The small questions you've never asked.

[lew]

-Not quite sure what you mean. The early-generation Max manifolds had two ports, both of which connected to the inlet to the regulator itself. That is, the output from the tank, and the two side ports, were all one passage. You could have your fill nipple on either side, and either just plug or fill the other one with a gauge.

The regulator body, too, had two sets of ports, usually just one furthest from the spring-cap end, and then a set of four just below the spring-cap threads. If you had multiple ports at the far end (some did) you could use any one of them for an inlet, and the four outlets in the middle of the reg body, blow the threads, all connected to the same internal chamber. You could put any combination of hoses, fittings or gauges in those ports, in any order- they all went to the same place.

Doc.

Right, I got that. I'm just wondering if there's a way to close the forward (furthest from the ASA) inlet from the manifold. Closing off the port below would be as easy as installing a 1/8" NPT plug. The reason I ask is that, with that second inlet "nozzle" tightened all the way into the reg body, most of the Max Flos I have of that generation have the regulator sitting at a slight downward angle, which looks weird to me. They function fine, so that's not an issue.

[Siress]

I think people are forgetting that paintballs cure and shrink to a nominal .68 caliber, and are not molded in their final dimensions.

That's a good hypothesis. If there's a nominal tool size minus a reasonable % shrink that lands us at .68" then I'd say it's probable. The next 1/8" increment up is a .75" tool diameter, which would indicate 25% shrink by volume for the paintball. Pretty sure it was a US invention, but let's try metric anyway. Next integer up is 18mm, indicating 12% shrink by volume. I'm not familiar with the exact moisture kinetics of these materials, but even 12% seems really high. I typically work in the <0.5% range for structural materials. Since gelatin and PEG are water soluble, it's certainly feasible that they are made substantially oversize and then dried out to .68". That leaves much of the process up to some rather chaotic phenomena, though... I think it'd be a lot easier to work with monitored and adjusted saturation rates in a humidity controlled environment.

[Rusty Brass]

To me, it seems just as strange to intentionally choose 11/16ths as it does for there to be an 11/16ths size already in use for encapsulating something else. 0.170cu-in (2.78cc) volume isn't close enough to an integer to suggest it had to do with dosing. It's not like tubing was commonly extruded with an 11/16ths ID. Or was it?

The fable is the bath bead machine retooled for paintballs but it could be apocryphal? I don't know if there was a machine already in that exact size or not - you're getting a little too scientifical for pre-computer age industrial development with your reasons and volumes. The tubing existed but I couldn't tell you why or what for, that's gotta be the starting point.

*Warning - Pedantic BS below*

There's the old builders' warning: Don't reinvent the wheel. It used to be followed a bit more religiously than now. Sometimes. All kinds of weird materials used to be much more common, standardization has killed off mountains of stuff you used to be able to just pick up where ever. Now we just have relics. The last 40-50 years have seen huge changes in industry as the introduction of computers has forced increases in efficiency and venerable old tools and machines couldn't just be rebuilt (using weird old off-size materials) to stay useful so they went to the scrap heap. We still have some of the measuring systems left over though - schedules for pipe sizing, gauges for diameters, grains for weights, inches/feet for distances... Once something exists and is built a certain way it doesn't really matter why after a while.
Know the story of why the Romans are responsible for the Abrams tank being as wide as it is?

[DavidBoren]

Why are the Romans responsible for the width of the Abrams tank?

[Rusty Brass]

It's kind of mind blowing. Way back when, as the Romans started to conquer Europe, they built roads everywhere that they went so that their armies and supplies could move faster. The carts that they built were uniform in size, being just wide enough for two horses to be under yoke to pull them. As the roads wore down ruts developed from the cart wheels. In order to fit the ruts all carts all over Europe continued to be built to that same track width for hundreds of years. When the railroads were developed the only people with any expertise for making carriages were the cart and buggy makers and they only built them one way - so that set the width of the train tracks. The biggest deciding factor was when they started making road cuts and cutting tunnels though. The width of the tracks determined how wide the carriages could be and still be stable and the width of the tunnels was determined by how much clearance the carriages needed. When WWII started up we had to design all of our fancy new vehicles for the region they'd be operating in - Europe, and the way they'd get around was by train. All of our military equipment had to be narrow enough to fit through European railway tunnels and since we still have defensive responsibilities in Europe all of our new equipment does too.
So the width of the Abrams battle tank was determined by the Romans building their carts wide enough for two horses' asses.

[Cunha]

That's a classic.

[DocsMachine]

I think people are forgetting that paintballs cure and shrink to a nominal .68 caliber, and are not molded in their final dimensions.

-Entirely true, but that still doesn't explain why we wound up with "68" as a caliber. After all, if they wanted ".75" as a final caliber, they just had to make the molds appropriately larger.

AND... it's worth noting that according to rumor, the first balls Charlie molded were in wax, out of a wooden mold. Shrinkage would have been minimal at best for those early examples.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a valid- and/or reliable- explanation as to why we wound up with .68 cal, rather than... well, anything else, .65 cal, .70 cal, .75 cal, etc.

Doc.

