Mark IV

Last year's experiment with Mark III brought out an interesting phenomenon with devices in contact with plasma. We've noticed a decrease of performance of the 300v trial over rounds, and figure it was due to the plasma damaging the rails, known as ablation.

That is where this year's experiment comes in! How do we prevent damage to metals in contact with plasma. This has also been an issue for the Navy's rail gun, magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, NASA's mass drivers, etc. Mark IV was then designed, equipped with a full onboard computer for regulating the voltage of the charging system, the rail gun was designed using AutoCAD Inventor and vector coordinates for the CNC milling machine were done using VCarve.

Mark IV costs more than double of that of Mark III, however designed with numerous safety systems due to the amount of power it is designed to hold.

Mark IV Charging System

Photographic Mark IV Prototype Shot with Mark IV rail gun

Intial prototype test using Mark III rail gun on the Mark IV Charging System