Superlight Mag Trigger?

[nerobro]

Last night my mind was inordantely fertile.... People were complaining about how the LX changed the feel of the trigger on a mag. IIRC Rob even put the L7 back into his classic mag becuase he prefered it's feel.

Let me set the scene. For this to work, it requires a properly setup LX. And it will require a new bolt and sear for any of this to work. Ideally it would use a new on/off too.

The current mag bolt and sear is designed so that no matter how much force is on the mags bolt the sear will still hold. Its a locking design for all intents and purposes. What if we used the bolt's force to our advantage? Like they do on a cocker. Setup the sear so that the bolts force trys to force the sear down. This force will ballance against the on/off making the trigger feel softer. And you won't be dragging the sear the whole way across the bolt, once you start it moving the shape of the bolt will help you move the sear.

Cockers have been like this for a very long time. They have a sear that's shaped so that just a breath of force on them will cause them to move across the sear lug and drop the hammer. And people good with cockers have known that changing the shape of the sear and lug would change the feel of the trigger pull on a cocker.... the same is true for a mag. Just the forces have been so high that I don't think it would have been a sane move untill the advent of the LX.

Here is my idea for making a mag's trigger much lighter. As it stands where the sear interface is a cone facing the back of the gun now, you'd have a cone that faced the front of the gun. And instead of a convex face on the sear, you'd need a concave one. Or you could even go a more conservative route and go with a flat bolt face and sear with a flat face as well.

Of course this leads to another idea. You could tune mag trigger feel with differnet angles and different shapes of the sear and bolt. Just like the cocker...

Becuase the bolt isn't locking, you'll probally want to time the mag more conservatively (aka longer on/off pin) And that would ensure that the bolt "locked up." A term that's not quite apropreate for a cone shaped bolt interface.

Picture one is the current bolt and sear setup. Picture two is a less radical design, but more prone to wear. Picture three is what i'm imagining. All of these are exagerated and not to scale, and don't show room for the boltspring, but the idea should come through.

http://www.zodnetworks.com/~nerobro/boltsear.bmp
Image courtasy of KPaint, not MSpaint ;-)

[nerobro]

Now there are some concerns with this. Without a properly setup LX the gun will effectively go full auto. turning on and off the on/off and fireing the gun completely ;-) interesting failure mode if you ask me. sorta like a spyder!

Actually if done right, as soon as you altered the contact of the sear, the gun could jsut slip into a full shot. the triggger could be really freaking short and the gun would "fall" into the rest of the fireing cycle...

[cphilip]

Be patient grasshopper....

[a_malfunction]

Thats a pretty good idea! But like you stated, it does have potential problems. If those could be worked through, that would be awesome!

[Skoad]

i think cphillip knows something we don't......so when's it come out cphil?
:D

[cphilip]

Wha?

I not know nuttin....

[Grasshopper]

Originally posted by cphilip
Be patient grasshopper....
Ok. :)

[cphilip]

:D

[beam]

Judging from phil's response and the fact that not too long ago there was a bunch of discussion about a really light mechanial trigger vs. electro, plus the whole thread about measuring the force to pull a trigger, I would say that Tom is working on something similar to this that would exploit the new characteristics of LX.

Hopefully. :D

[nerobro]

Lets hope I didn't create an artifical leak. This is just me thinking late at night stuff.... *hopes he's not in troubble*

[cphilip]

No you did not. At least I do not know if you did not. I have no idea how he accomplished what I cannot say he accomplished... :confused: :)

[nippinout]

What irks me is not only cphilip's teasing reply, but that damn frog! The frog, it mocks us!!! It mocks us!!!

:D :cool:

[BTAutoMag]

my mag trigger is light. i did no shaving on the sear of the on off pin. but its a .5mm pull about as light as a medium e trigger

[Cristobal]

A very interesting idea indeed.

Now, what if you made the lip of the bolt face removable. You'd still have the little "flange" at the back of the bolt, but you'd put a steel washer on it before you put the bolt inside the mainspring. Now you could play with different washers which would have having varrying angles where they contact the sear.

I think, though, that were it my gun, I'd want a hard safety (a la the emag) that would prevent not just the trigger from moving but also the sear.