[Siress]

this annoys the crap out of me. At least in the US we have 11/16" tooling. Poor int'l folks are stuck looking for 11/16" or 17.5mm tooling, accepting it being oversize.

[jerryjjackson69]

I knew paintballs shrank to size, but I just started thinking about how that works with a liquid filling. Does the filling get compressed? Does some filling escape? Is a certain amount of air left inside to allow for this? Part of the marketing for higher-end paint is less or no air in the filling, helping with greater accuracy, but does some air have to be in there?

[DocsMachine]

I knew paintballs shrank to size, but I just started thinking about how that works with a liquid filling. Does the filling get compressed? Does some filling escape? Is a certain amount of air left inside to allow for this?

-Yes, they shrink, but not much.

When the paintball is molded, the gelatin shell is soft and rubbery, so that when the two molds close with paint in between, the fill pushes the shell into the cavity, forming the ball. The two shell halves being soft and sort of "uncured" also helps them seal together, kind of like closing up an uncooked pie crust.

Then, the balls are sent into a tumbler-dryer, that, well, gently tumbles them while they dry. The tumbling action helps keep the balls spherical, otherwise they'd dry with a flat spot if you just laid 'em out on a cookie sheet or something.

As the shell dries, it shrinks slightly, which also helps make the ball more spherical, but the volume of paint inside is really what determines the final size of the ball- it can't compress, so the shell can only dry/cure to a certain size.

Doc.

[Cunha]

I bet it was available tubing diameters. One size seemed too big and one size seemed too small. Just guessing.

[Extreme Max]

Has the patent for the original Automag expired?

[Cunha]

I dunno but there's always an automag valve around for only 50 bucks plus the cost of a few seals.

Sears wear out

and after a while bolts wear out.

[DocsMachine]

Has the patent for the original Automag expired?

-I'm.... not sure there ever was a patent on the Automag. Point in fact, I seem to recall Tom Kaye specifically refusing to patent the first compressed air systems, in order that more manufacturers could produce them and eventually bring the price down.

Doc.

[Jordan]

I think T.K. did/does hold a patent on the AIR valve. Have Blue used to have a list of paintball related patents, possibly in the Rat's Nest? Wish that resource was still up.

[Siress]

What happened to the Rat's Nest? Does anyone have a copy?

[DocsMachine]

I think T.K. did/does hold a patent on the AIR valve.

-Even if true, and I'm not saying it isn't, it's long expired by now. The 'Mag first came out in, what, '89? '90? And patents only last for seventeen years. Even if TK got around to patenting it in '92, that was still thirty years ago.

What happened to the Rat's Nest? Does anyone have a copy?

-I think I have a partial one, buried deep in one of my hard drives. I'll see if i can find it one of these days.

Doc.

[MrBarraclough]

Mags were first used by an AGD sponsored team in the fall of 1990. I don't think they went on sale to the general public until early 1991, if memory serves correctly.

[Siress]

-I think I have a partial one, buried deep in one of my hard drives. I'll see if i can find it one of these days.

When you do, shoot me a PM and I can host it for all to benefit from.

[Hp_lovecraft]

THEN, Smart Parts appeared. According to rumor, one of the early All-Americans came up with an idea for a "self squeeging" barrel. He took a stock barrel off of whatever gun he was shooting at the time (probably a Sniper, this was pre-semi-auto by several years) and drilled a series of tightly-spaced holes in a spiral pattern. The idea being that if you broke a ball, the next ball fired would "squeegee" the paint out and blow it out the holes.

To add to that, I remember originally, they didn't sell barrels. They sold a porting "service", where you would send in your factory barrel to have drilled. They were not the only one. A few other companies had a similar "self squeegee" type modifications, but they didn't have the backing that Smart Parts had. I remember one, around 91 or so, that had long 5" spiral slots cut into the factory barrel. Same idea, terrible efficiency.

[Siress]

To paraphrase a buddies ESL wife: Why are we like this?

[Euphie]

On the original 4500 PSI maxflo, the on/off valve sits between the fill nipple and the gauge. This means that when it is off, the 5k tank gauge will drop to zero once the pressure in the regulator is lost.

Is there a reason for this? Was this a common thing to do? I can’t fathom why there is an on/off valve at all in this spot. It would make sense for an off on the actual output, but to be between the tank and the tank regulator seems such a confusing choice. I know the Gardeners weren’t stupid though so I figure it has to be done for a reason.

[Euphie]

but surely if you were to degas your regulator for storage, it would seem dangerous for the tank to read 0 PSI in it, when it in fact has 4.5K right?

[XEMON]

You have a point 👍
Might fit better/more compact?

[glaman5266]

I have no constructive idea & no experience with a MaxFlo, so I'm just spitballing here- maybe it was simply because HPA systems weren't super refined back then?

[DocsMachine]

The original Max Flows had the valve on the tank, so everything was depressurized once it was closed and the reg bled out.

Doc.

[Euphie]

Well then which type do I have? The valve is after the fill nipple but, before the high pressure gauge. I found a manual online for the what Smart Parts calls the second generation, but that clearly has the fill nipple and gauge on different sides of the tank and the on/off on the other side after both of them (which makes more sense to me as then you can take off the regulator to work on but still see pressure in the tank). Is there like a generation 1.5 tank?