How many times can an autococker cycle per second?

[Dubstar112]

How many times can an autococker cycle per second before the timing starts to get out of control?..lol

Is that speed reachable by A human finger? and what if you timed an autococker slightly off so at high rates of fire when the timing starts to go out it actually starts to go in 'time'?



I felt this was a deep blue subject.. however if you dont then ill delete it or what ever..

[Failure]

I read that the max rof of an autococker due to its mechanical nature is 13bps.

[liigod]

Autocockers are FAAAAAAAAAAST, the problem is the feeding. An autococker is friggen fast, faster than anyone will ever be able to pull the trigger, but over 13 the closed bolt style doesnt feed correctly its limit is about 13, with some TOTALLY tweaked things you can get 14. The less weight u have to move the faster it can open leaving it more time for feeding. Force feeding it a bit faster, but is hard on the balls. With a cocker they are a nice stable gun to shoot so they are easy to hit ball right after the last ball. So i say that you dont need over 13.

[BlackVCG]

Telefragged-

Where'd you get your data from? Do you have pressure vs. sps graphs showing that an autococker will cycle that fast without drop off? I want proof.

[Wat]

I would guess the max cycling speed (not worrying about shoot down) would be dependant on how fast you can cock.

If you could time how fast the back block goes back, then forward. Wonder if i can chrony a back block.

[AGD]

Deep Blue is not about guessing or stating what you heard somewhere else so it must be true. You have to back up your statements with good reasoning, facts or research.

So far I have not heard anything convincing that cockers can shoot 13bps. Cycle speed is different from shooting speed because the bolt has to be open long enough to drop a ball.

AGD

[Wat]

So minimum cycle time would equal

Time to drop sear/hammer to strike valve + Time to cock/open bolt + time for ball to drop in breach + time to close bolt.

We can calculate time for ball drop by how long it takes gravity to drop a ball 0.68" for verticle feed (or RH/LH if i bother to remember my trigonometry). I'm ignoring ball suckage since i still don't buy that it is an appreciable amount.

As for the other amounts, i have no idea as there are so many combinations of springs/LP rams/mini rams etc etc. Anyone with an eCocker know their delay and timing settings?

[Failure]

Well, I watched it on Pig TV in the 2001 NPPL Tourney Interview with Dave Zinkam of Protech paintball. Dave explains Protech's new electronic trigger conversion for the WGP Autococker and states that the autococker cannot do more than 13 balls per second due to the mechanical nature. No scientific explanations just your everyday meat and potato heresay.

Here is the link...episode 3

http://www.pigtv.net/01_summary/01_NPPLcup.shtml

[AGD]

Warpig Balistic Labs did a study of how fast various loaders could feed paint. They used a cocker mechanism to shuttle paint through the system. That would be a good place to start. You can calculate the bolt travel time by using 9 fps for a bolt speed as a start. That is fast but workable. Take it from there.

AGD

[squidboy69]

As well as the spring variables in an Autococker, don't forget that people shooting 'low pressure' cockers are effectively reducing thier SPS before shootdown. The RetroValve relies on the burst of full tank pressure through the on/off to recharge so quickly, most guys these days are only feeding there guns like 200-300psi, so that's a lot of vol to fill with so little pressue. hmmm low pressure makes for slow guns. Also the prevalance of dual regualting cockers slows them down too... better go rebuild mine

[Manuel_FZR]

hmmm, the racegun frame is the fastest frame for the cocker, as far as I know.

They write:

How fast can I shoot?
As fast as you can feed it. We are running between 10,5 and 13 bps without any clipping at all (no eye).Keep in mind that you need lightweight parts (bolt, rear block etc.) to go beyond 10-11 bps on a Cocker. Most Cockers work fine at 9,5-10 bps. At the World Cup we were demoing cycle rates up to 18.5 bps just to show off.

So they talk from cycle rates at the 18.5bps. Shooting speed would be up to 13bps. Most will shoot 9,5 to 10bps.

[MikeCouves]

Yeah I was going to post about the PigTV episode. The guy on that states that a stock 2001 cocker can cycle 10 BPS without shootdown, and a WGP STO can do 12 BPS without shootdown. After that it's start half cutting because you are taking another shot before the gun fully recocks and fills back up with air.

[nerobro]

Time for some testing........ *looks longingly at the AGD gun dyno* Hmm.. I wonder what it woudl cost to build a setup that would allow us to answer these questions......

*rummages through the parts bins and pulls out a PIC or two and some phototransistors* As our electrococker project continues... this is going to be something we will find out. I'll post to the thread again when I have defintie answers on how fast "my" cocker cycles. And how fast it'll feed paint.

