Speaking of new gas sources.....

[tooslow]

PigSweat: Thanks for the support, Ryan. But your still not getting a raise.

Slayer: Great idea about dual cartridges and/or combustion chambers for rapid fire!

There is no doubt in my mind that this system could be made to work effectively and effeciently for paintball. The question is: Is anyone willing to spend the time and money to develop it?

[zads27]

Well, alternatively.. this may be more complicated but..
Assuming creating 700 psi just from the combustion is unsafe, or unwieldy (apparatus has to be reinforced too much to handle the extra pressure), perhaps something similar to a pressure booster system could be used?
*shrug* Don't think the idea is very practical, but hey it's brainstorming.. who knows, someone can probably make a pretty small and high flowing pressure booster.. what do you guys think?

[mac2k4]

if ya went w/ a completly new gun design, like an extra LP gun. about ~100 psi. and design a new stlye?
just base it on what people like.. milling, rof, and it comes stock w/ a freak kit!!

[tooslow]

mac2k4: Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout! This system wouldn't just be another new paintball marker; it would be a whole new way of thinking about what a paintball marker is, or can be. In my mind I am picturing an entirely self-contained unit: A well-balanced bullpup-ish design with a built in WarpFeed-type loader in the rear section of the gun. No hoses, tanks, hoppers or anything sticking out from its smooth black frame... It would bear almost no resemblance to anything on the market today.

[Flamebo]

That's pretty novel. If someone could make those cubes power 100-200 psi and use an LP marker, I'd be sold. I don't know much about angels, but I think they can be run at 140 psi, which sounds possible with this system. If I could run an Angel without an air tank, I'd DEFINITLEY be sold on that. It's worth checking into, I know mags are high volume but if this is doable then AGD will just have to design a new valve system.

[Vegeta]

Yes, for rapid fire... you would need 2 combustion chambers... actually you might need 3. If you wanna shoot 15 bps... thats 15 bursts this thing has to do per second. Now.. it has to have time to combust.. which isn't long, but it also has to have time to cool a bit, and the valve / injector has to open and close everytime. So 3 would be best for that high rate of fire.. thats only 5 reloads per socond. Another idea is...

(Have fun reading this.. its worth it I belive...)

Have 1 of these things with the fuel injector wide open for several seconds (...about 10) and a larger storage area for the gas to sit before being used. The combustions fill up this chamber for about 5 seconds.. and then you have enough gas for 30 or so shots... Now this thing will need some electronics to calculate when to start burning again so It has enough built up for when that 30 or so shots are gone. It could be set to start compressign again about 20 balls after the first is shot... that way the chamber gets a nice refil before it starts to slow your accuracy. Of course.. to get this thing constant at all... you would need a reg on it.. and a low pressure system along with it would be the best.. but thats alot to lug around.
Also when this compressing system the cartridges would go a bit faster than the before.. but you would be able to fire at higher rates of fire.. I realy dont belive that you could fire at up to 14-15 bps with 1 small cartridge burining every time you fire. And we know they will wanna shoot 14-15 bps cuase this system would be found on mainly high end large rof fire guns.
To make better fuel economy for this compression burning system I proposed above, what woule be good is the fuel be stored in tanks about hte size of a 4 gram.. small and compact. It could be hooked up to a ASA looking device under the grip like we see today... with a hose running to the combust

[tooslow]

Vegeta: I'm impressed! You've obviously been doing some real thinking about this. Somebody, somehwere must want to make this thing.....

[AGD]

Sorry guys, been there done that too (aren't you getting bored of me saying that?) The Passlode fuel cell technology was under development in the early 90s when my friend Dr. Bob Stepanovick, an inorganic chemist, was brought in to work on a residual chemical problem in the fuel air mix. At that time Paslode didn't even know what all was going on in the chemical reaction and couldn't get the piston to retract reliably among other things. Bob came to us and said "look at this canister, you could power a paintgun with it!". It was very cool and we started conceptualizing the product. The whole idea fell down when we realized flames coming out of the end of the barrel could start the field on fire.

On another note, Passlode figured that the cooling of the gasses after combustion was what caused the piston to retract (it didn't have a spring). We pointed out to Bob that air blasting out an exit port leaves behind a vacume in the chamber and that is what was retracting the piston. They worked on the exit ports and problem solved. That was our contribution to the Passlode Nail Gun.

