Crossfire Regs

[paintball8869]

Just out of curiousity, but why not look at a pneumatics distributor for the equipment needed. I know a couple in my area and will check to see if they have the appropriate equipment. That way I can get a flow rate out of my armageddon tank (very interested in the actual flow rate compared to other tanks). I've had no flow problems with the geddon at 14 bps, so I don't understand how these tanks show dropoff on an angel at 11.

I'll see what they can do in the way of setting up a quick test for me. Hopefully they'll have the equipment to do the testing. If so, i'll run my geddon and nitroduck through the testing process.

[banzaimf]

Here's my thought process.

4500 psi X 68 ci = 306,000 total air (TA)

drain 2000 PSI of air out of the tank through a common sized fitting and time it = Drain Time (DT)

2000 is important because we can use this on 3k bottles and still have 1k psi in the tank. having 1k psi in the tank is important cause you want to have the reg working the entire time, ie have it regulating the pressure in the bottle out.

TA/DT= Flow Rate (FR)

output pressure of your bottle = (OP)

OP/1000 = modified OP (MOP)

MOP X FR = equalized flow rate.


YOu have to take into account the pressure that you are bleeding air at and this is the methoed that has popped into my head. I will verify this is what I jotted down last night when I get home, but does anyone see anything wrong with the formula?

as a note, this will NOT measure recharge rate. This is just something that you can do at home with a stopwatch and measure actual flow rate.

[Paladin]

Flow rate

If you measure the time it takes to get a volume of air through a known sized fitting, wouldn't that only be a measure of the flow rate of the fitting and not the flow rate of the regulator ?
On the other hand, accurate measuring of the pressure output from the tank when it is full versus when the pressure is down 2000 psi will demonstrate the relative output consistency of the regulator.
As a general rule, the output pressure from a single stage regulator will go up as the static pressure of the air supply goes down. (and vise-versa) The ratio of variation is the factor by which the consistency of a regulator is typically demonstrated.

[banzaimf]

The reason I thought of a known size fitting was thus, the internal diameter of the fitting should be larger of the internal area that air is leaving the reg. If I am wrong, then the other thought to me would be to have 4 fittings.

As to measuring at full and down 2k. Are you talking about setting at 850 full then draining 2k and then checking to see where the pressure is at?

ps Glen, I think you're a god!

[pbjosh]

Even if you do a tank dump you will be able to show how fast the valve opens, and flow throught the valve, but not how fast it recharges.

The only way to really see how fast a gun recharges, and measure it, would be to connect the regulator to a gun, preferably a gun that uses a good chunk of air per shot, and have a transducer in place between the reg and the gun.

Now, I have NO clue how to do this. But there are people out there with the setup. If somebody with the setup wants to connect a gun up I will see if I will pull strings and get a couple reg systems for them to try. If you have a professional setup, one that can get nice clean results, let the forum know. We can round up some regs.

Josh

[Paladin]

Originally posted by banzaimf
The reason I thought of a known size fitting was thus, the internal diameter of the fitting should be larger of the internal area that air is leaving the reg. If I am wrong, then the other thought to me would be to have 4 fittings.

Well, multiple orofice sizes and an accurate guage upstream from the various orofices will point out at what orofice size the regulator cannot provide enough flow to keep the pressure up between the regulator and the orofice. In other words, the point where demand outruns supply. Then you can calculate the flow rate of the orofice to determine what the potential flow rate of the regulator is. You will need to start with a very small orofice and work up in increments of just a few thousandths of an inch until the pressure on the upstream side of the orofice drops below the known output pressure of the reg. You will also see that as the supply pressure behind the regulator valve deminishes, the maximum output flow of the regulator will also deminish. This because higher pressure on the supply side force air through the regulator valve to the controlled side faster.

Originally posted by banzaimf
As to measuring at full and down 2k. Are you talking about setting at 850 full then draining 2k and then checking to see where the pressure is at?
[/B]

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. When the static pressure of the tank is reduced by 2000 psi the output pressure of a single stage regulator will generally change somewhat because the reg has so much less pressure to work against. Whether the regulated output goes up or down will depend on the design style of the reg but the variation will typically coincide with the dimensioning of the valve orofice and plunger/diaphram sizes.

[314159]

http://www.airamerica.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=39&osCsid=b8fac76047dff81855eb329b596b7f84

air america has this reg tester. it appears as if you can change the flow rate, because the pressure will not be changing rapidly, the responce time of the valve is not an issue.

there should be a certain quality of output. like 10% 20% or something.....

you would need to take (starting tank pressure - ending tank pressure) / time . take the highest one of these that satisfies your quality output numbers. this number is your maximum flow rate.

if the air america reg tester does not max out the flow of a tank, we either need to reset the quality of output threshold, or build a reg tester with better flow.

[Redkey]

Josh...

can you program your raceguns to fire full auto at 1, 5 and 10 balls a second? The reason why I ask is that for a good comparison of regs you'll need to be able to make the ROF pretty consistant. How soon can you collect those regs? I should be able to come up with a few myself.

