Magazines

[Oddball]

What paintball magazins do you guys read and trust the reviews of products? I ask this because in the new issue of APG there is a review of the Micro E-mag. I only flipped though it at the bookstore but I saw some fairly obviuos errors in the article. It said that profromance wise an AGD E-mag and the Micro E-mag are the same. The only difference being that the micro had more side to side play in the trigger. The article then said that this may be due to the difference in the size of the parts due to the anadizing.
Well as far as I know the AGD E-mag and the Micro E-mag use the exact same trigger frame and that anadizing does not effect to tolerances of parts due to the fact that it does not change the size at all. It changes the color by effecting the metal chemically and does not add thickness to the surface. Are there not editors who read this stuff before it is printed and do the writers need any kind of knowlegde about what they write about?
I do read most of the paintball magazines but only really trust Paintball games international. They seem to be the only mag that will give a bad review of something.
And I know that my spelling is sub-par, the spell check doesn't want to work.

[manike]

Anodising does add thickness. It can vary depending on what type of anodising is done. 'Industrial' anodising is much thicker. I can't remember the thicknesses but that can be significant and mess up high tolerance parts such that you need to take account of the anno thickness when machining the components.

When you strip a part it also removes a little of the original material, so if you keep anoing and stripping a part you will eventually eat it away and mess up tolerances.

manike

[Load SM5]

Also could've been a difference in tolerances between the 2 guns since the e-mag uses a rail and the Micro forgoes the rail and integrated it in the main body. It seems that if there is a problem with Pro Team's stuff its seems to be a tolerance issue.

Maybe Webby will comment on this since he wrote the article.

[Jonno06]

i have.....5 paintball2xtremes,1 APG(the one you were flipping through)2 PCRI's(from 97),1 paintball magazine(2000)1 PGI(97)1 PSI(97)

[Webmaster]

HI,

Actually - I wrote that article.

A) Yes there are editors - but they generally dont know as much about technical pball issues as they do grammer and spelling. If they see a gross error they do correct it though (in this case you are in error, not me or them)

B) Yes - anodizing does add thickness. Its very small and slight, but it can make a difference and mess up toloreneces on guns. Thats why Lapco doesn't anodize thier barrel threads. Anodizing isn't as simple as just coloring the metal - it acutally (and I may be off here, but close) an electralysis process that basically super-oxidizes the the metal and you end up with a hard coating of oxidation that protects the metal underneath from corroding. If you do this with certain dyes, you will get the dye to embed it self in the porrus coating and waa-la - you have a colored marker!

C) This was just a hypothesis. Yes, the Micro E-Mag frame/trigger is from AGD with the ano/polish done by PTP. It was noticable - but wiether or not the difference in anodizing thickness is the culprit or not - I dont know. It could have also been that metal was loss in polishing, or possibly either the trigger or frame was slightly out of spec. At any rate - this didnt hinder performance.

D) As stated in the article - you shouldnt see any real performance differenece between the emag and the micro emag other than the fact the short ball stack on the vertical feed may hinder your feed rate. I also mentioned in the article, but had it taken out by the editors, that PTP does have some tolorence issues on some of thier markers - but that since they bought Benchmark it should be getting better. It used to be a three machine process, now its down to two.

feel free to ask any other questions about the review.

[martlet1]

apg

Well, since I have been in pics in APG twice i tend to get that one. And since they put me in, I figure they know what they are doing.

[Jonno06]

martlet,are you in that issue?that article?

what are you talking about?

[PFAutomag33]

I just picked up the issue with the Micro E-Mag in it. I like APG because of all the ads, and the reviews. I don't like this one magazine I got at Wal-Mart called Paintball Games International. What I don't like about it is that the WHOLE magazine had autocockers in it. I don't have anything against autocockers, but that was the only gun in it. I mean how bias can a magazine get?

[nutz]

Originally posted by Webmaster
HI,

I also mentioned in the article, but had it taken out by the editors, that PTP does have some tolorence issues on some of thier markers - but that since they bought Benchmark it should be getting better. It used to be a three machine process, now its down to two.

i remember hearing about this and disscusing it with my friends... well we ended up calling agd and john told us that to a certain # of micro emags the body was to tight somewhere near the on/off pin and that they did fix this problem.

im not sure if u are right webby

[martlet1]

i was in pics

Nah I was just in two issues for playing in scenario games. Mr. Morgan was kind enough to get some pictures of us playing and submit them to the magazine. Unfortunately it was during my pre-micromag days.