New valve idea?

[Lohman446]

Ok... let me begin by saying that I am in no way familar with all the markers and systems out there that make them work so I may be stepping onto something already done.

It is my understanding that it is not the bolt that hits the ball to make it move but the air, and it would be better if the bolt never hit the ball at all - sometimes incidental contact is made.

I was laying in bed thinking of new designs for getting that air to the ball.

Why don't we use something like a fuel injector? I mean electrical pulse opens the self contained unit, and allows fuel to go into the engine, that lack of pulse closes it. There operation speed is in excess of 100 cylces per minute.

Couldn't we use this base idea, modify it, and make a paintball valve out of it?

[BigEvil]

Ive been wondering the same thing for a long time. Now that most guns have eyes, I would thing that it should be pretty easy. Im sure there is some reason why a bolt is needed though....

[p8ntball365]

I'm pretty sure The assault 80's don't use a bolt. They use some sort of trap door and air.

[slade]

wait, are you saying essentially have a "trap door" over the feed tube instead of a bolt? so the trap door opens to let a ball through, and then closes immediately afterward and a valve lets out a burst of air? if so, thats already been thought of by most paintballers and done at least twice. look at the alien and... dammit i forgot the name, its a relatively old marker that used this idea and never really caught on. i think it starts with an "E".

[Titansu]

You're thinking of the Epic.

http://www.pbreview.com/products/reviews/198/

http://www.pbreview.com/pics/1093984496.jpg




wait, are you saying essentially have a "trap door" over the feed tube instead of a bolt? so the trap door opens to let a ball through, and then closes immediately afterward and a valve lets out a burst of air? if so, thats already been thought of by most paintballers and done at least twice. look at the alien and... dammit i forgot the name, its a relatively old marker that used this idea and never really caught on. i think it starts with an "E".

[Emag2005]

The bolt is needed to recock the gun and i think it might hit it a little since their is a fomie on it

[slade]

ahh yeah, the epic. dont really hear much about them anymore.



The bolt is needed to recock the gun and i think it might hit it a little since their is a fomie on it
without a bolt, you dont NEED to cock the gun :tard: .

[deadeye9]

I think the bolt pushes the ball past the detent before releasing its air.
Not sure, though.

[ScatterPlot]

The bolt seals the air passage from letting all the air leak out around the ball and up through the feed tube. The Nova was another gun without a bolt, but it actually slid the whole barrel backward around the ball to fire it (or at least part of the barrel). Talk about reciprocating mass!

[68magOwner]

the bolt is there to seal the chamber, if you just shot air at the ball, it would go up the feedneck, smashing paint and creating horrible efficency

[BlackVCG]

The fundamental problem is that you need to load the ball and fire it down the barrel, thus you must have some sort of "breech." Either using a bolt or not, the gun will need to "seal" off the breech inorder to concentrate the air pulse on the ball and get any sort of efficiency. There's been plenty of bolt-less guns out there, but they all had to use some sort of door or shut-off to close the breech.

The SMG-60 was an interesting design because it used a clip that held 5 balls in it and as the clip fed in from spring tension pushing on the clips, the ball would be fired by the air and the clip housing acted as the breech. The only problem being the most balls you could have ready to be fired was 15 and after the game was over you'd have to run around and find all of your clips unless you had the canvas catch bag on the gun.

Also, I'm going to move this thread to Deep-Blue... It's technical enough of a topic and could bring up a good discussion.

[Lohman446]

The fundamental problem is that you need to load the ball and fire it down the barrel, thus you must have some sort of "breech." Either using a bolt or not, the gun will need to "seal" off the breech inorder to concentrate the air pulse on the ball and get any sort of efficiency. There's been plenty of bolt-less guns out there, but they all had to use some sort of door or shut-off to close the breech.

