Modern mechs with anti chop

[BrickHaus]

Ummm, yes and no.

Yes that patent exists

But if you read into it, it's talking about using an optical sensor to detect the presence of a paintball, ie, eyes. So unless PE is planning on building an emek with eyes... And filed the patent out just to prevent someone else from building a mech that also uses a battery, I'm not sure what they are doing there

I'm thinking though that the wording of "mechanical" in that patent is more technical than what we consider mech in the sport. This seems like an attempt to patent eyes in general which seems pretty pointless as it would be easy to prove eyes existed in paintball long before this patent. I'm betting there is probably some super specific thing about PEs eyes that they don't want people to copy

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The verbiage states its electrical, but if you go look at the design sketches it looks like a mechanical design. Which i dunno. Jack Wood kinda seems like the Gardner Brothers of the modern day, yet he's not widely hated..

So though its agreed on that its not really needed. Jack Wood basically nullifies anyones ability to try. As a result of this alone, I doubt you will ever see anything happen.

[martix_agent]

Nobody hated the Gardners because of the technology they "owned", they were hated because of how they were complete dicks about all of it.

[BrickHaus]

Yes, but Jack has made it clear that anyone who makes a cure bolt to sell, even aftermarket, will be sued. Why would he take a different stance on anti chop technology?

[imped4now]

Where has Jack stated that?

There have been quite a few instances of Jack's work being copied - no lawsuits have ever come of it. The Gardeners fairly deserve the hate they receive. Jack does not.

[Euphie]

It doesn’t seem so impossible that you could essentially make a cops/sensi style rod that turns a tiny pneumatic valve on to lock the trigger with a pin if the weight of a paintball doesn’t push it down

you could even turn it on or off with a knob since the pressure in it would be low anyway since you would need it to be sensitive enough to get activated by the weight of a single paintball the real question is why?

I never chop paint even when I have bought the fancy stuff with my Shoebox and it’s only anti chop mechanism is low pressure with a slowish bolt and that seems is what the modern spools seem to have. I love the level 10 but, it isn’t like you need to be able to stick your tongue in there to play paintball with it, so it is a bit overkill tbh, unless your goal is to prevent dry fires which the system I thought of above would

[Toestr]

The Tippmann ACT system was/is (?) coming on many of their 98s as a upgraded feature. Similar to how an egrip or rt kit could be included from the factory. The ACT's main problem is the operating pressure. If you stick your finger in the breach and fire with no air it feels significantly softer than an emek. If you pull the trigger with air on it it will hurt more than just pulling the trigger on a regular blowback and letting the full force of the mainspring/hammer hit your finger. Half the ball is still getting blasted with 800psi. It might work ok on a LP build.

Tippmann was actually smart with the design too. They made the linkage arm shaped in such a way that when the bolt travels forward to a point there couldn't be a paintball halfway loaded the arm cams down and locks into the hammer. This way you're not having the bolt blow back independently and lose velocity.

As for other potential mech anti chop means there could be an upside down Lok Bolt for applicable hopper fed guns. There's a spring mod for the MG100 Lok Bolt that involves adding the spring from some computer data port connector pin. That could be inverted.

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[The Inflicted]

Do Emeks chop? Real question. I never chopped with mine, but I only put like a case through it.

They'll definitely chop.
I've tried running my MG-100 on a Proto Primo and a PALs hopper and managed to get several chops with both.

No chops with my Rotor or Revolution, though.

[The Inflicted]

Nothing that's hopper fed. My MG100 has a Lok Bolt that Alexndl printed for me. Works great. Pretty much any mag fed Tippmann has a Lok Bolt for it. You can get the warp adapters for many mag fed guns too.

I can understand using them with warp adapters and boxmags, but do lok-bolts have any real utility when used with springfed magazines other than letting you know when you're empty? I can't imagine anyone is outrunning a springfeed with a mechanical gun, even with a reactive trigger.

[Trbo323]

The verbiage states its electrical, but if you go look at the design sketches it looks like a mechanical design. Which i dunno. Jack Wood kinda seems like the Gardner Brothers of the modern day, yet he's not widely hated..

So though its agreed on that its not really needed. Jack Wood basically nullifies anyones ability to try. As a result of this alone, I doubt you will ever see anything happen.

