So I was Thinking about a New Gun Design.....

[Gunga]

Might as well design it to use the uh...'civilian' FN303 round. I forget the name right now.

Have the bolt push up against the outer 'ring' on the back end of the round and the air blast into the little hollow where the payload was on the FN rounds. Figure you'd get some sort of efficiency boost there as the air would be somewhat contained within the hollow rather than flowing over and around a standard paintball.

Could use a radial magazine like the FN303 or a stick magazine ala the SMG-60/68. Or a spring magazine as in pistols and rifles.

[drg]

Well, that's not entirely true. It's already open. With any fast cycling dump chamber gun, varying dwell varies velocity. As does altering the timing on a cocker. And on a linked hammer gun, dwell has a strong effect on velocity too.

It's a box that's been opened, but largely ignored. There was a flash in the pan when people discovered that the clearing button on Matrices would give a single hot shot.

It was cracked open in the context of true cheater boards, but active dwell modification -- changing the dwell during the normal operation of the paingun, PARTICULARLY in a user-selectable manner -- is not an open box currently and we would do better to keep that box closed. Sorry, but this is just a bad idea. This is essentially dwell ramping which is a HUGE no-no in paintgun electronics.

Now FSDO compensation is a form of active dwell modification, but it is not user-selectable on the fly and is a relatively small concern compared to a system that modifies dwell as part of the routine firing of the marker and not as compensation for a quirk of marker operation. All of the above also applies for active pressure modification.

Paintguns are set up for steady-state firing, which is also the reason why active control via telemetric feedback loops are not useful in the context of paintball guns. By and large inconsistency in paintgun shot to shot performance is caused by random variances, which cannot be compensated for proactively.

Would it not be very very easy you ramp up velocity with a setup like this?

In not so many words, this is exactly what I meant.

[Newt]

Tom, the things that design would do is more than a guy could want from a marker. Watching you think is amazing. It makes me laugh like a child.

The only thing I can contribute to the thinking is: drop the velocity adjustment as linked to distance sensor. Yes, it would be an ideal to have every paintball impact the target at 280 fps regardless of distance, but I wouldn't want to be the guy who sticks his head in the way after a paintball is fired when the marker thought it would be a longball. I've been marked out that way.

Other than that, I love the simplicity of design. Particularly the idea of dynamically switching from HP to LP. That's a true killer.

As far as the dynamic dwell adjustment goes: Didn't AGD already wade it's way through the same genre of muck with the tourney world not accepting the RT at first? When you have a trusted manufacturer producing a marker of a known design with the intent of making the sport better (not breaking people's goggles), it will be accepted, and for good reason.

If this turns into an open source marker or somebody with connections makes it or whatever, this will be a requirement for the design to leave the hanger without exploding.

[mostpeople]

Anyone see the new smart parts patent?

[Newt]

No. Perhaps it could be showcased in it's own topic (assuming that's not covered in the patent)?

[Ratt]

very true but here is what im pointing to bore size = .689 (a good normal size) ball 1) .686 ball 2) .690 ball 3) .689 ball 4) oblong .680 ball 5) .693 ball 6) .690

each ball will have a different flight path and speed due to size in ball compared to size in bore obviously there is going to be considerable drag on the ball 5 and who knows what ball 4 is gonna do.

then with that same lil idea there that ball 4 is gonna do weird things with the slots, thats what im seeing as an issue. i do agree that a ball can run down a super smooth barrel of the right size with very little friction loss but when you are looking at spinning and such and even trying to get a sensor to adjust chamber dump each shot it only has the ability to use if last shot = (x) fps dump into chamber = (y) on shot 2 just like a computer on a car less air being sensed on last check = less fuel . pretty much what im getting at with that a person would have to have a perfect paintball to get the type of action im thinking Tom is talking about.