[BTAutoMag]

Originally posted by Cristobal
I think, though, that were it my gun, I'd want a hard safety (a la the emag) that would prevent not just the trigger from moving but also the sear.

thats a great idea, maybe instead of locking the trigger we lock the sear

[Skoad]

BTAutomag, i don't think we're talking about trigger pull distance. ie. .5mm

i think we're talking about trigger pull weight.

[nippinout]

.5mm? Holy cow, how in the world... Without modifying?

[BTAutoMag]

nope, i accualy added a part. i wont say what becasue my best friend is making an mpeg that ill post later in the week

and skoad, yea the distance is short but the pull is light too as i stated above

[spantol]

Originally posted by cphilip
Be patient grasshopper....

How patient? :)

[BTAutoMag]

from the movie the mummy

"patience is a virtue"
"NOT RIGHT NOW IT AIN'T"

[Jerhew]

ya know
ever since Tom started hinting at it a little while back..
measuring pull weights and such
i've been dreaming and drooling about the idea
oh man
i can barely stand it
that along with an rt and level 10
who needs an xmag :D

[BTAutoMag]

ooooooo
ME!!!!!!
do you accept IOUs:D

[cphilip]

Originally posted by Jerhew
ya know
ever since Tom started hinting at it a little while back..
measuring pull weights and such
i've been dreaming and drooling about the idea
oh man
i can barely stand it
that along with an rt and level 10
who needs an xmag :D


Ahhh now someone else remembers him doing that... :eek:

[BTAutoMag]

oooo i remember i remember

[spantol]

The original thread is still on the front page: A BIG Trigger Question!!!!!! (http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67916). How could anyone forget?

[magnj]

Hmmmmm, interesting :: in funny voice ::

Maybe I'll go back to the mag sometime when Tom starts releasing some new stuff

[cphilip]

Originally posted by magnj
Hmmmmm, interesting :: in funny voice ::

Maybe I'll go back to the mag sometime when Tom starts releasing some new stuff


Well I guess its now time... :rolleyes:

Intelliframes....Level 10...ULE bodies...X Mags....Time has come then...

[ShooterJM]

Originally posted by cphilip



Ahhh now someone else remembers him doing that... :eek:


He's not the only one, I've gone through half my sears and on off pins trying to figure out a reliable way to do it.

Grrr 40 bucks in parts down the drain..... I'd kill to beta test this!

[nerobro]

I really think the secret is in the bolt shape as it appears to the the sear... if done right the gun will fire itself as soon as the sear is allowed to BEGIN to move.

I wanna see what tom is working on ;-)

[ShooterJM]

Have you tried altering a level 7 bolt? I don't really want to mess with my L10 bolt.

[nerobro]

See that's a problem. The L7 bolt has a buttlaod and a half of force on it... so to speak. So you can't use such a hairy catch on the bolt. Well you can,... but you'll get doubble fires, full auto fire, and that sort of theing. not controled fire like you'll get with a LX bolt. The on/off needs to have enough force to keep that sear in place..

[JT2002]

Originally posted by BTAutoMag
nope, i accualy added a part. i wont say what becasue my best friend is making an mpeg that ill post later in the week

and skoad, yea the distance is short but the pull is light too as i stated above

mpeg up yet? cmon let us in on your idea.;) ;) :(

[Paintchucker]

When was that YGrip coming out????? LOL

[AcemanPB]

I can't wait....

Couldn't something be done to the diameter of the on/off pin? Would that change anything?


Now it's Level 10 all over agian..... soon we will have videos of Tom firing a mag 20bps with his tougne :)

[nerobro]

yes, we can. But from a production standpoint there are only certian o-rings we can get our hands on in any kind of quanitify for a reasonable price. From what I understand the lower half of the rt on/off pin is the next step down in o-ring size from the on/off top... and there isn't much inbetween.

By carefully ajdjusting the angle of the bolt-sear interface and by adjusting how much force the LX has at rest you coudl tune the trigger feel signifigantly. Hm... probablly the best tuning tool for this would a a whole boxload of LX springs of close rates to each other so you could adjust the trigger nice and light.