I have a bit more work to do before I'll be ready to test anything... but, I should be good to go by the second or third week of dec. I'll do some trial runs on my gear and see how it goes... if the results look promising (and you think it's worth while) you could drive down here and spend an afternoon taking measurements. For now I am limited to 600 psi... since most firing pressures are below that, we should be ok.

Do most of the regs in question have a port for a transducer? If not how do you want to tap into the air between the reg and the gun. On a cocker you could put a T between the front block and the cocking reg, or replace the frontblock gas though screw with a fitting... or probably the best bet would be to put an adaptor between the reg and the asa. Which ever method was used you'd want to minimize the amount of additional volume you were adding to the system.

I'm open to suggestions...

[Coaster]

i know i am not a roundtable member, but i thought i'd post this. Over on pbstar.com they did a review of a melee, and i think it is the way that it shoudl be done here, give or take. They used the gladiator output tester, with a larger gauge so that it was more accurate to read the input pressure to the gladiator. Here is the link :

http://www.pbstar.com/gun-upgrade-review/nitrogen-resource/melee/

[Redkey]

Hey... thanks for the link

While their testing is interesting I don't think this is what we had in mind. From my viewpoint I would rather know how well the reg did at keeping up at high rates of fire, not that I can shoot fast... but it seems to be the popular thing to talk about these days. The output pressure as a function of tank pressure would be a by-product of the testing.

They mention something about opening a valve and closing it ten times at various pressures. They also say something like the pressure "jumped back to its original position" in less than a second. This is pretty vague, but, it looks like they do have some pretty good data on the tank to output pressure relationship.

[flanders]

hmm for the time i had my crossfire it workedvery nicly

odly the first time i had it it had a high output (was an 800) of around 850-9

had the reg removed from tank, and then re assembled and cleaned, worked nicly from then on

very consistant used it on an intimidater with very little shoot down

i noticed that no matter whop filld it if they could fill it beyond the reg never alowed mroe then 2700 psi in instead of the 3k, also when empty many tanks' pinvalve can be pusjed down., never happoened to mine

now ive useed this tank on a huge gass hog cocker (way outa time) with some visible shootdown on the reg but it it recharged fast enough not to mater, now if i had been shooting faster coulda been a problem. Ive used it on an excal with close to 18 bps going into it and no shoot down, but the big thin was seeing the difference in recharge rates when using on an emag between electro and rt, showed very interesting ideas


and i think this thread is good, but seems to be slowing down and becoming redundant, may i suggest finding a new topic such as say, hmm whats a good one whats a good one umm, such as low pressure regulaters found on cocker's matricies impulses etc

[flanders]

oh and on the flow rate thing, it peaks after initial fill (why velocity is often up 10 fps after a fill or will drop after a chrono after first fill) and as such as the tank empties the rate in which air flows out of the tank will slow, same reason why a paintball slows down when less air is behind it, less force less compression.

flow rate influenced by the bottle neck of the well, bottle neck (snickers ) but do to the design it is more influenced by the pin hole size of the tank

now correct em if im wrong but wouldn't a larger hole leading from tank to reg provide the best flow rate, or am i just mising something

also if some one could post pics of a full dis assembled cross fire reg would be helpful

[Pand0ra]

Any updates on this?

After 4 months of debate on how to measure the flow rate, it's time to move forward, or dig a deep grave for this thread...

[Scandalon]

Looks like some things need to be defined and clarified.

There's a lot of terms being bandied about, but not everyone knows what they mean (least of all me!) Seems as though there's 3 things to test on these regs. (Assuming the tanks hold the air and don't explode, they are outside the scope of this whole project.)As I understand it, these are:

1. Flow. This is simply how much air (volume) can get through the reg when it's "open" in a certain amount of time. I believe this get's more complicated with adjustable regs...or am I completely off base here?

2. Consistency. This seems to consist of 2 seperate things, the "fluctation ratio" and the "recharge rate". The ratio I speak of, I can't recall the proper term, but if a reg has a ratio of 50:1, it would mean that the output pressure would vary 1 psi for every 50psi difference in the input. (The tank, in this case)

Now, "recharge rate" - I believe this means how quickly the reg reacts to changes in input pressure. The assumption is that you want this as quick as possible so that as the input pressure drops while firing, the reg adjusts as quickly as possible to keep the output pressure the same.

That's my understanding - someone that knows more want to weigh in?

[askman]

I think the test should be done in realistic scenerio

I think pressure transducer(there probably is one that can measure 800 psi, I've worked with ones that measure low pressures) attached to the input asa and capture the signal on the Digital Oscope for 10+ shot string full auto fire would probably give the best answer. You can vary the input, output pressure, and also try it with several markers. (at least those with electronic triggers)

Since markers draw air in bursts, the reg is under higher stress. this probably is the best way to test reg's performance in real condition...