paintball gun pressure

[gug]

hiya all, need some help.

been looking at using a paintball cylinder for the pneumatic shifting system we are going to try out this year. but i need to know what the pressure is on the gun side (low pressure side) of the regulator?

of course if anyone has any advice, stories or fishermens wives tales they would like to share about pneumatics, feel free to tell. speaking of that, the queensland guys broke a pneumatic valve before fsae-a didnt they? anyone know why the valve broke?

[gug]

hiya all, need some help.

been looking at using a paintball cylinder for the pneumatic shifting system we are going to try out this year. but i need to know what the pressure is on the gun side (low pressure side) of the regulator?

of course if anyone has any advice, stories or fishermens wives tales they would like to share about pneumatics, feel free to tell. speaking of that, the queensland guys broke a pneumatic valve before fsae-a didnt they? anyone know why the valve broke?

[Dr Claw]

are you planning button shift? or paddle shift? our buttons worked ok but our second driver was a shrimp and couldnt reach the damn things. (his hands were to short...)

our 2002 car is paddle shift, and my only reccomendation to you is to make sure your car wont shift on it's if you happen to hit a bump.

as far as what pressure though, I am not entirely sure what ours is set at. I'd think you'd have to tweak the pressure for whatever cylander your using to shift your car. even if it is "rated" for some presure, you might want to test it at a lower one to see if it'll still shift through the gears. if you can optimize it, you can get more shifts out of your car.

also, buy the correct fittings and stuff..on one of our cars, we had 1/16 (i think they were this thin, anyways) inch plastic 'hard' line, and they were asked to connect at all sorts of odd angles. needless to say, they crimp easily.

and dont forget that you have to aim the regulator and or top of the bottle away from the driver's general direction. aiming towards the track marshalls however, is ok for some reason.

[Griff]

For our pneumatic shifter we run the CO2 pressure around 110Psi. We can still shift a little under 100, but its more reliable if we run higher. I'm not sure what paintball guns run at, but their regulators are generally for higher pressures. We had to order a special regulator from Paradigm Motorsports.

[jack]

i looked into pneumatic shift for our car last year (didnt happen, due to more important priorities). the valve i got to control the shift was rated at 250 max psi (tpc pneumatics 3-way, exaust center) this vavle will probably dictate the pressure of the system. most paint ball regs will do this. the reg on my paintball gun, palmer stabilizer, will go pretty low, and is a good choice with co2. i think the biggest headache with such a system would be using correct lines, and lines that dont leak (too much). i never got that far myself. i noticed kansas was running flaired hard lines at comp, i guess it worked for them. travis will probably have alot to add to this topic...

[Travis Garrison]

Jack is right, the valve will most likely be your limiting factor, so its probably the first item you should look for. Most valves that I've seen are recommended for ~110psi or less...I know that in one paintball application a 110psi valve was actually used at 180 and was perfectly reliable....so you can obviously go over the manufacturers spec slightly if you have to.

Is the "paintball cylinder" a ram from an autococker? you might want to look elsewhere...I believe those have a screwy thread pitch on their shaft and have ~ a 1" total stroke (possibly more like 7/8" depending on the brand) which may be right at the limit of useful...also they are not intended to be used at more than ~100 psi...I'm sure most will go WAY above that, but if it is a paintball specific ram (say a palmer's) you may want to double check with the manufacturer.

As far as regulators go, at those pressures you'll probably be looking for Autococker low pressure regs...which retial between $50 and $100 but you might be able to get the cheaper used...Best way to go however, would probably be regulators from pneumatics dealers. Advantages would be $$, and non screwy ass paintball specific threads.

Good luck...

Travis Garrison

[Joel]

Im guessing by the paintball cylinder, you mean the CO2 tank. Looking at my gun, the tank runs a full pressure of 110-120PSI, and the gun has no regulator, just dumps a short dose at full pressure. the orifice is controlled by a screw, in order to set muzzle velocity.

The only paintball tanks i know of that use reg's are the ones running around 4500PSI nitrogen or air. These are smaller and lighter, and come with a reg generally.

[Charlie]

If you have a co2 tank with 120 PSI in the resevoir tank, somethings wrong.

[Frank]

we got 3 bar

[Dan Deussen @ Weber Motor]

Be careful when using solenoid valves with pressures higher than the manufacturer specs. We typically run 140 PSI and had a bad regulator that put out too much pressure. This caused the solenoid valves to leak and not open fast enough anymore to properly sync with the shift cut of the ECU. This might not be the case for all types of valves, but it sure was the case for the ones we used.

[MaizeRacer]

You can get a pretty good range of pressures out of a nice paintball gun setup. If you want to go off the shelf and not have any adjustability you can get a Nitrogen tank that will output ~450 psi. I would recommend looking at an adjustable Nitrogen tank that you can run from ~100-900 psi single regulated. If you want to get super consistent; double regulate the setup. Have a second paintball regulator set at the pressure you really want and then set the tank upstream at about double the pressure.

If you want any consistency at all, stay away from CO2 tanks, they will just output the tank pressure.

[sticks]

I would think nitrogen would be the way to go for the above mentioned reasons. If the volume of the actuator rams wasn't to great, the front regulator from the cocker (stock ones can be dirt cheap since people upgrade) could be used as the second regulator off the tank. Just a thought. Cheers!

[Travis Garrison]

Personaly I would look at all my options very carefully before jumping to an N2 system.

The main reason N2 systems have a reputation for being consitant is that they all have regulators built in. And while they won't freeze seals like CO2 can (only if you mistreat it) N2 systems typically offer less shots or shifts per pound of tank.

CO2 will be less bulky, lighter, and more convient to fill (most shops should already have CO2 or deal with a company that distributes it)...AND for the $ more consitant (you can dump the money you save on the base tank into two nice regulators)....

The main reason paintballers use N2 would be that they are sustaining rates of fire upwards of 9-10 balls per second for relatively long periods, which easily frosts over a C02 tank...in a minute of heavy play a paintballer could easily do the equivalent of 200-400 shifts without too much effort, this results in liquid CO2 entering the system which can screw up everything.

Seeing as we won't ever touch those depletion rates (at least not if you hope to finish) N2 may not be the best answer. Not to mention if you're at all worried about the endourance a 40 oz anti siphon CO2 tank will give you the kind of shift capacity that paintball N2 tanks could only dream about.

Bottom line paintball is full of hype...be very careful you don't get cought up in it...best bet is to simply talk to your local pneumatics dealer.

Travis Garrison

[Angry Joe]

We've used nitrogen shifting on our last three cars with pretty good success.

I am not intimately familiar with the setup but I can the guys that set it up. Some things to think about:

- Using a paintball tank, it is possible to get enough shifts to finish the endurance but it is a concern you must address.

- Dragging around a nitrogen tank is a pain in the ass, and a safety hazard if you aren't careful. It's pretty much mandatory because the bottle probably won't last you the whole event.

- The shifts will be very quick, but that makes it easy to bounce out of gear on the 1-2 shift. It also makes it tougher to get in gear in the first place. In 2003 we killed our second gear dogs two days before competition because of people botching this.

- On our setup the driver has a tough time shift into neutral once the car is in gear (someone outside the car usually does it manually).