Paintball Uprades: Barrels and Regs
Paintball Efficiency Tips
Often enough in paintball we find ourselves walking back from the game whether it be speedball or woodsball to the compressed air or CO2 line to fill up again. There are a few small ways to save precious game time and money. There are two main points that all paintball marker owners should consider to improve on: the barrel and the regulator.The barrel in it's essence is a 6 to 20+ inch long hollow piece made of metal or composite material. The trends for today's barrels lends toward what else but porting. Porting whether simply made or cnc precision milled can provide the big difference of how a ball gets from point A your bolt to point B your intended victim. What's wrong with porting you might ask? Original studies based by the company Airgun Designs have shown that paintballs retain the most accuracy at length of 5"-6" and thus reach the maximum velocity in the initial inches from the bolt. In essence excessive porting can in fact reduce the volume of available air and thus be a negative for efficiency. There are many barrels available with little porting and a reputation of accuracy. An example would be the boomstick series by Dye and the Stiffi switch barrels. Another good point to look at with barrels is finding the smoothest surface for the paintball to travel along. The lowest friction co-efficient the smoother the travel and the more cosistent the travel of the ball ( aka accuracy ). You dont want a scratched up or old worn barrel; a good barrel will have mirco honing or polishing of sorts with composite materials. However there is one exception to this rule: the tippman flatline series of barrels actually harnesses the drag caused by a rough surface to help produce backspin and force the paintballs further.
that volume increases as pressure decreases and thus lower pressure operating markers (like the ego, intimidator, angel, etc.) may have more potential over higher pressure operting markers (like the automag , nova, etc.). It seems that the market trend is now leaning towards markers with low operating pressures. The more volume and higher flow a regulator can produce the better the output and thus the better the efficiency. Examples of efficient regulators include those made by A.K.A., Smart Parts, Bob Long, Custom Products and STD. One other thing to note is that a volumizer chamber like those found on the angel series have the potential to improve the efficiency of the marker by allowing the mass of compressed air to expand into a larger volume of pre-regulated air and not have to starve the marker to keep up with the high rates of fire players can now shoot. The problems lies with how fast that the marker can move the extra pre-regulated air through to the main valve of the marker.
In conclusion each upgrade can make an improvement towards getting out of that proverbial line that we all hate. Check out a new reg or barrel at your local store. To learn more try the Physics of Painball, Airgun Designs research and sweet spotting your regs.