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

[Konigballer]

this idea is about as cutting edge as the Kentucky Rifle.





However, one of the biggest problems is ammunition.

a paintball's shape is to imperfect, and to inconsistent, to use rifling effectively. Very suddle, and often unseen, imperfections in each paintball prevent them from attaining a uniform performance from rifled barrels, negating any advantage a rifled barrel would offer over the usual smoothbore ones.

One of the reasons the Kentucky Rifle worked so well was because an individual's musket balls were often cast from a single bullet mold. there was a uniformity to the ammunition wich allowed the musket ball to attain the consistently high levels of accuracy, for that time, that the rifling of the barrel produced. Once the lead cooled off in the bullet mold, you could pop out a musket ball that would retain it's hardened lead shape even in transport. Now we've all seen what can happen to a paintball's much weaker structure just from being filled and shipped off by the bag full. They simply warp to easily to be able to attain any uniform, or improved performance from a rifled barrel.

[LoveMyMagMoreThanYou]

Tom's Tech Tip #3

http://www.automags.org/resource/tech/tomstech/03_spinning.shtml

[gil_ong81]

so to give this tread a constructive Spin...I'm sure we could all use more accuracy.

what would need to happen to ensure greater consistency in a paintball's flight path, without compromising current safety standards and ouch factor?

[hitech]

so to give this tread a constructive Spin...I'm sure we could all use more accuracy.

what would need to happen to ensure greater consistency in a paintball's flight path, without compromising current safety standards and ouch factor?

Eliminate or reduce vortex shedding. How to do that is the difficult part. We don't even fully understand the phenomenon in the first place. And very little work has been done with spheres.

[gil_ong81]

I'm a newbie at this, so try not to rip me a new one if at all possible.

Some time ago, I thought I came across a discussion about someone trying to put dimples on paintballs like they do with golfballs. What was that all about?? I'm thinking it didn't work out??


Also, could we see elongated "balls" in the future? It seems a logical step when we consider what happened to the ball and the current firearm projectile.

[bigfootimp]

Well as far as dimpled paintballs that happens naturally with the paint being left in a case and it certainly doesn't improve anything. As for elongating paintballs, you are talking about a complete world wide developmental change in the the entire paintball market from markers to hoppers to pods and that would be extremely costly on the parts of the manufacturers and consumers. Loading would be like putting an egg into a pipe andhoping that it sets in the barrel right or the egg will break when the bolt hits it.

[gil_ong81]

while it's expensive and difficult to implement int he beginning, i was just wondering if it might be the next big leap, a "disruptive tech improvemnt" kinda thing.

i wouldn't doubt if a few makers jump on board if it really turns out to be viable (and there's really no reason to think why it wouldn't work if people put their minds to it).

[LoveMyMagMoreThanYou]

The problem with elongated paintballs is the loading factor. you would have to preload them into magazines and you wouldn't have the bulk fill capabilities that round balls give you.

[SeeK]

Anybody remember the Macho-Fire clip feed?

[MikeM]

The big issue (as stated earlier) is the solid mass vs liquid filled mass.
Try this...get a raw egg and a hard boiled egg. Lay then on their sides on a table. Spin the hard boiled egg. Then spin the raw egg. The raw egg will stop spinning long before the hard boiled egg because of the effect of the liquid in the raw egg.

It's easy to impart spin on a paintball. The problem is it doesn't maintain that spin.

[hitech]

The big issue (as stated earlier) is the solid mass vs liquid filled mass...get a raw egg...It's easy to impart spin on a paintball. The problem is it doesn't maintain that spin.

That is not true. The inside of a raw egg bares VERY LITTLE resemblance to the inside of a paintball. Try the same thing with a paintball. It spins just fine.

Tom spun a barrel with the paintball in it at something like 10k RPMS. Let it spin long enough so that the liquid caught up with the shell. It still didn't make any differece.

Also, his high-speed video shows that paintballs do in fact spin when fired, and don't suddenly stop when fired. They continue to spin as they fly down range.

The biggest issue is vortex shedding.