Posted: 05/10/2008 21:21 PM Post subject: Paintball Minigun
Master of Spuds
Joined: 14 Feb 2007 Posts: 1175 515.28 Spud Bux
Hello fellow spudders. I am planning on making (or attempting to make) a paintball minigun (aka: hand-held gatling gun). I have searched long and far for schematics/how it works and came up empty handed. I think it would be a very cool project that could be designed by the members of spudfiles. I am willing to make it if you guys are willing to help me design it.
So you're saying you're willing to spend possibly thousands on materials and machining if we help you design it... sure why not
lol, not thousands, but enough to an extent (200-300 dollars USD)...I have plenty of connections and have plenty of materials I can use. But before construction commences, we need to have a discussion on final plans.
Oh right, I was under the impression you had no 'connections' or materials and it would be done from scratch
lol, not quite...
I have a ton of paintball-freak friends who have a lot of paintball equipment they don't use/would be more than happy to give me for the project (barrels, regulators, hoses, CO2 tanks, etc.), and they have friends, and there friends have friends, and its a list of probably 70-90 people...
but yeah...having there help would probably save me 500-1000 dollars once this thing gets built. If it turns out according to (the yet to be made) plan/s, then I plan on selling it and donating 50% of the profits to spudfiles
In the video, that sure appears to be a cordless drill revolving the barrels.
Also it appears like it has an onboard air or co2 tank betwwen the barrels.
I've become interestested in a simple minigun design due to a lot of thinking and replies to other peoples posts refering to them.
I will try to search for particular examples and edit this reply with some helful links.
Ok, so the guy used a cordless drill to turn the barrels, and there is prolly some C02 that goes into a hole... then there is adisk that the hole will slide on and when a hole in the disk(a barrel) is pressent, co2 escapes releasing the paintball.... the only thing is how he loaded the gun. Im not sure that he did do it or if he planed on doing it... I didn't see anything in the video. Hope that helped
Thanks guys, now that i look at the vid again, i think it is a cordless drill...
I got one lying around here somewhere I'll probably find a 18V cordless drill to use if it can withstand the weight...I'll have to do some research on how much torch certain drills have and what one has the most...
Ok, so the guy used a cordless drill to turn the barrels, and there is prolly some C02 that goes into a hole... then there is adisk that the hole will slide on and when a hole in the disk(a barrel) is pressent, co2 escapes releasing the paintball.... the only thing is how he loaded the gun. Im not sure that he did do it or if he planed on doing it... I didn't see anything in the video. Hope that helped
True, in other words, "don't believe everything you see to be fully working until you see it work fully"
The idea I had reached through replying to other posts is that,
If you used PB parts: valve, loading port and barrels and each loading port faces towards center (inwards)
If the magazine is center of the barrels with a hole going into each loading port, then as it spins the centrifugal force on the PB's will force them into each loading port.
Also if the air tank is located in front of the magazine and has hoses going to each valve and spins right along with the barrels that will simplify the air feed.
Since this design will use seperate valves the round plate they are mounted to would have cams shaped like ramps, the hammer will rub against the ramp pressing the hammer back and realesing it to strike the valve.
It's such a simple concept, I would like to build something similar if I had the time or were more interested in PB.
miniguns are cool
good thinking THUNDERLORD, mind drawing up a diagram via paint so i know what I'm working with?...
Thanks, I am still trying to learn paint. So I will have to maybe draw some diagrams on paper to photo and explain that way.
I think your 18v cordless drill will have enough torque to be useful.
BTW, I didn't mean to bash the awesome design in the video, just saying, we haven't seen any PB's shoot out.
It appears that minigun moves the barrels themselves for loading prior to firing if it is a working design. (similar to the original Gatling)
Also BTW, skateboard or rollerblade bearings would be useful to mount the spinning plate to the non spinning hammer mechanism.
*Yawn* dang-nab-it it too late to go into all the gritty details but I’ll run an over view:
Loading:
Seeing as how paintballs are soft, squishy, and burst easily, you going to need to run the through cartridges, keep the cartridge as sort as possible to reduce bolt travel and dead space, a cartridge could be made of thin wall tubing with o-rings on both end to keep a paintball in.
Well it’s true that a cartridge could simply be a piece of barrel that falls into place, I don’t recommend that as it offers far to much chance for blow-by, instead, have the cartridge feed into a chamber much like on an actual Gatling type weapon.
