Rifling barrel for first strikes?

[Jonnydread]

I know this thread is old-ish at this point, but I'm curious what fields (if any at this point) allow FSR to mix in with roundball rec games.

[Chuck E Ducky]

All good just thought some rifled brass would make for a fun build project.

[markdem]

Chuck E Ducky sorry im not doing any rifling in the near future. Setup is still very prototypish and has a lot of kinks.

[Chuck E Ducky]

That’s so cool! Can you riffle some .680 brass for me?

[uv_halo]

I never saw HSV of shots from a smoothbore barrel but, I can't recall whether or not Simon did shoot some.

[latches109]

uv_halo did they post any photos or videos of it?

[Trbo323]

Thanks for the long write up.

Last question, is there a control to the HSV test? It just seems like everyone assumes they are not spinning coming out of a smooth bore. And yes, that does seem likely but if the point was to see that the rifling is what's causing the initial spin I would like to know that the rifling is actually what's doing it and not something like air passing over the side wall while the round is still in the barrel.

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[uv_halo]

They (Bryce and Gordon) didn't capture footage of all of the shots. Between reloading the 8rd mags, cleaning a few breaks they experienced, logging the data, and setting up / tearing down the rig and target, and the fact that I didn't specifically ask them for footage (I trusted them), and probably a reason or two known to them (that I can't remember), they didn't collect video footage of the test rig or even all of the shots. Personally, I've never had a problem with this test because I was familiar with all of their previous testing and I was talking to them quite extensively before and after this test.

20 shots is a fine sample size for this type of statistical analysis, Sure, more shots would be better, with diminishing value as the number of shots increases. This is balanced against the cost of the rounds. At the time of the test, the largest packaged quantity of FSR at this time was the 100rd box, which worked out to $.60 a shot, and practically speaking, there were only 8rd mags commercially available at this point.

In regards to the Yellow, it's your browser settings. The Yellow represents Vector. That and CI require a bit more explanation to understand, more on those below. .

The slow mo video was produced with Simon's, personal or business HSV camera at the time. He had to set it up on a full sun day to get that shot. He used the paper to give contrast to the ruler and the round, and as it was outside, the background wasn't black, it just didn't provide enough light. This wasn't a full-on, intended to be documented and published test. It was to satisfy Simon's and my own curiosity as to whether First Strike Rounds exited a rifled barrel spinning. Prior to this test, it wasn't clear if rifled barrels actually spun the rounds, or even just allowed them to spin in the barrels. A lot of folks believed, due to their history with roundball, and Tom Kaye's testing (who is a personal friend, and former colleague of Simons) that rifled barrels were absolute bunk for projectiles like these (even Tom didn't expect them to work). Most of those folks assumed that FS rounds spun up while in flight. This video shows that in the first twelve inches of flight, the FS Round has already rotated approximately 180 degrees. If I recall, that matches (or is very close to) the twist rate of the barrel, and the twist rate of the fins is higher. I've assumed the higher fin rate was due to the fact that since fins aren't 100% efficient in converting drag to rotation, you take a more aggressive angle to get the round to spin at the desired rate.

To be clear, the HSV was actually collected before I had Punkworks conduct their test. I didn't receive permission to disclose the video until after the Punkworks testing.

Simply put, Vector represents the SDEV spread of the projectiles, relative to the center of their group. Looking at one group, you calculate the average of all the shots Y coordinates, and the average of the X coordinates. This tells you the center of the group. You then calculate the SDEV on each of the groups. This tells you how much (68% of them) spread in each the X and Y direction. You treat those as two legs of a right triangle and, calculate the hypotenuse. A circle, centered on the average of X,Y, with a radius of Vector, should enclose the central 68% of shots. 2X vector should cover 95% of the shots.

I'm not a statistics buff but, As I understand it, Confidence Interval (CI) tells you how much the range in which the average Vector, across multiple groups, should appear in, with a certain degree of probability. This is shown in the Upper and Lower fields at the bottom of each group. Somebody with more of a statistics background could probably describe how it is applied here more precisely.

The combination of the HSV and, the data support the theory that rifled barrels pre-spin the projectile thus, improving the accuracy of the projectiles at distances up to 75ft. It goes to follow that a tighter radius at the near end, translates to tighter radius at the far end. In order for that not to be true, some unknown force would have to cause the tighter shots to spread out more, to match or exceed the rate of the looser shots. For comparison, earlier FS and PB testing showed that FS rounds have a relatively linear amount of spread between 100 and 150, while PBs get worse, the further you go.

[Trbo323]

I have questions. To be clear I'm not debating the results, it's a decent test, I probably would have liked to see it have more shots at a larger range but not faulting you for that, work with what you got.

