SpudFiles

Hey guys, quick question. I'm making a small coil gun with a capacitor bank I made with 4 camera caps in parallel. The thing I'm not sure about is, should the wires of the coil be insulated or un-insulated?

Note- Yes, I no this will not be very powerfull, you don't need to tell me.

They HAVE to be insulated, or the coil will be utterly useless.
Use enamelled magnet (might also be known as coil or solenoid) wire - 20 SWG is usually a good bet.

Yeah, just scrape the insulation (enamel) off the ends so you can solder them.

A good source of wire is an old motor or transformer.

If the wire is a shiny copper color it probably is insulated. If it wasn't coated with something the copper would have corroded to the brownish/green of old copper pipe.

Radioshack has this set for $6;

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index ... Id=2036277


You can burn the insulation off the end with a match. I find it works better than scraping.

Just buy a roll of enamelled copper wire.

The wire on old motors or transformers is usually glued together to ensure that it doesn't unravel.

If the wire weren't insulated, you'd just have a rather hefty join in the circuit..