[cockerpunk]

accuracy compared to several benchmarks: https://docs.google....FwcU1nYmc#gid=0

chrono data compared to the best of the best: https://docs.google....dLNGpJX0E#gid=0

video will be up shortly!

[UV Halo]

So, what can we know about this 'barracuda' barrel? Manufacturer? Bore? It looks like Flasc.

Are there claims of noise reduction associated with this barrel? My intuition causes me to suspect that this barrel will be louder than traditionally ported barrels of a similar bore/length.

Am I correct in assuming that off board / Chrono error shots are simply not included in the data?

[cockerpunk]

i will leave it in the hands of the folks who made the barrel to say something about it.

interesting chrono results ....

[Egomaniacal]

Bore was spec'd at 0.680", I don't know what it is after polishing.

cockerpunk, on 21 September 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

interesting chrono results ....

Indeed. Although the chrono results from the accuracy testing tell a less impressive story.

[cockerpunk]

Egomaniacal, on 21 September 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

Bore was spec'd at 0.680", I don't know what it is after polishing.

cockerpunk, on 21 September 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

interesting chrono results ....

Indeed. Although the chrono results from the accuracy testing tell a less impressive story.

we rechrono during accuracy testing. this is where we noticed it was not as much of a gas hog as we suspected it would be.

[Egomaniacal]

Ah, makes sense.

tyronejk said:

"Maybe Lurker's new barrel?

I was just given the go-ahead to say yes, this was a collaboration between Lurker and myself to be sold as a new Lurker barrel. We will go over the test data and possibly make revisions/changes. Our original goal was to produce a statistically more accurate barrel, but if we're seeing increases in efficiency we'll take that into consideration during our design process. The velocity gains are not entirely unexpected, although more pronounced than we would have thought.

This post has been edited by Egomaniacal: 21 September 2012 - 03:28 PM

[rntlee]

13"-14" vectors at 100' are pretty mediocre...You were getting better results at 125' in your previous testing. Was the paint in good shape?

[drg]

So ... what ideas were supposedly used in this barrel? Are you still planning to produce it given the complexity vs lack of results?
Seems very crown point.

This post has been edited by drg: 22 September 2012 - 01:35 AM

[rntlee]

It looks to me like they were hoping to mitigate any muzzle effects. I personally was never able to create any measurable improvement in shot spread via this approach. I couldn't even measure a difference between an un-ported "tube", and one with pretty elaborate porting and muzzle break.
The best bet for creating a statistically measurable, better-shooting apparatus is via spin-reduction. This would require a completely redesigning the paintball marker from the ground up, and still the result would be measurable only with the best performing paints.

[upriver]

Do you have a detailed description of how you ran these tests? Also, can you explain the logic behind using a^2 + b^2 = c^2 on the standard deviations? What does vec. stand for?

thanks

[Egomaniacal]

drg, on 22 September 2012 - 01:31 AM, said:

Seems very crown point.

Hah yeah, the funny part is I didn't even see the crown point until after I had finished the design. I think Tom had different goals in mind with his design.

rntlee, on 22 September 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

It looks to me like they were hoping to mitigate any muzzle effects. I personally was never able to create any measurable improvement in shot spread via this approach. I couldn't even measure a difference between an un-ported "tube", and one with pretty elaborate porting and muzzle break.

Pretty much.

rntlee, on 22 September 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

The best bet for creating a statistically measurable, better-shooting apparatus is via spin-reduction. This would require a completely redesigning the paintball marker from the ground up, and still the result would be measurable only with the best performing paints.

We'll see.

[brycelarson]

UV Halo, on 21 September 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

Are there claims of noise reduction associated with this barrel? My intuition causes me to suspect that this barrel will be louder than traditionally ported barrels of a similar bore/length.

The barrel is louder than other Lurker barrels. It also "pings" like the crown point. We were shooting it on my Protege - I'm sure on an Epic or mag it would ring like crazy.

rntlee, on 21 September 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

13"-14" vectors at 100' are pretty mediocre...You were getting better results at 125' in your previous testing. Was the paint in good shape?

The paint was medium-poor - but as with all our tests - the paint quality day to day isn't really too important. Since we always run comparative tests rather than universal tests it works fine.

Egomaniacal, on 22 September 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

Hah yeah, the funny part is I didn't even see the crown point until after I had finished the design. I think Tom had different goals in mind with his design.

TK's thought process behind the crown point was that he wanted to have a gradual introduction of the pressure / ball out of the barrel. He now knows that the air flow doesn't work that way - but his thought process was that the tapered opening would at first let the air out gradually - then increasingly as it progressed along the triangle shaped hole.

The big difference I see with this barrel is the "rail" system created by the combination of the tapered slots and the internal fluting.

[rntlee]

brycelarson, on 23 September 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

rntlee, on 21 September 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

13"-14" vectors at 100' are pretty mediocre...You were getting better results at 125' in your previous testing. Was the paint in good shape?

The paint was medium-poor - but as with all our tests - the paint quality day to day isn't really too important. Since we always run comparative tests rather than universal tests it works fine.

Ok, I thought that was probably so.

