Leo Greer

I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if the idea holds water, but I had the idea of direct drive brushless, similar to what many RC helicopters use. Our current hearing system was invented in the age of ferrite motors pulled from the printer industry…

I should mention, never trust Evike! That place is a well of horrible information. They still recommend putting silicone oil in your green gas/propane.

The trouble with side feeding is simple: corners. And catching on bushes or whatever. I’ve brainstormed having a parallel gearbox, but the issues are many: weight, size, extra complication if you want to use the same motor setup, issues with reffing such replicas, etc. The simplest option is getting to know the refs and using an HPA system like the GATE Pulsar that allows you to have different power settings for each fire mode. That way you can have one mode as your DMR mode. The concept is very interesting though.

A modern V2 should have no issues with cracking below an M150. I know a lot of very low quality boxes do end up having issues… **cough cough** Ares **cough** …but that really shouldn’t be the norm. The V2 design as a whole is susceptible to strain on the front corners, but a lot of cracking issues are caused more by tolerance issues. For example, aftermarket cylinder heads with bumpers on the front are notorious for ruining shells. Or the issues with shells themselves, like many of the RA CNC shells have had, where pegs are in the wrong places, etc. But now to the actual question… For me, it looks like a lot like a P90 with a very slightly longer inner barrel (300mm), and an internal mid cap/hopper system, where you pour BBs in, wind about 2,000, and don’t touch anything for the rest of the game. Electronic trigger, throw a few rails on there. Design a hop system that’s screwed into the frame and is actually stabilized with good tolerances. Add an adjustable rubber clamp to the end of the outer barrel to hold the inner steady (just a grub screw would do well). And I’d use standard bushings just for simplicity. Brushless motor + potentiometer to finish it off.

In my experience with V2 gearboxes, spur gear bearings are the most likely to fail by far. Over here in America we use stronger springs, so keep that in mind, but typically if you don’t use J-caged bearings they’ll inevitably fail above about an M110 or equivalent spring. This is a general guideline and not a rule—as other have pointed out, the individual variables are endless—I have builds running 30+ RPS and 1.5J that still use the bearings that came with the gearbox shell (Lonex). However, I’ve also failed more than one spur gear bearing at similar power. Currently, my general wisdom is that I’ll put 3mm J-caged bearings wherever I can fit them, and if not use either FLT 2.5mm bushings or RA 2mm if I need lower profile. This seems to yield a slightly quieter box than bushings alone. Of course, this is extremely variable, depending on your shimming skill, etc, etc, but I’ve been able to achieve near noiselessness on a few builds. Nothing wrong with a little gear noise, but the satisfaction of firing and hearing nothing but the piston hit the cylinder head is wonderful.

I recommend asking the same question over on AirsoftSniperForum. The guys there have a lot of experience using and modding Mk23s and clones.

It's why I typically use packs in the range of 5K Mah with plenty of discharge. I run a spare mag pouch on my stock, switch the stock around, and just use the same battery for everything. Obviously that's overkill, but it's nice to not care about your battery for multiple game days on end.

I mean Amps when I write “Ah”.

Adding on to your post, you can calculate the actual discharge amperage by multiplying the "C" rating by the Ah listed. So a 1200 Mah (1.2 Ah) and 25C would have a rating of 30 Ah. Most stock RIFs need 15-25 Ah continuous to run properly without straining (and eventually puffing/ruining) the battery. On another note, most manufacturers lie through their teeth about C and Mah rating. Over on AirsoftSociety, the main American forum, we had a very electrically savvy member run actual tests on both, and the results are impressively bad for most packs tested throughout the thread: https://www.airsoftsociety.com/threads/objective-battery-test-titan-lion-vs-kypom-lipo-vs-hv-lipo-valken-others.161379/page-6

I'm using an M120 equivalent with that build (PDI 190%), since I was getting slight PME on the stock spring (M115 equivalent). You can make it work with no PME though--I'm hitting around 29 RPS, and suspect I'm getting more drag than I should be somewhere, which caused PME on the original spring. I was able to simply use an M120 though, so it's irrelevant in my case. TL:DR, yeah, you may have some. Depends on your setup though. It's right on the edge. I've done just as fast on 1J springs and been fine. What are you using to measure response? I'd love to try and measure the response on my 60+ RPS build...

My primary: Arcturus NY06 Stock gears, wiring harness, microswitch trigger, inline MOSFET, deans plug. T238 brushless motor. You can get great trigger response with just a motor, 11.1v (amperage is irrelevant as long as the motor has enough current), and good tuning. You have less spam capability than a build with an ETU because of the microswitch trigger, but the actual trigger response is just as good.

