what do YOU think the next technology is?

[Toranaga]

true, but the feeling I was getting fro mAGD in his statements was that this could be done for the same price we pay now for a good high end marker. Imean take the part about eliminating the regs, thats (excluding the mag) taking off 2 or 3 regs and hundreds of dollars. Also Im sure adding a 12 in piece of aluminum into the design plan of any marker wouldn't be that difficult (it seems to me that making the threads correct would be more difficult).

Also, what Tom said about electric valve, agian the feeling I was getting from Tom was that it would be a cheap or reasonably priced alternative.

I dunno, just rambling now.

[ramenjames]

Tom if you make that marker i would be the first to buy it

[Dryden]

Hmm, I think the most telling statement that everyone missed is this one.

Originally posted by AGD
This is just one possible reality, most likely not to be part of any of your futures. Have fun with your pods.

AGD

It is possible, but who is going to buy it?

With all due respect to all the members of AO, I expect Tom realized long ago that he and his staff can't make a living selling Warp Feeds to the same 100 customers over the Internet. :) There has to be something that's not just revolutionary, but looks sexy too.

My question, either for Tom or whoever, is why deal with compressed gases at all? If we eliminate the single most unpredictable element, and replace it with a constant, aren't we half-way to eliminating pressure constraints and flux in paintball velocities?

If a tool as tiny as a Dremel can achieve rotational speed of 35,000 RPM, why not use twin electric motors or a belt as both feeder and propulsion? I'm thinking of something on the scope of a pitching machine in batting cages and tennis courts. If these machines can hit 100mph+, what is the impediment to miniaturization for paintball use?

Again, drawing from the precedent of the Dremel as a model of size v. power - it can't be cost. Is it heat, noise, power source, etc?

[spantol]

If it worked as described, was priced competitively, looked pretty, and was marketed properly, who wouldn't buy one? I see far more pros than cons when comparing Tom's Gun-of-the-Future to the current market leaders.

Offhand, I would guess that the forces involved in the "pitching machine" design would be too much for a paintball, but I'll defer to someone that has done the math.

[Brophog]

Probably all those things.

First off, the air for the most part is not the problem, provided its regulated properly. I can get most of my markers +/- 2 with consistent paint on CO2. That's a deviation of a little more than 1% which to me is perfectly acceptable.

The balls are the number one element causing deviation, but lets look at your idea further as it has more uses than just consistency. The fact that you could go out there with perceivably less weight and play longer is a big plus in my book.

[WenULiVeUdiE]

Originally posted by Toranaga
true, but the feeling I was getting from AGD in his statements was that this could be done for the same price we pay now for a good high end marker.

From what I know about wholesale prices and business stuff this could probably be sold for a little more than Xmags. But some of these things that Tom has talked about like the sensors, is going to be on the Nerve, assuming it comes out. And sadly there is a patent on it currently . But forget the patents for the sake of this post. I dont think that it costs 1k to produce Xmags. If so AGD is very daring. I think it may cost around 500 or less to actually produce the gun. But this is one that Tom can step in on. He owns it so he would know for sure.


Andrew

[spantol]

I've just done some quick math here. It's been a long time since I've taken a kinematics class, so I've had to dumb this problem way down, possibly to the point where it's no longer appropriate. Someone please correct me if I'm way off.

It seems to me that one of the main hurdles here is going to be the amount of force that has to act on a ball. In the current system, the ball has forces pushing it the whole time it's in the barrel, say 8". If the ball were being propelled by a rotating motor, all of the force would have to be applied almost instantly, and over a much smaller distance. I'm going to call that 2" for no reason other than it makes the math easier. Again, this is one hell of an abstraction.

For a ball to accelerate to 91.44 m/s (300fps) in 8 inches, its average acceleration has to be 130.65 m/s^2. It'll do this in .350 seconds. Since Force equals mass times acceleration, the force acting on the ball, is 130.56m, where m is the mass of the ball.

For the ball to accelerate to that same speed in 2 inches, it's average acceleration has to be 2090 m/s^2, and it has to do that in .0437 seconds. That's sixteen times the force we're currently subjecting paintballs to.

Again, I'm using the most simplistic math possible, but I think it demonstrates that this is much easier said than done.

Originally posted by Dryden


If a tool as tiny as a Dremel can achieve rotational speed of 35,000 RPM, why not use twin electric motors or a belt as both feeder and propulsion? I'm thinking of something on the scope of a pitching machine in batting cages and tennis courts. If these machines can hit 100mph+, what is the impediment to miniaturization for paintball use?

