autolube?

[K4S]

Do i have to use autolube on my mag or would another paintball lubricant work?

[hitech]

Re: autolube?

Originally posted by K4S
Do i have to use autolube on my mag or would another paintball lubricant work?

Any quality paintball lube should work. I suggest the one in the link in my signature.

[Rabidus]

I use "3 in 1" oil that you can buy anywhere. It is the same viscosity as paintball lube. It is the same thing, but they just put it in a different bottle and call it "paintball lube" and charge a lot more money for it. Ive been using 3 in 1 for 5 years on my mags and never ever had any problems with it!!!

[hitech]

Here is was Kermode Concepts says about paintball oil:



Lubricating oil is used in machinery to prevent wear between moving parts. It does this by separating parts that would normally rub or slide against each other with a thin, slippery film. This is especially important with o-rings that slide in a tubular fit, such as in Paintball guns.
There are three general types of oils that you will encounter for mechanical purposes: Penetrating oils, Mineral oils, and Synthetic oils. In the field of lubrication, another type of lubricant is grease, but grease is made from oils, both mineral and synthetic.

1. Penetrating oils such as WD-40, Break Free, TriFlow and others, are a mixture of solvent and mineral oil. They are thin enough to penetrate rusty nuts and bolts and help to separate the rusted parts. Because of the solvents used in these mixtures, they are extremely harmful to o-rings and seals. They are not capable of functioning as real lubricants for machinery- you wouldn't use them in the crank case of your car or in the bottom bracket of your Mountain bike. Using penetrating oil in your Paintball gun will destroy it very quickly.

2. Mineral Oils such as Unique, Gold Cup, and APP brands: Mineral oils are refined from crude oil that is pumped from the ground. The crude oil got there from animals and plants being crushed by geologic formation and cooked by geothermal activity over millions of years. Because crude oil comes from so many different animal and plant sources, it is a "stew" of millions of molecular elements.

Refining crude oil into the thousands of products that we take for granted, like gasoline, solvents, diesel fuel, propane, motor oil, roofing tar, etc., is a matter of separating gasses, liquids and solids according to molecular size. Gasses, liquid fuels and solvents have the smallest molecular size. Thin oils have larger molecules and thick oils have still larger molecules than the thin oils. The problem is that the refining process is not entirely effective in isolating molecules by size. 40 wt. motor oil that you buy at the auto parts store also has solvent-size molecules, as well as 0 wt, 5 wt. 10 wt. etc. size molecules

All mineral oils have small molecules in them that are volatile, meaning that the smaller molecules evaporate into the air. As the smaller molecules evaporate, the remaining liquid becomes progressively thicker and stickier. This is SLUDGE, and you can see it whenever you take your gun apart to clean it. It's that black stuff that holds all of the abrasive dirt and dust (unless your gun is lubricated with K-C TROUBLE FREE Oil).

Paraffin is another chemical component of crude oil, and it can't be completely refined out of mineral oil. All mineral oils contain paraffin. Paraffin is that white stuff that you use to wax your skis, snowboard, or surfboard. Paraffin is also the part of mineral oil that makes it freeze solid at a high enough temperature to cause a C02 powered gun to jam in cold weather or during rapid firing.

The reason why so many Paintball marketers sell mineral oils is that they are CHEAP.

3. Synthetic oils: These oils are not pumped from the ground. They are man-made. The synthetics that you will most often encounter in machinery applications are "Ester based" synthetics, but there ore other types such as glycol-based and silicones. By mixing certain types of acids with certain types of alcohols, you get an entirely different type of chemical called "esters". The advantages of this type of oil are that there is absolutely no paraffin to make it freeze solid at high temperatures, and all of the molecules are the same size so there is no problem with volatility. This type of oil will not evaporate and become sludge. NO SLUDGE...EVER.

Other advantages of the ester-based synthetic that is used in K-C TROUBLE FREE paintball gun oil are that it is non-toxic. We blend it with anti-wear and anti-friction additives that are also non-toxic, and it is completely harmless to all o-ring and seal materials.

