revolutionary idea...

[Sledgehammer]

I remember Tom explaining, why rifled barrels on paintball guns don't work:
If you start rotating a glass of water the glass rotates and the water stays still. The same goes for paintballs, it's just the shell that rotates. Thus no added stability from rifeled barrels.

I also remember Tom saying (in a different post) that the effect of backspin barrels still remains to be seen.
Shouldn't backspin barrels suffer from the same effect that rifled barres do?

How about this:
If paintballs were made with an internal "wall" through the center (in other words two chamber paintballs) wouldn't rifled barrels (or backspin barrels) work with them? could they be made. Would they have a more stable flight path due to the spin (they would really spin)? Is this idea, what the paintball world has been waiting for?

[drx975]

Heh cool idea, maybe. We should really consider that. They will probably be harder, a lot harder to make than paintballs we currently make--the whole process would have to be redone and this would cost a LOT, im assuming. Plus, the way we make pballs today is a strange process and I doubt that its possible if not extremely hard to get a wall in there. Another thing you didn't notice--what if the pball is shot with the wall vertical? This would put a spin on the ball, but it would be shot just like a pball today, because the wall wouldnt be spinning the paint. This means (*sigh*) we need a 2nd wall in there, and even at that, i dont think the paint would always be spinning always/consistently (its always about consistency isnt it).
Anyway, backspin on paintballs adds a lot of wind resistence on the shell, which causes it to "float" more. The paint inside doesn't need to move, think about a ping-pong ball. If you cut down on the ball as you hit it, you put backspin on the ball--the ball stays in the air at flatter trajectory. The fluid inside--air, doesnt move at all. Yet, the ball has a flatter trajectory than just hitting the ball head on. Hope that helps. Great idea though, too bad it seems unlikely now.

--drx975

[Sledgehammer]

You cannot compare a paintball and a pingpong ball in that respect. You need to put the spin on the heaviest part of the projectile for stability.
In case of the pingpong ball that's the shell, in case of the paintball that's the fill.
The wall coming in vertically is a good point, but on the other hand what are the odds of the painball going into the barrel exactly vertically?

[drx975]

I see what you are saying about the ping-pong ball. Its just an analogy, and I realise weight/size measuremants vary. Now that I think about that, it seems strange that the paintball actually is affected by backspin that much. Apparantly the spin on just the shell affects more than we are saying.
The chances the wall coming in vertical arent that great, but the point is, the ball is going to vary in the amount of spin almost every single time, depending on the wall's postion.
One other thing, rifling works best with bullets because of their shape, paintballs are round and wind affects them differently---we shouldnt try to copy rifling when 2 different types of ammunition are being used. I dont know though, anything is possible.
Could we get an expert on anything dealing with what we are talking about?

[J]

Maybe a 4-chamber paintball would work better, but that doesn't sound easy or cheap to make.

[drx975]

Thats what I was thinkin--I think I might have mentioned that in one of the other posts. I cant think of one single way to make a paintball like that though. That would definetly be a challenge, and Im not sure if it would really work, thats why we should ask someone who knows a lot more about the physics of paintballs. Maybe Tom could help some here.

[Goldie D Pimp]

If this theory is correct, wouldn't rifling and backspin have more of an effect on paint with thicker fill?

[drx975]

If you mean heavier which Im sure you do, ultimately I think so. But as with many new ideas paintball, there are problems with this. The thing is, is that the whole "safe" velocity of 300fps was calculated by the factors of the weight and size of a paintball. So as soon as you throw off the weight of the paintball, you throw off the velocity restricition used at every field. Plus, a heavier paint is going to require a harder push down the barrel, meaning higher pressure, more air used, and more ball breaks. Doesn't sound too good anymore does it? What we really need to do is throw out the entire 68 caliber paintball and make something like a bullet that is still safe, with the "wall" running down from the tip to the back. This way paint-bullets will always have almost exactly the same amount of spin, and the spin will actually help. Plus, bullets have a much better aerodynamic shape which would lower the pressure needed for high velocities. The downside is that this destroyes almost everything in paintball, starting with barrels and loaders which would have to redone entirely. But that doesnt mean we shouldn't consider it....