So...let's make the perfect paintball. Hear me out on this one: The problem with paintballs is that there is not in existence a process that can make a perfectly round paintball each and every time. So, say you take that imperfectly round paintball, and place it inside a sabot. The sabot could be made out of some thin, yet strong material. It would be made at what ever circumference you want (.689, etc.). Depending on the thickness of the material of the sabot, the paintball itself would have to be made smaller. Something tells me that with the right processes, the right tools, and the right material, a perfectly round sabot can be rapidly massed-produced. And since it is perfectly round, and at the correct bore, there would not be any need for a special loading system. You pour them into your hopper and fire away...just like a normal paintball.
Once you have that perfectly rounded paintball, you can make adjustments to you marker or your barrel which would allow you to get a near-perfect consistancy.
I just came up with this idea, so I haven't had time to fully think it through. That being said, I am sure there may be some flaw(s) that I didn't think of. Feel free to point them out.

[om3n]

So...let's make the perfect paintball. Hear me out on this one: The problem with paintballs is that there is not in existence a process that can make a perfectly round paintball each and every time. So, say you take that imperfectly round paintball, and place it inside a sabot. The sabot could be made out of some thin, yet strong material. It would be made at what ever circumference you want (.689, etc.). Depending on the thickness of the material of the sabot, the paintball itself would have to be made smaller. Something tells me that with the right processes, the right tools, and the right material, a perfectly round sabot can be rapidly massed-produced. And since it is perfectly round, and at the correct bore, there would not be any need for a special loading system. You pour them into your hopper and fire away...just like a normal paintball.
Once you have that perfectly rounded paintball, you can make adjustments to you marker or your barrel which would allow you to get a near-perfect consistancy.
I just came up with this idea, so I haven't had time to fully think it through. That being said, I am sure there may be some flaw(s) that I didn't think of. Feel free to point them out.

Well how could you design a sabot that could withstand being dumped into a loader, being knocked by a bolt, being accelerated extremely rapidly with the seams at any odd angle down a barrel, and then survive being intact through all this to be separated in mid flight by the force of the wind?

I like the idea of a sabot (not that I have any authority in this area) but I just don't think it would be possible with a modern loader. It would have to be clip style I think... that way you could control how the sabot loads into the gun, so that the seams line up in such a way so that they won't be separated by the force of the bolt, or by being dropped into a loader, etc.

[drg]

Is it even still "accepted" (if it ever was) that "HP" is more efficient than "LP"?
When I think of the most efficient markers, not a single one is "HP."

[nerobro]

i know what you mean when you give out intervals.
*standards of velocity consistancy*
if you think otherwise, just try it, you will be shocked. just shoot a 20 shot string and record each FPS reading. its really quite astounding. its really quite an eye opener.

Perhaps our standards of high end is different. :-) Up to about 2004? I had shot everything on the market. But that doesn't mean anything.

This is about to turn into a contest of egos. No need for that. I knew my equipment well, I knew where I could set it and be confident that if chronoed the gun would not shoot hot.

I've also sat down with peoples guns and tried to figure out how the heck they play with the equipment they do.... I don't consider a 12fps range good.

When I started caring about velocity trends on guns, I did write them down, and average them. extended numbers of shots even. I was obsessed... absolutely obsessed with being able to turn my gun up to the highest velocity and not break the field limit.

I do not believe ram driven guns are better velocity wise than springs, and sears are. Dump chamber guns are dependent BOTH on a good regulator and a good way of actuating the bolt. That can throw ram consistency on top of regulator consistency. Going with the technology we have, has reduced the velocity consistency of todays guns.

A electronically controlled valve, such as we have been discussing in this thread would bring back that consistency. We might see +-3fps be a sanely achievable number again. Provided the yahoos don't run .710 barrels and dice shaped paint *grins*

Paintguns are set up for steady-state firing, which is also the reason why active control via telemetric feedback loops are not useful in the context of paintball guns. By and large inconsistency in paintgun shot to shot performance is caused by random variances, which cannot be compensated for proactively.

This is the responsibility of the people making the gun, and programming the boards. (note, AGD did not support the aftermarket e-mag software...) And definitely not within the scope of this discussion. :-) That said, when you start introducing other gas inputs there may need to be compensation done at the valve level. The bleed slots to give the ball spin would likely change signifigantly the velocity of the ball. I don't know which way it would go though. That sort of thing would need to be hard coded, and conservatively so.

