Gun question

[lucius octavion]

I have a question that is confusing me. I want to know the exact differences between a

Gatling Gun
Maxim Gun
Chain Gun
Mini-Gun

I know they are all very alike, but just to show my interpretation so you get an Idea of what I am asking:

Gatling gun is like a big gun with rotary technology firing a bullet on a ammo belt eachtime a barrel rotates to the firing chamber. The rotation is controlled manually with a crank.

Maxim gun seems like a gatling gun to me.

Chaingun I know was meant to be mobile. I did some research on gun history and chaingun was a name that was kind of just dubbed, they are mobile and have some sort of automatic means to fire, with a motor in it too

Minigun is well like a fast military thing....

Maybe bullets is the difference, if anyone knows this please let me know. Thanks in advance. heh IDK :P

[Kuwabara]

I think it's size Octavion.(Hey! you brought that avatar from the CQ forums)

[Sigma]

See below.

[lucius octavion]

Thank you.

I would love to hear what more you can tell me about the energy sources and the stuff you talked about, please do? Like, why would the barrels melt what is the difference from internal and external, etc etc

and why is a minigun different than chaingun (doom maring has that, not a chain gun?)

thanks I would really like for expanded info, that is if you don't mind

[rustyslacker]

The barrel would overheat and maybe melt when you put 500+ rounds per minute through a gun, hence multi-barrel machine guns. The gases would just heat up the barrel until it bent or distorted badly.

[Sigma]

See below.

[Aliotroph?]

So what's the deal with vulcan cannons then? They look like the same idea too, but they seem to get pretty big (like those ones you see on helicopters).

[Sigma]

I decided to research this and I was wrong. I hope this clears things up.

A Gatling-gun is a multi-barreled, externally powered weapon capable of high-rates of fire. It was originally powered by a hand-crank, but later was revised to depend on an electric rotor. The Vulcan cannon and mini-gun are derivatives of the Gatling-gun; their names are based on barrel-size. Mini-guns can be portable, but do not necessarily have to be. They have been deployed on helicopters and other forms of equipment as well.

A chain-gun is independant of a Gatling-gun and is confused with it quite often apparently. A chain-gun has a "motor that drives the chain, the chain moves in a rectangular loop via four sprockets which tension it, and one link of the chain is in turn connected to the bolt assembly; thus the bolt moves back and forth to load, fire, extract and eject cartridges." I believe the barrels themselves in this particular design never move. That is how, I assume, you can tell the difference without becoming specific.

A Maxim-gun isn't considered to be a relative to these weapons as it has an internal power source, though it can be designed with multiple barrels. It uses energy from gas exchanges in the chamber and barrel to feed, eject and fire.

"It is a common misnomer to refer to Gatling guns (rotary cannons) or miniguns as chain guns; even in some video games, such as Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the player carries a minigun referred to as a chain gun. In fact, most Gatling-type guns - weapons such as the M61 Vulcan, the M197, the M134, and the XM214- ARE externally-powered but are NOT chain guns. They instead function by directing the power source (usually electricity) to a unit known as a rotor, which contains each of the multiple barrel-and-breech assemblies that make up the distinctive shape of a rotary gun and is free to rotate within a fixed outer sleeve. A cam projecting from each breech unit runs in a shaped, recessed track within the sleeve. To fire, power is applied to rotate the rotor which in turn causes each breech to cycle as its cam is forced to follow the recessed track. Each barrel therefore fires independently."

Source: Wikipedia.org

The various names of the weapons are composed of power source, caliber and manufacturer/designer.

[Kuwabara]

So are you doing a report on guns or something Octavion? Or were you just siting around and suddenly thought "hmm.....whats the difierence between {insert gun names here}"?