People used to do it a lot when finish quality was worse, but nowadays it's pretty irrelevant, as gear finishes are already smooth, and as they wear in they tend to polish themselves, especially on soft aftermarket gears like SHS. Harder gears like Siegetek and even really hard stock gears like Krytac don't do this as much. Yeah.... yeah.... In a lot of ways, American airsofters are even dumber than the variants y'all have over there. Unfortunately my computer won't open the Imgur link either... It's probably my content blockers disliking both for various reasons.

For some reason the photo graph won't load for me. While I can't offer any specifics without looking at the graph, I can add some general knowledge: PME is governed by all aspects of mechanical resistance, including those not often discussed. For example, a stickier lube/grease in your cylinder creates more friction between your piston o-ring and the cylinder, lowering the PME threshold. Heavier BBs will do this also, as they create more mechanical resistance. This is because a heavier a BB requires more energy to accelerate, hence why air volume ratios are very important. The more mechanical energy the BB requires to move forward, the more pressurized air builds up behind it before it breaks over the hop nub, the more resistance is applied to the piston's forward path. The curve is actually quite steep--a build could have no PME on .20g but suffer mild PME using .25g and heavy PME with .30g-.32g. This is far more prevalent in DSGs, where the cycle is shorter, the timing is stricter, and the piston is moving faster (resistance increase on an exponential curve relative to velocity). Hop packings also affect PME threshold. An off-spec hop packing can be slightly too tight, causing more resistance and lower the threshold. Off-spec BBs do the same thing. You can raise the PME threshold by using a cylinder with a smaller effective volume (porting farther forwards). This allows the piston more time to gain momentum before experiencing air mechanical resistance, effectively increasing piston speed, which increases air pressure, increasing FPS in some cases and increasing efficiency/consistency. A wider inner barrel and wider nozzle will also raise the PME threshold. The same applies for the drivetrain side of things--a more efficient electrical setup with less resistance leads to a faster rate of fire which leads to a lower PME threshold for a certain setup, irrelevant to gear ratio, spring weight, etc. So, ironically, a better setup here leads to a lower PME threshold. This goes for how thick your grease is, how well the gears are shimmed (truly bad shimming where extra resistance is caused, not just noisy shimming), and other factors like gear meshing. Contrary to popular belief, polishing your gearbox around the gears to reduce resistance does nothing. It's actually really silly, since the gears should never contact anything but themselves, the piston teeth, and the bushings/bearings.

This made me bust out laughing. It's hard to imagine this is serious... but I'm sure it is.

As a note, for some very basic clean gameplay videos, check out Chaoswolf airsoft on YT. Nothing special at all, but he’s a good dude and films at my local field.

Irrelevant to my opinions on Fricking Mustard, I play with a lot of folks both in the service and out of the service. Some are downright excellent players, that I learn new tactics from every time I play with them, and some are vets with PTSD who need a space and a field to decompress. Either way, they all have a very similar numbness to them, and Names Nicco doesn't have a hint of their vibe. He may have technically been a soldier, but he sure ain't one.

Disassemble the box and measure the gear sizes. See what you come up with.

It’s really not that bad. As long as you wear a long shirt or something similar that’s not too tight you’ll hardly feel it. If you’re like me though and roll with shorts and a t-shirt, pain is just part of the game. 😉 I’ve never seen it myself. In my area we usually don’t have to worry about people being extreme full auto trolls. Honestly, I’m the only one who even has that capability, and I shoot semi-only with anything over 28.

Yeah... there's no legal limit in America... They don't really care how hard we shoot each other as long as the field and everyone is signed off on it.

Not quite, but close. 😉 FPS limits are field-specific, but for general usage most fields are something like: minimum MED: 20 foot. 1.5J for Assault class: 20 foot MED, 2.25J for DMR class: 50 foot MED. 3J for sniper: 100 foot MED. And full auto rules differ. I don't use anything hot or fast on FA, as I prefer not to waste BBs and let my trigger response and reflexes do the job for me. Good idea!

Hey y'all. I figured I might as well create a thread to share what I'm working on and messing with. I do a lot of DIY modding, higher speed SSGs, higher power, and generally a lot of fine tuning on mechboxes. I won't be able to post a ton with schoolwork right now, but hopefully I'll put pics and updates up somewhat regularly. Right now I'm changing my Arcturus CAT back from a DSG to an SSG and upping the power to act as a DMR. As a DSG it was running at 1.5J and 58 RPS, and for the DMR styled build I'm looking for 28-29 RPS and maybe 2.5ish joules. I'll post some pics soon!

