Gun on Liquid

[Mrmacdude]

Why arent there any guns made to run on only liquid co2??? with no rapid expansion, velocity would be really consistent.

[NuthyN]

efficiency would go to hell

[alexrusek]

Yes there are. They use siphon tanks and are very rare. They are usually VERY heavy and have vertical bottle setups. They also shoot lots of frost out the end of the barrel, other than that you'd think it was a regualr pb gun.

[Wat]

pumps

Many pump guns can be be setup to run on liquid CO2 like the phantom. Its harder for semis as liquid CO2 is hard on regulators and orings and seals but some were specifically designed to be able to run on liquid. I think the Vector was one of them.

[eisenhans]

Hiya,

The Z series guns by Montneel Designs are designed to run on liquid CO2 (kits to convert them to run on vapor were/are available).

http://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/paintguns/z.faq.shtml

A Z1 was my first paintball gun, although it was stolen within two weeks of the purchase and I bought a MicroMag as a replacement.

The Z1 is actually a very lightweight gun and is pretty compact.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

eisenhans

[sdsm_99]

Maybe to continue the discussion in deep blue would be to tackle the assumptions made about a marker running on liquid CO2. Does a marker running on liquid CO2 have rapid expansion? Can we really say it does not have rapid expansion? And how would having or not having this expansion affect consistency (constant velocity) in a marker?:)

[Wat]

Yeah, it was the Mega Z not the vector i was thinking off that ran off liquid.

And i don't think we can't say that running liquid does not have rapid expansion. Once the liquid CO2's pressure is dropped to ambiant, it will flash into a gas pretty damn quick. What would effect velocity consistancy is temperature. The density of the liquid co2 would vary with temperature and thus the mass amount of liquid you'd draw could vary and thus your velocity would vary. However, in gas co2 powered gun, you have liquid co2 boiling off into gas in your tank, chilling your tank and dropping your pressure.

In a liquid co2 gun, there is no chilling of your tank effect because the boiling occurs in the gun, not the tank. So while your gun my chill you'd be drawing liquid co2 at the same temperature. And even if you cooled off the liquid you drew, the density of liquid co2 does not vary as much with temperature as does the pressure of gaseous co2 does. I've used phantoms on siphon tanks and while they would shoot clouds of snow, they never had velocity problems.

As for why not to run co2. Unless you're using food grade co2, the industrial stuff has a reputation of having lots of excess gunk in it. Plus a lot of guns these days run with one or two regulators of some kind and co2 tends not to be to gentle on them.

[nerobro]

Most guns without regulators onboard will happily run liquid. Liquid is a rocking way to overcome the shortfalls of co2 ;-) You only need to expand a few cubic inches worth of co2 instead of a few cubic feet of it.

VM's like liquid. Tippmans up untill the CVX valve were great on liquid. Most pump guns love liquid ;-)

Mega-Z's can run on vapor too. IT's just a question of choice.

Oh yea, one more liquid only gun. The 68-special. And IIRC all the SMG's used siphon tanks as well.

[jinxed]

I run my electros on HPA, but I still run all my pumps and blowbacks on liquid co2.

The advantages are similar to HPA:
1- Impossible to shoot down.
2- Works perfect in cold weather.
3- no fps spikes. Consistent.
4- no need for regs, ECs, LPCs, anti-siphons, etc

My MegaZ got 1300 shots per 20oz, which is pretty good.
Below 88 degrees, a LIQUID system will perform better then ANY non-liquid system with regs, or expansion chambers.

Above 88degrees it has a problem. The liquid and gas both turn into a "super critical co2". In this state, the velocity will drop, so you either need to fog the system, or just shoot alot to keep the temperature of the tank down.

Nick
(I wrote that FAQ at warpig mentioned above, btw).

[billmi]

Whoa! Nick! Blast from the past! How are you doing these days? Back into paintball again, I take it?

Off the top of my head the other paintgun commonly set up to run on liquid CO2 was the VM 68. Bottle placement (vertical, backbottle) etc. is pretty much irrelevant on liquid CO2 guns because they use a flexible weighted siphon tube inside. The bottle just needs to be oriented with the valve above the horizontal plane.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills

[nerobro]

And here I thought he had gone the way of al mollick ;-) Jinxed, it's good to see you. Your faq's did a lot of good for me back in the day ;-) Heck look at my responce to what this guy said.....

[jinxed]

Oh, I still play, but with work and family, I can only squeeze a couple games a year. I've been surfing around the boards lately because work is slow, and nothing to do... :)

I also ran my VM68 on liquid, but unlike the MegaZ, it only for 500 shots per 20oz! I tried tweaking the valve, but it never improved. It shot fantastic, but when I used it for tournaments, I would have to stick on a 20+7 or even a 20+20oz!

Most modern blowbacks seem to have problems with liquid though. The cycle speed is increased so fast that the sear has a hard time catching the hammer. So, the main spring often has to be chopped to compensate.

-nick

[FSU_Paintball]

Ever heard of the Tippmann 68 special? (I think that's it's name)

A very old gun. Semi-auto. Ran on liquid CO2

Unfortunately, that also shot it's efficiency to hell. Something like 200 shots off of a 20 oz tank. CO2 is efficient in general because it's liquid, and you just use the gas that it expands into. That means you can get a lot of shots out of one tank, because that liquid expands a LOT when it becomes a gas. If you use the liquid itself to power the gun, you'll suck the tank dry very quickly.

In other words, it's not a good idea.

[Frontline Newbie]

any tippman can, well maby not the a-5 or, I read it on some alaskin paintball websight

[SnarlBuckle]

so are you guys saying that running liquid will work well in cold weather? how cold?