My frist guess is that this will use a "normal" mag on/off to reduce the RT effect, and provide a fairly constant spring action against the sear so the gun wouldn't be dangerously unstable (wher esomething like a sneeze will cause the gun to spontaniously fire) under normal conditions.....

[Derman2k]

Originally posted by JT2002


mpeg up yet? cmon let us in on your idea.;) ;) :(

Yea...I second that....lets hear it BT

[Smoken]

what if instead of a reverse sloped sear face, we used a roller sear like cockers use. It should accomplish the same thing, but with a much smoother pull and less metal on metal grinding.

[nerobro]

roller sears on cockers usually don't have the roller at the "sear surface" though a guy on PBN has done that with a spyder sear. It would not provide the "finish the pull" for you trick that the sloped sear face will provide. and finding a berring that would work... Hmm... Definitely worth a thought though. it would work well with the current bolt design and even provide lockup at high pressures and woudl probally work with a L7.....

I like it.

[Cristobal]

Wait a minute -- are you sure you have to alter the bolt to get this to work? Changing the sear angle will adjust the way the geometry of the contact works. But once you reduce the sear to a 90 angle at contact(or less) I'm thinking that the bolt geometry might not be that important.

Modifying the bolt geometry would leave you with a contact "surface" with the sear; leaving it the same would leave you with a contact "point". What I'm thinking though, is that the difference between "surface" and "point" once the sear angle is reduced becomes minimal.

The disposition of forces acting on the juncture should be almost itenticall. All that a contact surface will do is give you a little more friction, and distribute the stress on the bolt/sear over a little wider area. But I'm guessing that whatever frictional differences will be minimal, and that the sear and bolt are strong enough for the stress factor to not be a problem.

Does this make any sense -- or do I need to draw a picture?

Has anybody tried modifying just the sear while using a lvl 10?


EDIT: Oh, and as an adendum, a roller sear a bolt with the current angled face might actually work out very nicely.

[nerobro]

The reason I was emphsizing a surface was for durablity concerns. if we were working with a point, the edge of the bolt would wear very quickly. if done right, with flat mating surfaces, or at least matching ones, like we have on the current mag we could get some rediculous life out of such a sear and bolt.

[Cristobal]

Are you sure we'd have to use a "flat matching surface" for durability reasons? I'm not convinced that a "point" configuation would see any more stress than the lip of the bolt already sees normally.

[BTAutoMag]

ha ha

you guys are gonna have to wait. because its a dam light ad short pull but its on a benchy so i gotta install trigger stops or there is slack in the trigger

[AGD]

I am posting an update on the mechanical trigger so you guys can stop talking about mods that will get someones eye shot out. The problem with the sear angle mod is that the gun will fire when it degasses.

This is serious stuff, you mod a sear and someone looses an eye we get sued. If you modified it we have to sue YOU to get the blame and the cost off us.

If you think we are kidding ask Tippman why we had to sue them in a lawsuit we had because without his tank our gun would not fire. This is standard legal proceedure and I would expect him to do the same to me (we are still friends). You modify something you are now the MANUFACTURER so unless you have a boat load of insurance you could loose your house, car or get your wages docked for life.

AGD

[BTAutoMag]

dont worry mine's safe. i had 3 misfires when i jolted it to hard so i had to make the trigger heavier:)

[Brett23]

What was that about a lawsuit against Tippman about a tank??? Me confused by what Tom said.

[nippinout]

About the Tippmann thing, I am assuming it was about the tank's threading.

Tippmann invented the ASA thread we all use in screw-in tanks for paintball.

[BTAutoMag]

hmm could be

[cledford]

Originally posted by nippinout
About the Tippmann thing, I am assuming it was about the tank's threading.

Tippmann invented the ASA thread we all use in screw-in tanks for paintball.

Actually, it was a Tippmann co2 bottle from what I remember of the story told by Tom at last years IAO. The gun was able to fire since it had an air source - and wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

-Calvin

[cledford]

Originally posted by BTAutoMag
dont worry mine's safe. i had 3 misfires when i jolted it to hard so i had to make the trigger heavier:)

:rolleyes: