Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-38684270-20200110172538/@comment-30049823-20200114000338

Super Capacitors?!? That's a thing now I guess. Wow!!

I watched a youtube vid of a guy making his own linear push solenoid, and couldn't help but think those commercial 35mm push solenoids are probably massive overkill for a dart pusher. If they draw that much power, they're probably quite powerful physically and better suited to actually be driving a direct plunger, or possibly a whole new propulsion method (I'm picturing a RIVAL "ball puncher", where it smacks the ball really hard and its own sponginess becomes part of the propulsion).

But I do still like the idea of electromagnetically pushing a dart.

What about a coaxial series of four smaller coils, that push a rod forward in stages, 10mm each stage (or rather 4mm/8mm/12mm/16mm)? And then a fifth coil loosely wrapped around the full length but in the opposite direction? (since there's little or no resistance to the rod returning).

Then you just need a little microcontroller to direct the juice to each coil with an appropriate delay between them, and no springs needed.

(#brainstormpower exceeds actual #ambition LOL)