How many times can an autococker cycle per second?

[AGD]

Here are some things to consider:

Our Superbolt weighs 1.1 oz, I bet that is lighter than most cocker or angel bolt/hammer assemblies. Someone please weigh them and prove me wrong (I never have).

The forward momentum of the Mag bolt is decellerated by the bolt spring and will reverse without hitting anything. The rearward motion is stopped by a rubber bumper.

Hammer valve guns like the cocker/angel/impulse decellerate the forward stroke of the bolt by hitting the valve stem which is held closed with about 300 psi pressure. On return they hit something else like the back of the ram.

How smooth your gun shoots is largely based on how much you spent on it for bragging rights. They all wack something when they shoot.

AGD

[nerobro]

it's not even worth weighing ;-) other than for figuring out how much more they weigh.... Actually... Hmm... *digs out the scales* It would be nice to have numbers to play with.

Are you saying that the spring in the automag never get's fully compressed? (I thought that was the reason it was switched to a square crossection instead of a round one..)

I'd like to get back to the real point of this thread... how fast can we get a cocker to cycle ;-)

[squidboy69]

is that 1.1 oz the ENTIRE superbolt, or just the delrin sleeve?

I've just gone and weighed some new fangeled space age bolt for my cocker I was given to 'beta' test, and it was 2.2oz

not sure what it is, but is slick (coefficient of friction) as hell. It matches the bore of my gun flawlessly, but if I have the gun angled slightly, it'ss slide right through the marker, barrel and all... weird stuff.

[AGD]

Under normal conditions the bolt spring does not bottom out. We went to the square wire to increase the force. When dry firing it can bottom.

1.1 is for the ENTIRE Superbolt.

AGD

[sniper1rfa]

[AGD]

35 grams = 1.23oz. What is the weight of the hammer and cocking rod?

AGD

[Doc Nickel]

Okay, we're talking about two different things here, again.

I'd heard the snippet about RaceGun as well, and the consensus was that they were not firing it at circa-eighteen per second, they were cycling it at 18+.

There's a difference.

The original post asks how fast a 'Cocker can cycle. By this I assume he means chamber and fire a ball with minimal loss in velocity, correct?

From my fooling around with my own ElectroCocker design using a KM2 "Morlock" board, I could very, very easily hit the default 10/sec rate-of-fire, using a Max Flow and Tornado and running around 180 psi according to the cheap guage.

I don't have a chrony that will record a string of shots that fast, but there was little or no apparent dropoff, as measured by my Mk I Mod 0 eyeball.

It could have easily lost 20 fps, over and above the usual few fps consistency variance, without my noticing, but as I said, without a chrony that can cycle and record as fast as it can shoot, that's no more than a guess.

Now, the default timing I was using equalled almost exactly ten complete cycles per second- meaning it took not quite 100ms to release the sear, wait, push the block back, wait, and bring the block forward. Unfortunately, there's still a minor glitch in the Morlock software, something about overrunning timers. The gun is at KM2 now so Curt can iron out the software.

However, I'm assured that the Morlock can cycle far faster than that. It was suggested that, if I wanted to simply "show off" like the aforementioned RaceGun demonstration, that I should alter the timing to minimums and let it rip at 20+ cycles per second.

I'll drop a note to KM2 and see if Curt can stick a 'scope on it and see how fast the gun can cycle.

Doc.

[Failure]

Doc the morlock can cycle faster, the thing about the morlock board is that it is fully adjustable, unlike the race. I believe the morlock was adjustable from 1-100 ms.

[sniper1rfa]

each timing register is a byte...

they can be adjusted from 1 (technically 0, but that is locked) to 255.

the cocking rod and hammer are both the stock 2k parts, but i dont know how heavy they are, we never measured.

and doc, if you put the timing to minimums, nothing would happen. ther just wouldnt be any time for anything to happen because all the minimums are 1 ms. thats 4 ms for the solenoid 1 pulse, solenoid 1 holdoff, solenoid 2 pulse, and the solenoid 2 holdoff. although, if something did happen, that would be 250 bps. fun.

[Vegeta]

Cycling speed will always be faster than shooting speed. ALWAYS. Even if someone makes a extreemly reliable forcefeeding system, it will still be able to cycle a bit faster than it can feed. This is much like my post about the stacked tube reversed bolt design I had, which I posted here in deep blue. Theoretically, it worked, but it would cycle once so fast that there would be no time at all for the ball to feed. The hammer went backwards (toward player) And was linked to bolt on top, which moved with it. The hammer hit hte valve at about 10ms after the chamber was fully open. I thought that by the time the air got to the top, the ball would be in, and then the blowback would push it all forwards again, but no. it owuld be a blender, not a marker. i still like the concpet. Im sure tom has seen this, butmany times you come up with ideas that look great, but cant be done becuase of eitehr modern technology is not great enough or physics juts wont allow it.