Ok, the understanding of the purpose of sealing the breech means somehow we are going to have to consider it. Is there any reason that the next ball in the stack could not act to seal the breech area. If we have force fed loaders and could make the tube going into the breach .689 (or even somehow adjustable for different size paint - I know we will have to think more on that one) then could the next ball not act to "seal" it? I mean you don't have to be dead perfect, look how little efficiency is lost shooting a .686 paint through a .692 barrel - very little.

I understand there is bound to be a series of problems, and it appears the first we are going to have to consider is the sealing of the breach. I think it might be done as above - am I tottally insane on that line of thought?

[jewie27]

Since paintball is a little over 20 years old now, if it was a good idea it would have been done by now. As far as bolts go....

[Lohman446]

Since paintball is a little over 20 years old now, if it was a good idea it would have been done by now. As far as bolts go....

That one I refuse to beleive. There are new ideas in established industries all the time. Lets take for instance the rotary engine in automotive. A high rev, low displacment engine with pretty good torque and horsepower for its displacement. Its a good idea, just not in common use. Doesn't mean it doesn't work as well as other things.

The point I here is many of the bolt ideas that we use today are based on firearm theory at the base. We are not trying to lower a striker or a hammer, there should be better ways to do it then what we do now. The spool valve to me was one step forward... but I still beleive there has to be other ideas.

With that attitude we would still all be playing with pumps. With time gone by it just means ideas are not as... well a lot of them are used but I am sure there are still ideas out there.

[slade]

Ok, the understanding of the purpose of sealing the breech means somehow we are going to have to consider it. Is there any reason that the next ball in the stack could not act to seal the breech area. If we have force fed loaders and could make the tube going into the breach .689 (or even somehow adjustable for different size paint - I know we will have to think more on that one) then could the next ball not act to "seal" it? I mean you don't have to be dead perfect, look how little efficiency is lost shooting a .686 paint through a .692 barrel - very little.

I understand there is bound to be a series of problems, and it appears the first we are going to have to consider is the sealing of the breach. I think it might be done as above - am I tottally insane on that line of thought?
...what?? remember, the air on the ball shoots it at 280 FPS. that same pressure would be applied on the next ball in the feed tube, shooting it back into the hopper. if its kept in the same place, all your balls will be crushed. either that or the hopper itself will break. also that pressure on the ball BACK UP into the feed tube would drasitcally decrease the feed rate, as the hopper would have to overcome that pressure and then push the ball into the breech. that would require an even stronger force fed hopper, which would mean there is even MORE force on the ball pushing it down, while there is force from the air pushing the ball up. This would create many problems, and have only a slight advantage. it would be a much better idea to simply have a solenoid activate a ram behind the feed neck that pushes a piece of metal through a slot to close the breech. you could even lower the pressure enough to make it pinch balls. and you could probably use a cocker board with slightly modified software, since there would be two noids.

[Lohman446]

...what?? remember, the air on the ball shoots it at 280 FPS. that same pressure would be applied on the next ball in the feed tube, shooting it back into the hopper. if its kept in the same place, all your balls will be crushed. either that or the hopper itself will break. also that pressure on the ball BACK UP into the feed tube would drasitcally decrease the feed rate, as the hopper would have to overcome that pressure and then push the ball into the breech. that would require an even stronger force fed hopper, which would mean there is even MORE force on the ball pushing it down, while there is force from the air pushing the ball up. This would create many problems, and have only a slight advantage. it would be a much better idea to simply have a solenoid activate a ram behind the feed neck that pushes a piece of metal through a slot to close the breech. you could even lower the pressure enough to make it pinch balls. and you could probably use a cocker board with slightly modified software, since there would be two noids.


Interesting thought but I think you are overdramatizing the air effect here. The air will travel the path of least resistance (I think) and that would be pushing the ball past the detents and out the barrel. Although there would be some pressure on the "sealing" ball I think you are thinking it will be more than it actually would be - I think. (yeh, try to figure that sentence out).

I had considered a "door" of some type, but was concerned with it causing more problems then a bolt would.

What about a "rotating" feed system - like the A-5 uses. You could make it so each "cylinder" sealed off the breech area and yet balls from the loader would just drop in when they were not ceiling. Or perhaps like the Omens cam feed system.