In general a bunch of people have developed regulated portable air sources for nail guns none of which took off. It is kind of like the Z-Grip.

AGD

[Vegeta]

LOL.. yea and I don't even own an Automag.. Tippmann 98 for me.. I just like reading about the tech stuff.

Anyways.. I suppose you could stop the hot gas/flames problem by having yet another separate chamber for cooling, with a cooling fan and heatsink on the outside like a computer... but thats getting to technical.. and to big.

I am going to thing these things over.. and think about other possible air sorces.. hell wouldn't you love to be the guy who comes up with the next newest paintball breakthrough?

[tooslow]

Thanks for replying, Tom. Here I thought that I had some new idea here I am continually amazed by the things that you have already done and tried... It's no wonder that your products are of the caliber that they are. I want to be you when (or if) I finally grow up!

[Vegeta]

Well said tooslow.
It will take us a while to find something that AGD's R&D (or other companies at that) hasn't already tried.
The only thing I have thought up about alternative air is just more on this combustion stuff... that and some really, really cool ideas about how to get the paintball out of the barrel without air at all.. magnetic propulsion. Of course that would be dangerous.. having the paintball fly down a long tube almost liek a particle accelerator... then hitting someone.. well.. I scrapped that idea. I also thought abotu having some sort of turbocharge system. Just liek a car, only use the blowback gas, filtered through a turbine, to compress more gas.. Of course this would never work becuse to blowback gas is so weak it could never apply the amount of force and speed to the turbine to actualy compress any air... so scrap that idea too.

Im working.... one of these days I'll have something.
I also noticed on the way to this post that theres notehr topic about air sources I have yet to check out. Maybe something will arise out of that.

[AGD]

Now if you want to get really creative:

We even looked into the stuff that blows the air bags in your car up. It's a powder that is ignited by a hot wire and pressurises the bag instantly. We thought it would be great if you could just put a teaspoon in the tank, spark it and wala instant full tank. As it turns out the stuff is carcinogenic and has restrictions on handling etc.

Argon held some promise for a while as a compressed gas because it's molecule is large and heavy without the liquid problems of CO2. It was expensive but inert. Someone could do some serious research in this area today and maybe come up with some interesting stuff.

AGD

[Vegeta]

Argon makes up about 1% of hte atmosphere. Now im sure theres a way to refine this right? It would still eb expensive.. And nobody wants to pay $10 a fill.

Also thought about neon. Another inert gas, and, it you were to put a spark gap on the end of your barrel, tie it into your electorinic hopper or grip frame so that every tiem hte gun is fires theres a spark acrost the barrel, boom! you have a glowing trail of neon behind your paintballs! Not sure if that would really work though.

Right now, I m tryign to find a way that would eliminate filling al together.. a gun that takes ordinary air around it and compresses it into a chamber on the gun. What alos could be done is have a compressor come with the gun liek a charger would for an electronic gun. between every game you hook it up to your gun and recharge it. problem i ti would ned ot be a rather powerful compressor totake ordinary air form the atmosphere around it and pressurize it into a small tank, and yet still eb the size of a hopper or so.

[Vegeta]

oo! now AGD might have tried this already, but what if you haev 2 tanks, filled with two liquids. They go in to the gun in sparate lines, then when they reach the valve, a little bit of both are combined. Now when they are combined they instantly expand and form a gas thats under much more pressure than the liquid. If you have liquid CO2 in a 3cm cubed area, and gas CO2 in a 3cm cubed area, the gas CO2 will be under more pressure becuase the moulecules are traveling faster and colliding more often, obviously. SO when these 2 liquids combine in hte valve (or in a small starage unit before the valve) they could create a gas thats double in voulume, therefore double in pressure. This would save much space and call for less refills. The tanks would only have ot be maybe 4 gram sized, yet could produce (if the chemicals were very reactive to each other) up to 16 grams of air or more when all combined. Now im not sure which two chemicals could do this, and most likeley they wouldnt turn themselve all into a gas, there owuld be some liquid residu left that didnt chage, so this would have to be stored in a small voulume and disposed of afterwards.

Take it this way .. its liek vinegar and baking soda.. they let off a gas when combined... ut still leave behind a lot of liquid... hopefully you could find 2 chemicals that almost entirely change over to a gas, so you wouldnt have that much liquid to handle.




Now that I think about it, hats nto the best Idea nad is even to complicated for me. Oh well, it was worth a shot.