Polygonal Barrel Theory. Respomses welcome

[P8ntballerAK]

here is a barrel with 6 sides rounded

[P8ntballerAK]

I know what tom did and es armson makes the stealth barrel, but the point is its not LESS efficient. and i think that making a polygonal barrel does make a difference, just not a big enough one to notice with paintballs. There is a reason BB guns are rifled, and thats because it makes a slight difference on accuracy that can be seen because a bb is so small. Paintballs create quiet a bit of turbulence once in flight, thats why they are so inaccurate. even if paintballs were more bullet shaped, the difference in rifling still would not be enough to notice on the field.

again my point was merley on the efficiency of the barrels.

[Carbon]

Yes please read the whole thread before sayin something. But i get your point about the paintball being innacurate: it is an effect caused by atmospheric/aerodynamic turbulance.

But like all theories, Its a theory. It would be cool to actually see one of these polygonaly type barrell go side to side testing vs a DYE bomstick or some this just for *EDIT* Do not circumvent the cuss filters, this is NOT your average website, we actually enforce those rules you agreed to follow. Army and gigles. thnx for your commnets anyway.

[Miscue]

No theory.

AGD spent a ton of money researching this stuff with high speed cameras. They had really fast rotating barrel and stuff to make it spiral. What they found is that... the ball goes all over the place... wobbling... they are horribly inaccurate to being with. Same effect no matter what they did... even with Perfect Circle balls. I dunno if the info is still floating around on AO somewhere...

[mag-hatter]

oh man it hurts just thinking of how hard it would be to clean that thing!

[Carbon]

Miscue For gods sakes, im talking about straight rifling here, no spinning the balls, no spiral rifling, no spinning the barrel. I want to see a (insert brand name barrel here) VS A POLYGONAL STRAIGHT RIFLED BARREL. Marginal or not the results will show a "cluster pattern". I want to know what that pattern is.

Furthermore, I would like to see if the polygonal barrels are more efficient.

yes, Paintball shapes are inconsistent, but with a of box 2000, they are consistant enough to get a Mean or average size, shape ect.

Yes theories are theories. You can say i told ya so once actual testing is done. Thnx.

[Temo Vryce]

Originally posted by Miscue
No theory.

AGD spent a ton of money researching this stuff with high speed cameras. They had really fast rotating barrel and stuff to make it spiral. What they found is that... the ball goes all over the place... wobbling... they are horribly inaccurate to being with. Same effect no matter what they did... even with Perfect Circle balls. I dunno if the info is still floating around on AO somewhere...

AGD also stated that spinning the balls showed no improvement. He never said that rifling didn't work.

I believe that the thread you are refering too is in Deep Blue Miscue.

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

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64669

[bofh]

Originally posted by MarkM
Oh and straight rifling has been done by J&J many years ago...got a couple of those brass tubes lying around somewhere

My too, got me a four land straight rifled J&J barrel, which is not anymore accurate than a non-landed one.

Not any worse effiecney wise either...

[hitech]

You cannot make a more accurate barrel. Vortex shedding is the root cause of paintball inaccuracy. 2Gs worth of lateral force. It is amazing they hit anywhere near where we are aiming. Here is the deep blue thread:

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=64669&goto=newpost

You may be able to make it more efficient. I've noticed that a tighter barrel is more efficient. The better seal seems to make up for the extra drag. However, it kills your consistancy.

[joeyjoe367]

Originally posted by hitech
You cannot make a more accurate barrel. Vortex shedding is the root cause of paintball inaccuracy. 2Gs worth of lateral force. It is amazing they hit anywhere near where we are aiming. Here is the deep blue thread:

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=64669&goto=newpost

...exactly what I was trying to say in my first post. Paintballs are innaccurate *OUTSIDE* of a barrel. The barrel is not the limiting factor in a paintball's accuracy.

[BarryTolar]

Glock and HK don't use polygonal barrells. Some models from each maker use polygonal rifling.

And even then it's not what most people think of when you say polygonal. Another manufactor also did something wil bizarre rifling patterns but I can't remember who right now.

Barry

[shartley]

Comparing paintballs with standard gun ammunition, and paintball markers to standard firearms, is where theories get tossed in the trash. And I will leave it at that.

And for the sake of argument, even if it DID work, it is much cheaper to make round barrels than barrels with special shapes. Would any accuracy gained be worth the expense? I would bet the answer would be no.

[Evil Bob]

The problem lies in fluid mechanics. Paintballs contain a non solid material that takes quite a bit of inertia to spin evenly with the outside shell, something that is not possible with the current barrel length and the speed at which we play at for safty reasons. This is why Tom tested with a high speed barrel spinning gizmo to get the paint core to match the speed and rotation angle of the outer shell.

You can easily test this concept out yourself, go visit any sports store that carries one of those dynamo wrist exercisers with the weighted spinning core and play with it, once you get the core spinning, you can feel how that mass impacts any movement you try to induce into it.

Firearm projectiles are solid, a solid projectile can be easily stabilized in flight by inducing spin at right angles to the flight path, this results in a flatter trajectory due to the physics involved (gyro stabilization).

If we were to use a solid projectile in paintball and crank the velocity up to a few thousand feet per second, then we would definitely see some benefit from spin stabilization, but we'd end up killing each other.

-Evil Bob

[joeyjoe367]

Originally posted by Evil Bob
a solid projectile in paintball and crank the velocity up to a few thousand feet per second, then we would definitely see some benefit from spin stabilization, but we'd end up killing each other.

-Evil Bob

Sounds good to me. Let's go for it

[tobz]

one small

thing that I would like to add...

those two "contact points" are because the paintball itself is larger at the "equator" where the two shell halves are "put together" so creating more contact points will not effect it in any positive way, even with a perfect circle, since the extra drag + all of the wasted air around the ball would make it no longer worth it anyhow.

tobz