Gatling gun

[DocsMachine]

You can't keep 1 ion going these days because the parts are hard to find... And terrible, that thing is 6 ions

-I'm actually working on that. (That is, the Ion thing, not the Gatling thing. ) What parts do you need?

So awesome that sc village allows him to hang out in the staging area without barrel covers.

-While I definitely agree, the gun was disconnected from air, and you could see was empty of paint. And, I suspect none of the staff was nearby right at that moment- and given how badly the gun gets splooged in that demo video, considering that it's clean in Bacchi's video, I strongly suspect that was as he was first bringing it out.

There was one seen, in the pre-YouTube days, that was an actual mechanical Gatling. I don't know how it was fed, but supposedly it was in fact six mechanical valvetrains in a ring. I've heard suggestions that the guy above, with the Ion-gun, is the same guy that was developing the mechanical gun, but I really don't know for sure.

Now, all that said, as you might imagine, I have reams of drawings of paintball Gatlings. I've been sketching ideas since I started playing, and that's longer than some of you here have been alive.

My "current" design- no CAD, still just plain paper sketches- I believe is quite workable, though will of course both need a lot of CAD development and probably at least two generations of physical prototyping. I believe I've solved the feed issue- not necessarily meaning it can't or won't chop, no paintball gun will get past that, but that the feed should be able to keep up with proper high ROFs. Maybe not "true Gatling" speeds, but definitely better than "spooler on full-auto" speeds.

I only hope to live long enough to both start and finish it.

Doc.

[Jordan]

Man that thing has to be dead. You can't keep 1 ion going these days because the parts are hard to find... And terrible, that thing is 6 ions

So awesome that sc village allows him to hang out in the staging area without barrel covers. Great safety practices guys

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If you're talking about armature dying, there are a couple guys making new ones.

[Olsson]

Apart from the obvious technical difficulties in buidling a functional Gatling Gun, I was under the impression that one of the main reasons why such a contraption is rarely built was due to rapid spinning barrels would simply mess up the accuracy with paint being the ammunition, rather than bullets. Thereby making a Paintball Gatling Gun with slow rotating barrels a somewhat pointless novelty, and a Paintball Gatling Gun with rapid rotating barrels a hilarious but rather useless novelty.

I have never tried anything like this myself, nor have I seen a rotary paintball gun in action. I have heard this mentioned as a main problem several times over they years, so it gave me the impression it was a major hurdle. Ideas anyone? Yes, Doc - I'm expecting a very explanatory answer from you.

[Trbo323]

If you're talking about armature dying, there are a couple guys making new ones.

The banjo bolts are the hard thing to come across. And they are plastic so you know, that really helps them last long

I can't remember the last time I saw an ion on the field actually

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[Trbo323]

-I'm actually working on that. (That is, the Ion thing, not the Gatling thing. ) What parts do you need?

I don't touch them any more unless someone needs work. Most of the stuff I do is flipping markers but I avoid ions at this point, they typically need too much work and sell for too little to really turn any profit


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[Jordan]

The banjo bolts are the hard thing to come across. And they are plastic so you know, that really helps them last long

I can't remember the last time I saw an ion on the field actually

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There are industry spec fittings available to replace those plastic ones... Pneumadyne and Clippard, off the top of my head.

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[Trbo323]

There are industry spec fittings available to replace those plastic ones... Pneumadyne and Clippard, off the top of my head.

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Do you know the specs? I'll have to check that out.

But regardless, the banjos are just the most common issue with ions, the internal tubing, noids, eyes, reg seats, I've seen them all go and it's just gotten to the point that I avoid ions when I'm searching around for something to buy. The amount of work they typically require mixed with parts they need and low resell mean they are hard to turn a profit from

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[Jordan]

Do you know the specs? I'll have to check that out.

But regardless, the banjos are just the most common issue with ions, the internal tubing, noids, eyes, reg seats, I've seen them all go and it's just gotten to the point that I avoid ions when I'm searching around for something to buy. The amount of work they typically require mixed with parts they need and low resell mean they are hard to turn a profit from

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They're not worth the cost if you're trying to flip... I thought you were talking about personal projects, forgot you were a flipper.

[The Inflicted]

This one was made from a bunch of Stingrays, but as you can probably tell, even a small amount of use would damage the sears of several of the individual guns past the point of working. To my knowledge he never worked out any feeding solution.

I would think that if one's goal was to produce a fully functional build you would start with the loading mechanism and work backward from there.

[DocsMachine]

Thereby making a Paintball Gatling Gun with slow rotating barrels a somewhat pointless novelty, and a Paintball Gatling Gun with rapid rotating barrels a hilarious but rather useless novelty. [snip] Yes, Doc - I'm expecting a very explanatory answer from you[.]

-You may be confusing TWB with reality.

Unless there's been one I haven't seen, that one rotary multi-Ion is pretty much the only truly functional paintball Gatling that's been made. The guy's Stingray Gatling used to have at least one demo video, shooting indoors into a sideways trash can, but that was at such close range no weird trajectories could be seen.

The Ion one has had at least two demo videos, including the one posted here, with it being fired, among other things, into a stream. It's hard to see the actual balls in the air, but from what we can see of the impacts and water splashes, no crazy physics seem to be going on. Even when the gun is badly gooped (you can see splooge coming out of the breech area) it still seems to shoot fairly straight.

If you want data, anecdotally, Tom Kaye tried shooting paint through a barrel, as I recall, mounted in a lathe, and spun up to at least 3K RPM. No significant change in accuracy was observed.

