Not sure why that is brought up. It is obvious... (puzzled face) Did I say otherwise somewhere else?Josh, every paintball gun uses exactly 1 valve to fire a ball. Period.
I am talking about 'outside' of paintball valves? Might that be your confusion. That is where I have as much or more experience with valves, hence my 'weird' reference with them. Order a Parker valve, and the components are inherent, the some total of that part. It is a total. 1 part, a valve. Nothing more or less. With various components, no matter what Lurker says.Calling the entire engine a "valve" is semantically incorrect. It is a series of valves with individual ports feeding a firing circuit, but one is final.
Like the Mag, I see three valves (reg, on/off, bolt, and the reg is a poppet), but the only defining one to me for the operation would be the bolt and related components (powertube, o-ring seal, center lug). Not the controls or pilot (like in a solenoidvalve operated marker.)
I hardly would define a cocker that has moving base (spool style) reg, a 3-way spool switch, a ram (spool) or LPR (poppet or spool reg) as a spooler.
Josh Coray
J4 Paintball
Lead Design
www.j4paintball.com
Heh, well shoot a DSR. I think most people agree that the insight has an almost poppet-y shot quality. The DSR is crisp like that, but softer.
I also find it funny because the "shoots like" attribute can be almost entirely tuned at the final valve. Slow opening is more practical with the geometry of a spool and hydraulic spools with a "soft start" feature just have a chamfer at the end of the spool. Fast opening is more practical with a poppet since it requires less lift to get to max flow. Most designers probably gave the guns these attributes by accident based on the geometry that happened to work. From that spurs public perception.
Arguing with someone about adding the morph valve making the autococker a spool takes education. When most designers are uneducated and ignorant themselves, how can they properly educate consumers?
(ducks head)like a stacked tube .... wait ....
nevermind
Josh Coray
J4 Paintball
Lead Design
www.j4paintball.com
I've tried since 1996 to educate paintball consumers and realized that for the majority it's a waste of time. I think most consumers don't really want to be educated. They want something that fits their perspective or mind set. There is and has been so much BS in paintball that it's often a losing battle to fight pre-conceived beliefs.
People still regularly tell me that closed bolt guns shoot further than open bolt guns and when I tell them they don't they look shocked. They often don't even know the correct definition of open and closed bolt guns, and I've seen sales people from several companies try to play off enclosed as closed for people that bring it up. If people still hold onto BS like that, then basic details of how a valve works are always going to be lost to them.
I mean, most people in the market are high schoolers and 20-30 year old dudes who, for the most part, just want to get on the field and blast faces with something reliable. The gearhead aspect is more significant in paintball than in some other sports, and less than others. Some players care, other's completely don't. We're somewhere between kickball and rebuilding engines.
If people want to listen I think we should do our best to give accurate information, but I don't think some crusade to correct all the inaccuracies would be worthwhile or even really improve much of anything, and it certainly won't be well-received.
Regardless of all this technobabble, accurate or not, people are still going to buy what looks good and feels good to them to shoot and maintain.
Ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic. -Alan Watts
I work for the company building the Paragon
Agreed completely.
I think one of the greatest selling points has proven to be reliability and it's why Planet Eclipse are currently the top high end gun manufacturer.
The reason it's a singular "valve" is because there is 1 actuation system. There can be a multi-port valve or a single valve. Multiple valves in an array is called a "valve manifold" and allows seperate actuation systems, but is no longer a "valve" singular. Multiple valves off a single actuator is called a "multivalve actuator." Those are industry terms... Never in the history of engineering would you call a system of components a single component. So, if you're describing a paintball gun (system of components) with a component name like spool or poppet, knowing all designs to date fit one of the 2 names, it only makes sense to look at the final air delivery component as the operational descriptor.
Now, stop scratching your head and look at the statement again. You're using a component name (poppet or spool) to define a gun. Only 1 valve fires the ball. It's either a spool or a poppet. Period. Since those are the generally recognized categories (right or wrong), it is the only consistent way of identification.
Carry that forward to a regulator... a standard regulator has only 1 valve. Only 1 design, of which I'm aware, used a spool valve and that'd be the the evolve PI. It was awful because of the characteristics inherent to the spool geometry which is low-lift flow. The piston itself is, by definition, not a valve. (Purging reg systems have an additional valve which is usually a check valve.)
Back to the shot dynamic. Spools are inherantly slower opening than a poppet with equivalent velocity. It's inherent to the geometry. That's why spools have traditionally been perceived as smoother. It's inherant to the geometry of the final valve. The morph valve changes the shot dynamic to be smoother due to this exact reason.
No arguement.
And, yet again... I agree. This is a forum of techies so I discuss it here. On the field, I just say "shoot it."
I will also say that I've tried to isolate individual variables of both my designs and historical designs to see what gives them their character. I can tune a valve specifically to shoot quiet, crisp, efficient, swooshy, etc all by toying with the valve. There are typically very minor geometry differences between them.
For the DSR, I was told to make it crisp yet smooth and efficient. I could point to the very specific geometry that makes the DSR posess each characteristic. I'll pick efficiency here... we know it takes so much energy to fire a ball. You want to open and close the valve fast enough to meter out the perfect amount of energy. Since there's an obvious drawback to jerk, I chose to open one way and use the lurker control freak trick to gain bias to close the valve independant of bolt position. The ports are squared to geometrically improve the valve rate of the spool. (The CS1 went the opposite way.) These attributes were chosen specifically to accomplish the goal. Could I make the DSR more efficient? Easily, and I could do it multiple ways. I just feel like the efficiency we see is well balanced against the trade-offs I'd need to make to increase it.
A paintball gun is a control system. Understanding the trade-off at each point is why the DSR has some very specific engineering features. Were there times when marketing influenced the design? Sure, but once I understood what was being asked I made deliberate design choices. I asked "why" so many times I thought I was going to get fired. If I meet some of you in person, I encourage you to ask "why" on my design choices. I'm not saying I always made the RIGHT choice, but the design was very deliberate.
ahh....I don't think I said anything otherwise in this though? It is kind of like us both looking at the sky and saying it is blue, and you are saying "BUT IT IS BLUE!" for 2 paragraphes.The reason it's a singular "valve" is because there is 1 actuation system
If I said anything otherwise, I might have been when others are talking about the full action of a mag being a sear release and coupled mechanical action - and when they were trying to say the sear action defined the marker, I broke it down into 2 valve systems coupled mechanically doesn't define the marker action? But I don't think the on/off is the gun valve, and I don't think I said it is. No more than the solenoids are what makes the marker valve what type of valve it is. They are totally independent actions but only the bolt components would cover what the valve is a mag, same as only the poppet in a cocker would define it.
I think I said that above? It is late.
The sky is still blue.
Josh Coray
J4 Paintball
Lead Design
www.j4paintball.com
this conversation is actually why i like ynda's gun classification system. a gun isn't a "poppet" or "spool" its a increasing force, spool valve blowfoward.
describes the trigging mechanism, the valve, and the bolt actuation, which can all be different things.
social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.