Your going to need a force feed mechanism for the cartridges; I recommend something that would resemble a sprocket, with the gap between the teeth the same size as the OD of the cartridge.
The sprocket would revolve parallel to the barrels and be timed to were it would place a round in front of each bolt as it got to the loading stage.
Part of the sprocket would be in the hopper so that it can pick up rounds as it spun.
I’m not a fan of centrifugal feeding; I feel it would be rather quite unreliable for many reasons, and would be next to impossible to reload without stopping the weapon.
Valve:
I recommend hammer valves; I don’t recommend auto-resting hammers, rather, have the hammer reset be the same type of mechanism that opens and closes the bolt, that way you never have to worry about a failure to re-cock.
Filling the valves:
Although having a Co2 tank in the midst of the barrels sounds good, it would decrease reload time.
Instead, I recommend that you use swivel joints and have two Co2 tanks to run it, that way when tank #1 runs dry your can switch over to tank #2 and switch out tank #1 for a fresh tank.
Spinning the barrels:
You could either use an electric drill:
+ Quite
+ Can be quickly turned on and off
+ Strong
+/- Runs on batteries (a similar setup to the Co2 would allow for a longer period of sustained fire)
- Slow
Or you could use a large weed eater engine:
+ doesn’t use batteries
+ can be ran off a large reservoir of fuel that would not require you to stop and refill often
+ Can be run off two tanks in a similar setup to the Co2 and Batteries
+ Strong
+ Fast
- Can’t be stopped and started easily
- If you use a large tank it will take awhile to fill
- Gas prices are though the roof
If done right, and supplied with a enough ammo, Co2, batteries/fuel, and you used the duel tank method I described, you could maintain fire indefinitely and at the withering rate of 1200 to 3000 even 6000 round per minute, although id keep it between 1200 and 2000 rounds to conserve ammo, gas, and batteries/fuel, and reduce over-kill.
If something doesn’t come out right, tell me and I’ll explain it tomorrow afternoon when I get back from Church.
believe it or not i was actually thinking about building one of these about a week ago but my my basic idea was to make a turret pb gun then i leaned towards the mini gun design,
then i found this guys and realized how hard itd be and gave up...
but heres some stuff i found about this guys gun....
judgement_arms stated:"I’m not a fan of centrifugal feeding; I feel it would be rather quite unreliable for many reasons, and would be next to impossible to reload without stopping the weapon." QUOTE.
My concept of feeding into the feed tube on the PB mechanism is not entirely a centrifugal feed but also a simple gravity feed(at lower RPM).
One way to load while firing at the same time, which is also quite simple, (since the magazine does not need to contain pressure if it's feeding into the feed tube of a PB set up),
is to use a larger bearing that the disk is spinning on and the PB's can be passed through the hole in the center of the bearing Because:
If the axle is a tube or pipe with the ID as large or bigger than a PB the PB's can be fed into the magazine even while the barrels are rotating.
@the Judge, With the "onboard air", true it would be more difficult to change out the cylinder than if a "swivel joint" is used.
With two + tanks and the design being handheld weight starts to be a factor.
In the original piper mini-gun as seen in "Predator" movie, the air tanks were in a backpack and the hoses were piped through a rectangular piece that looked like a belt feed.
That would still be heavier and complicate the design though.
Either way, IMO any airpowered gatling gun is a theme gun by using air for one thing. So trying to design the parts exactly the same as a real one really only complicates things.
For example the main reason the barrels of a mini-gun spin is to deal with heat which is really not even a factor for pnuematic autos.
Mini-guns are cool but IMO function should win over form and however it looks if it has spinning barrels and is full auto it's a "mini-gun".
BTW Judge, cool that you're going to church tommorrow, I was planning on going with my mom just because it's mother's day.
@trae08, thanks for the links. That design looks a little complicated and he stated the parts wore out and it didn't always feed properly.
At the time of that post.
good thinking guys. and good links trae08, the first one is the exact same minigun as in the video. good research...I will post plans that I came up with later...they are almost full proof. just need to work out some bugs and make sure there wouldn't be any feeding problems, but the way I plan on designing it, there shouldn't be.
Thanks again guys, and nice write up Judge....Keep up the good work!
STHORNE
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
I'll probably find a 18V cordless drill to use if it can withstand the weight...I'll have to do some research on how much torch certain drills have and what one has the most...
One way to load while firing at the same time, which is also quite simple, (since the magazine does not need to contain pressure if it's feeding into the feed tube of a PB set up),