Testing part

The assembly of the launcher was completed following the initial design, but this proved to be unsucessful as the frame was unable to hold the magnets due to their strength. This lead to the launcher frame being redesigned.
The new launcher frame was constructed, but there was another problem with the rails. The copper tubing that was used as the rails was not strong enough to hold the steel ball bearing in place. The steel ball was attracted to the magnets and would be pulled through the copper rails, bending them out of the way. The copper rails were therefore replaced with steel rails.
This new design held the ball bearing and the magnets in place without any problems.
The circuit was then able to be connected to the rails to test the launcher. There were initially problems with the ball bearing being caught in the magnetic field and being troublesome to move mechanically, let alone under firing.
After some testing, it was decided to swap the steel ball bearing for an aluminium slug. This gave better conduction with the rails as there was a larger contact surface, as well as being lighter than the steel ball bearing. More importantly though, not being attracted to the magnets meant that the aluminium slug could move freely along the rails.
Still however, the slug was unable to launch. It was decided after much testing that the reason was that our capacitor(s) weren't delivering enough power. To further test the launcher we used a borrowed capacitor array of 0.2 Farads, at 4v. This was a vastly greater amount of power than we had tested with. Still however, there was no movement. It was decided that the inertia of the slug was too great and that the slug would have to be already moving to actually fire. With further development, the launcher would have an integrated injector, allowing the slug to being introduced to the magnetic field and to the rails with enough momentum to allow the bullet to be launched.