Electro Powered paintball gun?

[bjjb99]

Originally posted by athomas

The capacity will still be there You'll just have to wait for the cells to cool to produce the rest of the electricity.

That's not entirely true. The amp-hour ratings for batteries are listed for a specific discharge time--around 20 hours if I remember correctly. When I was looking at batteries back in the days of battlebot-mania, I quickly learned that if you need 120 amps for 5 minutes, a 10 amp-hour battery will simply not do the trick... you'd be lucky to get half the battery's capacity.

Do a search for battery discharge curves. Many manufacturers describe just what I'm saying.

Originally posted by athomas

That being said, 1 Amp hour drawn at 1 amp over a one hour period is the same as 1 amp hour drawn at 200mA over the period of 5 hours.

True in terms of the amount of energy drawn. However, in terms of the amount of extractable energy remaining in the battery these two scenarios are surprisingly not equal. The "low and slow" discharge will result in a greater amount of extractable energy left in the battery, even after both batteries have reached thermal equilibrium with their surroundings.

Originally posted by athomas

I think we all agree the idea of using a battery to compress air in real time is not an efficient way to go.

Absolutely true.

BJJB

[athomas]

The rating for instantaneous charge or discharge of a battery is the "C" rate. Eg; When rating a battery, a C rating would mean the battery would be able to fully discharge its rated capacity in 1 hr. A 2C rating means it could discharge its rated capacity (milliamp hours) in 30 min. A battery rated at 1000mA with a 2C rating could discharge at a rate of 2000mA for 30 min. A 1000mA 0.1C rating means the battery would last 10hours at a maximum discharge rate of 100mA. The battery is capable of its rated discharge until the battery reaches the knee voltage, at which time the battery is considered "dead". Exhausting the cell(s) beyond the knee voltage is detrimental to the life expectancy of the battery. A battery can exceed its rated "C" rate but will overheat and increase the internal resistance. This will have an effect of reducing the available current until the battery returns to normal. For batteries used in continuous duty operation, over stressing the cells by using under rated batteries is not recommended and will result in reduced cycles of operation.

[einhander619]

I have an idea that noone has proposed yet, and possibly for a very good reason. So far, all the talk has been about motors powering things and railguns. What about static electricity, you know, alike charges repel each other? Perhaps there would be a way to bring the ball and the breach to a high electric charge quickly...

One more thing, a railgun is never powered by just a battery. A capacitor bank(usually huge,on the order of 50+ Farads)that charges in series and then discharges in parallel is used to fire one. I don't think we're up to the task of hauling 4 50 gal. drums of copper plates and silicon oil around, are we?

[askman]

using electricity to accerelate

At work (I work at designing printhead for printers), we had problem with off axis shooting of drops off jets. One idea we looked at was using large electric charge in front of the stack to speed/straighten the low conductive ink drop. We hooked up 1-5kv power source in front of the printhead, and looked at result on strobe. it did visibly speed up the drops. Of course we are talking about small distance, high voltage charge and relatively slow speed. (compared to paintball) Thus railgun idea will require hugh power source to accelerate low conductive material.

[Col Sanders]

Sry, really already been done.

Can some1 say one word, Airsoft. Basicly same design with a smaller projectile, but one would need a significantly stronger motor and battery. Tokyo Mauri the pioneer of the nice little machine called the gear box has been around for quite some time. Search up airsoft and find a technical sight, it's all there my friends.

ALex "Col Sanders"
[email protected]

[speedyejl]

Col Sanders, before you flame them, take note that I already mentioned that, heck I even drew a pos diagram.

[ShadowCruiser2K3]

Something I haven't seen mentioned would be to stick the power source on a vest or similar article of clothing, with a wire attaching to the handle or back of the gun.* This would take the weight off the gun, and disperse it over a larger surface, aka, your body. This would allow for more batteries, or whatever else you would use for the power source, and allow for more to be put into the gun.

And, theoretically, if you use multiple batteries or power sources, couldn't you pull from each one in turn, taking the strain off just one, allowing them time to "recharge"? Or even pull from all at once, thus reducing the strain on them?

I mentioned this to my friend and he said why not put contacts on some gloves and the handle of the gun?

[JoelSalz311]

well I'm pretty stupid.
but I know that my dad made a paintball "gun" like that.
It wasn't practical. It was hooked up to like a 5 horse and compressor.
Still, i've had that idea for a long time, but not the knowledge to do it.
hehe when i started playing, i thought the bushmaster was fully electronic.