[cockerpunk]

Perhaps our standards of high end is different. :-) Up to about 2004? I had shot everything on the market. But that doesn't mean anything.

This is about to turn into a contest of egos. No need for that.
.

its not a contest of egos, its just a matter of the interwebs vs reality. its pretty easy to claim on the web that your gun gets +/- 1 all day long ... but it doesn't. it doesn't even come close. to make that a legitimate claim you'd need to shoot probably 18 out of 20 shots at identical velocity, and those two would have to be within 1 of that average. not to mention you need something other then a red box chrono, they are plus or minus 3 percent.

again, if you want to claim otherwise, make a video. i have never seen it, and i have been playing for 9 years now.

protip - best way to increase consistency - smaller barrel

[nerobro]

its not a contest of egos, its just a matter of the interwebs vs reality. its pretty easy to claim on the web that your gun gets +/- 1 all day long ... but it doesn't. it doesn't even come close. to make that a legitimate claim you'd need to shoot probably 18 out of 20 shots at identical velocity, and those two would have to be within 1 of that average. not to mention you need something other then a red box chrono, they are plus or minus 3 percent.

again, if you want to claim otherwise, make a video. i have never seen it, and i have been playing for 9 years now.

protip - best way to increase consistency - smaller barrel

Yup, it is pretty easy to claim guns are X Y and Z. I've gone through the rigamarole of "show me, show me, show me" here before. The whole fastest cycling gun thing took a lot of time and effort.

I've never claimed that I have a gun that shots +-1. Just +-2.5 :-) And that's now a long "had" ago. (around 1996...) I'm not very comfortable shooting a gun that's not consistently in a +-5fps range. I have stacks of barrels laying around, and good air systems to ensure that. Just to blow your mind, that gun that got +-2.5fps, also got 1300+ shots per 20oz.

You haven't been around long enough to know I'm not some kind of internet blowhard. ;-) I'm ok with that. But if you're interested, check some of my post history, and my reg date.

Are you saying red radarchonys chrono's are +-3% shot to shot? or day to day? or unit to unit? If they're 3% shot to shot, that in itself would build in a 9fps variance at 300fps. Day to day, over the life of a battery, changes in temperature... I could believe that.

Back on topic
TDI injectors are $645 a set. Eeep.

Who's got other ideas? Who's got a common rail diesel that's blown up? Or will we have to build our own injector to do this? ...... I wonder if the injector from like a MS3/MS6 would do.

* Applications: Passenger cars, light-duty commercial vehicles

* Power output: 30 kW/cylinder

* No. of cylinders: 3...8

* Control: Electronic, electrical, solenoid valve, or piezo actors

* Injection pressure: 1350 bar (1st gen.), 1600 bar (2nd gen.), 1800 bar (3rd generation with piezo injectors)

* Injected fuel quantity: up to 90 mm3 per stroke

http://rb-kwin.bosch.com/us/en/powerconsumptionemissions/dieselsysteme/dieselsystem/passenger-car/technology/injection_systems/commonrailsystem/crs_pkw_types.html

[gunangel]

that's pretty funny, i compare cars and paintball markers all the time.
spyders are civics, e-frames are turbochargers, solenoids and electronics are superchargers, angels are lambos, egos are ferraris, mags are old school muscle cars


onto topic

for the spin couldn't you just make a barrel with a groove cut along the side with the spin material (most likely rubber or polyurethane) inserted in and use a twistlock type barrel to control the the locking points? i know I have a barrel that has one main grove with 3 lock points on it so i can go from right to center to left feed with a quick twist. that would make the barrel maybe a smidge thicker than a normal barrel but would allow spin and the ability to control which direction

and for the chrono barrel idea, which i've given much thought (most likely two or more break beam eyes spaced an exact distance apart that could be used to extrapolate within a reasonable degree the suspected velocity based on acceleration), if the marker used an electronic solenoid you would have electronically controlled dwell which could easily control the velocity to a given degree, granted the parameters would have to be fairly loose, say a 10 fps interval, and one wrong shot (a partial roll out, a small round, some other miscelaneous problem) would shift the dwell which could offset a the rest of the shots. granted some good parameters like an absolute cap on the dwell and the ability to adjust dwells in smaller increments than ms would probably help.