So I read into this a little more, here's the take aways

1) it is specifically talking about a mechanical marker, electronics would only be used for the eyes

2) it's a blanket patent. The wording is loose enough to cover any electrical sensing system designed to prevent chops on a mechanical marker

3) The wording covers basically any method to stop the marker from firing it seems so long as there are some electronic elements involved. It specifically mentions a blocking device that would prevent the bolt from traveling but in reading it that appears to be used as more as an example because the wording should cover any device that would prevent the bolt from moving

As to why wood is not hated, I think there are a few reasons, I'm using this patent as an example

1) he actually came up with/patented this idea. The gardeners didn't come up with the idea to use a electronic switch first. They actually had to use a patent that was already in place because the date on that was sufficiently in the past, basically re submitted it with new language to take advantage of the previous date. This was only allowed because the parent office will clamp a stamp on basically anything because they are over worked and let you fight it out in court.

2) as far as I know (which I'll admit, isn't far) wood isn't suing small manufacturers out of business. When the G brothers started on the offensive they specifically went after small companies that could not mount much of a legal defence. Any win in court early on would set precedent for future cases.

Really though, if you own the patent and nobody else can proove that they had the idea before you, you can go after whoever you want. That's the problem with the G brothers e marker patent. Because of the back dating, it made it look like this with the first instance of someone patenting/using the electronic switch

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[BrickHaus]

Fair enough. I didnt read it myself specifically, but I was told he would not allow aftermarket bolts to be manufactured with a ramp ( specifically speaking to his cure patents). And would not release the patent even though their markers dont utilize the technology any more.

I understand hes not. G brother at all, but IMO our sport needs to be as collaborative as possible to keep growing. Utility patents like these stifle that.

[Brokeass_baller]

I've never really had good luck with mechanical anti-chops in the past. The Level 10 for the Automag worked really well, and once it's tuned, it's good for YEARS. But in the end, I choose to run a Level 7 foamie for the sake of simplicity, and I haven't really had any problems. The Tippmann 98 ACT also worked really well (surprisingly). Especially when coupled with the cyclone and squishy paddles. Those two systems are excellent and worth the money/time investment.

But my Autococker Jam bolt is... Weird. I can't figure out the springing. Stock, the spring is really stiff. So much so that I can't see it benefiting in any way. If I change it to a lighter spring, it drags and moves independently from the back block.

The Spyder ACS bolts worked ok on hard Walmart-quality paint. These were lighter and delrin and had no o-rings, so maybe that's why. So it worked for rec ball, but there's absolutely no way it would stop on Ultra Evil or anything tournament brittle like that.

My two magfed guns (Tacamo Tornado and Vortex) have the Lok-Bolt, which works really well. By the time you get to the last ball or two, the spring tension in the Helix mags is so weak that they feed slow enough to chop with a decent ROF. Or simply fail to completely enter the breech altogether. But, it's annoying because when the Lok-Bolt kicks in, you have to recock the system manually. If you just swap mags, it'll fire immediately upon insertion, and the round will just kinda bloop out at half velocity, and it'll scare the crap out of you. So, it works, but that's annoying.

I had a Gemini system at one point on an Autococker. Really cool idea. Used a 6-way (or something) and two LPRs, so you could run a higher pressure for the bolt-back movement, and a lower pressure for the bolt-forward movement. The idea was that you could simply rest the bolt onto a half-fed ball with the light bolt-return pressure. But the unbalanced pressure caused my whatever-way switch to hangup a lot. The only way to correct it (as far as I could figure) was to install a firmer spring behind the trigger plate, which made the trigger pull feel tough and less-refined.

So, yeah. It's been tried, but very few have actually accomplished it without reducing the marker quality in some other fashion. That said, I really rarely chop, and in general I do not think it's worth the hassle and cost. I've been shooting Automags and Autocockers for 20+ years now, and I know how to pull the trigger so that I don't short stroke. And I know how to tune them so that I can achieve a good ROF. Modern mechs operate at such a low pressure that the point is almost moot. I don't think I've ever chopped a ball in my eNMEy, or my old GMek before I sold it. And as far as loaders go, I pretty much use ReVLutions or my SpireIR exclusively, or my APP 150rd hopper for old times sake, and they feed more than enough for me.

[cfos00]

I make my own bolts for my R/T cockers, and they absolutely work. They have to with the cockers I shoot being blind and 12bps or so as soon as you pull the trigger (need a rotor as well to keep up with the feeding). The bolts are based on jams, but I also ramp the front of them to stop clipping of the ball stack. Mine also differ in that the front half is very similar to a lightning bolt internally with a wider inlet, and they're sprung much heavier than the old jam bolts. I noticed when looking at hi speed video of one of mine shooting that the lighter spring lead to the bolt actually bouncing back mid-shot, which could lead to some bad things. So I went heavier, and found that they still work and will stop a chop dead in it's tracks. I've shot these bolts for around 7 years now, and the current generation that I make for the last 4 years or so. If I get a break, most of the time it's the paint either being bad (most of the issue right there) or occasionally cracking in the feedneck (ramps don't always stop clips----but they're rare). And the gray and purple R/T twister has had at least 200k+ shots through it and the spring in the jam still works and is still really heavy. They work very, very well.

