rail gun employed to accelerate tennis balls.

[leidenfrost]

I have recently taken up the challenge to design and make a solenoid powered table-tennis-ball-distributor.

to give an impression on the basic design I'm talking about (look at the second diagram)-->

http://home.howstuffworks.com/nail-gun.htm

my question is this, can I power these two/one solenoids with a moderately low DC voltage ~9V (amperage can go as high as possible) and see a relatively fast ball ejection speed?

the design parameters require that I don't exceed 9V.
but I could get around this maybe by using capacitors to store the charge until +250V (which is usually used for coil guns).


I have searched extensively for schematics of nail guns so that I have a loose blueprint to base my design on but I haven't found much on schematics.

I know Pneumatics/spring potential would probably be my best bet but I love the idea of propelling the balls solely from electromagnets.

any help would be very much appreciated (If this post isn't in the right forum, please tell me, so that I can move it)

thanks,
Jack.