Paintball Spinning - i think i have found a way!!

[daviselk]

i have an armson steath barrel... that is what it is... just smalller spaces.
but with that big of spaces i bet it will be hard to get the ball moving because the air will go through the spaces.... mostly missing the ball.

edit/ after reading a lil more... it does work, but if u get a little bit of paint or shell in the barrel the ball goes crazy...

[BeaverEater]

Since all paintballs arent uniform, it doesnt work too well. Even in the same bag, paintballs my differ slighty. Your best bet for accuracy is a paint to barrel match, whether it is a barrel kit or many different bore size barrels.

[Enos Shenk]

I never have understood why people always say paintballs dont spin. I used to shoot an A5 flatline, and i most certainly wasnt hallucinating the effects of the flatline.

[Mister Sinister]

The spin produced by a flatline is on a different axis than they one they are trying to achieve with rifling... the question being asked is if you can spin a paintball to make it more accurate... flat lines dont seem to be more accurate than anything else. but i do see them fling balls into la la land when tilted once in awhile..

[Mardi]

What about an invert? have the barrel and then little grooves cut into the sides that spiral? They would have to be shallow grooves though because the air could escape easily if they were too deep...

[bigfootimp]

With this idea there are a few inheirent problems. One a sphere is not areodynamically designed so the amount of drag that it produces is so much that once the ball leaves the barrel is pretty much reduces speed by a good amount. Two even with the spiral rifling, as mentioned earlier, the ball is not a solid mass like a bullet, so when you spin the shell the fluid isconstantly attempting to catch up with the momentum of the shell spinning. (example of this would be to fill a round can like a paint can up around 3/4-7/8 of the way with water and roll it on the ground kind of slow...as it begins to slow down you will notice it shaking because while the can stops the water still retains some momentum pushing the can this is your basic fluid dynamics) Also in the case of actual bullets the rifling actually has to cut into the lead to get the bullet to spin so the same would be true for a paintball. Obviously if this were done to a paintball the shell would break or be cut and all you are left with is a big mess in your barrel. As for the spin put on a paintball with the flatline barrel, if you have ever looked through the barrel you will notice that it has a texture on the inside making it rough, this creates friction that makes the ball roll but the reason it works for long balling is because of the barrel arch. When the ball goes through this arching barrel it is in basically being pushed up hill. Hope this has helped to explain somethings.

[hitech]

Rifling (may not) work on paintballs, I'm not saying it doesn't. But if it doesn't it's not because they are speres. Spheres can be stabilized with rifling quite well.

Not paintballs. The are WAY to light, and traveling WAY to slow. The force imparted by vortex shedding far out weights anything else.

Make them three times as heavy and "bullet" shaped and you get something else entirly.

[bigfootimp]

Not paintballs. The are WAY to light, and traveling WAY to slow. The force imparted by vortex shedding far out weights anything else.

Make them three times as heavy and "bullet" shaped and you get something else entirly.

Weight doesn't have as much to do with it as much as the speed aspect. If weight were that big of a factor then a .22 cal. or a .25 cal. bullet wouldn't be as acurate as they are, neither would a pellet. However the speed aspect does affect it a bit.

[hitech]

Weight doesn't have as much to do with it as much as the speed aspect. If weight were that big of a factor then a .22 cal. or a .25 cal. bullet wouldn't be as accurate as they are, neither would a pellet. However the speed aspect does affect it a bit.

A .22 cal bullet is WAY heavier than a paintball. A .177 pellet is at least as heavy. Both are fired at velocities WAY faster than a paintball. Both of those are also NOT blunt objects and therefore do not experience vortex shedding. Compare a "BB" and you are getting closer. They are generally fired faster than a paintball and are still less accurate than a pellet.

Additionally, drag is a function of shape and frontal area. Since a paintball is so large it has a lot of drag, without much momentum to keep it going. Therefore, it slows much sooner than a .22 cal bullet, .177 cal pellet or "BB".

[bjjb99]

A .22 cal bullet is WAY heavier than a paintball. A .177 pellet is at least as heavy.

Barnes 22 caliber .224 rifle bullets weigh between 40 and 50 grains. There are 15.43 grains in a gram. That makes these rifle bullets somewhere between 2.6 and 3.2 grams each. Paintballs are approximately 3 grams each. A .177 pellet is about 7.5 grains, or right around 0.5 grams.

Additionally, drag is a function of shape and frontal area. Since a paintball is so large it has a lot of drag, without much momentum to keep it going. Therefore, it slows much sooner than a .22 cal bullet, .177 cal pellet or "BB".

Remeber however, that drag is also a function of the square of the object's velocity. All else being equal, a .22 caliber bullet or a .177 caliber pellet moving at 250 meters per second will experience about 7.5 times the drag of a paintball at 300 fps. Of course, all else is not equal as you have stated above. How much of this 7.5x increase is eliminated by reduced area and streamlining? I'd imagine quite a bit, to the point that bullets/pellets actually experience less net drag than paintballs upon exiting their respective barrels... but I don't believe that the difference is as large as one might otherwise suspect.

For folks reading this thread: If you want to make spherical paintballs more accurate, make them 5 grams (or 10 grams!) instead of 3. Of course then you may start running into safety issues with high-mass paintballs -vs- current goggle specifications.

BJJB

[hitech]

I was about to question your facts, until I saw who it was! I'm VERY surprised. I thought .22 cal bullets were much heavier than that.

...make them 5 grams (or 10 grams!) instead of 3. Of course then you may start running into safety issues with high-mass paintballs -vs- current goggle specifications.

Not to mention that they will hurt like hell!

[bigfootimp]

Thanks for the technical back-up. I have dealt with bullets and paintballs most of my life so I knew that a paintball was heavier than a .22 cal. but didn't know the exact weight difference.

[LoveMyMagMoreThanYou]

I really wish this subject would die out. It has more to do with the make up of the paintball and not it's size/drag. The fact that a bullet is a solid mass and the paintball is a water balloon are the more significant facts. You can get a solid mass spinning at the same rate much easier than you can with a shell with liquid in it.

[hitech]

...the paintball is a water balloon...

Hate to disagree (well...not really ) but that is not true. Paintballs hold their shape when fired and can and do indeed spin when fired. Tom has posted proof of this in Deep Blue.

[LoveMyMagMoreThanYou]

Hate to disagree (well...not really ) but that is not true. Paintballs hold their shape when fired and can and do indeed spin when fired. Tom has posted proof of this in Deep Blue.

He has also posted proof that he has disproven that spinning helps paintballs yet the arguments go on. I also wasn't talking about shape either.