If you want hard data, we have to make a couple suppositions. A typical electro doing an achievable 20 BPS (easily achievable today) is firing 1200 shots per minute. Let's assume our Gatling can, maybe due to feed issues, "only" reach 2,000 per minute. That's only 5.5 balls per second per barrel. If I have my math right (never a certainty) that's only about 365 RPM for the barrel assembly.

For the sake of the argument, let's assume 300 FPS and a 12" barrel. Given those, the ball only spends 1/300th of a second in the barrel, or less than four milliseconds.

So assuming I have my math right- you fellows are welcome to check and if necessary, point and laugh - that ball is in the barrel for somewhere around 0.02 of a revolution.

I would think that if one's goal was to produce a fully functional build you would start with the loading mechanism and work backward from there.

-I kind of did. The two big tricks to a Gatling are getting the paint out of the hopper and into the gun, and then, chambering it into the breech. Both need to be heavily redesigned to take into account the speeds. I believe I've solved both, but of course until it's actually built and tested, we won't know for sure.

Doc.

[Olsson]

Doc delivers.
I had to unlike your post, so I could like it twice.

[uv_halo]

I'm of the belief that a gatling paintball gun is pointless. That's not to say that it wouldn't be a fun project or thing to have.

The purpose of the gatling mechanism is to overcome the challenges of feeding bullets / shells, in other words, their long, recipricating bolt mechanisms. With our very short projectile lengths, our 'bolts' are capable of moving much faster than we can force feed a ball into the chamber (we're limited by their fragility). With all that said, it would just be easier to have multiple guns firing sequentially (without rotation).

[Chappy]

Look at dis guy, talkin' bout pointlessness and doing it the easy way. Does he know what forum he's on?!? Sheesh

[uv_halo]

LOL. I put that second sentence in there precisely because I realized I was on this forum :P

[DocsMachine]

[/I'm of the belief that a gatling paintball gun is pointless.

-You're not wrong. If you could push such a thing to 2K SPM, that's a case a minute. It'd cost you $50 to $75 a minute to run it. And unless your opponents are trying to run between bunkers or you catch them in the open (IE,attacking the Castle) the vast majority of that would be no better that suppressive fire.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be a fun project or thing to have.

-Bingo. We don't "need" a Gatling, any more than we "need" a Goblin, or a Roscoe, or a Duke. Or a grenade, or a "rocket launcher", or for that matter, a "tank" to shoot the "rocket launcher" at.

BUT... those things are cool and fun to play with- and after all, for everyone save a very few 'pro' players, this is a game played for fun and recreation.

And, of course, for guys like me, there's the mechanical challenge of it. That's part of where the Duke came from- I never really liked most of the Sheridan-brass lever conversions, and the Dukie Phantom was only marginally better, so I set out to make one that was designed as a lever from scratch. I would love to have the time to sit down and properly develop a Gatling- as well as a proper reusable grenade, and maybe a couple other minor 'holy grails'.

The purpose of the gatling mechanism is to overcome the challenges of feeding bullets / shells, in other words, their long, recipricating bolt mechanisms. With our very short projectile lengths, our 'bolts' are capable of moving much faster than we can force feed a ball into the chamber (we're limited by their fragility).

-Technically, the Gatling was developed in part to make a manually operated machine gun. Keeping in mind that true recoil-operated or gas-operated machine guns didn't yet exist, so having the operator turn a crank to cycle the thing was the technology of the day.

And the other part because black powder was horribly filthy, and left behind a great deal of soot and debris with each shot. A conventional machine gun as we know it today would have been impossible with black powder- the gun would have fouled and jammed before the end of the first magazine. The Gatling design spread that fouling out over effectively six guns, allowing longer periods of use before it had to be cleaned.

No, we don't need any of that in paintball, other than maybe the idea of one or two barrels getting splooged with chops, with the rest able to still fire accurately.

This is, of course, not the primary reason.

With all that said, it would just be easier to have multiple guns firing sequentially (without rotation.)

-Yep. If mere volume of fire was the only goal, a 2X4 with half a dozen A5s nailed to it and some sort of electric firing mechanism would do the job simpler and easier.

But wouldn't be anywhere near as cool.

Doc.

[uv_halo]

-You're not wrong. If you could push such a thing to 2K SPM, that's a case a minute. It'd cost you $50 to $75 a minute to run it. And unless your opponents are trying to run between bunkers or you catch them in the open (IE,attacking the Castle) the vast majority of that would be no better that suppressive fire.

I wasn't meaning to say that a gatling paintball gatling gun would be pointless but, rather gatling gun technology being applied to a paintball gun.

-Technically, the Gatling was developed in part to make a manually operated machine gun. Keeping in mind that true recoil-operated or gas-operated machine guns didn't yet exist, so having the operator turn a crank to cycle the thing was the technology of the day.

And the other part because black powder was horribly filthy, and left behind a great deal of soot and debris with each shot. A conventional machine gun as we know it today would have been impossible with black powder- the gun would have fouled and jammed before the end of the first magazine. The Gatling design spread that fouling out over effectively six guns, allowing longer periods of use before it had to be cleaned.

I agree with all of that but, I also left out the thermal benefits (esp. as they pertain to Vulcans) because I didn't see those either benefits as relevant to paintball. That's part of the reason why I focused on reciprocation and, also because that fact applies to all gatling and derived designs.

All that being said, I onder how many guns firing at xBPS would it take to where it doesn't sound like repeating shots but rather, a true brrrrrp or zipper effect?

[Seajay]

Well everyone seems to want to do one with a lot of barrels... why not 3 and simplify it a lot, that way it makes it to reality. GAU-19.

[netsurferdude2]

Why not 8 and complicate it a lot, that way it makes it to reality.

[netsurferdude2]

More = gooder