[Lord Odin]

I read somewhere that a bolt striking a ball is harder on a paintball than the power pulse of air is. This got me thinking. The bolt is a relatively hard object that hits the ball yet air acts with a lot of force. So wouldn't the power pulse be harder on the ball and lead to more breaks than the bolt striking it? This is more a theoretical question but perhaps there is some relevance to barrel breaks.

[BOBBYTUCSON]

it boggles me too , but air is a softer substance than the bolt. so if delrin and air hit a ball at the same speed , its hard to determin because u must find out which of the 2 is denser , the bolt , or the volume of air hitting the ball. than you have to consider something hard to detect , - does the air that hits the ball seep around the ball upon contact? cuz that could lessen the force on the ball , since no paintball is perfectly round , but the barrel is. this a very good question odin!!

[paulpker121]

I have always believed that the bolt pushes the paintball forward, while the velocity comes from the air pushing it out of the tight barrel.

[brycelarson]

from the high speed stuff we've been privileged to see so far - it looks like there may be no such thing as a "pure" barrel break. From everything I've seen it looks like the power pulse is responsible only for mashing up damaged balls - not for actually breaking them.

[Jack Wood]

brycelarson, on Jan 10 2009, 03:54 AM, said:

from the high speed stuff we've been privileged to see so far - it looks like there may be no such thing as a "pure" barrel break. From everything I've seen it looks like the power pulse is responsible only for mashing up damaged balls - not for actually breaking them.

You have only seen a fraction of the footage so far. We have definitely seen breaks that have been caused by their launching down the barrel. But there is also a complex number of factors that lead to most of these other breaks. I can't say for certain that the powerpulse alone can cause a barrel break. But you can definitely have a break with a paintball that got to the barrel unmollested. To me, that says you can have a "Pure" barrel break. But can a pure barrel break only occur with the powerpulse alone? I don't know for sure.

This post has been edited by Jack Wood: 10 January 2009 - 05:15 AM

[LieutenantDan]

The pressure put onto the paintball very much depends on the dwell and pressure that the marker is set up to operate at. For instance, if the marker is set up with a low dwell and high pressure, and small volume of very high pressure air will hit the paintball at one time, which puts a lot of force on the paintball. If the marker has a high dwell and low operating pressure, lower pressure air will give the ball the same muzzle velocity, but spend more time accelerating it, which is easier on the paint. One may ask then, why do people have markers set up with really low dwell and slightly higher operating pressure than stock? Its slightly more efficient.

If somebody were better at physics than i (im taking it now), one would be able to compute the proper forces put on the ball over a certain amount of time with air and the bolt. Unfortunately, this is different with each type of marker! Bolts have different weights and face surface areas that contact the ball, and they operate at different pressures and dwell settings.

This post has been edited by LieutenantDan: 10 January 2009 - 05:05 PM

[Odin1eyeD]

Hmm, maybe someone with the resources should do a little mythbusting and basically hook up an hpa compressor to a barrel and fire some paintballs down it. Can't think off the top of my head how you would do it with a simple tank... Mmm, you could run a line from a fill station to a barrel and somehow do it that way... Or has this whole idea of mine been done to death already?

[BOBBYTUCSON]

can anyone post up vids or demonstrations? this is really boggling me now lol

[Troy]

Test barrel breaks on an Ice Epic verses a marker that uses a bolt at an equivalent pressure. If there is a statistically lower amount of breaks, then that will tell you that the bolt in the equivalent marker causes fractures.

[Ritterkreuz]

I go with Cockerpunk's theory that the majority of barrel breaks are caused by "predamaged" balls blowing up in the barrel .... or did i get that theory wrong?

This post has been edited by Ritterkreuz: 16 January 2009 - 09:16 AM

[A.E.D.paintballer]

i dont understand why the idea of the epic never took off....

[Snipez4664]

A.E.D.paintballer, on Jan 16 2009, 10:25 AM, said:

i dont understand why the idea of the epic never took off....

If you think about it, it's not really boltless - a moving piece is still going to strike the stack. What does it fix? In fact, you can make a "perfect" system with a trapdoor, but the floor of the breech has to move too, to create a void for the chambered ball to settle in to, and a place for the stack ball to rest into.

[brycelarson]

and the newer epic guns had a fin on the bottom of the trapdoor that moved the ball forward - so it was making mechanical contact to load the ball.

see pic here

[A.E.D.paintballer]

but if you have watched the video you can see that there is barely any force on the trap door. its still a cool design, i MIGHT pick one up and show you guys some results

[brycelarson]

I have watched the vid - I think it's one of the very few really innovative paintball designs out there - however, as far as the door chopping paint - yes, there's less force, but it takes less force to push a knife through cheese than a dowel through that same cheese.

less force concentrated on a smaller area may be more damaging. The smash test results that CP is working on were really interesting. When a paintball is pressed on evenly - they're really frickin' strong.

[Snipez4664]

brycelarson, on Jan 16 2009, 12:03 PM, said:

and the newer epic guns had a fin on the bottom of the trapdoor that moved the ball forward - so it was making mechanical contact to load the ball.

see pic here

That isn't at all what I'm talking about - It solves the "volume exclusion" problem in the breech but not that of clipping the stack, I believe.

[brycelarson]

Snipez4664, on Jan 16 2009, 01:01 PM, said:

brycelarson, on Jan 16 2009, 12:03 PM, said:

and the newer epic guns had a fin on the bottom of the trapdoor that moved the ball forward - so it was making mechanical contact to load the ball.

see pic here

That isn't at all what I'm talking about - It solves the "volume exclusion" problem in the breech but not that of clipping the stack, I believe.

I was adding to your point that a moving piece was still going to clip the stack. I was pointing out that a moving piece also was making contact with the ball being loaded.

I'm agreeing that going boltless didn't necessarily reduce the loading fracture potential. In fact, at the same ROF as a design with a bolt I don't know why the "fin" idea wouldn't be MORE likely to damage the ball than a cup-shaped bolt face. Add that to the fact that the trap-door is interacting with the stack just as much as the top of a bolt.... I dunno. I see where the idea originated - but I don't know that any of the reasons that this gun would break less paint hold up to intellectual scrutiny.

This post has been edited by brycelarson: 16 January 2009 - 02:43 PM

[Poe]

In regards to the Epic...and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Snipez was saying is that the trap door actually raises the balls in the feed neck by a small amount.

Normally a bolt in the forward position just takes the place of the ball in the breech. The balls in the stack do not change vertical position.

The trapdoor in the Epic scrapes in between the two balls to seal the breech. In doing so it pushes the second ball up slightly.

[Troy]

I think its reasonable to assume that at high rates of fire the trap door may still clip a ball in the breach, however, it was my impression that that wasn't what the original post was about. To me, it seemed Lord Odin was concerned with figuring out if a power pulse was more harsh on paint then a bolt impact.

If this thread was about proposing a system to keep from clipping paint in the stack, then the above criticisms of epic's design would be relevant... since we aren't, I fail to see the relevance.

If we contrasted an epic (with the old trap door, not the new one) verses a marker that runs at a similar pressure and shoots at a similar velocity (thereby imparting the same amount of force on the paintball) while shooting at a moderate enough speed to ensure that the marker isn't clipping the ball in the breach and we find that there is a statistically relevant difference in the numbers of breaks from one marker to the other, then we can conclude which is the harshest on the paint.

[BOBBYTUCSON]

well as of thus far , barrel breaks are still a relatively rare for me. i still believe it is cuased by a pre-damaged ball

This post has been edited by BOBBYTUCSON: 16 January 2009 - 10:31 PM