[Jambs]

When I started playing paintball in 2001, none of the barrels could effectively put any spin on the ball. Now there’s the flatline, first strike, Carmatech and Armson, but I think I found a better method using a rifling technique from the 1850s. It’s called Lancaster rifling (I tried to post a link, but it didn’t work. It was called Colindian rifling or lancaster rifling, and a google search will pull up some good stuff), but the simple explanation is that the barrel doesn’t have any lands or grooves. Instead, its cross section is an oval where the major and the minor axis rotates as it travels through the barrel. The difference between the major and the minor axis is very small, so it actually appears to be a circle, and it does a good job sealing the gases. It accurately fired a round ball, but it fell out of favor because it was more expensive to produce. The rifle barrels that they developed had a difference of .006 inches between the major and minor axis, so that’s what I used (That’s about the thickness of two human hairs).

I thought it would be a perfect for paintball barrels, so I filed a patent on it (which is still pending), and started asking shops how much it would cost to make one. Most of them said they couldn’t do it, or ignored me, so I went to a vocational school, and learned how to work the machines myself. After a year of trial and lots of errors, I am able to make a oval barrel that rotates counter clockwise. The major axis is .686 and minor axis is .680.

Right now I’m working on threading the barrel so that I can screw it into a gun and test it, but I wanted to start getting feedback now. I am a high school science teacher, so I have no experience in manufacturing, but I’ve discovered that I love working with CNC machines, and I want to make the barrels if I can do it without losing too much money. (Last week I ordered a new end mill, and my wife asked if I ever missed playing golf. She’s also threatened to start buying a new pair of shoes every time I buy a new tool, and our closet won’t hold many more of those.)

I have a few questions, and if you would fill out this survey it would really help me. I couldn't get the hyperlink to work, but if you copy and past the link below I'd really appreciate it.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...iLr6Q/viewform

If you don’t want to fill out the survey, I would still appreciate any comments on this post. Thank you all so much for your time.

[dualimpact]

Interesting idea.

I'd love to help test.

I could anodize a few barrels for you in exchange for one.

[martix_agent]

What would make this a "better" design for the end user?

Autococker threads, is the answer And/Or Tippman A5 threads. Those guys seem to love spinning balls.

[Jambs]

Originally Posted by dualimpact

Interesting idea.

I'd love to help test.

I could anodize a few barrels for you in exchange for one.

That sounds great to me. If you'll fill out the survey or PM me your e-mail address and a comment, I'll work on getting one too you.

[Jambs]

Great question. Without spin, paintballs fly like a knuckle ball pitch, where they randomly weave. Consistent velocity helps minimize the y variance, but putting a spin on it should help minimize the x variance as well and make the gun more accurate.

[martix_agent]

Originally Posted by Jambs

Great question. Without spin, paintballs fly like a knuckle ball pitch, where they randomly weave. Consistent velocity helps minimize the y variance, but putting a spin on it should help minimize the x variance as well and make the gun more accurate.

I was more asking about yours vs other brands that add spin. You must believe in your design quite a bit to go to school just to design and create it.

[ironyusa]

Originally Posted by Jambs

Great question. Without spin, paintballs fly like a knuckle ball pitch, where they randomly weave. Consistent velocity helps minimize the y variance, but putting a spin on it should help minimize the x variance as well and make the gun more accurate.

What effect in physics results in the performance change you're looking to achieve? If you calculate the length of the control bore and the twist rate, is it technically feasible? Additionally, assuming a ball isn't perfectly spherical, what would be the estimated impact of asymmetry?

Rifled barrels suck with just about anything other than first strike rounds... the people that buy first strike rounds are your target market for a product like this.

[Paul77]

After spending a bunch of time this year learning the ins and outs of the paint business, lots of the paint out there isn’t weighted very well.

-some will have an air pocket that makes it unbalanced
-some suffers from settled starch making it very unevenly weighted
-some has the gelatin on one side weighing more.

All of these factors make paint shoot worse when rotated. It would be different if paint was perfect. I agree fs is your target market

[Jambs]

Originally Posted by Paul77

After spending a bunch of time this year learning the ins and outs of the paint business, lots of the paint out there isn’t weighted very well.

-some will have an air pocket that makes it unbalanced
-some suffers from settled starch making it very unevenly weighted
-some has the gelatin on one side weighing more.

All of these factors make paint shoot worse when rotated. It would be different if paint was perfect. I agree fs is your target market

It's possible that my idea won't work, and if that's the case I'm okay. Thankfully I didn't quit my day job, and equally importantly I've enjoyed the journey of learning how to make things, so the time and money I spent doing that was well spent. I appreciate your insight about paintball imperfections, and I'll create a new post after I test it and let everyone know how it works.