the injector idea sounds very interesting, but i wonder how the ball would sit in the chamber, would the injector move forward to seal the ball in the chamber? would it be an open chamber? would there be a hollow bolt that would move forward to seal the chamber?


some issues i've run into while thinking of the chrono barrel. so we all know a ball leaves the barrel with a given velocity, say 280 fps, but does how it gets there affect the acceleration in the barrel? like if the low long pulse vs a short powerful burst was used would different programming have to be used to calculate the acceleration inside the barrel? or is it possible to calculate the distance where the ball has finished accelerating and take measurements beyond that point to get an accurate reading? i've always wondered if how the ball accelerated played a role, for example does the flight path change if the ball finishes accelerating before it leaves the barrel or at the tip?

well forgive my ramblings, this thread has brought out the curious cat in me. i'm very interested in what will come of this

[druid]

All,

So I was sitting around the other day watching Top Gear and thinking how advanced the latest sports cars were. I think to myself, "they are advancing just like paintball guns" and then I had to stop a minute.... I was wrong. If a paintball gun was transformed into a sports car, you would have an electronic sensor on the gas pedal that opened the carberator, THAT'S ALL!!

That got me thinking about what it would take to make a marker as advanced as today's Ferrari's. First of all, to get advanced control, you need to know what the car or the marker is doing. For the marker this means it knows what the velocity is for every single shot. Once it knows the velocity, then you need a way to control the velocity on every shot regardless of other factors like tank pressure etc. Just like fuel injection, this would require direct injection of the gas into the bolt chamber behind the ball. You could then dynamically adjust the timing so no matter what the tank pressure was, you would get the same velocity out. No regulators in the gun, at all. Just the tank feeding high pressure into the computerized injection system and your good to go.

So that was a cool idea, and it got me thinking further. If you could control the gas injection directly into the chamber, you can control the profile of the power pulse to the ball. Longer-lower pressure or higher-shorter but for this you would need to control two injection ports. This would allow you to shoot really fragile paint and make the gun very quiet with a long pulse at the expense of efficiency. Conversely you could make it bark with stronger paint and get much better efficiency.

Then I thought about how you could combine those parameters to best suit your game. It suddenly made sense that if I had a marker that did that, I would program it to shoot the first couple shots very quietly but once I started jack hammering it would automatically go to the high efficiency mode. This would allow me to sneak in the first couple shots without alerting my opponent but still give me great efficiency!!

But that lead to more ideas..... If you can inject the air into the chamber, at a pre-determined time, you could do it WHEN THE BALL WAS ROLLING PAST THE PORT! If you did this, it would rub the ball against one side of the barrel and induce a spin. With three independently controlled ports, below and on each side, you could get the ball to float or hook left or right just with the press of a button! :)

This would be like stepping out from behind your bunker or tree about 10 feet to take the shot. I also will bet you that a ball spinning and hooking left or right will be more accurate (left and right but not up and down). This is because you are controlling where on the back of the ball the vortexes are being shed from. They are NOT random. Cockerpunk should test this.

So why would I mention really cool designs on a pubic forum? Because I don't think there are any companies left in this industry with the ability to conceive, design and then finance a truly revolutionary product at this time. There are some guys with the ability (Chris Goddard and Simon come to mind) but there are no companies that I would have confidence in that could do it.

Just thinking out loud.....

AGD

Tom...this is great thinking and all but I'd like you to ponder this thought for a minute...

After creating ^^ that marker...are people going to pay what it will end up costing?

Don't get me wrong, I love AGD stuff. Have a PrClassic but would LOVE an X-Mag. I'd SETTLE for an E-Mag.
You know why I don't have one?
1. Cost.
2. parts unavailability.

,,,and it's not like I can't afford things...I work for the County for over 12 years...