[spantol]

...And I just realized that I screwed up the math. Stupid unit conversions. Redoing it now.

Still, way, way more force involved in the rotating motor case. :)

Edit:

8" distance yields an acceleration of 20574 m/s^2 in .0011s, 2" yields 82296m/s^2 in .0011s. Still a big difference.

[FreakBaller12]

with these motor ideas,
i would think we dont use them for 2 reasons
1. it would burn out to quickly, cuz of the high shot of bps, cuz then it could be endless high bps, and if the motor burned, it would not be pretty what it might do to your board if it is close by.
2.nitro and c02 can eb refilled easily, inexpensively, correct me if i am wrong, but isn't it one of the most abundant gases on earth?

[Brophog]

Sure, both the HPA and CO2 fills contain cheap and abundant gases, that's why we currently use them.

I agree that the biggest issue is acceleration on the ball. The expansion rates of CO2 and HPA are quite slow in comparison to the force we would need with a motor system.

What if we used a longer tube for acceleration though. Either further out the back of the marker, or down the barrel. After all, without the gases needing room to expand, the barrel's prime purpose is thwarted. I think we could use this distance as a runway of sorts.

My thought on that though is such an idea could cut down on cycle times a bit.

[spantol]

How are you proposing to start the ball moving? If it's from spinning disks, the ball stops accelerating as soon as it clears those disks. A longer barrel would mean that you'd need to be spinning those things even faster to make up for the energy you'd lose from friction. You can't use the barrel as a runway unless you have a force acting on the ball the whole way down.

Originally posted by Brophog
What if we used a longer tube for acceleration though. Either further out the back of the marker, or down the barrel. After all, without the gases needing room to expand, the barrel's prime purpose is thwarted. I think we could use this distance as a runway of sorts.

[Brophog]

Sure, sure. I agree, you couldn't use a "pitching machine" type setup if you were going to slowly accelerate the ball.

You'd probably need to use a plunger type system that would accelerate the ball down the length of several inches.

[Dryden]

All very good points.

My reasoning for thinking not to use compressed gas though is that it is dangerous, unpredictable, and the container is heavy.

I know a motor seems far fetched, but it's also not going to explode with 4500psi of force when it's 6 inches from your head.

I don't have any statistics to cite, but I speculate that a great number of paintball related injuries, after eye injuries and general sports injuries (e.g. sprained ankle, knees, etc) are caused by a mishandling of CA and CO2.

Now, as far as motors go, there is plenty of room to think outside of the box there too.

For example, when you're ready to play, you power the marker up. The motor has already achieved it's functional speed before you even hit the chrono. The firing mechanism doesn't 'fire' the marker as much as it 'nudges' a paintball into the already operating device.

Instead of a copper-coil motor, how about linear induction? Use magnets?

Thinking of the design of a pitching machine, what if the firing mechanism were several paddles on a rotating wheel, like a steam boat? Think of a lacrosse raquet, on full auto.

The more I think of the 'Dremel' motor, it doesn't work because of noise and vibration. I couldn't imagine holding what amounts to a power tool for hours on end.

I dunno. It just seems to me that if magnets can get a two-ton roller coaster car holding 40 people from 0-60 in one second, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure a way to propel a 1 oz paintball a few hundred feet! :)

[Brophog]

The fact the paintball weighs 3 grams and is so brittle is the problem.

With the roller coaster, you've got a lot of weight to move forward over the course of several feet, moving relatively slow (60 mph). The momentum of the car greatly assists you in this case once you get the car moving.

In the case of a paintball, we've got less than a foot to get a 3 gram object up to 300 ft/sec (204 mph). Since we have very little mass to work with, most of our force is coming from initial acceleration.

That's what spantol is alluding to. The force necessary to move the paintball 12 inches is very high. The chief problem here is not crushing the paintball.

[Woodsmen]

Originally posted by TraXeR
I think the next technology SHOULD be a built in talking system in masks so teams don't have to yell and and exhaust themselves more than they need.

They have the Sportz Com from JT; it has two plugs, one for the walkie-talkie and another for a Mp3. they are pretty tyte, you just have to watch the wire and make sure the plugs are in right.

http://store.yahoo.com/actionvillage/059-2100.html

but ya I think the next step will be promotional stuff to get more people playin, like cheaper paint or cheaper home setups for teams or clubs like filling stations or cheaper or easier course setups like sup' air