The Silicone oil that is sold by one of our competitors and is blended with mineral oil by another competitor is also a synthetic oil. The problem is that it is not compatible with any anti-wear additive. The main industrial use for silicone oil is as a mold release in the plastics industry, and as brake fluid in race-cars and high speed aircraft (high temperature applications). No one uses it as a lubricant except some Paintball marketers.

4. K-C TROUBLE FREE N-2 Paintball Gun Oil was designed for High Pressure Air powered guns, because we felt that those guns could benefit from an even higher degree of wear resistance. We could not increase the amount of anti-wear additives in our Synthetic lubricant because our synthetic base can only hold a certain amount of additive in suspension. A larger amount of additive can be mixed with mineral oil.

But instead of using the cheap industrial junk, we chose a white mineral oil that is non-toxic and is used as the assembly lube for SCUBA regulators. This special lubricant is intended for sale to tournament players who clean and re-lubricate their guns regularly. It takes a longer time for our N2 oil to turn to sludge than it does for our competitor's products, but only our synthetic oil is sludge-proof.

So, as you can see from our comparison chart in Paintball, you don't necessarily get what you pay for.
YOU DO WHEN YOU BUY K-C TROUBLE FREE OIL !


Kermode Concepts
P.O. Box 886, Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-4555 (voice and fax)

[Jack & Coke]

Very informative!

Why is it that we're supposed to use oil in some guns (automag, cockers, etc.) and grease like Dow 33 and 55 in others (Intimidator, Impulse, Shocker, etc.)?

Does it have to do with mechanical vs. electro-pneumatic?

[hitech]

Originally posted by Jack & Coke
Why is it that we're supposed to use oil in some guns (automag, cockers, etc.) and grease like Dow 33 and 55 in others (Intimidator, Impulse, Shocker, etc.)?

Does it have to do with mechanical vs. electro-pneumatic?

Probably. Orings do not like most greases. Also, grease isn't going to work in an air passage. In general, mechanical parts (esp. "slow" moving parts) work better with grease (doesn't run off/dry up). If it's going into the air passages, then you need oil. If it is not and it's not coming into contact with any orings then grease works.

[Jack & Coke]

I found some more stuff on the web...

From: http://www.grainger.com



Dow 55 Grease

"...O-Ring Lubricant Lithium..."

The last sentence is interesting... What kind of o-rings are in most paintball guns?

This is the grease I was instructed to use in my GZ...

Also, a lot of this stuff goes to lub the ram, which is moving very, very, fast back and forth, so I'm not sure about the "slow moving parts" theory.

However, I think you may be correct on the "air-passages" idea...

[Thordic]

The reason you use grease in those guns is because lightweight oils can destroy the solenoid.

There's no reason why you can't use grease in a mechancal marker, its just a lot easier to use lightweight oils since you dont have to grease each part individually.


As for Dow 55, it supposedly works well in Intimidators, I don't know what the exact story is. I use a big tube of Dow 33, aka Shocker Lube, that I picked up at Grainger. Its pink and smells nasty, but it does the job.

[hitech]

Something made to swell orings is not necessarily a good thing! It would be bad for "active" orings (like the power pistion oring in the 'mag). If the grease does not harm the material of the oring and is not in an air passage then it's probably okay. And yeah, after I wrote it I thought of other "high" speed examples for grease.

The Kermode oil is less than $7 a bottle. One bottle will last for many years. It's formulated for paintball markers. Why use anything else (in an air passage of a paintball marker)?

[Kaiser Bob]

Typically paintball orings are urethane in some form or another, so thats why Dow 55 shouldent eat the orings in your GZ

[steveg]

The reason you use grease in those guns is because lightweight oils can destroy the solenoid.

Thordic, that is not correct, solenoids in industrial applications are typically lubricated with light oil
using an inline oiler at the water seperator,filter,regulator, and lubricator set
anything from iso 10 hydraulic oil (consistancy of water)to purpose make synthetic pnuematic oils are used but they
would all be classed as "light"

MAC (solenoids) Bimba(cylinders) use Magnalube-G grease to
lubricate their products. works very well on my matrix except at freezing temperatures when it has to much drag.

I also use it on the on/off pin on my mag.