[Rock Star]

well a Huge factor in how fast it can cycle would be what type of bolt sear etc. if the bolt were delrin it would increase the cycle speed. if the back block was lighter than that would also increase the speed. thoguh i dont own a cocker i think this would play a huge role in cycle speed.
-Jared

[nerobro]

REcriprocating weight does make a difference, but you can make even a SS bolt Extrordinarily light. and being a smoother surface, I'd bet you'd get less drag. Again, even inertia can be overcome with enough force. The sear has nohting to do with it ;-)

[AGD]

Here are some things to consider:

Our Superbolt weighs 1.1 oz, I bet that is lighter than most cocker or angel bolt/hammer assemblies. Someone please weigh them and prove me wrong (I never have).

The forward momentum of the Mag bolt is decellerated by the bolt spring and will reverse without hitting anything. The rearward motion is stopped by a rubber bumper.

Hammer valve guns like the cocker/angel/impulse decellerate the forward stroke of the bolt by hitting the valve stem which is held closed with about 300 psi pressure. On return they hit something else like the back of the ram.

How smooth your gun shoots is largely based on how much you spent on it for bragging rights. They all wack something when they shoot.

AGD

[nerobro]

it's not even worth weighing ;-) other than for figuring out how much more they weigh.... Actually... Hmm... *digs out the scales* It would be nice to have numbers to play with.

Are you saying that the spring in the automag never get's fully compressed? (I thought that was the reason it was switched to a square crossection instead of a round one..)

I'd like to get back to the real point of this thread... how fast can we get a cocker to cycle ;-)

[squidboy69]

is that 1.1 oz the ENTIRE superbolt, or just the delrin sleeve?

I've just gone and weighed some new fangeled space age bolt for my cocker I was given to 'beta' test, and it was 2.2oz

not sure what it is, but is slick (coefficient of friction) as hell. It matches the bore of my gun flawlessly, but if I have the gun angled slightly, it'ss slide right through the marker, barrel and all... weird stuff.

[AGD]

Under normal conditions the bolt spring does not bottom out. We went to the square wire to increase the force. When dry firing it can bottom.

1.1 is for the ENTIRE Superbolt.

AGD

[sniper1rfa]

wieghs in at 30-40 grams i think. anyone know grams –>oz. ?

[AGD]

35 grams = 1.23oz. What is the weight of the hammer and cocking rod?

AGD

[Doc Nickel]

Okay, we're talking about two different things here, again.

I'd heard the snippet about RaceGun as well, and the consensus was that they were not firing it at circa-eighteen per second, they were cycling it at 18+.

There's a difference.

The original post asks how fast a 'Cocker can cycle. By this I assume he means chamber and fire a ball with minimal loss in velocity, correct?

From my fooling around with my own ElectroCocker design using a KM2 "Morlock" board, I could very, very easily hit the default 10/sec rate-of-fire, using a Max Flow and Tornado and running around 180 psi according to the cheap guage.

I don't have a chrony that will record a string of shots that fast, but there was little or no apparent dropoff, as measured by my Mk I Mod 0 eyeball.

It could have easily lost 20 fps, over and above the usual few fps consistency variance, without my noticing, but as I said, without a chrony that can cycle and record as fast as it can shoot, that's no more than a guess.

Now, the default timing I was using equalled almost exactly ten complete cycles per second- meaning it took not quite 100ms to release the sear, wait, push the block back, wait, and bring the block forward. Unfortunately, there's still a minor glitch in the Morlock software, something about overrunning timers. The gun is at KM2 now so Curt can iron out the software.

However, I'm assured that the Morlock can cycle far faster than that. It was suggested that, if I wanted to simply "show off" like the aforementioned RaceGun demonstration, that I should alter the timing to minimums and let it rip at 20+ cycles per second.

I'll drop a note to KM2 and see if Curt can stick a 'scope on it and see how fast the gun can cycle.

Doc.

[Failure]

Doc the morlock can cycle faster, the thing about the morlock board is that it is fully adjustable, unlike the race. I believe the morlock was adjustable from 1-100 ms.

[sniper1rfa]

they can be adjusted from 1 (technically 0, but that is locked) to 255.

the cocking rod and hammer are both the stock 2k parts, but i dont know how heavy they are, we never measured.

and doc, if you put the timing to minimums, nothing would happen. ther just wouldnt be any time for anything to happen because all the minimums are 1 ms. thats 4 ms for the solenoid 1 pulse, solenoid 1 holdoff, solenoid 2 pulse, and the solenoid 2 holdoff. although, if something did happen, that would be 250 bps. fun.