It's simply the thought that "knowing engineers and how they think" ....[you, example] tend to over-complicate things.

I've defended AGD on other forums, using "perfection has a cost" and that's worked only so far...but really, when you stop to think about it....how well has AGD managed over the years?
Started out as the cock-of-the-walk.
Then -
Slowed sales, Patent wars, boards/wiring setups that take insanely huge battery packs....something that now has to be custom made or ordered.......ultimately leading to the "Star" program being discontinued....

Kids don't want stainless steel. They want "light, fast, common upgrades" and the ability to anodize it to their liking.

You really want to go through all that again?

Some advice? It's no disrespect to you man, but K.I.S.S. is the approach here.

Recreate the E-Mag or X-Mag but with better battery and board programming....smaller and more common batteries, dude. Scenario Dreams has their UTB. Work out a deal with them to provide/produce those boards for you.

The Mag itself is as close to 'perfection' in the realm of valve performance...but this new generation of paintballer isn't going to accept something they don't like. The painful truth is, they don't like the old Mag set up. WE do....but they don't.

But you are an engineer...the K.I.S.S. method isn't usually well liked...lol.

Now if you want to "quiet" the marker...the ATF has changed its ruling on paintball silencers BUT IT HAS TO BE A PERMANENT FIXTURE TO THE BARREL and permanently affixed to the marker.

Make a marker that incorporates that silencer, that opens [somehow] like an Angel, so we can slide bore inserts into the breech pf a .691/.693 bored barrel of 10", 12" and 14" offerings.

Redesign the frame and electronics to accept one (or two...say via 12V mod) 9.6V NiMh batteries with on-board recharging plug (like a Spyder or a cell phone).

Make it ALL out of aluminum.

Normal detents...like on the ULE.

But the thing is...doing all this isn't going to end up at a reasonable cost to the consumer....the "end-all" of what makes a business. You have to make it affordable or it won't sell.

[Dend78]

So...let's make the perfect paintball. Hear me out on this one: The problem with paintballs is that there is not in existence a process that can make a perfectly round paintball each and every time. So, say you take that imperfectly round paintball, and place it inside a sabot. The sabot could be made out of some thin, yet strong material. It would be made at what ever circumference you want (.689, etc.). Depending on the thickness of the material of the sabot, the paintball itself would have to be made smaller. Something tells me that with the right processes, the right tools, and the right material, a perfectly round sabot can be rapidly massed-produced. And since it is perfectly round, and at the correct bore, there would not be any need for a special loading system. You pour them into your hopper and fire away...just like a normal paintball.
Once you have that perfectly rounded paintball, you can make adjustments to you marker or your barrel which would allow you to get a near-perfect consistancy.
I just came up with this idea, so I haven't had time to fully think it through. That being said, I am sure there may be some flaw(s) that I didn't think of. Feel free to point them out.

great idea but as om3n pointed out you gotta load those suckers correctly each shot or your up the creek, so you would have to go to something mag fed, which the way paintball seems to be heading thats not a bad thing. if that were the case i would say oblong the balls make them more like a round nose bullet rather than a ball but then you are still dealing with a liquid filled oval in a sabot. then again once you start making these rounds your adding in an extra step or 12 to making a paintball which goes back to the time is money thing, and where i see it if i wanna spend 4 dollars a round and have a great time ill get a 50 bmg and shoot stuff a mile away

also a problem with doing it this way it will kill the ablity to throw out some hook shots you can only shoot straight sabots and backspin dont go together well

[nerobro]

to go regless, like was proposed earlier, we'd need a pressure transducer that's cheap, and accurate enough to mount ongun. Think of the weight savings if you can ditch the whole regulator assembly?

You'd still need a LPR and a ram to actuate the bolt. I don't see that as a huge issue . The bolt could be a very, very small thing. I already have a layout in mind... and I think that using modern casting techniques this could be a very, very cheap gun to mfg. (provided the only special feature we're looking at is the use of an injector instead of regulators and metering devices)

And I think I may have figured out a way around needing a LPR and second solinoid...