This crazy weapon looks like a mad scientist’s dream. The gun came to be after creator Rob Flickenger read the graphic novel The Five Fists of Science, in which a young Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain battle Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi, using the likes of a Tesla gun.
Rob’s Tesla gun is powered by an 18 volt drill battery and uses a spark gap Tesla coil. The body of the gun itself is a Nerf gun, cast in aluminium. The housing for the primary coil and high voltage switch is made out of porcelain, and was 3D printed–it’s a pretty custom switch after all. All the power supply is housed in silicone.
In case you are wondering, the Tesla gun will fire over 20k volts of lightning upon pressing the trigger. As you can see above, this looks amazing but could of course kill someone. In fact, if you want to create a similar project, you must check that the casing is properly designed, so any electrical current won’t make its way to the ground through you.
Now, there’s only one question left to answer: will Rob use his incredible weapon for good or evil? Check out pictures of the sparks when fired on his Flickr, or keep an eye on his blog for a video to see it in action in the near future.
[Hacker Friendly via MAKE]
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