hopper

[quasimorte]

ok so everybody has their own hopper idea so here is mine.

would be the size of a 4 pod horizontal pack. made of plastic it would basically be a box. the bottom is a screw drive run by a small (RC car) motor with lots of torq. might add a warp at the exit port but not sure yet. the top of the pack would be a drop weight, bassically it would push the balls down to the drive. it would load from the top kind of like a chain gun ammo box. the warp would feed a hose that runs down the shooting arm, or under the arm to the gun. I would use something like the super hose from AGD as it gives a little. would have a small on/off near the gun end either mounted on the wrist, or just behind the feed port on the gun.

other than thinking this thing is a straight out ball blender what are your thoughts. i think it can be worked similar to the q-loader so as to limit breaks but i am not sure. the soft spot is in the screw drive and how it would work. also some sort of eyes and spring loader on the screw drive might be workable.

thats my idea, lets play catch

[athomas]

A Halo can squash balls in a short stack due to too much pressure on the balls. By adding a long hose full of balls, you are increasing the mass that must be moved, and thus are increasing the amount of force that needs to be applied to move it. It has the potential to be a ball masher.

Don't be discouraged though. There may be a way to do it. And if you find it, you could be the one to reap the rewards.

[maxama10]

you should work on a drawing because i have no idea what youre talking about man sorry :-/

[neppo1345]

The best idea would be to make the "impeller" as large as possible...maybe even gut a q-pod and use the guts of that.

A halo will mash balls because the force applied to the feed stack is only applied to one ball at the tip. If you spread this out to multiple balls (by using a q-pod guts) you will lower the pressure on each individual ball by having the force exerted over more serface. Kinda like putting tracks on a tractor.

The only problem is that one they enter the tube, the pressure on the top ball could be pretty great...

I don't see it "blending" paint persay....just crushing it.

I see it working as well as you engineer it.

Throw a bunch of parts together = crap

Take your time, design it right = cool as hell

[quasimorte]

the impeller in the tank would only need to push ball to the top of the tank, on the outside. from there a warp (don't know where you guys got a halo from?) would feed the balls down the players arm and to the gun. from other posts i have read that people can feed ball straight up from a 12v mod warp for 4 feet without breaks. got a warp coming so i will test the speed and what not. the impeller itself would be something very similar to the q-pods, with nice large grooves for the balls to fit in. the tank would be wide enough for two balls side by side or something like 1.4" (.70 * 2) and as long and tall as the 4 pod pack. my hurdul (sp) right now is cading out the design and finding someone to do the plastic, think storm trooper armor, thats what this thing would look like on the back but small and close fitting. might do carbon fiber, but that is more a look thing. the bottom, where the impeller is housed, would be slightly wider to account for the width of the screw itself. just above the impeller on the inside of the tank a small ramp would cut the inside down by half allowing only one ball to slide by at a timeand create a solid back wall for the balls to slide against. at the head of the screw (opposite the exit port) i would cut back the ramp to allow the balls to feed unimpeeded. also might put a slight ramp towards the head on the ram. the weight at the top would run down a track on either side of the tank. on one side there would be a seires of switches to tell that the weight had passed. these would link to a set of leds on the wrist to tell how much ammo is left. i would also work some kind of on/off into the wrist for both balls and any signal from the gun if i run like a intelleframe wire to the motors. i would be able to shut off the tanks and disconnect the gun between games and possible a secone stop just at the shoulder so i could take off the tank and reload without taking off the hose on the arm.

would you guys suggest a backpack or a waist pack for this. the back pack could be entirely rigid and not have to worry about movement. a waist pack would have to account for player lean, either forwards or back.

i'm not that good at paint but i could try to sketch something out to give you a better idea of what it would look like.

[athomas]

I used the example of the Halo because it puts a force on the ball that can crack it, yet it doesn't have enough force to perform the job that you want. The warp allows you to meter the force and yes it can push a ball 4 feet straight up. Straight is a key work here. Once you put bends in the hose, it increases the amount of required force to push the ball stack. You also have to maintain a bit of pressure at the gun to prevent the stack from backing off. The amount of pressure required to operate will be quite high and could easily crack a good quality brittle ball.

The feed source can have the force evenly distributed across several balls, but once the balls are lined up in the tube, the ball closest to the source will have all the force of the stack placed on it.

Now, if you use a less brittle ball, you will have a better chance of this working. It will be a trade off. You can have balls that break on contact but may break in the feeder, or balls that occasionally bounce off their target but will feed fine.

[quasimorte]

hopefully i will be throwing enough paint that a few bounces will not matter. and if i get the capacity up around 1000 rounds i don't have to worry about not having enough paint. I will do some sketches today (hopfully) to show you what i mean exactly. although some say my sketches are worse than my paint skills

[quasimorte]

ok here are the drawings, i know they suck but see if they help clear up the design
1. tank and impeller at bottom
2. output from impeller
3. warp
4. output to gun
5. impeller drive motor
6. electronics
<a href="http://tinypic.com"><img src="http://i6.tinypic.com/14ebcch.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

[quasimorte]

1. tank
2. inpeller core
3. ball path/screw paddles
4. direction wedge
<a href="http://tinypic.com"><img src="http://i6.tinypic.com/14ec2fm.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

[quasimorte]

This is for the wrist box, it has three main parts.
1. 1-way paddle, thsi allows the balls in but not out and can be locked to disconect the gun
2. ball path
3. electronics pass through, with the warp i can hook this up to an e-mag so i needed a pass through to do this.
4. air pass through
5. ball valve cut off, this will allow me to turn off the air to disconnect the gun.
<a href="http://tinypic.com"><img src="http://i5.tinypic.com/14ec55j.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>