been doing some pneumag testing.

[longi]

I've doing a fair bit of testing in the last few weeks trying to find an optimum setup for my pneumag: ie, trying to make it fire as fast as possible, as consistantly as possible. I did several tests as follows.
1...Is there a performance difference between the emag on/off and the standard RT on/off
2...trying different tension main springs.
3...Halo B vs VL Evo 18bps hopper.
My setup is the MSV-2 type with QEV, Centrflag 4500 psi hyperflow reg, 1x retro valve un-modified, 1x retro vavle modified to accept a ULT. (I didn't try the ULT as i've been having problems getting the ULT to work.)
Prior to my Pneumag conversion, i found that with the emag on/off, i had a spectacular runaway trigger which was probably hitting around 16+bps. I tried it up against my friends 13 bps Angel LCD, and my mag was alot quicker. I have no way of measuring it, so it's purely an estimate.
Moving on to the pneumag. I tried the emag on/off and the RT on/off with both the softest and the middle spring starting with the middle spring. I put several hundred rounds through the gun using both on/off's. The gun was walkable with both on/off's showing a reasonable rate of fire, not spectacular though, as the middle spring is better for anti-chop (more resistance). Then i tried the softest spring...OMFFFG!!!! .This thing turned into a beast! I'm not sure of the ROF, but it was pretty high, i'm pretty sure it was firing 13+bps easily! I'm sure it was approaching 16bps! I found that the middle spring really hindered performance. So for a high ROF go with the softest spring. I also found that if i used the RT on/off in place of the emag on/off, there was no perfomance difference at all, which really suprised me. In fact, i'd go as far to say that if anything the RT on/ff worked slightly better, giving a crisper pull with a more consistant ROF! No, i couldn't quite belive it either! It was the same story for both valves, modified and un-modified. I thought that the emag on/off would've worked better, but it didn't work out that way.
Onto the hoppers, well, my Evo hopper didn't work so well, it made the LX10 work hard, and just struggled to get the paint into the breach. So i tried my friends Halo B, now that worked alot better! The LX10 didn't go into action once and fired consistantly and like dream. I was able to spit strings of paint everywhere! A force fed hopper just seems to work so much better in a mag than a normal feed hopper, i guess the Evo would work better with a gun that had eyes. I've now bought a Halo B and retired my Evo. For the record, i put 1500 balls through each hopper.
The best setup i've found so far then is this...
1...Use the softest spring for the highest ROF
2...Halo B hopper
3...And i think this is probably open for debate, and it really suprised me! The RT on/off! There's no difference in ROF between the two on/off's, but i swear the RT on/off worked more consistantly with a slightly nicer (Crisper) trigger pull. At the end of the day though, i think that one might be down to preference.
At some point i'll try again with the ULT, if only to satisfy curiosity. As it stands though, i can't find any reason to use the ULT as i love the perfomance with the above setup, the trigger pull is super light anyway so there's no need to use one unless you already have one or have somey burning a hole in your pocket! Ho hum.
Just to add to that, as soon as i can get hold of my friends camcorder i'll upload a video of it in action!

[djslik]

Softest spring huh...I have a bunch of springs because I got a couple extra from a friend so now I am having trouble distinguishing between them. Also do you think having higher input pressure will affect ease of walking. I have a dynaflow coming and I plan on setting it between 900psi and 1000 psi on my pnuemag.

[Pneumagger]

Softest spring huh...I have a bunch of springs because I got a couple extra from a friend so now I am having trouble distinguishing between them. Also do you think having higher input pressure will affect ease of walking. I have a dynaflow coming and I plan on setting it between 900psi and 1000 psi on my pnuemag.

Mechanically the high imput pressure shouldnt hurt a thing. Personally I use the longest spring with the theory that it will push back on the bolt much harder in the rest stage - relieving force forward on the sear. Thereby meaning the sear can be moved with less force.

For example. put the long spring in the LX and tune the frame to just shoot the valve. Now swap to the shortest and the mag will actuate poorly cause the LPR pressure needs to be higher.

IMO tune guns to how you shoot. I play 290+ FPS and use the Long spring with 800psi input. I adjust my frame acordingly. I've owned a handfull of mags which have sported 3 separate Xvalves. In addition to many of the valves people heve sent with thier setups, I can say that each mag has its own deamons inside. There's no ONE setup - otherwise AGD would've set it for us.

Props on the testing. Awesome to hear you got her singing like a champ. I'll have to try my shorter spring.

[longi]

Indeed, there are a fair few different tolerances between the parts. It taken a lot of trial and error experiments to get it to run right, 6 months in fact! I could get the middle spring to walk quite nicely with a full tank, but when it dropped to around 1200-1300psi, i was unable to walk the trigger properly and it would start misfiring, hence i started to run some expreriments. I've really enjoyed messing around with it, i'm learning more and more all the time. Great stuff! I'm gonna run some experiments using the lvl7 bolt and see how that runs.

[Lenny]

Hey Longi. If I use batteries in my hopper, am I a girl? Just curious...

Nice write up. I love reading about this kind of stuff.

[longi]

LMAO!! I hadn't thought of that! I'll have to invent a clockwork hopper now!..Hmm...Now there's an idea! While i think of it, The problem i found with the middle spring was it that the return force was too much, having the effect of reducing the reactive bounce, in turn this reduced being able to walk the trigger effectively. Another effect of the middle spring was that it would sometimes stick ever so slightly when it was walked quickly. Swapping springs also reduced this effect. Has anyone gone back to a LVL7 and found it any better than the LX10 in a pneumag?