[slade]

Interesting thought but I think you are overdramatizing the air effect here. The air will travel the path of least resistance (I think) and that would be pushing the ball past the detents and out the barrel. Although there would be some pressure on the "sealing" ball I think you are thinking it will be more than it actually would be - I think. (yeh, try to figure that sentence out).

I had considered a "door" of some type, but was concerned with it causing more problems then a bolt would.

What about a "rotating" feed system - like the A-5 uses. You could make it so each "cylinder" sealed off the breech area and yet balls from the loader would just drop in when they were not ceiling. Or perhaps like the Omens cam feed system.
it wont push against the ball in the feed tube quite as much as the one in the barrel, but there still will be a lot of pressure on it, causing lower feed rates, with the possibility for a lot of breaks and the chance of breaking your hopper. plus it would be more inefficient and less consistant.

there certainly could be problems with a "door", but they would be far fewer than with the ball sealing the feed tube. plus there would be many advantages. the door would weigh MUCH less than a bolt, so there would be much less reciprocating mass, meaning less kick, plus since there is less weight to move the operating pressure can be greatly lowered, meaning no chops, only pinches. you could write code and set up a system to detect if the trap door is closed (maybe a microswitch), and if it is not closed (meaning it is pinching a ball) the solenoid controlling the hp air would not fire, and the "trap door" solenoid would cycle again, letting the ball fall into the chamber unharmed.

thats actually a great idea. take the A-5 loading system, modify it to have it seal the breach after each round is loaded, and then put it on an electropneumatic marker, with a solenoid that just releases air after the breech is closed. doing that would most likely lower the ROF though, since it is a more complex sequence. and the bulk of the A-5 loading system would keep it off the tourney scene, but it could sell very well to woodsballers.

[Lohman446]

Rather than being horizontal to the marker could this rotating breech be vertical? I mean, you only need one to drop from the hopper to the breech, it would make the marker marginally taller - though if we had something like the ATS system... or the second warp feed design.


The second warp feed design, the "chain" type one. Each section of the chain could fully seal the breech - you would be tottally gone with chops, for one each ball would be individual, and well - there would be no bolt to chop anything.

[Jazkal]

I've seen mention of some older markers that use this, but not of the newest. It's called the "Alien". It's been "coming soon" for about 2years or so.

Here are some schematics (http://www.alienpb.com/pages/schematics.html).

[Jakedubbleya]

ball valve... balls drop in, but air closes valve, not too complex.

another more unrefined way of doing this would be to branch a hose behind a springloaded gate that seals off the breach, now it closes when u fire, simple.

either those ways or complicate it by integrating a gate with the eye, which is already being done on one marker i read about, the alien.... strang looking thing...

benefits would be extreme, no kick from the striker or bolt, and ability to shape the hose so that it jets onto the ball in a genuine venturi fashion, meaning no more ball distortion problems.

imagine how small you could make these things.... it would be like literally attaching a tank to a grip and a barrel.

the future of paintball: grips with integrated compressors attached to hoses, attached to barrels and hoppers lol.

(funny how we tend to progress backwards when it comes to paintball lol.)

[Lohman446]

And the other benefit... no bolt to chop a ball - my original conceived benefit of the idea

[Cougar]

I'm pretty sure The assault 80's don't use a bolt. They use some sort of trap door and air.

The Assault 80 is a spool valve, just like a shocker and trix.

["the FitZ"]

How about having your air/fuel injector be activated by the bolt after it has sealed ;) .

Maybe have a spring push the bolt forward but electrically deliver the air to the ball. Isn't that kinda like an Impulse or something?

[Lohman446]

How about having your air/fuel injector be activated by the bolt after it has sealed ;) .

Maybe have a spring push the bolt forward but electrically deliver the air to the ball. Isn't that kinda like an Impulse or something?

lets make a 'cocker - where the bolt moves forward with air and seals the breach, and then an injector opens and delivers the air?