The question is what specs they're using. Chinese/Japanese/older units are often designed for thinner, shorter rubbers, whereas Taiwan/HK/newer units are often designed for thicker rubbers with longer lips. If it's a perfect 1-1 copy of the A&K unit that'd be awesome, and it should work better with the Prommy rubbers, Modify rubbers, and PDI rubbers, though @MrTea will be able to tell us more as he works on it. 🙂

On the ML issue, Lozart and Adolph pegged it—you can try sanding the lips, but ultimately it’s a spec issue. ML rubbers are designed to fit Taiwanese units like Maxx, G&G, etc. I have no clue where AirsoftPro falls on the lineup of Tawain/China/HK, but they all have different specs, courtesy of the wonderful airsoft industry. I would personally suggest either flathop ping the stock rubber as a free try, or buying a flathop rubber. I don’t have experience with the unit you’re using, so I’m not sure what exactly will fit the best, but you can flathop pretty much any rubber. The PDI W-Hold is usually contained with units that don’t like ML, and so are the Modify Flathop rubbers. Prommy should fit as well (I’d recommend purple), but they tend to be kinda expensive. And, of course, you can always just buy stock rubbers that are made from half-decent material like Guarder, Arcturus, G&G (similar to ML but may fit better), Krytac Blue and Orange, etc. Flathop really depends on the rubber and the nub, so the current contact patch shape doesn’t matter. For a nub, I usually just use a piece of 8mm tubing cut into a rectangular patch, glued to the hop arm. This creates a concave contact patch and ultimately a similar effect to an MR. Hop that works with any rubber and barrel. You can adjust the height by either sanding it or adding layers of tape. Or you can simply cut your own nub out of hard plastic using small files. It can be flat or concave, either works. Then attach it to your hop arm (maybe sand the hop arm flat), with superglue.

First, play with the RIF and see what aspect makes you feel insufficient on the playing field. Do you feel like you need more range? Better accuracy? Faster rate of fire? Snappier trigger? Once you know what you want, here's what I'd suggest doing... The first two performance boosts I'd suggest are a good quality LiPo battery (11.1v or 7.4v, with 11.1v being much faster), for gains in ROF and trigger response if that's what you want. Heavier, higher quality BBs will net you gains in range and accuracy, as well as being able to cut through wind and foliage better. As the others have set, motor and hop rubber are your first and most effective parts upgrades. These two upgrades cover range/accuracy, and trigger response/rate of fire. You can pair them with a LiPo battery (11.1v or 7.4v, with the faster being 11.1v), and heavier, high quality BBs for greater gains in both departments. I would personally suggest doing just the hop rubber first, as you'll be able to observe the actual performance change. G&G hop units are already really good, and they fit maple leaf hop rubbers great. I would suggest using a maple leaf rubber in between 50 and 60 degrees (look for Macaron or Super Macaron), and replace the original soft nub with a harder piece of plastic or even a piece of 6mm tubing laid flat in the hop window. You can polish the stock barrel with some metal polish and a drill (use a rag on the tip of a cleaning rod), and get a decent performance boost. I'd suggest doing this before buying any upgrade barrel. Upgrade barrels are really a minor upgrade--a decent polished and clean stock barrel (as long as it's not bent or messed up on the inside) will give you 80+% of the performance of any upgrade barrel, and sometimes more. For example, the stock barrels from Krytac and Arcturus are just as good or better than any upgrade barrel I've used (Prometheus, Lambda, etc). Not all stock barrels are created equal, but there is no advantage of having steel over brass in most circumstances. I would also suggest wrapping the barrel in tape, and likewise stabilizing the hop unit with tape or plastic shims. These are extremely cheap and easy accuracy upgrades that I do to pretty much every build. For a motor, I would suggest ordering a 25K neodymium motor from ChiHai Shenzhen, which should cost around $30. Either that, or take whatever suggestion the more local members of the forum give you. There's not too many horrible options for a motor, and they know local retailers better than I do. 😁

I don't hear a crazy amount of screech, but I think it could be better. It probably has to do with your bevel to pinion shimming and getting it just right. I'm assuming the video is using 11.1v--are you able to take a vid using 7.4v? (7.4v is way easier to judge shimming. This vid is the closest I've built to what you have above. Notice you can hear a light shh noise, but no screech or high pitch.