SpudFiles

I've been looking at some BBMG lately and i was wondering, if you could find an air source that has a high enough flow could you make a BBMG that is scaled up to fire paintballs? or are the physics to do so just not possible?

Do you mean a bbmg as in a vortex or cloud?
A cloud probably wouldn't work b/c paintballs are a lot heavier than airsoft bbs, so you would need really high pressure; plus, if it did work, the paint balls would probably break in the process.
A vortex (theoretically) would be possible. A horizontal vortex cap or vortex block hooked up to a compressor could quite possibly give some impressive results. The chamber and vortex cap/block would be huge though.

Paintballs are soft, and they would likely get smashed in a cloud or vortex setup. I think it has been attempted before.

well i was thinking that a vortex set-up would be the one i use and just have a really long tube probably like made of 4" pvc with a glue on end cap that has the barrel drilled through it and the air source going in just like a normal vortex but instead use a force feed paintball hopper and get it traveling down a curved tube that wraps around a few times on the inside of the vortex tube to get it already started and then when it actually gets to the vortex it is already spinning and ready to fire

that sounds kinda complicated, I would try a normal vortex first

i'm not sure how hard it will be but once i get the chance i am gonna try to build a start up for this project and see what kind of results i can come up with

well i was thinking that a vortex set-up would be the one i use and just have a really long tube probably like made of 4" pvc with a glue on end cap that has the barrel drilled through it and the air source going in just like a normal vortex but instead use a force feed paintball hopper and get it traveling down a curved tube that wraps around a few times on the inside of the vortex tube to get it already started and then when it actually gets to the vortex it is already spinning and ready to fire

Yeah that ideas actually really good.
@ Fishboy, its not really that complicated, he just makes it sound complicated -.-
Theres like a spiral of tube going down the big pipe which stops at the vortex cap (Kinda like those little things you see at shopping centres, put 20c in and a ball of bubblegum rolls down) . All the paintballs get fed into the tube-spiral and the paintball gets pushed down the spiral and are already spinning by the time it gets to the vortex cap.

yeah hydra completely has the idea!!!!


on another note, can anyone tell me why my theory thread was moved to showcase?

Velocity wrote:Paintballs are soft, and they would likely get smashed in a cloud or vortex setup. I think it has been attempted before.

Then it would become a flamethrower style gun.
It all depends on the design and pressure.

It would be a nice experiment to try this, though you will need one heck of an air feed.

You are missing the entire point of the vortex block. The vortex block is designed to aid in the feeding process. If you have a paintball hopper, then you already have the feed figured out, and a vortex block will not help you. A vortex block is just a better feeding method for a cloud chamber, there is no real difference in the manner in which it performs.

i would go for something like a QEV + pop-off (BTB-snap valve-ish) so not as much air is wasted, then you could hopper feed, and all you would need then is a bolt and a constant air supply/trigger!

As has been said, conventional BBMG designs are useless for paintballs, they are far too violent.

Also, the spiral feed idea is pretty useless - as Lentamentalisk points out, the vortex is a feed mechanism designed to take loose BBs and shove 'em down the barrel.
If you have a hopper feed to supply the balls, the block is useless, the balls have already been sorted out. The fact that a 6mm vortex fires several times faster than an AEG is due to the fact not that it's feeding is more effective (as proven by Davidvaini, AEG mags have a high feed rate, up to the sort of levels of vortexes), but that it's air supply is much greater. AEG gearboxes just can't handle the strain.

It's also worth pointing out that a PBMG would not be capable of anything like the ROF of a BBMG, even if the balls remained intact. My best guesses put it as no faster than conventional marker designs.
If you have to have high ROF, build a paintball minigun, as these CAN load and fire paintballs at 50 rps or more without smashing them. Prepare to wave good bye to your wallet though.

in fact paintball miniguns fire too fast, so much of the time people design them to only load a paintball 1/3 of the time or so, to save them money, but still keep the scare factor.

Check my thread in the pneumatic discussion section. Mine works so far, but one CO2 tank only gets me about fifty feet. I'm planning on hooking up another inline style tomorrow. Hopefully that will take care of the flow.

Not to mention it being super cold outside doesn't help.