[Vegeta]

Cycling speed will always be faster than shooting speed. ALWAYS. Even if someone makes a extreemly reliable forcefeeding system, it will still be able to cycle a bit faster than it can feed. This is much like my post about the stacked tube reversed bolt design I had, which I posted here in deep blue. Theoretically, it worked, but it would cycle once so fast that there would be no time at all for the ball to feed. The hammer went backwards (toward player) And was linked to bolt on top, which moved with it. The hammer hit hte valve at about 10ms after the chamber was fully open. I thought that by the time the air got to the top, the ball would be in, and then the blowback would push it all forwards again, but no. it owuld be a blender, not a marker. i still like the concpet. Im sure tom has seen this, butmany times you come up with ideas that look great, but cant be done becuase of eitehr modern technology is not great enough or physics juts wont allow it.

[314159]

this just hit me and would verify some of the results out there. warpig used an autococker(with the cocking rod removed so it wouldn't fire to avoid the ballsuck effect on loading preformance)to test out some of the loaders currently available. they went up to 15bps before some of the loaders started to have problems.

with the hammer engaged, the force to move the hammer back, slowing down the bolt back, some of that force is applied to accelerating the hammer(the force it takes to cock hammer from the length of the hammer lug past the sear). so for an aproximation, you could say that this is insignificant and that it cancels itself out.

the factory settings on the centerflag grip frame had long times for the back block to go back, and the back block to go forward. they use standard autococker 4 ways on their guns. (autococker 4 ways have a problem with sticking, more so the higher you turn the pressure, usually resulting in a stronger trigger return spring) which in centerflags case, would make them use a stronger solenoid, which might be prhoibitive on the battery.

if you were to use a mac valve, like racegun and sandridge do. you could set the pressure of your cycling pneumatics to 80 psi which would increase the cycling speed.

lightining the hammer spring, would also increase the cycle rate.

you could lighten the hammer spring further if you put in a valve spring light enough to hold the valve stem in place, and have the back block timed so it closes the valve (this might have some blowback issues, resulting in a longer bolt, negating the suggested preformance increase.)

you could also increase the rof, by reducing friction from the bolt/body. and the hammer/body.

sandrige claims their guns top out at 16 bps, but their cockers are not clock driven, there event driven (which can cause reliablity problems. ie. more things to break) for example, they have a sensor on the ram that senses when the bolt is all the way open, they have a sensor to see when the ball is in the chamber. so there rof is limited almost to cycling speed, and how fast u can dump paint into them.

if you would shorten the length of hose from the mac valve, to the ram attached to the sear, or replaced this with a solenoid, you could increase rate of fire.

adding an adjustable eye that would allow the gun to fire before the ball is all the way in the chamber would also add a little to the rate of fire.


after saying all this, rate of fire has no corilation with the amount of fun you get out of playing paintball. i have been playing pgp the past couple times i have been out having a blast averaging .5 bps .

[314159]

it seems the autococker will always cycle slower than the automag, i'm thinking that the suction an autococker can generate might make up for this. i wonder if it is enough suction to suck the next round into the chamber faster than the warp could push the next round in the chamber.

now only if the automag could have ball suction. (hint hint )

[Vegeta]

Basically, make the parts lighter, oil it better, it will cycle faster. make to parts smaller, and it will cycle faster. Thast why you can supposedly get a high ROF on a PTP minicocker than on a normal one. the bolt is cut down and ther back block is nearly eliminated. Its plain physics. If you have a gun with a 1200 gram bolt, it will cycle slower at first becuase it takes mroe force to move a object with more mass compared to a 800 gram bolt. BUT theoretically, once this heavy bolt gets cycling, the mass should actually help keep it up to speed, becuase its harder to stop something heavier. The problem there is, the thing has to recipricate. it has to go back and forth, and at each end of the stroke it has to stop. If there was a way to make it keep going all in one direction, like a ring, you could get extremely fast cycling speeds.. like a waterwheel. It keeps spinning in one directi0on, the direction of the flow. It doesn't stop and go backwards to get more water now does it.

So we can get faster speeds by making the parts smaller and lighter. And if we coat them with a material that repels friction from the casing they are enclosed it it will go even faster. But it will always have to stop at the end of its stroke, and go backwards. and the deceeleration and acceleration at the end of each side will always slow it down.


whwew that was long.

[nerobro]

Hmm.. Vegeta brigns up an interesting point... how light can we get the autocockign components in a cocker. If you want to find the smallest set of moving components in an autococking gun.. take a look at the blazer. And blazers are very friendly to really high LPR pressrues...... Gah, how to make me spend MORE money... Still we need to dig up a testing rig to add some real numbers to all of this.

[314159]

i rember when autocockers had the large back blocks, and for a while the bob long ones still did. i think the trick to timing one of them was to set up the cocking rod so that it would stop the back block (the hammer reaching the point of furthermost travel about the same time the ram would reach it's internal stop) and then when the trigger was released, the hammer spring would help push the back block foward.

i guess that it is all in how you have it set up.