5 replies to this topic

[Ice Nine]

At the last SoCal war I tried out a system to get China darts (in this case, cut down ACCs) to fire consistently out of non-4B blasters. Before Armageddon, the U3 managed to get all of our blasters firing them in my garage perfectly, and then of course the day of the war nothing was working. I managed to bring that level of success up from "zero" to "about half," which is a bit of a start.

 

My theory was that these darts didn't have enough room to navigate inside of a 1/2" wye and I didn't want to do stuff like shave down the kink in the ceiling or whatever. I couldn't get them to work with a Zorn-style flute/chute hopper at a war so I figured I would just give them more space over all. I ordered a 3/4" wye. (Click the photos to embiggen.)

 

 

It's very similar to a 1/2" wye. It's almost unnoticeably bigger in practice. Unfortunately, I ran into a problem when I stuck it on my blasters: there was too much space inside the wye. It wouldn't feed almost ever in lower-powered blasters (e.g. Maximizer (!!!)) and I managed to get two darts simultaneously stuck in the barrel with my 4B. I took a piece of PETG and trimmed it so I could get a little tray for the darts inside.

 

 

This upped consistency in my driveway significantly. I was able to get this to fire out of all my non-4B blasters (mostly broken +bow, Maximizer, and a Panther, which fired out of the hopper every other shot). Power didn't seem to be as great as it used to be with slugs out of a 1/2" wye but the ACCs are also a little heavier than a #6 slug.

 

Here's how darts sit in it.

 

 

 

Were I to do this again, I would either put a stop at the back of the PETG or use a material where it wasn't possible for them to slide back or get vacuumed back (as I managed to do once with the +bow). Still, the ten seconds it took me to do this with an exacto knife was better than taking a dremel or scrollsaw to a piece of CPVC.

 

I made a barrel by jamming a polyester barrel through the back of a 3/4" to 1/2" reducer and chamfering it.

 

 

The PETG basically jammed right up against the barrel and made feeding EZPZ. I only had double feeds when I titled the blaster back and a dart slipped into the PETG in the back stub, so call that user error by bad material choice.

 

At the war, I managed to fire out my Maximizer with every other shot. Power was not great, definitely decreased as compared to a 1/2" wye with slugs or pink silicone domes, but out of the thirty shots I managed to fire, I hit at least TWO people. That is, percentage wise, infinitely better than I did with ACCs at Armageddon because none of my blasters were feeding them.

 

Maybe people can use this as jumping off point for future testing. Maybe the other perspective is that this will prevent people from wasting their time to try this out. Who knows. Let me know what you think.

Edited by Ice Nine, 23 July 2016 - 08:32 PM.

[The2ndBluesBro]

I found ACCs fed fine with an unmodified 1/2" wye as long as you shake it downwards a bit like an RSCB. Getting them to reliably gravity feed seems like only a matter of time. It may depend on how short you cut the ACCs.

Edited by The2ndBluesBro, 23 July 2016 - 08:07 PM.

[CaptainSlug]

Super glue a nub of plastic into you chute to prevent vacuum-loading.

 

And most of the problem with using these darts and similar ones is the friction coefficient of the tips. They grab plastics and metals easily. Zorn posted in another thread about using thin teflon sheets and that's really worth exploring.

 

I bought some but haven't bothered trying it yet because the "Knifty" wye works well, though it's likely working well because the Plusbow is just hammering the darts through it. Blasters with slower plunger heads aren't feeding as well, so friction is way more of an issue.

[Ice Nine]

I found ACCs fed fine with an unmodified 1/2" wye as long as you shake it downwards a bit like an RSCB. Getting them to reliably gravity feed seems like only a matter of time. It may depend on how short you cut the ACCs.

 

Having to shake the blaster ruins the advantage of a pump-action blaster by basically doubling the time between shots. I'm not sure what evidence there is that it's just a "matter of time." I've taken a few mine and cut them down to almost an inch which makes them fly way worse than they already did, so not a great trade-off.

 

1.) Super glue a nub of plastic into you chute to prevent vacuum-loading.

 

2.) And most of the problem with using these darts and similar ones is the friction coefficient of the tips. They grab plastics and metals easily. Zorn posted in another thread about using thin teflon sheets and that's really worth exploring.

 

3.) I bought some but haven't bothered trying it yet because the "Knifty" wye works well, though it's likely working well because the Plusbow is just hammering the darts through it. Blasters with slower plunger heads aren't feeding as well, so friction is way more of an issue.

 

1.) Smart. Thank you.

 

2.) I was actually the one who posted the bit about teflon-PTFE sheet in the thread (Optimally Done Optimal-Y). It works for silicone domes (I have had a 100% feed rate without cornstarch at every war since 2015 because of that, out of all my hoppered blasters) but for some reason it isn't consistent for China darts with these tips.

 

3.) Big volume and fast plungers are the best panaceas to dart problems. It would be nice if it could trickle down to functionality at the 200-220 FPS range. The knifty design you had was nice but again, I'm not huge into the work of smoothing that hard 45-deg bend inside the wye.

[The2ndBluesBro]

If we're trying to use a plastic chute with a low friction coefficient, why don't we use UHMW?

[KaneTheMediocre]

If we're trying to use a plastic chute with a low friction coefficient, why don't we use UHMW?

Because that has a higher coefficient of friction than the teflon that he already tried.  Also, rubber generally sticks just as much to slippery plastics as it does to less-slippery plastics or even metal.  The fact that teflon was successful with my silicone domes is somewhat miraculous (and inconsistent with my own experiences) and probably only possible because MHA domes hopper much more easily than Artifact domes to begin with.

 

 

 

I bought some but haven't bothered trying it yet because the "Knifty" wye works well, though it's likely working well because the Plusbow is just hammering the darts through it. Blasters with slower plunger heads aren't feeding as well, so friction is way more of an issue.

 

Plusbows can be almost like the 4B in that it's so powerful that everything works.  Ryan's +bow consistently fired streamlines through an ordinary hopper, and although a more average +bow might not do quite as well, the goal is to make these darts hopper under all the same circumstances that Slug darts do.  This is especially important because Artifact darts aren't stable enough to be useful at more than 150 fps (ish), so getting them to feed consistently through a 250 fps blaster isn't all that helpful.

Edited by KaneTheMediocre, 25 July 2016 - 07:06 PM.