[314159]

this just hit me and would verify some of the results out there. warpig used an autococker(with the cocking rod removed so it wouldn't fire to avoid the ballsuck effect on loading preformance)to test out some of the loaders currently available. they went up to 15bps before some of the loaders started to have problems.

with the hammer engaged, the force to move the hammer back, slowing down the bolt back, some of that force is applied to accelerating the hammer(the force it takes to cock hammer from the length of the hammer lug past the sear). so for an aproximation, you could say that this is insignificant and that it cancels itself out.

the factory settings on the centerflag grip frame had long times for the back block to go back, and the back block to go forward. they use standard autococker 4 ways on their guns. (autococker 4 ways have a problem with sticking, more so the higher you turn the pressure, usually resulting in a stronger trigger return spring) which in centerflags case, would make them use a stronger solenoid, which might be prhoibitive on the battery.

if you were to use a mac valve, like racegun and sandridge do. you could set the pressure of your cycling pneumatics to 80 psi which would increase the cycling speed.

lightining the hammer spring, would also increase the cycle rate.

you could lighten the hammer spring further if you put in a valve spring light enough to hold the valve stem in place, and have the back block timed so it closes the valve (this might have some blowback issues, resulting in a longer bolt, negating the suggested preformance increase.)

you could also increase the rof, by reducing friction from the bolt/body. and the hammer/body.

sandrige claims their guns top out at 16 bps, but their cockers are not clock driven, there event driven (which can cause reliablity problems. ie. more things to break) for example, they have a sensor on the ram that senses when the bolt is all the way open, they have a sensor to see when the ball is in the chamber. so there rof is limited almost to cycling speed, and how fast u can dump paint into them.

if you would shorten the length of hose from the mac valve, to the ram attached to the sear, or replaced this with a solenoid, you could increase rate of fire.

adding an adjustable eye that would allow the gun to fire before the ball is all the way in the chamber would also add a little to the rate of fire.


after saying all this, rate of fire has no corilation with the amount of fun you get out of playing paintball. i have been playing pgp the past couple times i have been out having a blast averaging .5 bps .

[314159]

it seems the autococker will always cycle slower than the automag, i'm thinking that the suction an autococker can generate might make up for this. i wonder if it is enough suction to suck the next round into the chamber faster than the warp could push the next round in the chamber.

now only if the automag could have ball suction. (hint hint )

[Vegeta]

Basically, make the parts lighter, oil it better, it will cycle faster. make to parts smaller, and it will cycle faster. Thast why you can supposedly get a high ROF on a PTP minicocker than on a normal one. the bolt is cut down and ther back block is nearly eliminated. Its plain physics. If you have a gun with a 1200 gram bolt, it will cycle slower at first becuase it takes mroe force to move a object with more mass compared to a 800 gram bolt. BUT theoretically, once this heavy bolt gets cycling, the mass should actually help keep it up to speed, becuase its harder to stop something heavier. The problem there is, the thing has to recipricate. it has to go back and forth, and at each end of the stroke it has to stop. If there was a way to make it keep going all in one direction, like a ring, you could get extremely fast cycling speeds.. like a waterwheel. It keeps spinning in one directi0on, the direction of the flow. It doesn't stop and go backwards to get more water now does it.

So we can get faster speeds by making the parts smaller and lighter. And if we coat them with a material that repels friction from the casing they are enclosed it it will go even faster. But it will always have to stop at the end of its stroke, and go backwards. and the deceeleration and acceleration at the end of each side will always slow it down.


whwew that was long.

[nerobro]

Hmm.. Vegeta brigns up an interesting point... how light can we get the autocockign components in a cocker. If you want to find the smallest set of moving components in an autococking gun.. take a look at the blazer. And blazers are very friendly to really high LPR pressrues...... Gah, how to make me spend MORE money... Still we need to dig up a testing rig to add some real numbers to all of this.

[314159]

i rember when autocockers had the large back blocks, and for a while the bob long ones still did. i think the trick to timing one of them was to set up the cocking rod so that it would stop the back block (the hammer reaching the point of furthermost travel about the same time the ram would reach it's internal stop) and then when the trigger was released, the hammer spring would help push the back block foward.

i guess that it is all in how you have it set up.