New Ideas Wanted

[RazorMonkey]

...after SP stole the Shocker from them.

SP bought the design... SP haters make me laugh...

[Riddler236]

Good comeback.

I live in Pittsburgh and witnessed this debacle nine years ago. But there are two sides to every story. Maybe the PVI guys I heard it from were biased, considering they had just lost their jobs.

SP paid PVI to design and manufacture the marker. They (SP) then reverse-engineered it, patented it and gave PVI notice to halt production or face legal action. PVI tried to remain in business by designing the Cyber9000 but lacked the funds to launch the marker. Some few prototypes are still floating around out there.

[Jotsy]

i was thinking. currently, no matter how well the marker regulates the shot, inconsistencies in the paintball will affect the shot. so i was thinking, what if a marker actually measured the size of the ball, very accurately and very quickly while its in the breech. then calculates and releases the appropriate amount of air to get the shot to the right speed.

the measurement could be done using special eyes i suppose, oooor a clamp/trap door style breech. instead of having a bolt move back and forth under the feedneck, have a clamping style breech that clamps the ball as it drop from the feedneck and thus closing off the feedport (this should also have the side effect of reducing recoil since there's no reciprocating mass). if you can attach a sensor to the clamp that detects how far the clamp has closed to a very VERY accurate degree, you can get a measurement of the size of the ball.


on a different idea....

the original post said that this thread is for other paintball related products too, so here is another one of my ideas. now, paintball is really fun and exciting to play, but watching others play tends to be a bit boring for me. it just looks like a bunch of guys ducking around behind obstacles. what would make it more exciting to watch?

answer: tracer rounds.

how cool would it be if the audience could actually see where all the shots were going. if they could see everytime someone just barely dodges a shot. if they could see why players are cowering behind cover. but how to get that tracer effect? they way i see it, there are 3 options:

1) glow in the dark paintballs. they have glow in the dark bbs in airsoft and they work really well, but only in the dark, or through smoke. i'm not entirely sure if the larger sized paintballs would make them easier to spot though.

2) highly reflective paintballs. you notice how road signs light up really well even at a distance with a regular flashlight? what if the paintballs were cover with that same reflective paint and then we played with large spotlights overhead (like in a stadium). since the balls are round, they should reflect light in all directions and light up really well.

3) beforehand, take note of the playing field (grass, bunkers, surrounding landscape etc) and then use specially selected colored paintball shells that are designed to contrast the area. this sounds like the most feasible, but its not guaranteed to work at all locations. and you prob won't get that cool streaking effect...

[edit] another idea would be highly explosive, but of course harmless, paintballs. painballs that are guaranteed to explode in a big puff of colored smoke and paint, so that spectators can see where they hit bunkers, or the ground next to players. plus, it makes the game look like there's more at stake . of ourse, this idea would be alot harder to pull off than the tracer ideas....

[LorneCash]

I did a project for my experimentation class to measure the roundness of 8 or so different types of paintballs and to see how much force it takes to crush them at 3 different temperatures. I collected hundreds of data points and it was mildly interesting but the point is that paintballs aren't round therefore measuring the diameter would have to be done on several axes to get an accurate reading. The way i did it was I took a digital caliper that could measure to the .0005in and measured arround the seam and found the smallest and largest diameter. I then measured the diameter from the north pole to the south pole of the shell (usually the smallest diameter, if i remember right). The results might surprise you but as expensive as marbalizer is it wasn't the best... as far as breaking force consistancy or roundness. I actually don't remember which one was best but I know PMI premium was up there and that's what I use so I felt justified to continue doing so. One thing to note is that some of the balls were not the freshest so that may have affected some of the results. I just needed to do a large variety to complete the necessary requirements for the project the only ones I cared about was Menace, Premium, and Marbolizer, those I know were fresh and a good batch of each.

[Beemer]

Hey Lorne did you weigh the paint to?

Where can I get a chrono that will measure FPS on 15 balls in one second?

[LorneCash]

Hey Lorne did you weigh the paint to?

Where can I get a chrono that will measure FPS on 15 balls in one second?

no why do you think that would matter that would just tell you the density of the fill...



PACT mkIV Championship Timer will do it

[SeeK]

If you used Perfect Circle rounds you could then concentrate on the other issues.

There are just too many variables with moisture levels to try to make it work with regular paintballs.

Once the other problems are worked out you could then concentrate on the self sizing breech.

[Beemer]

no why do you think that would matter that would just tell you the density of the fill...

PACT mkIV Championship Timer will do it

Oops wrong tangent on the weight. I was in FPS mode. Size and weight.

The MKIV is the timer. Pacts best chrono will only read FPS on one shot every second. Oehler has one that will do a thirty round burst but it is more then one second. When I said I needed FPS on fifteen shots in one second, reps I talked to from both companys kinda went Huh. Oehler's chrono was twelve hundred dollars.

But anyway heres the idea. A portable easy to set up Gun Dyno. Measures FPS and BPS.
My paint my barrel. My paint is all the same size and weighs exactly the same and its PR, PerfectlyRound. The bore is a perfect match to. That takes care of size, shape, weight and match. Now run the dyno

Peace Out
____________

[hitech]

Tom thought the built-in chrono was doable now. Here is his post:

Well if everyone were to suddenly give up their preconcieved notions of what is good and bad about a paintgun then this is what we could do NOW.