[Jambs]

Originally Posted by martix_agent

I was more asking about yours vs other brands that add spin. You must believe in your design quite a bit to go to school just to design and create it.

Well I did, but the feedback is making me start to doubt it, LOL. I still had a great time learning how to make everything work, and if it fails, I have other projects that I get to move onto. I've come far enough that I get to test it and it won't be a theoretical discussion soon. Griffin Spanner at Parabolic even agreed to help me test the idea, so an expert will be showing me the ropes.

[martix_agent]

ironyusa is also correct. First strike users are your main target market.

[ironyusa]

Jambs, not that you care, but I've designed a thing or 2 for the paintball market including the DSR and m3. That said, the gooey center of a paintball has some problem picking up it's spin from the shell. When I toyed with some ideas, the seam always seemed to present the biggest obstacle to flight... assuming a spherical ball. Then I realized any small deformation in the ball can cause terrible problems which get worse with spin. I am not saying the idea won't work, but maybe do a staight oval barrel and allow it to be indexed vertically and see what happens.

[Jambs]

Originally Posted by ironyusa

Jambs, not that you care, but I've designed a thing or 2 for the paintball market including the DSR and m3. That said, the gooey center of a paintball has some problem picking up it's spin from the shell. When I toyed with some ideas, the seam always seemed to present the biggest obstacle to flight... assuming a spherical ball. Then I realized any small deformation in the ball can cause terrible problems which get worse with spin. I am not saying the idea won't work, but maybe do a staight oval barrel and allow it to be indexed vertically and see what happens.

Thank you so much for sharing your idea. I do appreciate it tremendously, and I will try it. The reason I'm sharing this is to get other people's opinions because I want to try as many ideas as possible.

[ironyusa]

Is it safe to assume you're going to be using broaching to make the profile?

[Jambs]

Originally Posted by ironyusa

Is it safe to assume you're going to be using broaching to make the profile?

That was my original plan, but making a home made press that could force the broach through was actually much more difficult then I expected. I eventually used a CNC machine to do the cuts. It's been really interesting to me, because so many of my original ideas ended up not working.

[AzianAssassin]

I'm stoked you're working with Griff on this idea. His barrel design's ability to add FPS is what I consider to be a giant step forward technologically-speaking for barrel design. I look forward to follow your results and I'll submit a survey in the meantime.

[Cookie47]

Been slow to regain access to this site for comments. Thats actually a pretty cool idea. Would mostly cater to the magfed/slower rate of fire crowd. Paint has gotten smaller these days than years past. Twist Rifled barrels were never really all they were advertised as being for traditional balls. The "spiral porting rifling" which is now known as the All American type never did a thing for imparting spin on the ball. The Armson rifling would occasionally give enough traction for spin, but would cork screw. Later
"info" said it was designed to create less surface contact allowing ball to skip in between lands. Something that would probably help with less barrel brakes and overall consistency would be a very gradual taper in bore that is bigger at breech and narrower at the bore. That concept has been around for quite a while in the rifle world. Gonna be quite an expensive endeavor but interesting none the less.

[XKE]

Received this update from Jambs yesterday -

"Good afternoon all,
In late August, I posted a survey about an idea that I had to incorporate Lancaster rifling with a paintball barrel, and asked for your opinions. You were kind enough to respond, and one of the best suggestions from the thread was that I contact Griffan Spanner at Parabolic barrels.
Over the last five months, Griffan has helped me test the concept, and after several tests it's clear that a barrel incorporating lancaster rifling is inferior to a non-rifled barrel. This surprised me, because in the 1800's bullets were spherical like a modern paintball, and rifling dramatically improved their performance. The difference between paintballs and lead balls is the seam in the paintball and the low density of paint relative to lead.
Several people did anticipate the seem catching the air and causing the paintball to behave like a curveball, but I was optimistic that due to the low rate of rotation rate required to stabilize a round ball, that it wouldn't cause a significant error, and that it could easily be compensated for. My calculations indicated I would only need one full rotation in 100 inches, which gave me hope that I could improve the accuracy of the barrel.
Unfortunately, since the seam is oriented differently each time a paintball was fired, there was no consistent error introduced, but a random error. Because of this, the curve was different each time. Additionally, due to the lightness of the paint, it was easy to accelerate it laterally, causing large errors down range.
In short, my idea didn't improve the accuracy of a paintball barrel, and I am going to move onto other projects. I did want to update you, and thank you for the help that I had along the way. I hope everyone has a great new year
-Jambs"