[Jakedubbleya]

Ugh whats the point tho?

[thefool]

Heres an idea. The key to closing the breech is to get something in between two balls. This ussually resulting in pinching. Why not just have an extended trigger to go all the way up to the breech. Seeing as it's a lever, it would lift the ball up and leave you space to put the trap door without worring about pincing. The only thing that would ever touch the balls would be your slow moving trigger lever.

[Maggot6]

So "thefool" basically your saying that you have something that looks kinda like a zgrip, but has a much longer trigger. So that it can lift the ball and then close the other side? :tard: Kinda seems like you'd need a warp feed body or something for that.

[thefool]

I wouldnt be talking about mags, just a gun in theory. And no, no "special" bodys, just a costom built one beacause it would be a very costom gun. You could make the trigger lift by makeing it have a shape like this -l_ turned 90 degrees counterclockwise. it would have a hole in the feed neck where the special trigger could push the ball up to make room for the sliding door.
The only disadvatage is that it wouldnt work with high pressure force feed hoppers.

[SlartyBartFast]

benefits would be extreme, no kick from the striker or bolt, and ability to shape the hose so that it jets onto the ball in a genuine venturi fashion, meaning no more ball distortion problems.

Ahh. But all of those "problems" are myths. Or at least have never been shown to exist.

Plus the annoying use of 'venturi' out of context. :mad:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=venturi

Show that the idea has merit before wasting time and money designing a new firing mechanism.

Changing a gun from closed to open bolt has been shown not to affect accuracy. So the "slamming" effect seems disproven.

If boltless has any accuracy advantage, firing a cocker at a low rate of fire should be superior to firing an "open-bolt" at slow rates of fire. I'm willing to bet that you'd find no difference.

[Lohman446]

If boltless has any accuracy advantage, firing a cocker at a low rate of fire should be superior to firing an "open-bolt" at slow rates of fire. I'm willing to bet that you'd find no difference.

But what about less kick at high rates of fire? Sure the marker is still just as accurate when vise shot, but what about when shot in the real world? Wouldn't less kick allow quicker and more precise target reaquisition times, and quicker follow up shots? Or is the point that there is so little kick anyways that benefits would be nearly intangiable? I do see the logical argument to that...

[SlartyBartFast]

Or is the point that there is so little kick anyways that benefits would be nearly intangiable?

BINGO.

Some people talk as if they're shooting .45 handguns the way they talk about "kick" :rolleyes: .

These discussions are ultimately rediculous. The same people clamouring for more "accuracy" use rediculous shooting stances, hold their markers in a bizarre fashion, and rail on the trigger in a manner that does nothing to provide stable shot-to-shot consistency.

Think "no-kick" will help your game? Try a monopod or bi-pod. But even then it'll probably only be your own shaky hands and arms that you'd be compensating for.

I'd like to see this test done one day:

Use a marker with no internals. Instead, fire a laser pointer and record where it hits. Then have a player put as many shots on target as quickly as possible.

Want to bet how wild most of the shots are? Vortex shedding and other random influences on paintballs probably HELP the ultimate accuracy of most paintball shooters. :rofl:

[Lohman446]

Want to bet how wild most of the shots are? Vortex shedding and other random influences on paintballs probably HELP the ultimate accuracy of most paintball shooters. :rofl:

Quit giving away my style man. Ok, so let me say that the idea has nothing to do with accuracy, but with ball breakage. Are we to the point that it is so seldom that the benefits of making it less by nth degree would be nearly intangible? There may be an argument for yes too... but I don't really think so. The thing is, it seems any sealing method proposed, or that I can think of, has as much chance of chopping the paintball when sealing the breach as the bolt itself does...

[Jakedubbleya]

Ahh. But all of those "problems" are myths. Or at least have never been shown to exist.

Plus the annoying use of 'venturi' out of context. :mad:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=venturi

Show that the idea has merit before wasting time and money designing a new firing mechanism.

Changing a gun from closed to open bolt has been shown not to affect accuracy. So the "slamming" effect seems disproven.

