Airow gun to spring powered conversion?

[Impactfour]

I've always been engrossed by the idea of making a paintball marker that didn't need hpa or co2 (or propane) but rather operated like a spring powered airsoft gun, a break barrel pellet gun or a multi pump BB gun like a crosman 760.

I could be mistaken, as I've never owned one, but if I understand it properly the airow gun use the force of a compound bow to force a plunger that uses compression to launch the paintball. If this is in fact the case could it be reasonable to set up the plunger with a spring sear mechanism similar to a spring powered airsoft marker (but significantly stronger) to create a spring powered paintball marker?

I'm purely spitballing, and have no access to an airow gun but am mostly curious as to if someone more knowledgeable than I has any thoughts on making a no gas marker a reality outside of the airow gun or a slingshot.

[Chuck E Ducky]

I think you would be better off going with a break action like a 22cal BB rifle and adapting a larger bore barrel to it. It takes alot of force to get a paintball up to speed. The arrow bows generally shoot lower velocities like 260-270 unless you crank up the draw weight. Heavier draw weight the less you’re gonna pull that thing back. It’s a work out to shoot the arrow bow. It’s a bring it out for a few games kind of marker you couldn’t pull it back all day unless your a beast and have shoulders of steel.

I feel like a break action drive train on my Air rifle would be much easier using the barrel for leverage and spring /nitro compression.

[Daniel Tiger]

Sounds like he is headed toward the crossbow you were toying with

[Chuck E Ducky]

The issue with the cross bow is the draw length is substantially reduced. The entire valve chamber would need to be made shorter and a larger diameter. Basically to make a self cocking cross bow work it would take a lot of reverse engineering and money. Those self cocking cross bows are not cheap right now. I would probably make my own valve and Manifold out of aluminum. Maybe two smaller pistons linked if needed. Also the barrel would make it pretty long.

[Toestr]

The Daisy/Avanti x53 series uses a single stroke piston to charge a Sheridan style valve setup for a single shot. The piston compresses to about 1200psi based on some rough volumetric difference calculations. That fires .177 pellets at just under 500fps. That sort of system might be viable depending on how efficient it is.

[Morgenstern]

I just started getting back into Nerf and there are some hobby grade foam dart blasters that could probably do it without much modification. Massive plungers and springs. There’s probably something out there available for 3D printing that could be tweaked to shoot magfed paintballs. One guy that shows up to the local nerf game has something he made that fires the massive diameter rubber tipped nerf rounds and I know it hits with several more joules of force than a paintball, that is just a novelty and not for shooting at people. It’s a massive plunger and spring setup that works just like the smaller ones. Should be really gentle on paint, too! Really high volume and really low pressure

[markdem]

The Evolt was a prototype spring-plunger marker that has very little info surrounding it. I tried contacting Simon (the inventor) from Inception Desings with no luck

There was also a dart/tranquilizer gun that operated identically to the airrow gun, except it used large rubber bands to drive the plunger.

if i were to make a usable spring plunger marker, i would do as Morgenstern suggested: take inspiration from the DIY Nerf community.

If i wanted to get goofy with it, i would make a trebuchet. Some people claim they can achieve supersonic velocities using rubber bands and fancy cams on lightweight arms

I have a pellet shooting crossbow (stonebow) but it only shoots like 120fps. There are also bows that do the same thing. The pellet sits in a pouch between parallel bowstrings

and then of course, the grand daddy of them all: the sling. As in David and Goliath

there is also the vacuum gun. Science teachers are getting pingpong balls up to near supersonic velocities by putting the ball in a barrel, sealing both ends with packing tape, sucking all the air out of the barrel and then puncturing the packing tape on one side of the barrel (the side with the ball).