Using a pneumatic cylinder to reset bolt, i.e. no bolt spring idea

[the electrician]

yeah, I can get stuff from clippard pretty easy. no "handling fees"

check out thier website. www.clippard.com

the SMAV-3 is a very small 3-way valve that's fun to play with.

there are all kinds of cylinders available and fittings.

[ScatterPlot]

Wow, that looks great. Thanks a lot!

[Target Practice]

target practice-

uhm... you mean you don't know anything about solenoids too, not just pneumatics.

You're right. Electronics are not my thing. Im not even sure if solenoid is the right freakin' word. What came to mind are the things that operate the paddles in a pinball machine, or open your door when you have shaved door handles. I guess a better question to ask is, is there away you could use electronics to move the bolt instead of air. Again, not quite sure, but kinda learning as I go along.

[ScatterPlot]

Yeah, that's the right thing, but solenoids aren't what you would want to use to reset the bolt. That would take a ton of power (compared to what you would have on a paintball gun) and be very inneficient (power wise, not air wise). A solenoid that power and length would be huge and very very heavy. Air cylinders are much much much better as an alternative.

[the electrician]

target practice-
here's something to remember about solenoids and air cylinders:

a solenoid turns electricity into linear mechanical motion thru the magnetism it creates. the current goes through the coil of wire causing the magnetism, which pulls the iron core into to the center of the coil. now as you know a mgnets, magnetic field is not as strong an inch away from it,as it is only 1/16" away from it. it may have only 4 ounces of pull an inch away, but 4 lbs of pull 1/16" away.
so this is why solenoids are not a good choice of actuator when you are looking for something to travel a long ditance, or have the same amount of force available through the whole stroke of movement. make sense?

now solenoids do react fast because electrical current flows just slower than the speed of light. so they would be a good choice when looking for a linear actuator that had to react fast and pull a small to medium sized load a short distance. like an automatic lock in a car door.

air cylinders use pressurized air to create linear mechanical motion. the area of the piston inside times the pressure it's given, decides how much force it creates. so an air cylinder with a large piston could create a large amount of force at a relatively low pressure. so it can create a very large amount of force in a small size, no matter what the stroke distance. the great thing about air cylinders is that they have generally the same amount of force available through the whole stroke of motion.

cylinders can also be designed to push and pull by applying air pressur to one side, then the other. the only draw back is the extra components that more than likely be required to control the amount of input pressure and when it is applied to the cylinder. control valves and regulators do this job. contol valves can be solenoidvalves to further the accuracy of control through electronics.

so now you can see why a solenoid would not work for the application, but an air cylinder is a great choice.

[ScatterPlot]

Well here I am to ressurrect this thread again, it's made for some pretty good discussion so far. If you've read up to this point so far or have been following this thread, then you know what the electrician pointed out about not mattering if the pressure is lower or not coming thorough the gun that makes for less efficiency, but the long path the air must travel until it comes to the ball and then accelerating it. He pointed out that the low pressure alone would not increase the efficiency of the gun (stupid me, that was noobish). Upon review of the thread (I was looking through my attached files to try and find something when I came across this. I read through it, and wanted to reopen it for some good discussion). Anyway upon review of this thread, I noticed another point that improved efficiency would come from, and that is that normal mags cannot "drink" as much from a tank as most other guns, hence less percieved efficiency. With a lower pressure required to fire a ball, would'nt the tank be able to supply more shots than usual? I usually can't get good results when the pressure gets to like 1000 or so. With this proposed mod, couldn't that number be reduced? Mags are seen as gas hogs because they cannot go into the tank as far as other guns can. They may use more gas to fire each shot, but I bet it's not TOO much more. This is one area where not many people have thought about fixing; the gas hogging nature of Mags. Looks have been updated, chopping has been fixed, the trigger pull has been reduced, but the problem of efficiency has simply been looked over, and is even worse with the LX. Don't get me wrong, I would much rather have my LX in than get a few more shots out of my tank. But don't you think, by adding the ability to possibly "drink deeper" into a tank, that the efficiency could be improved some? I'm not saying wide production like the hAIR will be, but maybe something that could someday be tweaked into maybe a better, more efficient design. I am actually working on something right now that would let open more than enough space to make a ram in the shape of the bolt spring, like the matrix that someone mentioned. But anyway, maybe we can get some fresh eyes on the subject and see what we can do. Oh BTW, Aut, how's that thing you mentioned going? Or is it :)

[eddie885221]

since the ram only operates at 100psi maybe it could be pre-pressurized and when the bolt is released at the said 400psi it would be enouhg to compress it into sumthin, then when the pressure from the bolt is gone the ram would push the bolt past the sear again

[eddie885221]

or maybe it could have one of those RC car shocks instead of a ram, that way u completely cut down on excess air all together, except for both of my ideas kinda defeat the LX part of it so yea

[ScatterPlot]

Well, yeah, then why don't you just use a spring?

[the electrician]

the real trick I think is to get rid of the sear if we can. if you don't need the sear, then you don't need a steel bolt. you can make your own bolt out of aluminum, brass, delrin, whatever. something easy to machine. make it with a seal that will be the piston in the ram.like a matrix bolt. put a sleeve inside the body, with a seal, like a matrix. making a single acting ram.

reasearch needs to be done though to see what can be done to the design to lower the pressure if possible. this will lower the force needed to hole the bolt back, and improve efficiency.

use a very small bore, really short stroke cylinder to actuate the on/off.

now timing is the trick. the main problem with using two 3-way solenoid valves, is that the timing has to overlap on them. no commercially available circuit boards are able that do that right now.

so I think trying to use one 4-way solenoid valve to control both cylinders should be tried. the on/off pin would have to go alot farther past the o-ring that seals the input off. the exact opposite of what every body does with thier ULT kits. but this would slow the opening of the on/off just a bit to let the bolt cylinder pressurize before the on/off pin lets the air into the dump chamber.

first things first, measurements must be taken. see what we are dealing with first, then see what we can come up with.

[Aliens-8-MyDad]

what iff.... you made an on/off valve that wasnt activated, it was just left open the whole time. and you controled the relase of the air by simply moving the bolt forward. you use a ram with qev's at a semi high pressure to overcome the pressure of the bolt and it would move really fast in my theory. here are some paint drawings I made.

bow down to the Paint KING!!!

[the electrician]

well so far, every gun ever made that uses a dump chamber, and doesn't control or shut off the supply air before the gun is fired....is a complete gas hog.

the original matrix, the original 03 shocker design, the freestyle, all of them have this problem.

you definitely want to keep the on/off operating.

[luke]

I have a question in regard to running a pneumatic cylinder to the on/off valve. Would the on/off pin be attached to the cylinder or would it simply activate it?

Intresting thread by the way. :)

[the electrician]

I love these kind of threads.

I personally would not attach the actuator to the on/off pin, too hard to machine for the results. no real gain. it would be easier and faster to tear it down and put it together if they were separate units. the pin returns itself anyway.

[ScatterPlot]

Hey, what did you use to make those drawings?