Paintball sorting

[ThatBobbyjoe]

Had some really bad paint lately and was wondering if anyone has ever come up a convenient way to sort paint. I’m imagining sorting a bag at a time, just getting a semi consistent range, removing .678, .690, and football shaped ones.

maybe a 3d printed tray of some sort?

[scottieb]

Like a mechanical/automated coin sorter, but for paintballs.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

Something like that yeah

[Cdn_Cuda]

Some guys suggest running it through a Dye Rotor and anything that doesn't make it through set it aside.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

Could be any loader really , rotors are just abundant and cheap. Also pretty easy to change stack pressure on them.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Walker not sure. I know my Rotor will jam from misshapen paint but haven’t tried a different loader.

[Jsc5150]

Haha that’s one of my tricks.

The rotor has those two paddles running in opposite directions so they jam easily with egg or football shaped paint.

[iamthelazerviking]

I've heard of some kind of tumblers years ago that would "sort" the good from bad.

It stinks that a majority of paint is still bad these days, especially for closed bolt users.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

It would be nice to be able to use field paint. Hoping someone will have a photo of one or something

[Jonnydread]

back in the day I knew some guys who would put their paint in a rock tumbler

[scottieb]

It would be great to have your own bags with just one size in each. Gee, you'd think that would be a marketable thing.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

If only…

[Pyrate Jim]

As a stock player, I would guesstimate by filling a 10-round tube and checking the distance of the stacked paint to the top of the tube.
Sticking out the top meant swollen paint. Too far below meant shriveled paint. Variations within a single bag of paint meant inconsistencies.
Not exactly a sorting method, just a gauge.
The sorting was filling the tubes by hand. Obvious distortions like dimples could be kicked out.

Obviously, that's not really an option filling a revvy. You're not filling it by hand, handling every ball. Just pouring them into the hopper.
Yet you don't need to measure every ball. A sampling of 3 tubes out of a bag of 200 is 15% and doesn't take long to do.
But it might give an indication of what sort of paint you're dealing with.

[BrickHaus]

I had a hair brained idea for this in my head, but I never tried to implement it. But my thought was like a box with a labyrinth of holes in it directing different sized balls to different compartments. Then a pod loader on each compartment. More so I could take all the similarly sized balls, and have a single pod of that. Then I could change my insert and use a different pod of balls

[ThatBobbyjoe]

Exactly, just an easy way to get them close.

[Bert_bart_brett]

I blame skirmish still getting 100 bucks a case and only letting field paint be used. Biggest field in the US bulk buys garbage paint, no incentive not to produce garbage paint. Is my blame warranted? No not really

[Kit352]

I used to have a coin sitter thing that I made and it would sort various sizes. Worked great. Unfortunately it was when balls were bigger so it's useless now. Not sure how it would sort bad paint but you could at least get uniform sizes.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

Got any pictures of it?

[Kit352]

I will look. I don't have it anymore, it was useless once bores got small.

[Cunha]

The rotor idea is best

[Walker]

Make removable sleeves, different sizes, for a loader neck? Go smallest to largest and feed the paint through.

[Walker]

Yup.... Stranger things have been used.....

[ThatBobbyjoe]

I like that idea. Just need some way to clear out to no go ones.

[ThatBobbyjoe]

I could see sets of 2 sleeve cylinders. When it won’t feed through rotate it and clear out. Revolver style

[ATBen]

I have one of these, and according to my Amazon calipers they're spot on. I always wondered with where today's 3D printers are at, if someone could somehow combine a BallSack with some sort of sorting ramp that would have plates of these stacked largest to smallest bore. Maybe 688, 686, 684, etc? The hopper driven Balls Dropper?

[TencenT]

I don't think you can really do it. The issue I've seen with field paint is that none of it is actually round so you sometimes can get barrel tape detents to work and sometimes you can't because how the ball entered the breach is all the difference. I've started attempting to put tape in circularly to combat it but that's only partially effective. The ultimate issue is paint no longer comes close to fitting in even a .679. I feel like the real resolution is eventually someone sues them and maybe gets them on the false advertising that .68 paint ain't even remotely close to being .68. Doubt that ever happens though.

[frd333do33]

Have you tried ProShar paint?
This paint is A+

[uv_halo]

The biggest obstacle to this idea is the fact that not only is roundball paint different sizes, they are ellipsoids with differing eccentricities, and often more than one polar axis (one hemisphere's pole is pointing out of line with the other hemisphere) Assuming they were simple, single pole ellipsoids, you would have to design a system that consistently orients the balls (for widest cross-section, or narrowest cross-section) and then sort accordingly.

[Cunha]

Rotors jam easily. They really do sort bad paint from good really reliably. Gets rid of bad apples.