If boltless has any accuracy advantage, firing a cocker at a low rate of fire should be superior to firing an "open-bolt" at slow rates of fire. I'm willing to bet that you'd find no difference.

Never implied accuracy differences.

But it must be recognized that high pressure concentrated jets of air COULD cause a bad seam split on a certain low quality ball where it would not happen with a distributed jet of air at the same pressure.

Kick:
Walk an electro spyder.

Then walk a shoebox.

Id say i feel a tad more comfortable with the solid shoebox, not to a great degree, but i think enough to effect my game in certain situations. Not because the shoebox is heavyer and bulkier, but because i feel virtually no kick.
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And how about this benefit; Near-complete efficiency.

Or this one; trigger frame being the only part complicated enough to break.

Or; Smallest, lightest gun yet.
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I dont really have ball chopping problems anymore on eyed guns lohman:(

Edit: yeah my springloaded gate idea with a hose of the air source behind it so it closes when u fire could very well chop paint. Going to need some eyes for sure.

Although.. IF we cold develop a ball valve of sorts...

such as a trap door that opens and drops paintballs in the chamber, and seals the space between the ball and the air distributor. Hosing releases air, causes door to close and the door does push the ball forward a bit while its closing (maby a stop of some sort at that point) but then the air gets to it and fires the paintball with the chamber sealed, next ball drops in.

[SlartyBartFast]

Ok, so let me say that the idea has nothing to do with accuracy, but with ball breakage. Are we to the point that it is so seldom that the benefits of making it less by nth degree would be nearly intangible? There may be an argument for yes too...

How many times do you break a ball that's due to the bolt and not a barrel burst? Difficult to tell.


Ok, so let me say that the idea has nothing to do with accuracy, but but I don't really think so. The thing is, it seems any sealing method proposed, or that I can think of, has as much chance of chopping the paintball when sealing the breach as the bolt itself does...

Well, I'd say first prove it's a problem, then design the solution.

But that's never stopped anyone in paintball marketing before. :p

[thefool]

Advantages of bolt-less.

We've decided that kick plays no part

But how about this, boltless can offer the same accuracy of a closed bolt while maintaining an open breech. Sure that doesnt matter for blasing rates of fire but if oyu shooting slow it would be like having a coker that doent need to worry about timing or an unfilled breech. If it were possible to design a wawy to have even the trap door not touch the ball then the only possible ball breakage would be from bad balls because even in cokers, the bolt might break the ball on impact.

And the again what is a barrel break, its either a bad ball that burst at the seem or a good ball that was impacted, became a bad ball and bust at the seam, because if the impact and airflow is constant and the barrle is smooth, how can a ball burst.

So in essence, boltless would be efficiant and reduce barrle breaks and eliminate breech breaks. They would also be as accurate as cokers without being continually colsed, why they havent caught on, it beats me.

[Jakedubbleya]

*cough*

[Joni]

So in essence, boltless would be efficiant and reduce barrle breaks and eliminate breech breaks. They would also be as accurate as cokers without being continually colsed, why they havent caught on, it beats me.

Prepare for the flames :)
Closed bolt has been pretty much proven to help with nothing else than getting barrel roll outs.

[thefool]

Prepare for the flames :)
Closed bolt has been pretty much proven to help with nothing else than getting barrel roll outs.


but but.... screw it ill let someone else take this im sure someone will

[Jakedubbleya]

but but.... screw it ill let someone else take this im sure someone will
doubt it.

[ThePixelGuru]

The problem with a boltless design is that it's a bit more complicated to do than a design with a bolt. A trapdoor's more of a pain, and you have to make the blast of air less sudden or you'll break balls. Take the linking arm out of a 98 Custom and it'll break every ball in there - the relative velocity of the air to the ball is just too great. Sure they're be less kick, and it might cycle a little faster because of the reduced movement, but I don't think it's worth it. Besides, do we really need faster markers? Look at the current speeds that markers with bolts can hit.