Help needed with the LV2 Solenoid on an Ego 11

[LocalAcceleration]

Hi all! I’m new to the forum but have been working for a couple weeks on a manifold to convert the LV2 Solenoid to the Ego 11. I have gotten it to fit and designed a custom manifold.

The solenoid airs up and pressurizes the bolt, however once it does air starts venting from the two outer exhaust ports on the solenoid (marked with red arrows in the photo below). The solenoid will cycle the bolt on trigger pull but the shot is a little bit weak.

here is a video of the problem; you can hear the air venting at the start of the video:

https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/s/KbIuMzZU3G

Note that the gasket which has the inflow and outflow ports to the marker is not leaking and the sound changes as I adjust the slotted screws on the LV2 solenoid. If I adjust them all the way shut the marker depressurizes slowly so I don’t think I can block them off.

The marker fires perfectly fine at 280fps with an Ego 11 solenoid on there with no leaks so I don’t think the LPR or HPR need adjusting.

I noticed the solenoid on the Ego 11 originally only had 3 ports and the Lv2 solenoid has 5 so my concern is if the marker is designed not to have vents on the solenoid for back pressures or anything like that.

If anybody has any ideas on how to solve this or what the cause could be I would love to get some help on this.

[Cyberpyr8]

Jack Wood posts every so often on PBN. You might want to reach out to him to see if he could offer any advice. If anyone knows, he would.

https://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?p=100493473#post100493473

[Frmrspec]

air is bypassing the ram oring.. rebuild the rammer..

I'm a little confused by the comment that it fires fine with an lv1.6 solenoid, but not the lv2 solenoid, as I thought they were the same....

The other thought I had was that the manifold is machined improperly... is it possible the gasket is deflecting allowing input pressure to bleed into other ports?


edit** - Just saw that the manifold is SLS printed.. have you tested it to make sure it is air tight? I'm pretty sure it is not. If you genuinely think that the manifold can't be machined, I would try stabilizing the material.. put the manifold in a small container with uv resin and put into vacuum chamber then transfer to a pressurized chamber for a few hours, then put it under UV light after all that

[LocalAcceleration]

Ahh gotcha. Yeah it is possible it’s bypassing slightly. That would explain the reduced fps when it fires. I guess if it were venting from overpressure then it would fire at a normal fps. I’m having the manifold SLA’d and will check back in after that’s done!

[William the Third]

It's funny to see someone else has figured out the same thing. So about 1.5~2 years ago my friend Mikey and I were screwing around with his LV (slow winter day at the field). He had at the time one each LV1, 1.1, 1.5, and 1.6. We had them all apart doing various parts swapping among them. Some of them needed a solenoid, and we wondered how hard it would be to adapt a LV1.6/2 solenoid to the older markers. Turns out, not hard at all, as the Ego 11 thru LV1.5 use the same manifold, and that manifold is only very slightly different than the LV1.6/2.

So the project got put on pause because, lets be honest, procrastination and laziness (same reason it took me two years to get the HDR50/TR50 velocity adjusters to manufacturing). Anyway, jump to Fulda 2023 and Mikey is really wanting to use one of his LV1.? creations, but he needs a solenoid. He picked up a solenoid (or two, I forget) from Eclipse at the event, and we discus how we really need to move forward on this project. Come another slow day early 2024, and Mikey decides to go at an LV1.6/2 manifold with a Dremel to make prototype 1. It's ugly, but it's a success! The LV1.6/2 solenoid worked perfectly in one of his LV1.? creations. Actually, the LV1.6/2 solenoid appears to cycle faster, as he's got a slight his when firing, like when FSDO is cranked up on your first shot. Looks like you'll be able to drop dwell a bit when using a LV1.6/2 solenoid on older markers. This also brings up a minor problem. The adjustment screws on the LV1.6/2 solenoid aren't accessible in older frames. Not a big deal, as you should need to access them often, and if you do, you could just drill a couple of holes.

Anyway, for the last six or so months that prototype manifold has been with me, as I've been needing to measure it and draw it up in CAD to send out for manufacturing. Again, procrastination and laziness has reared its head. My goal was to finish all of that so I could hopefully have a few manufactured for testing by the end of this month. I was supposed to finish all of the drawing last week... but that hasn't happened yet, so hopefully by the end of this week. I want to get a few prototypes made before I do a full run (hopefully in time for Fulda 2024).

I'm not a fan of 3D printing something like this. Sure, the Ego 11-LV1.5 manifold is plastic, but it's injection molded over a partial metal skeleton.

Anyway, here is the crude prototype 1.

