Fundamental Input Pressure Question

[El Zilcho]

Why is it that Mags only operate at such high pressures? Are they only needed for the RT effect of the newer valves? Watching an Invert Mini firing animation got me thinking.

[BigEvil]

You need the high pressure to;

-Push the bolt forward with enough force to overcome the mainspring

and

-To act on the on/off pin to reset the sear.

[El Zilcho]

Is it safe to assume that AGD just didn't care about operating at high pressures? It seems like some engineering could overcome both of the issues that you mentioned.

[sQuidvision]

It would be cool to see if an on/off with a larger diameter pin would be an effective way to solve half the problem.

[viper-mayhem]

What about the spring stack in the regulator and a lighter bolt spring? I know the amount of force coming out a Lvl7 bolt is pretty strong, enought to nick up a pencil. Has anyone ever tried to change the regulator spring stack with lighter ones?

[captian pinky]

pretty sure the on/off pin thing was discussed somewhere else on here

[Dayspring]

Is it safe to assume that AGD just didn't care about operating at high pressures? It seems like some engineering could overcome both of the issues that you mentioned.

At the time, there really wasn't anything that needed "low pressure" operating. Everything was CO2, which is around 800 PSI.

[sQuidvision]

At the time, there really wasn't anything that needed "low pressure" operating. Everything was CO2, which is around 800 PSI.
That makes perfect sense... Still with AGD being the driving force behind hpa/n2 I would have expected that would have been discussed? Or maybe not?

[sjrtk]

Another part of the high pressure issue is that the valve itself regulates pressure down to what a low pressure tank puts out. Also the velocity being regulated by pressure in paintball means you need the room for adjustment. If you cap a classic valve you need to put and external reg to adjust velocity. If you ran a low pressure tank on a capped classic valve you can't adjust your velocity. The bolt of an Automag being stainless steel also requires more pressure to operate.

Despite what anyone will tell you in this industry high pressure is more efficient than low pressure purely mathematically. More pressure = less air per function. But with parts getting lighter and volumes being larger you can cheat the math.

[athomas]

A given volume of air at a given pressure equals twice the volume of air at half the pressure. That means a smaller system can be built using high pressure system than with low pressure. With low pressure, the lower forces per square inch require a larger surface area to act on. This in turn requires a larger diameter oring to seal the outer diameter which in turn results in more contact area and more friction. So, low pressure results in more possibility of frictional losses if things aren't tuned properly. A high pressure system can overcome frictional losses more easily because the smaller contact area results in the friction being a smaller percentage of the applied force. Another area of concern for mags, was the mass of the bolt. A low pressure system would require quite a large bolt stem/piston just to overcome the mass of stainless bolt and move it at a decent velocity. A lighter bolt could be made but it would not have been near as robust to work the way the current one works.

The original level 7 bolt required about 350psi in the front chamber in order to fire the gun. That is not that high. Since most CA systems of the era were CO2 at 800psi, it translated well for use with mags. Most early air systems also used 800psi regulators so that they were direct replacements for CO2. It wasn't until the level 10 came into operation that mags actually required 800psi to operate properly at high cycle speeds.