Not being critical here, but I don't understand your methodology regarding paint choice for tests. You fellows insist on indoor testing, yet are willing to use mediocre paint in your tests? Paint is always the biggest factor in accuracy, and poor shooting paint will obfuscate any meaningful results you might obtain regarding the barrel's effect on shot spread. The barrel's only large input into paintball shot spread is imparted spin. Yet, in order to be able to measure different spins via the shot spread, you HAVE to use excellent paint.
I know your argument about "practical" accuracy, but there are more factors involved in a test such as this. The ability to market a barrel that is demonstrably better-shooting than any other barrel would be a HUGE asset to the manufacturer, even if the difference was conditional on paint quality.

This post has been edited by rntlee: 23 September 2012 - 08:25 AM

[Egomaniacal]

rntlee, on 23 September 2012 - 08:23 AM, said:

brycelarson, on 23 September 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

rntlee, on 21 September 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

13"-14" vectors at 100' are pretty mediocre...You were getting better results at 125' in your previous testing. Was the paint in good shape?

The paint was medium-poor - but as with all our tests - the paint quality day to day isn't really too important. Since we always run comparative tests rather than universal tests it works fine.

Ok, I thought that was probably so.

Not being critical here, but I don't understand your methodology regarding paint choice for tests. You fellows insist on indoor testing, yet are willing to use mediocre paint in your tests? Paint is always the biggest factor in accuracy, and poor shooting paint will obfuscate any meaningful results you might obtain regarding the barrel's effect on shot spread. The barrel's only large input into paintball shot spread is imparted spin. Yet, in order to be able to measure different spins via the shot spread, you HAVE to use excellent paint.

I would agree with this, and while I appreciate that better paint is more $, by using medium-poor grade paint you're intentionally introducing noise to the system. No conclusions can be drawn about performance with good paint, because any potential signal might have been wiped out.

IMO we've learned about as much as we can with shitty paint, things like good bore sizes (for shitty paint) and appropriate barrel lengths. And really, we've learned that most barrels of the same bore and length perform pretty much equivalently under those conditions. But any finesse beyond the most blunt of effects - things like internal surface finish, gloss vs. matte paint, differences in porting patterns etc - will be drowned out by imperfections in the way the ball makes contact with the barrel, so we don't really have any information on how to achieve peak performance - which I think is what a lot of people are going for.

tl;dr - we've pretty much learned a barrel behaves like any other barrel of the same bore, length and # of pieces when you shoot shitty paint... but what happens if you're in a tournament situation shooting good tournament grade paint? Whose equipment gives you an edge then?

This post has been edited by Egomaniacal: 23 September 2012 - 11:19 AM

[brycelarson]

see new topic.

In which we prove that underboring creates accuracy problems. In this case well outside the noise introduced by the paint quality.

This shows that the barrel can cause measurable accuracy differences.

[Egomaniacal]

brycelarson, on 23 September 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

see new topic.

In which we prove that underboring creates accuracy problems. In this case well outside the noise introduced by the paint quality.

This shows that the barrel can cause measurable accuracy differences.

I would like to clarify that "the barrel" you're referring to in this post is not the barrel which is the topic of this thread but any arbitrary barrel. The barracuda was not included in the new round of tests.


Also, that bore has an effect on the accuracy of mediocre paint was never in question and I said as much in my post. I have personally followed the rule of thumb of nothing more than .005" underbore based on your last large round of barrel testing.

[brycelarson]

Egomaniacal, on 23 September 2012 - 06:32 PM, said:

Also, that bore has an effect on the accuracy of mediocre paint was never in question and I said as much in my post. I have personally followed the rule of thumb of nothing more than .005" underbore based on your last large round of barrel testing.

Just using it as a point. I'm showing that a known condition that causes poor accuracy will override the noise introduced by the paint.

[Egomaniacal]

brycelarson, on 23 September 2012 - 06:42 PM, said:

Just using it as a point. I'm showing that a known condition that causes poor accuracy will override the noise introduced by the paint.

But why is that relevant? All all that means is THAT known condition is strong enough to override the noise of bad paint, which is a huge amount of noise in this case - and suggests the two are relatively independent variables. That doesn't mean any arbitrary condition has to be strong enough to override paint quality in order to show an improvement in accuracy for people using good paint. And on top of that, I strongly suspect that if this barrel were to show an improvement, that improvement would depend on paint quality because of interactions with the rails.

People who care about accuracy already use an appropriate underbore and quality paint. What's going to improve accuracy from there? You're making the assumption that any improvement would not depend on paint quality and necessarily can drown out the noise of that signal, and it is a poor one.

This post has been edited by Egomaniacal: 23 September 2012 - 10:29 PM

[cockerpunk]

if the barrel only provides better accuracy with perfect paint, then it is useless to me as a player, and consumer, and is also equally useless to a product designer.

this was med-good field grade paint, the exact paint that every weekend thousands of players take to the field with. if it doesn't work for them, its not very useful.

/end topic

i wanna know why the barrel shoots so damn fast.

This post has been edited by cockerpunk: 24 September 2012 - 08:33 AM

[brycelarson]

Right - this is the field paint at by far the larges indoor provider in the area. They'll have three fields operating in a month or so - which prob is 75% of the paintball being played in MN for 6 months of the year. They sold something like 120 skids of paint last year. This is the paint I will be playing with over the winter months - there's no other option.

If a system can't make it shoot better than the system has no value to me.

(*see same thoughts in the bore to accuracy thread)