Look Ma!! It's a Dimpled Paintball!!!

[SeeK]

I think this was analysed on rec.sport.paintball and the conclusion was that there wasn't enough time for the dimples to matter. Backspin wouldn't work without high RPM.

[sniper1rfa]

make it a little rougher and you might see some interesting things. however, what i was getting at, is that paintballs may already be rough enough that you wont see any difference between them and a dimpled ball.

they do go fairly far...

[Dragoon]

Alright Tom, youv'e watched as they guys debate it, but what were your findings?

Afterall you stated that it didn't work. Why not?

Douglas

[50 cal]

Sooo Tom, whatever became of the solid shelled p-ball? Give it up, or isn't it cost effective?

[Bront]

I would think that it might actualy be a shell integrity thing, inorder to make the shell able to do that, it'd have to be so thick that it'd be inefective in breaking on it's targets.

At least that would be a problem I'd see, depends ultimately on how it would work.

[Star_Base_CGI]

SImple soloution

The answer is simple create a propriatary paintball gun that puts a spin on the paintball from top to bottom.

Spin the paintball top to bottom to give it more lift and more turbulance.

1. Create a special striker and launcher that spins the bottom up when it lauches the paintball.

2. Put some kind of rough irregular surface on the top of the barrel to traction the ball spin up.

3. Make and market the whole system a propriatary size. Make it like .55 That way you have to buy the special gun to shoot the balls and the special balls to shoot in the gun.

Call em VTOL spin ball systems or some *EDIT* Please do not cicumvent the cuss filters, you have been warned. Army like that.

Sadly thats what the world is becoming.

[halB]

star, apg had a system that actually had a spinning barrel to test ball spin on flight i believe, so he could use that. or maybe they just thought of using one. anyways, id like to hear from tom what he found instead of us guessing

[The Frymarker]

Okay what I want to know is how many dimples are on it?

[AGD]

This is all being discussed in Deep Blue. Long story short typical paintball spin has little to do with paintball accuracy. The dimples made the accuracy worse. We tried all types of induced spins with no appreciable increase in accuracy.

AGD

[Bront]

Was there any change in distance? From what I can tell, the dimples might reduce drag a bit allowing for a longer distance.

Were you actualy able to make paintballs with dimples? Or just the test balls like you have a picture of?

[aut911]

Just for fun, i think AGD should go to a driving range with either a flatline model 98 or one of those z mags, reason being golfballs or rather the drivers were designed specifically to impart backspin on the golf ball thereby making the range of the golf ball, or air time longer.

Id love to see him at the range though.



FOUR!!
aut

[MINIMAG4LIFE]

so when can we expect a foam rubber ball? something I can shoot at the cat and wife around the house. Maybe make ones that could be used as squeegie balls

[ChucktheMAGician]

Originally posted by MINIMAG4LIFE
so when can we expect a foam rubber ball? something I can shoot at the cat and wife around the house. Maybe make ones that could be used as squeegie balls

Excellent idea, if it could be done? I think this could be it's own thread idea tho. If there are any I want some:)

[Star_Base_CGI]

Why it wont work.

It dawned on me. The whole thing why this doesnt work.

Paintballs are filled with paint.

Take two eggs and boil them.

Spin both eggs. The raw egg wont spin.

Physics case in short.

You cant spin a paintball because their filled with liquid.

If you shot a solid dimpled ball I gaurantee it would spin up. SO thats why the accuracy sucks.

[SuperBeast]

I noticed that people don't seem to get the concept of fluid dynamics, or have come close but to no conclusion.

For the record, dimples are used a lot. I wouldn't call baseball, football, etc. cutting edge technology. Rather, I would look at F1 racing, naturally aspirated low displacement motors (motorbikes and Honda B series motors).

There are several terms to be looked at here. There is flow velocity, flow capacity and flow quality. Flow velocity would be how fast a fluid travels. Flow capacity would be how much of that fluid travels. Flow quality would be the nature in which that fluid travels.

When air comes out of air conditioners, flows across airplane wings, or is sucked into a motor it travels in layers. This is called laminar flow. The air travels in layers that are "laminated" upon eachother. In the actual paintgun, I doubt air travels in a laminar form, since the air spends time compressed and decompressing. That would be turbulent flow. However, it is the flight of the ball that we look at when the ball is in flight. We want the ball to fly as straight and far as possible (a perfect straight line could never be achieved b/c of gravity).

So, what would cause a ball to fly through air with as little resistance as possible? When two surfaces rub against eachother, they are going to have some kind of friction coefficient. Without going into the math part of it, I can tell you that some surfaces have worse coefficients of friction than others, or they aren't as "slick". In machines, smooth surfaces are good for less friction and easier movement. This is not the case in fluid flow. The smoother a surface is, the worse a fluid will travel over it. B/c the surface is smoother, there is more surface area present to create more laminar drag. When I say laminar drag, I mean that fluid does not flow as well, causing a "pile up". This slows down the flow velocity.

Take the head off your motor and polish everything to a crystal smooth surface. You will destroy it's performance namely because you have destroyed it's airflow or it's ability to breathe. Why do sharks have rough skin?

So how do the dimples help out? The dimples help out because they reduce the surface area that the air flows over. This allows for better flow velocity and less laminar drag.

Don't think a paintball's speed is so minute and small that dimples and the such won't make a difference. The mean flow velocity for most motors is about 240-260 fps. That's a little below what we run the muzzle velocities of paintballs at.