Efficiency Testing

[Roger7pball]

I’m sure efficiency isn’t high on most player’s list, but I had the test equipment and access to a few markers so collected some data.

All testing was done indoors; same temperature, same barrel (insert and tip), roughly the same velocity, and same 50 reballs.

Used 50 shots and averaged the pressure drop for each shot. Extrapolated that for a few tank sizes. I used 4300 psi since my average marker’s running pressure is 200 psi. In reality you start to lose velocity as soon as your tank pressure reaches the output pressure, since you set velocity based on the tank’s standard output pressure and most HPRs aren’t pressure compensating (that I know of).

I have high confidence in the data acquisition (transducers with less than 0.5% error) but keep in mind some of the markers are 20+ years old. And none have been tuned for min dwell/max efficiency. I plan to dig into the Lazarus valve’s markers some more - I think there’s some gains to be made. I’ll also test more markers as they become available to me.

[Blackmagic71]

Well done! Very interesting results.

[russc]

Awesome! I'm surprised how close the SFT and Shocker Sport are. That's pretty funny. Assuming you're using ideal gas assumptions, my coworkers have used free data from NIST to calculate pressures that account for real gas compression effects.

[Roger7pball]

I went down this rabbit hole of thinking there is more energy in the tank the fuller it is. In short - non linear, getting more shots per psi at the upper end.

But after converting everything to Moles of air, using PV=nRT, it is all very linear. I didn’t want markers testing earlier after a fill to have an advantage over markers tested down near empty etc.

It was interesting watching the tank slowly “fill itself” when returning to room temperature after a long string of shots.

[russc]

At pressure extremes it's actually the opposite effect...you get fewer moles stored per psi as your pressures go up. Nitrogen is fairly linear as long as you are below 3,000 psi.

[Grendel]

Interesting, I was expecting the Vikings (AKA) to be up toward the top but was not really thinking about the Angels never really thought of them as high efficiency markers. Glad to see my 107R is not down toward the bottom either

Keep up the work, while I do not worry about efficiency in paintball I am a numbers geek so I appreciate the work and it appeals to my Green/Black Belt background.

[Jonnydread]

This is the kind of content I love. Fascinating, a little nerdy and subjectively valuable.

[Frmrspec]

Something is very askew with the Viking with tornado valve… it’s leagues worse than every similar iteration (Vikings or ehms)

[Roger7pball]

I did observe a 60 fps jump by just changing out the valve in my Vikings. So the increased efficiency made sense in my mind. But I do plan to get some more samples and will update the summary.