1) why is there a different number of shots for each barrel in the accuracy test? The YouTube one that is

2) why so few shots? I've seen players go through more FS than 30 just trying to hit an opposing player (granted, I think that was not the best decision on their part but whatever)

3) In the slow mo video, I think I see the mark on the round but I'm really confused why this wasn't done with a better background or better camera. (If money is the reason for the camera I would understand that part but the background?) It's really difficult to see at best. The round is only there for about 5 frames. But where's the control for this test? Did you do one?

The Google sheet looks pretty good, whats the CI number? And if you still have access to it, I really can't see whatever number you have in yellow. Not sure if that's a setting on my end but white font on a yellow background just doesn't work for being able to see it.

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[uv_halo]

I distinctly disagree with most of your points.
More mass has already been addressed but, even at the time measured 3.11 vs 3.0 gram measurements, 0.11g wouldn't improve the ballistic performance of a paintball even 0.1%
They are not a cheat or an instant win button. They have their own disadvantages: No bulk feed, no practical speedloading of mags. Mags take up more space and weight compared to pods. Limited on gun feed capacity (compared to guns with hoppers), MagFed reliability is almost universally worse than the average hopper system on the average gun. Oh, and the cost.

You don't like that they are called FS Rounds? Where's your outrage at Nerf 'Rockets'? They look more like a dart than a rocket, they're used in the game of paintBALL, and, they aren't even included in the ASTM standard for paintball like FS rounds are.

Finally, on fairness. Paintball as an industry and community was totally fine with putting renters with M98s and a shake and bake hopper on the same field and in the same games as any electro, double-finger electro with a force feed loader for more than a decade, if not two.

I strongly disagree with the idea that everyone should be shooting the same projectile. How many computer FPS games feature this? I think a game featuring .50, round ball, .50 First Strike, .68 Roundball, .68FS would be great. Each system has it's own set of benefits an limitations, and success comes to those who exploit their system best.

To add: If everyone was shooting First Strikes, It would be played identical to roundball magfed, just at a longer range.

[uv_halo]

1)What data?

I linked it all earlier in this thread. Maybe you missed it so, I will summarize:

In 2013, using barrels and first strikes I provided, Gordon and Bryce of Punkworks tested First Strikes out of six different barrels from the same, bench locked Tiberius Arms T9.1, at an indoor paint facility in their area. The test results were posted to TechPB first and, I immediately cross posted it here. The barrels:

• Stock (Tiberius) 9"
• 9" LAPCO .690 Smoothbore
• 9" LAPCO/Tiberius .683 Rifled
• 16" LAPCO .690 Smoothbore
• 16" LAPCO/Tiberius .683 Rifled
• 14" Hammerhead .688 Rifled

Here's a link to the data, a google spreadsheet.
Here's video footage of the impacts:

Additionally, I sent a LAPCO barrel to Simon Stevens (of Inception Designs) for High Speed Video capture of the rounds exiting the LAPCO/Tiberius Rifled barrel. Here's that video:

Believe me, I am just as skeptical of the advertising claims of paintball companies. That's why I put my money where my mouth is, and had these things tested.

[Chuck E Ducky]

I see a bit of a tighter group at longer ranges. (But not much)

I think my single shot uses a Lapco barrel. But I have shot them with great results out of my smooth bore pistol to.

[Trbo323]

I find it funny that several folks point out that they don't think Rifled barrels are that much better than smoothbores. Just look at the data. The worst rifled barrel (the Tiberius barrel) had a spread that was nearly half of the best smoothbore barrel (LAPCO) at 75 ft (4.8" vs 8.45" respectively).

1)What data?

And 2) most "tests" are done by the manufacturer, they are far from unbiased. Essentially the best case scenario is that they did do the test..... Many times, and just cherry picked the best one.

Hell, hammerhead used to have a video on their own home page that claimed it actually spun the paint as in spiraling (round ball) then about 30 seconds later, in the same video claimed it was also putting back spin on the ball.

They even had slow motion video of paint coming out of the barrel. But because they didn't put any marking on the paint beyond the seam that was already there you could basically claim it was spinning in just about any direction you wanted

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[uv_halo]

I find it funny that several folks point out that they don't think Rifled barrels are that much better than smoothbores. Just look at the data. The worst rifled barrel (the Tiberius barrel) had a spread that was nearly half of the best smoothbore barrel (LAPCO) at 75 ft (4.8" vs 8.45" respectively).

Sure, First Strike rounds by themselves are a huge jump over regular paint. Maybe it's a matter of diminishing returns in the real world (i.e. where we often have to deal with breezes that we can't even feel) but, I'd rather start with a single digit spread, than a double digit spread.

[uv_halo]

While I think that video works okay for promoting rifled barrels, I was disappointed that they didn't bench lock the gun since we don't know his ability to hold the same position from shot to shot.