A Real Railgun Made By 3D Printing – Fires 560 MPH Plasma Projectiles

[su_heading size=”27″ margin=”0″]3D printing Make Plasma Railgun [/su_heading]

[su_dropcap style=”simple” size=”5″]L[/su_dropcap]ittle is known about Imgur user “NSA_Listbot” beyond the fact that he’s just short of being a wizard with AutoCAD and a 3D printer. The man took to Imgur over the weekend to share what may very well be one of the most amazing and terrifying DIY projects that has even been attempted. And he didn’t just attempt it, he built it.

The crazy contraption is the first portable railgun, a futuristic projectile launcher associated most commonly with the military or NASA. The man in the image above isn’t in the military, and he’s not a NASA engineer. Instead, he’s a civilian who used some engineering smarts, some widely available parts and a 3D printer to create a functioning weapon that can fire graphite, aluminum, tungsten and even plasma projectiles at speeds of more than 560 mph.

Using a combination of 3D printing and widely available components, the man built a functioning handheld railgun that houses six capacitors and delivers more than 1.8 kilojoules of energy per shot. What does it shoot, you might be wondering? So far he has tested the gun using metal rods made of graphite, aluminum and copper-coated tungsten.