[Tarsun2]

you gotta remember (just like the bounce in an electrical switch) the balls in the stack move around quite before they settle.
Theres allot going on in there.

most of the time with my old spyder, it wasnt a feed rate issue. with a force feed hopper, the ball in the breach (bottom ball) would scoot forward or back a little causing the next ball in line (top ball) to drop down a little further. this top ball would get clipped by the bolt and then be blown to smithereens when its turn was up... (or crushed by the stack when it entered the breach).

rollback is a problem with modern paint and older markers. An agitator hopper will work best for that situation.

this can be remediated by gluing an o-ring to the face of the bolt to take up the extra space.

the chances of actually chopping a ball in half has to be pretty limited at this point. especially with a mech and an electronic hopper.

[Euphie]

I can’t say I have ever had rollback be an issue, but I have to wonder if that means modern hoppers are just asking too much? I have a Reloader B2/Halo B, Ricochet AK, Viewloader VLocity select force, Viewloader eye-force, and Viewloader VL-2000 and of all of those the only one I ever had paint break with is the Halo and I put the spring back in so that it can’t wind up and that solved my issue. So it just seems like modern hoppers should be way more gentle since they don’t need to feed fast or push against a bunch of blowback but, I have consistently seen people chop when I haven’t using older guns and that is the only thing that seems different about their setup versus mine

[Trbo323]

need a rotor as well to keep up with the feeding

I actually ran into this about a month ago on my automag (x valve with RT)

I put my spire 3 on it and it would often chuff on the second shot. If I'm guessing my mag is somewhere around 18bps but the spire can't go from 0 to 18 in the span of one shot. Had to run the rotor on it

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[cfos00]

Yep, the CTRL and IV might keep up, but the rotor consistently does and I know it. Spires I-III won't work unless I slow the gun down, which isn't what I want. I would rather run an LT-R than the best spires on fast mechs. I KNOW they'll keep up.

[The Jayster]

Lol, this was never designed in actually, it came about by happy mistake. This started with the sp1, smart parts basically discovered that their never ending "low pressure is more accurate" scam had an unintended consequence of running the bolt slow enough that you wouldn't (usually) chop. They could not however claim the same thing on the ion xe because it had a QEV from the factory. But the thing is, the sp1 was the same internally as the original ion but the original ion was never marketed with this as a feature, they didn't realize it at the time

Smart Parts wouldn't have made bogus marketing claims... oh wait, the 'mag Magic Box I paid a pretty penny for... damn, foiled again!

I do recall that they were selling the 'low-pressure = no chops' point for the Shoebox Shocker. They were also claiming that low-pressure also meant way more air efficient, yet the SB Shocker was a gas hog. I'm not surprised that they discovered the anti-chop properties of the Ion engine by mistake. I do know that the SP-1 I had could handle the most brittle of paint (yes, sometimes I bought tournament-grade paint for my SP-1) at 10 bps full-auto, all day long. I had a BH board and Tech T bolt, and the latter, for some odd reason, seemed to make the gun even softer on paint.

[Tarsun2]

The G6R i had used a bolt with a small ramp just above the face of the bolt. it was supposed to prevent clipping... i think i t worked (idk).
my a1 fly never breaks paint. and that dosent have anything fancy going on with the bolt...

[Trbo323]

. I had a BH board and Tech T bolt, and the latter, for some odd reason, seemed to make the gun even softer on paint.

Funny story, did you know that the BH boards were just re-flashed stock boards?

On the stock board SP would fill the programming plug with glue to prevent anyone from re-flashing their own board.

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[Brokeass_baller]

That's a very Smart Parts thing to do.

[The Jayster]

Funny story, did you know that the BH boards were just re-flashed stock boards?

On the stock board SP would fill the programming plug with glue to prevent anyone from re-flashing their own board.

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I'm not surprised, actually. The BH board did come with the kewl blue laser eyes and a new body sleeve with grooves to accommodate said eyes, and IIRC it wasn't too expensive, so I snatched one up. In SP's defense (yeah I know, it sounds odd), the very first SP-1s came with the board stuck at semi, but they quickly offered a new iteration with the 3 modes. Those who bought the semi only model could get the board flashed for free to unlock 3-round bursts and F/A (and it was true F/A, which was awesome).

I must have gone through pallets of cases with that gun; never chopped and never let me down. And to think I bought it as an afterthought to pad an order so that I'd get free shipping. Anyways, good times.