[LocalAcceleration]

Hey man just curious if you had any more success with this getting made into a CAD file?

[William the Third]

LocalAcceleration This project is on hold for a while. Helene has fucked everything up here right and proper. My Ego 11, and Mikey's LV's were all damaged in the floods.

[Siress]

Nice work! FWIW - you could ditch the thin reinforcement wall everywhere except between the two chambers to simplify the machining as it does practically nothing to protect or reinforce the gasket. (Shit...just saw that you were hit by the floods... that sucks, dude. I hope you and yours are all safe and that you can get everything important sorted out soon. Best of luck to you)

[tyronejk]

Can you post the specs/part numbers for the LV1.6 and LV2 solenoids? We can dig into manufacturer data with those. But I thought the two were the same too.

[LocalAcceleration]

So I’ve determined that PE and SMC have different part numbers for the solenoids. Any spec sheets would likely use SMC’s PN and not the PE one.

[tyronejk]

What is the SMC part number for the LV1.6/LV2 solenoid?

[LocalAcceleration]

I believe it is the SYJ3140-RG-X159 solenoid for SMC. However I can't verify that and I only found that listed one place as a manufacturer part number, everywhere else lists the PE part number. SYJ does follow along with SMC's naming convention and the other SYJ3140-RG-XXXX does seem to look similar at the base of the solenoid

[Ecapnation]

Just to back up things ...

SLS prints are highly porous not air or liquid tight

[devilzcall]

This. SLS Nylon is amazing and can match injection molding in strength, but for Airtight parts i'd go with resin. If you don't have access to a printer i'd go with jlc3dp - 6060 resin.

[LocalAcceleration]

This seems to be a common consensus. I’m going to get a part made with SLA to see if it will hold

[Frmrspec]

Also I’m sure you could get the manifold machined given a little design creativity… manifold and have a sub plate mounted between the manifold and the solenoid using either seperate screws from the solenoid mount to secure, or longer solenoid screws.. depending how creative you wanted to get.. a little RTV compound between the subplate and manifold would seal up just fine

[LocalAcceleration]

It's funny to see someone else has figured out the same thing. So about 1.5~2 years ago my friend Mikey and I were screwing around with his LV (slow winter day at the field). He had at the time one each LV1, 1.1, 1.5, and 1.6. We had them all apart doing various parts swapping among them. Some of them needed a solenoid, and we wondered how hard it would be to adapt a LV1.6/2 solenoid to the older markers. Turns out, not hard at all, as the Ego 11 thru LV1.5 use the same manifold, and that manifold is only very slightly different than the LV1.6/2.

So the project got put on pause because, lets be honest, procrastination and laziness (same reason it took me two years to get the HDR50/TR50 velocity adjusters to manufacturing). Anyway, jump to Fulda 2023 and Mikey is really wanting to use one of his LV1.? creations, but he needs a solenoid. He picked up a solenoid (or two, I forget) from Eclipse at the event, and we discus how we really need to move forward on this project. Come another slow day early 2024, and Mikey decides to go at an LV1.6/2 manifold with a Dremel to make prototype 1. It's ugly, but it's a success! The LV1.6/2 solenoid worked perfectly in one of his LV1.? creations. Actually, the LV1.6/2 solenoid appears to cycle faster, as he's got a slight his when firing, like when FSDO is cranked up on your first shot. Looks like you'll be able to drop dwell a bit when using a LV1.6/2 solenoid on older markers. This also brings up a minor problem. The adjustment screws on the LV1.6/2 solenoid aren't accessible in older frames. Not a big deal, as you should need to access them often, and if you do, you could just drill a couple of holes.

Anyway, for the last six or so months that prototype manifold has been with me, as I've been needing to measure it and draw it up in CAD to send out for manufacturing. Again, procrastination and laziness has reared its head. My goal was to finish all of that so I could hopefully have a few manufactured for testing by the end of this month. I was supposed to finish all of the drawing last week... but that hasn't happened yet, so hopefully by the end of this week. I want to get a few prototypes made before I do a full run (hopefully in time for Fulda 2024).

I'm not a fan of 3D printing something like this. Sure, the Ego 11-LV1.5 manifold is plastic, but it's injection molded over a partial metal skeleton.

Anyway, here is the crude prototype 1.

It seems possible but extremely ill-fitted to do that without a small leak or something. I'd be apprehensive about fitting the solenoid into the lower with it being so far forward. I matched the positioning of the rearward screws to that of the Ego 11 manifold. It also looks like the Lv2 mini-fold does not reach the forward port on the marker.