Electromagnetic Links

Here are some Web resources I found useful while researching these projects. Please tell me if any links are broken! Also let me know if you know of anything additional that might be useful.

More Links

• Is a coilgun a "firearm?" Learn more at The Straight Dope
• How to Buy, Sell & Shoot in Every State provides useful home security and state legal requirements.
• Electronics for the Evil Genius is a rich source of beginning electronics for the independent learner. No previous knowlege required.
• RadioLocman - schematics search engine has a variety of circuits for the hobbyist.
• Circuit Cellar On-line offers practical, hands-on applications and solutions for embedded-control designers.
• How Stuff Works: Electromagnet tells you the most basic principles of coils and magnets. Includes suggestions for experiments.
• LA Electrical Contractor provides quality electrical installation and repair.
• Convert Auto is a great way to convert just about anything automatically. Area, angles, energy, force, power, pressure, speed, it's all in there, even cooking and currency. This is the caffiene-fueled brainchild of Lily Hammond, engineering student at NCSU.
• What Is A Solenoid? provides a concise introduction to how solenoids work.
  Brought to you by the Detroit Coil Company.
• Solenoid valves by Valtorc, the expert in high performance industrial controls, is the supplier that I recommend for your control valve needs. Made in USA.

Levitation

• Levitation Kit by Guy Marsden has a very clever one-chip design.
• Visual Levitation offers a terrific levitation system, and their kit is a reasonable price. Read my review.
• Diamagnetic Levitation shows you how it works, and sells supplies and kits to build your own.
• Flying Magnet has a complete levitate-from-below system in 3d, written in both French and English.
• Magnetic Levitation - Science is Fun contains the best links to every conceivable type of maglev device.

Coilguns

• Portable Coilgun is chapter 1 of '15 Dangerously Mad Projects for the Evil Genius' by Simon Monk. Download it. Build it. Best write-up ever!
• Centum Engineering offers one of the better railgun websites, by Ravi Gaddipati.
• MadLabs Coilgun has an extremely nice 3-stage coilgun with optical sensors and capacitive discharge power.
• The Magnetic Gun Club explains how to use FEMM and Spice to model coilguns.
• Pskov 1100 Coilgun is a professional-looking pistol style coilgun from Russia.
• Me And My Monkey has lots of good coilgun (and other) design details and schematics.
• Jeff's Electromagnetic Coilgun has an interesting hand-held model.
• Slava Persion's Voltage Labs has an interesting variety of EM, projectile and radiation weapon projects.
• Sam Barros' Power Labs has a variety of high-energy experiments, including 3kJ and 7kJ coilguns.
• Resonance Research "Theater of Science" describes a very good coilgun on display with speeds over 600 mph.
• Lissandro's Mass Drivers has energy calculations along with thoughts on inductance and novel coil designs.
• Go to IBM Patent Search and look up Patent 5,763,812 for a "Compact Personal Rail Gun" filed in 1995. It is an educational introduction, if you can read through the legalese. His design detects the projectile position by measuring the inductance of the coil.

Discussion Areas

• .HV Community has very active discussions of high voltage and linear accelerator topics. This is where I hang out.
• eGroups Femm Board is where users can share ideas about FEMM, the finite element magnetics modelling package.
• eFusion Consortium is a top-notch marketing and communications company that I've been involved in.

Parts

• MWS Wire provides all kinds of magnet wire, and has even written me to say they are eager to sell small lots to hobbyists like us!
• WireTron manufactures wires for electromagnets and other applications. They offer a handy piece of free software to help understand and choose magnet wire. Get it!
• National Semiconductor describes the 555 timer chip here: http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM555.html
• The general-purpose 2N2222 (or the plastic-case MPS2222, as Motorola produces it) is spec'd on the Fairchild site at: http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/PN/PN2222A.pdf
• Capacitor Testing and Safe Discharging by Samuel M. Goldwasser has a great deal of practical information about capacitors.
• Hart Scientific and INSCO is the calibration laboratory for all types of measurement devices. They provide ISO accredited calibration services for research equipment, laboratory equipment and measurement weights.
• Tribology: Rtec Instruments specializes in design and manufacturing of high tech instruments such as tribometers, 3d profilometer, stress tester and atomic force microscope etc.

Finite-Element Analysis Programs

• FEMM, a free package supported by Dr. David Meeker, is an excellent choice for coilgun modelling.
• The FEMM Tutorial by David Meeker (based on Ian Stokes-Rees tutorial) is an essential introduction to using FEMM.
• QuickField by Tera Analysis does magnetic field plots for user-defined configurations. Highly graphical and relatively easy to set up 3d configurations. The student edition is a free 3MB download but the limit of 200 nodes will prevent you from solving real problems.
• Solenoid Physlet is a Java applet for a novel visualization of the magnetic field around a solenoid. This is part of the Web Physics pages by Davidson College.
• Field Precision creates 2D and 3D finite-element programs for electrostatics, magnet design, thermal transport, charged-particle devices, electromagnetic analysis and radiation transport in materials. The programs are moderately priced for consultants, universities and small companies. Their web site also features several educational items available for download at no charge, including an educational version of 2D software for electrostatics and magnetostatics, a complete package for 3D time-domain electromagnetic simulations, and textbooks on charged-particle acceleration and physics.

Inductance Formulas

• Magnet Formulas is a small web site devoted to the vanishing art of practical magnet design without FEA (Finite Element Analysis). It offers a number of very useful formulas.
• Bibliography of Inductance Calcuations provides references to a huge number of specialized documents about inductors.
• Wheeler Formulas for Inductance provides equations for common coil configurations.