn't check which serial number it was. Chief I can't hit from here let's get closer
Chief i need another mag
Holy crap. All right apparently gummy bears are beyond our destructive capabilities
Jammed? Okay, yeah, misfire hang on. Hand it back over
All right looks like it was just a magazine issue
we swapped that out and now let's take on the banished
Apparently it wasn't just a magazine issue. That hasn't actually happened yet
and that is what we call an anti-climax
Alright let's take another go at that
I was really expecting that to break
You might notice that this thing really isn't doing the kind of damage that the MA5 is capable
of in Halo well there are a few reasons for that first we live in Canada where that would
be illegal we cannot construct anything that launches projectiles at over 152.4 meters per
second and with kinetic energy over 5.7 joules less we get the mounties beating down our front
door. Second there are fundamental limits to what this type of magnetic launcher can do
the 2019 model was brushing right up against them but installing this tube for the barrel took three
people in a rubber mallet so I made the new barrel in segments without the inner tube sadly
that means there are gaps in the barrel which the projectile is wasting energy bouncing off of
and scraping against we're seeing about 50% losses from that alone. Which brings me to my third point
engineering is hard. Expecting ringing success on any first prototype is setting yourself up for
disappointment there are always issues to solve avenues for improvement and ways to make it better
next time. But even though there are many ways I can improve on our MA5 it is still
the coolest thing I have ever built and I'm so glad you guys got to come along for the ride
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