Shouldn't this be in deep blue?, not that it really makes a huge difference.

[FooTemps]

Well, if you have a wall down the center... What if the ball is lined up so the center disc/wall spins flat and does nothing?

[Paintchucker]

I seem to remember back in the early 1990's that there was a company that made some special paintballs that had the equilvalence of a dart back on it. These things were deadly accurate, but could only be loaded one at a time by hand... They were also very expensive...

[Sledgehammer]

The infamous <b>sniperball</b>!!! Oh, the good old times.

[Goldie D Pimp]

Well, I suppose thicker would mean heavier, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Take a glass of water and swirl it like you were talking about. Then take a glass of say.... toothpaste and swirl it. The way I see it the thicker stuff would be affected by spin more. And I honestly don't think that the actual weight would be that different between the two. At least not enough to cause huge efficiency and breakage problems.

Right now there are several brands of paint that's fill is slightly thicker than others. Someone should do a test with it!

[drx975]

My bad then, yeah that sounds like it makes sense now. It would have to be something really thick though depending on the speed of the spin on the paintball.

[Paintchucker]

making the paintballs heavier would bring up safety concerns. If it weighs more and you are still shooting it at 300 fps, then it would possibly exceed the thresholds of the googles and cause eye injuries, etc...

[Donnyluv]

If you spin a glass of water fast enough it will spin the water inside due to the friction between the walls of the glass and the water. The same is true for a paintball. The fill inside will spin to a certain extent, due to the friction with the wall of the paintball. Although it won't spin as fast as the paintball, it WILL spin some. Which obviously is enough to produce the desired effect with a z-body or flatline barrel.

[Donnyluv]

And I too remember the Sniperballs! Never bought any though. Has anyone actually shot any of them? Just curious.

[drx975]

Whats the Sniperball again? Were they really that accurate, and how much were they?

[drx975]

If you spin a glass of water fast enough it will spin the water inside due to the friction between the walls of the glass and the water. The same is true for a paintball. The fill inside will spin to a certain extent, due to the friction with the wall of the paintball. Although it won't spin as fast as the paintball, it WILL spin some. Which obviously is enough to produce the desired effect with a z-body or flatline barrel.

Very good point. Looks like what we need is a really dense or thick fill. I mean really thick. Its possible it could work, but remember the shape of a paintball is a sphere, and rifling was designed to the shape of a bullet, not sphere. Still might work though.

[Grim]

My two cents. When you talk about rifled and backspin you are actually talking about two different systems. Rifled works on bullets because it causes a spin, a corkscrew style, to the bullet which keeps the bullet smaller and does not let it flatten out due to air resistance, thus a tighter pattern . Rifleing for paintballs will not work because corkscrewing a sherical object at low velocity does not perform the same function as it was intended to do with bullets, which are not sphrical. Backspin is different on a sherical paintball, it does cause a change. For one it is spinning in the direction of movement and two it ,in micro standards, causes a low pressure under it by spinning upwards, direction of spin puts greater pressure on top which just like a wing causes lift. That is why you sometime see balls fly of crazy like. The upwards spin is effected by imperfections, dimmples or seems, and causes the low pressure to increase suddenly or if the imperfection is not centered it will go off in a different direction. Hope this helps out.
So in all reality putting a divider in it will not make the rifling work any better, at least not enough to warrent a change. Also it is true that if you spin it fast enough the inside fill will spin but the out side surface area form is what is important. With a bullet the out side surface area changes form so the spin is good. With paintball the surface area does not change form, at least not at the velocities we shoot them at.

[Sledgehammer]

Back in the times when they shot spherical cannonballs, cannons had rifling too. And they worked...

[Grim]

Are you saying that the rifling made a cannon ball more accurat? Such as it does with bullets! They also made cannon balls round so if they missed their target it may roll into it and still do damage because the accuracy was not good.

[drx975]

Yeah Grim my friend was saying the other day that bullets work with rifling only becuase of their "conical" shape. I wouldnt be surprised if rifling never works with paintballs. We just have to think of something else then. Damnit.....