New valve idea?

[Lohman446]

Ok... let me begin by saying that I am in no way familar with all the markers and systems out there that make them work so I may be stepping onto something already done.

It is my understanding that it is not the bolt that hits the ball to make it move but the air, and it would be better if the bolt never hit the ball at all - sometimes incidental contact is made.

I was laying in bed thinking of new designs for getting that air to the ball.

Why don't we use something like a fuel injector? I mean electrical pulse opens the self contained unit, and allows fuel to go into the engine, that lack of pulse closes it. There operation speed is in excess of 100 cylces per minute.

Couldn't we use this base idea, modify it, and make a paintball valve out of it?

[BigEvil]

Ive been wondering the same thing for a long time. Now that most guns have eyes, I would thing that it should be pretty easy. Im sure there is some reason why a bolt is needed though....

[p8ntball365]

I'm pretty sure The assault 80's don't use a bolt. They use some sort of trap door and air.

[slade]

wait, are you saying essentially have a "trap door" over the feed tube instead of a bolt? so the trap door opens to let a ball through, and then closes immediately afterward and a valve lets out a burst of air? if so, thats already been thought of by most paintballers and done at least twice. look at the alien and... dammit i forgot the name, its a relatively old marker that used this idea and never really caught on. i think it starts with an "E".

[Titansu]

You're thinking of the Epic.

http://www.pbreview.com/products/reviews/198/

wait, are you saying essentially have a "trap door" over the feed tube instead of a bolt? so the trap door opens to let a ball through, and then closes immediately afterward and a valve lets out a burst of air? if so, thats already been thought of by most paintballers and done at least twice. look at the alien and... dammit i forgot the name, its a relatively old marker that used this idea and never really caught on. i think it starts with an "E".

[Emag2005]

The bolt is needed to recock the gun and i think it might hit it a little since their is a fomie on it

[slade]

ahh yeah, the epic. dont really hear much about them anymore.

The bolt is needed to recock the gun and i think it might hit it a little since their is a fomie on it

without a bolt, you dont NEED to cock the gun .

[deadeye9]

I think the bolt pushes the ball past the detent before releasing its air.
Not sure, though.

[ScatterPlot]

The bolt seals the air passage from letting all the air leak out around the ball and up through the feed tube. The Nova was another gun without a bolt, but it actually slid the whole barrel backward around the ball to fire it (or at least part of the barrel). Talk about reciprocating mass!

[68magOwner]

the bolt is there to seal the chamber, if you just shot air at the ball, it would go up the feedneck, smashing paint and creating horrible efficency

[BlackVCG]

The fundamental problem is that you need to load the ball and fire it down the barrel, thus you must have some sort of "breech." Either using a bolt or not, the gun will need to "seal" off the breech inorder to concentrate the air pulse on the ball and get any sort of efficiency. There's been plenty of bolt-less guns out there, but they all had to use some sort of door or shut-off to close the breech.

The SMG-60 was an interesting design because it used a clip that held 5 balls in it and as the clip fed in from spring tension pushing on the clips, the ball would be fired by the air and the clip housing acted as the breech. The only problem being the most balls you could have ready to be fired was 15 and after the game was over you'd have to run around and find all of your clips unless you had the canvas catch bag on the gun.

Also, I'm going to move this thread to Deep-Blue... It's technical enough of a topic and could bring up a good discussion.

[Lohman446]

The fundamental problem is that you need to load the ball and fire it down the barrel, thus you must have some sort of "breech." Either using a bolt or not, the gun will need to "seal" off the breech inorder to concentrate the air pulse on the ball and get any sort of efficiency. There's been plenty of bolt-less guns out there, but they all had to use some sort of door or shut-off to close the breech.

Ok, the understanding of the purpose of sealing the breech means somehow we are going to have to consider it. Is there any reason that the next ball in the stack could not act to seal the breech area. If we have force fed loaders and could make the tube going into the breach .689 (or even somehow adjustable for different size paint - I know we will have to think more on that one) then could the next ball not act to "seal" it? I mean you don't have to be dead perfect, look how little efficiency is lost shooting a .686 paint through a .692 barrel - very little.

I understand there is bound to be a series of problems, and it appears the first we are going to have to consider is the sealing of the breach. I think it might be done as above - am I tottally insane on that line of thought?

[jewie27]

Since paintball is a little over 20 years old now, if it was a good idea it would have been done by now. As far as bolts go....

[Lohman446]

Since paintball is a little over 20 years old now, if it was a good idea it would have been done by now. As far as bolts go....

That one I refuse to beleive. There are new ideas in established industries all the time. Lets take for instance the rotary engine in automotive. A high rev, low displacment engine with pretty good torque and horsepower for its displacement. Its a good idea, just not in common use. Doesn't mean it doesn't work as well as other things.

The point I here is many of the bolt ideas that we use today are based on firearm theory at the base. We are not trying to lower a striker or a hammer, there should be better ways to do it then what we do now. The spool valve to me was one step forward... but I still beleive there has to be other ideas.

With that attitude we would still all be playing with pumps. With time gone by it just means ideas are not as... well a lot of them are used but I am sure there are still ideas out there.

[slade]

Ok, the understanding of the purpose of sealing the breech means somehow we are going to have to consider it. Is there any reason that the next ball in the stack could not act to seal the breech area. If we have force fed loaders and could make the tube going into the breach .689 (or even somehow adjustable for different size paint - I know we will have to think more on that one) then could the next ball not act to "seal" it? I mean you don't have to be dead perfect, look how little efficiency is lost shooting a .686 paint through a .692 barrel - very little.

I understand there is bound to be a series of problems, and it appears the first we are going to have to consider is the sealing of the breach. I think it might be done as above - am I tottally insane on that line of thought?

...what?? remember, the air on the ball shoots it at 280 FPS. that same pressure would be applied on the next ball in the feed tube, shooting it back into the hopper. if its kept in the same place, all your balls will be crushed. either that or the hopper itself will break. also that pressure on the ball BACK UP into the feed tube would drasitcally decrease the feed rate, as the hopper would have to overcome that pressure and then push the ball into the breech. that would require an even stronger force fed hopper, which would mean there is even MORE force on the ball pushing it down, while there is force from the air pushing the ball up. This would create many problems, and have only a slight advantage. it would be a much better idea to simply have a solenoid activate a ram behind the feed neck that pushes a piece of metal through a slot to close the breech. you could even lower the pressure enough to make it pinch balls. and you could probably use a cocker board with slightly modified software, since there would be two noids.