Tales from Der PrinterSchrank: Sillyness in Sound Reduction
I've had a vision rolling around in my head for a few years now, about how I might attempt some kind of raincover/suppressor design for paintball. It started with some inspiration from an MCB legend of old: tymcneer. I went up to visit Ty a couple years back, and something he was working on at the time was a paintball suppressor with the typical K baffle internals. His design was really well done, and the fit and finish he achieved with his little Ender 3 astounded me at the time! Well, as many encounters with great minds have been know to affect me in the past, this visit and this design started the rusty cogs a-whirring in me old noggin...
So a typical suppressor - Projectile begins to pass through the suppressor bore, and we rely on the gas behind the ball having great enough pressure/velocity that as the ball passes through a baffle, the pressurized gas escapes outward into the voids in the baffles, and hopefully muffles the sound signature in the process. But...What if we take a different approach? What if we don't just rely on the pressure of the gas, hoping that it wants to go somewhere besides out the barrel tip? What if we FORCE that gas to go somewhere else?
This was actually one of my very first Fusion360 projects that I tried to create... to resounding failure. I didn't know the software well enough then, and the shapes I was making were clunky, ill-aligned, barely conceptually functional. So it took a back seat for awhile. Recently, ReconSWS let me try out his suppressor models, and it got the rusty cogs turning again (excellent suppressors, by the way!). So, I gave it another go...
The idea is that there is a "flap" in the path of the ball, such that when the ball passes over the "detent"-looking bit on the front of the flap, the flap flips up into the oncoming pressurized gas, and re-directs as much of the gas behind the ball as possible into dual expansion chambers, which then have exhaust ports that direct expanded gas away from the target.
Animation:
Assembly Animation:
I did print this, and here's how it turned out:
I also did kinda test it. It redirects gas beautifully when the flap is blocking, and reduces/changes the sound signature significantly....
However, with any project like this, it's a metric butt-ton of trial and error, and iteration after iteration to address all the issues.
1. Flap doesn't return easily
2. Ball doesn't consistently activate the flap
3. Ball breaks inside the suppressor body.
4. Gas re-directs well (when flap is blocking), but sound reduction is not great.
5. Sound reduction at targetunknown
6. etcccccc.....
I need to do a better down-range sound reduction test, because so far, I just had my son stand about 30 yards away and ask him "does this sound different?"
Anyway - this project is taking a back seat to some other stuff for awhile, but I thought it would be something fun to look at. Also, I've mostly been working on this in the void of Der PrinterSchrank (The PrinterCloset), so I suppose some input from the outside world would be good as well...
I do currently have enough Guinee Pig beta testers at the moment though (whenever I get to the point of making something more test-able), so no volunteers needed at this time.
This has been:
Tales from Der PrinterSchrank!
With your host, Rainmaker
I've had a vision rolling around in my head for a few years now, about how I might attempt some kind of raincover/suppressor design for paintball. It started with some inspiration from an MCB legend of old: tymcneer. I went up to visit Ty a couple years back, and something he was working on at the time was a paintball suppressor with the typical K baffle internals. His design was really well done, and the fit and finish he achieved with his little Ender 3 astounded me at the time! Well, as many encounters with great minds have been know to affect me in the past, this visit and this design started the rusty cogs a-whirring in me old noggin...
So a typical suppressor - Projectile begins to pass through the suppressor bore, and we rely on the gas behind the ball having great enough pressure/velocity that as the ball passes through a baffle, the pressurized gas escapes outward into the voids in the baffles, and hopefully muffles the sound signature in the process. But...What if we take a different approach? What if we don't just rely on the pressure of the gas, hoping that it wants to go somewhere besides out the barrel tip? What if we FORCE that gas to go somewhere else?
This was actually one of my very first Fusion360 projects that I tried to create... to resounding failure. I didn't know the software well enough then, and the shapes I was making were clunky, ill-aligned, barely conceptually functional. So it took a back seat for awhile. Recently, ReconSWS let me try out his suppressor models, and it got the rusty cogs turning again (excellent suppressors, by the way!). So, I gave it another go...
The idea is that there is a "flap" in the path of the ball, such that when the ball passes over the "detent"-looking bit on the front of the flap, the flap flips up into the oncoming pressurized gas, and re-directs as much of the gas behind the ball as possible into dual expansion chambers, which then have exhaust ports that direct expanded gas away from the target.
Animation:
Assembly Animation:
I did print this, and here's how it turned out:
I also did kinda test it. It redirects gas beautifully when the flap is blocking, and reduces/changes the sound signature significantly....
However, with any project like this, it's a metric butt-ton of trial and error, and iteration after iteration to address all the issues.
1. Flap doesn't return easily
2. Ball doesn't consistently activate the flap
3. Ball breaks inside the suppressor body.
4. Gas re-directs well (when flap is blocking), but sound reduction is not great.
5. Sound reduction at targetunknown
6. etcccccc.....
I need to do a better down-range sound reduction test, because so far, I just had my son stand about 30 yards away and ask him "does this sound different?"
Anyway - this project is taking a back seat to some other stuff for awhile, but I thought it would be something fun to look at. Also, I've mostly been working on this in the void of Der PrinterSchrank (The PrinterCloset), so I suppose some input from the outside world would be good as well...
I do currently have enough Guinee Pig beta testers at the moment though (whenever I get to the point of making something more test-able), so no volunteers needed at this time.
This has been:
Tales from Der PrinterSchrank!
With your host, Rainmaker
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