New Paintball Technology - UNDERTOW!!!!

[Webmaster]

http://imperialpaintball.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=browse&id=24908&pageid=60

hehee - i dunno - seems like its right up there with smart parts "wobbyly water ballon" therory.

Comments?

[UThomas]

Isn't this similar to Cooper T's old "Undershot" bolt?

[hitmanng]

Actually I think it is the same concept as the smart parts rifling. To quote Bill Gardner

The Smart parts barrel puts a very light spin on the ball. It's not disruptive. And what it does is, if you have a bell curve or distribution and you fire other than Smart Parts barrels, you'll find that when they reach the end of their energy curve, when they're way out there, they can fall in any direction. They can drop left, they can drop right, they can drop randomly- it's arandom pattern.
But the Smart Parts barrel, you'll find that the end of its trajectory, it will generally always fall in the one direction. That gives you a little bit more control over that flight path. A competative edge.

The concept is by spinning the ball a little you take out some of the randomness of the walking man.
Of course they are both trying to sell you something.
Hitmanng

[Alex-Angel]

Has anyone here actually tried one of these bolts yet?

[Umbra Solis]

I dunno, it just seems like an in-gun alteritive to tipman's flat-line barrel to me. it just seems silly to me, doesn't make much sense to me either. ah well

[Hasty8]

Not sure of the Undertow would work.

It might impart a slight spin around a fixed axis but isn't the problem the liquid core. It would take a substantial spin on the exterior, in any direction and on any axis, to get the interior spinning.

Anyone know the difference between the speed of the earths core and its crust? (I understand that this is a bad analogy due to the consideration that the earths core is most likely solid but I have nothing else)

[teamhereticsmagluvr]

I really like how they state it will be more accurate, but never show any photos of groupings from the undertow bolt and a normal bolt!

Sounds like phooey to me!

[ScatterPlot]

OK I havent read all the stuff on their site but are they talking about gyroscopic stability or backspinning to give it longer range? If its backspinning then theres no need to get the inside spinning, because its just the outside that effects the way it moves. Spinning cylinders and spheres create lift, and the insides dont matter. But if its gyroscopic then the innards of the thing matter a lot.

[Yamz]

if you dont get the inside spinning as well the outer shell will have too much drag to spin and the needed rate for and real amount of useful time

[Tunaman]

Help from TK?

I am sure Tom could quell this silly talk....he has "been there...done that"...

[backtrack2pb]

They're smoking crack. First off, in that firstlittle graphic where they're trying to show that paintballs rotate about a radom center (def not center of gravity) if fired from a regular barrel, just use common sense. Pick any point and try to rotate the paintball about that point while it is inside the barrel. Look what happens, the ball get's wedged in the barrel! Any paintball that has any inclination to rotate in the barrel has to rotate around their approximate center otherwise some really nasty stuff would start happening. The problem that I see is that when they put a blast of air at the bottom of the ball, it would jam the ball against the top of the barrel. I think it would be interesting to do the powder test with this bolt (coating the inside of the barrel with powder and then firing a ball to see where it touches the barrel). Anywho, at the bottom of the page they claim that their bolt is "friction free delrin," which is complete bs. I mean, come on, if they really did have friction free delrin they wouldn't waste it on bolts for paintball guns. Besides, it would be insanely expensive not to mention physcially impossible. Ignoring this, they're graph is irrelevent seeing as how it is lacking dimensions for the y-axis completely. But back to their claims of tighter grouping at longer range. There is a very good reason that rifles are, well, rifled. That is of course to impart a spin on the bullet and create gyroscopic stability. I can only fathom that this is what this company is trying to do but if you work out the math, you can't build up much inerita in a 12g paintball (that's the mass I used). Enough to make a difference, but until some real numbers are posted (actual spin rate for example), and even after they are posted, I would rather put my money into a new air system.

[FutureMagOwner]

i have one on my impulse and it works. your supposed to use it like a z body with a larger bore to create the back spin which flattens out the trajectory not to increase range

[oldsoldier]

Ok folks, here's a word of advice; if you want to be taken seriously, make sure your SPELLING is CORRECT. The first sentence is spelled wrong! I stopped reading after that, because, frankly, I no longer cared. A paintball moves too slowly and has too much mass for spin to affect accuracy to any great degree. People need to stop applying bullet ballistics to paintball; they are two different things.

[backtrack2pb]

It's ballistics in general, and the same physics that apply to a 45/70 apply to a .68 Nelson.

[Enigma4you]

I read all the stuff above, I have in the past read Toms words of wisdom on the spinning of paint balls. I have conducted my own test and come to this conclusion. Any money a person spends on a gadget that causes the spinning of a normal paint ball is waisted. Several factors come into play when ever this conversation comes up.
1. A paint ball is not a solid object, nor is it a liquid filled object it is a gel and even the viscosity of that gell within any one paintball is not consistant due to age, temp, humidity.

2. size and wheight are not a constant due to the above conditions.

I saw someone talk about gryoscopic principle. Those laws only apply to solid objects. However if you apply them to the shell only what will happen is the ball will balance its self and spin on its own center of gravity, however with a gell filling that center of gravity is not a constant and what you will find is a very inconsistant flight path.

Try this, spin a glass of ice water, does the ice and water spin at the same rate? No. Now take a shot glass and fill it 3/4 full with veg oil, and 1/4 with some other liquid, do the veg oil, other liquid and shot glass spin at the same rate? No. Now clean out the shot glass fill it with you drink of choice relax and remember that we play paintball for the fun of it.