Run guns at much HIGHER pressures so you could make all the internal components smaller and more compact. This would lead to overall smaller guns with better efficiency.

Better efficiency means smaller tanks making the guns lighter and smaller overall.

Built in crono's that maintain your velocity at exactly what you set it to even when your tank starts running below your working pressure. This would mean that even though you we shooting a "high pressure" marker you would use it to the bottom of the tank. In order to do this you would have to have a fixed barrel but since everyone has to waist money on replacable barrels this thinking would have to change.

Trigger systems that would accomodate ALL of your fingers for "4 finger walking" pushing the fire power into the 30 BPS range.

Pre-load bolt systems that chamber the next round while you are firing the first elliminating ball feed lag.

Pressure feeding loaders that feed balls from anywhere into your flamethrower. OOPS we already have that, Warp Feeds....

Electronically timed millisecond on/off valves that would completely eliminate regulators. Lets see, we can take off the tank reg, then the vert reg and oh yea the LPR too. You would have to be ready to put all those manufacturers out of business.

Very high speed two shot bursts where the 2nd ball would draft close behind the first ball for greater accuracy. The first ball would disrupt the air column and leave behind a turbulent wake. The turbulence would disrupt the laminar flow that leads to vortex shedding on the 2nd ball. Disrupt the vortex and improve the accuracy.

No real gun with any state of the art firepower shoots from a clip. Clips are so 1900's. Real guns in all the worlds militaries use a belt feed from a huge magazine. We still love our cute little pods and hoppers and fashion matched pod belts so we look good when we are posing on the field. Maybe someday we will get with the program and use a backpack that could shoot a case of paint non stop. Oh yea, we have that right now too but no one wants it.

And last but not lease an electronically timed, high pressure marker without regulators could plug into a laptop, test itself and tell you exactly what's wrong with it.

This is just one possible reality, most likely not to be part of any of your futures. Have fun with your pods.

AGD

[Beemer]

Tom thought the built-in chrono was doable now. Here is his post:

Well probably, but I cant find a COTS chrono anywhere that will read velocity[fps] for 15 balls in one second.

In contradiction to the whole idea of a self regulating marker, we attempted to make the most consistent one instead. Using a well tuned Tippmann, an "A5" with some internals work, chrono'd between 277& 279 for 2500 shots, in a test done last September at Flagraiders Paintball in Toronto.
Dye Throttle air tank, CP reg, Evil and Marble paints were mixed as a batch, AA two piece barrel. Varrying rates of fire from 1 bps to 13,( the limit of the Tippmann E-grip) were used.

-On a side note, consistency made for incredible accuracy, something I cannot stress enough when tuning your marker.

I wonder what chrono they used to read FPS at 13 BPS. I cant find any other info on this test.

How come all they push today is ROF and not consistency. How consistent are these guns today at 15bps?

[hitech]

Well probably, but I cant find a COTS chrono anywhere that will read velocity[fps] for 15 balls in one second.

In his discussions with the radar chrono guys (I think it was them), they told him that his in barrel chrono was doable with today's technology.

And I could have sworn that someone on here had a chrono that could handle at least 15bps. Can't remember who it was...

[shades]

Barrel CHONOGRAPH! Geez get with the time that has been here and gone. It was made by Brass Eagle and available at Wal Mart a few YEARS!!! ago. next subject. Proof: google "Brass Eagle Chrono"

[hitech]

Not exactly the same thing...

[Jotsy]

as for the self chrono, self regulating system, i think the best way to do it would be to somehow put a radar chrono (or some sort of laser range finding system) somewhere behind the ball when its in the breech. like have it part of the bolt or something and have the beam read straight down the barrel.

that way it can read the fps at regular intervals during firing without having to have multiple sensors along the barrel (and with an added bonus of being ale to use whatever barrel you want). then it could read the fps (in real time) and shut off the valve once it hits 300fps. this way it would control the current shot rather than the next shot.

also, while we're at it, why not implement a system where you can program in the length of your barrel so that the valve can be adjusted to optimize it. for example, for a short barrel, the pressure would be turned up and the valve would have to open and close faster in order to get the ball up to 300fps in say something like 8". But for something like a 20" barrel, the pressure can be turned down and the valve left open longer cos the ball has more room to accelerate. this also has the plus point of being softer on the paint.

ALSO, since there's gonna be a sensor looking down the barrel, we could program it so that it could detect and differentiate between chops or barrel breaks etc (usefull if the gun was set up like an xmag or an angel where you can quickly get into the breech for quick clean, or if its just a barrel break, then the gun could just shoot a blast of air down the barrel). mebe even stop shooting or give a signal when the barrel and chamber has been empty for a while telling the user to reload.

[Jotsy]

btw, why isn't there a manual override for the haloB for when the eyes get clogged up? it would basically just ignore the eyes and keep loading continously. when the user stops shooting the z-code prevents the loader from crushing the balls, but instead of stopping after a few tries, it will just keep on doing the anti-jam procedure (ie, rotating the drive cone back and forth) until the user starts shooting again. i know it will eat up batteries much faster, but at least it'll get you thru a 5 minute game when you need it most.