Design Tips for Paintball Grenade

[standarshy]

I'm an Industrial Engineering student and my team has chosen to design and create a reusable paintball or airsoft grenade for our final project.

We are required to perform a market analysis and I was hoping to get some help from you guys.

A video of the concept: YouTube - Paintball / Airsoft Grenade Product Concept School Survey


The following link is the survey
https://spreadsheets.google.com/view...FEM1E6MQ#gid=0


Update Thanks for bringing up the paint concerns,

We're hoping to use 6mm paintballs or bbs ref. http://www.rap4.com/store/paintball/..._1840_105.html What are you thoughts on this ?

Also, do you have preferences for exterior materials (for the shell/casing), such as plastic or aluminum ? Also, do you have a preferred weight range ?

Heads-up: we are having a live presentation this Friday after 5:30 pm (Eastern Time); more information will follow !


Thanks for your time guys.

And you never know, if we are ever able to market and sell this, maybe I can give you guys some coupons .

[Conker]

Mmm... why don't you go on a paintball forum? This is an airsoft forum...

Oh et en passant, si je peux me permettre, Ã* quel université est-ce que tu vas?

[Spawn28]

Something without paint in it.
Reusable is a definate +
Must have a scatter pattern of at least 10' in all directions.
must be able to be thrown without breaking or hurting someone.

Just a few to get ya started

[ShelledPants]

I've been involved in airsoft actively for 3 years. I play once a week, every week, in a competitive environment.

I have NEVER seen a paintball grenade used on the field.

Out of the plethora of airsoft grenades I have seen. Airsoft Innovations TORNADO series, are the best. Hands down. Reliable grenade on the airsoft market.

If you are interested in designing an AIRSOFT grenade. You will find a hard market to follow, although I'm sure AI would like the competition.

If you're designing a PAINTBALL grenade, as you have written, I foresee a lack of help from this community. In my experience, they are simply not used by airsofters in Canada.

[L473ncy]

Not that we're assholes or anything. Just, dirt on your gear is one thing but paint is a totally different thing.

As for something to help you out:

Should be cheap so that if in the off chance the grenade gets lost you're not out a terrible amount of money.

Minimum 10 ft. spray (in all directions) is ideal.

I guess paint to fill it up with (you could probably buy paint by the barrel and sell to people in litre bottles or something.

Colours.... Depends on who you're selling to. Woodsball and Milsim PB players will probably be more attracted to earthy/neutral tones. While speedball players might be more into the neon and bright colours. You could probably have some sort of grenade "cozy" in green/tan/black and make the grenade a bright colour to aid in finding it afterwards.

Other design considerations, simple system that even a 12 year old could use with a minimum number of parts and minimum maintenance required (ie. if there's possibility of paint drying inside and gumming up the delivery of the paint to the area you're throwing it think of something to take care of that).

You're probably also looking to run your system via 12 gram CO2 cartridges (possibly something more powerful) since you'll need a lot of pressure/power to push a medium sized amount of paint in all directions for 10 feet.

[Boris the Blade]

When I played paintball, we used surgical tubing injected with paint and tied off with a rubber band or ziptie. Total cost: about $.30 per grenade, they sprayed on impact 3 times out of 5.
You could make a Co2 powered one I suppose, that uses 12gram powerlets, other than that I can't say I have any more advice.
Good luck.

[standarshy]

Originally Posted by Conker

Mmm... why don't you go on a paintball forum? This is an airsoft forum...

Oh et en passant, si je peux me permettre, Ã* quel université est-ce que tu vas?

Haha, fair point. I should have mentioned that the we are still decided whether it should be a paintball or airsoft grenade.

So, tips on specs for an airsoft grenade would be more pertinent to this forum

[ShelledPants]

Originally Posted by standarshy

Haha, fair point. I should have mentioned that the we are still decided whether it should be a paintball or airsoft grenade.

So, tips on specs for an airsoft grenade would be more pertinent to this forum

http://airsoft-innovations.com/

A good place to look would be the leader in Airsoft grenades. Canadian made.

[FOX_111]

Metal canister that resamble a real grenade that is able to light a firework inside. The firework would detonate inside the canister, making it safe to handle, yet loud enough to be usefull.

[Wayne0188]

I think that it would be a great improvement if you could design something similar to the tornado, but looking more like a real frag grenade, maybe even a classic looking grenade too.
If there is room, you could put in a small chip to play a sound loop of a typical explosion, or fox_111's firecracker idea if you can make it safe.

[Gunk]

Balloon + Paint + funnel + throwing arm = fun.

[Drake]

Here's an idea: make it usable outdoors.

The AI Tornado works well indoors, but rather poorly outdoors. In fact, due to the poor ourdoor performance of most grenades (be it commercial, home made/pyro-based, or the Hokatsu Thunder grenades [which don't project BBs]) most games [here anyway] now rely on a kill radius rather than actually BB hits.

That means having a grenade which can easily be seen and heard going off would be more useful than one that attempts to scatter BBs (the only ones I've seen which did this well were pyro-based and used charges which were far too powerful to be used safely in games, i.e.: cherrybombs etc)

Another problematic aspect of using reusable grenades outdoors is having to retrieve the grenade: obviously its not always possible to do so immediately after throwing it/in the middle of a firefight. Add to this low light conditions, dense vegetation and uneven terrain and even if you know exactly where the grenade landed it can be difficult to find. In this respect the addition of "locating" feature (beacon?) which would activate after the grenade has gone off would be useful; something like an intermittent strobe and loud chirp (say 0.5s every 15 seconds so it isn't too annoying but remains useful).

Obviously the beacon needs to have power to operate for several hours and the strobe should be able to survive the impacts from being thrown over and over.

And as with most grenades, it should have some kind of soft/rubberized exterior so that it doesn't injure anyone if it lands on someone's head or smacks someone in the face (e.g.; throw a grenade through a window just as someone pops up behind it).

[Sportco]

Man... I love that idea... remember those key ring that would chirp when you whisled!!!

((Only operational after detonation of course!))

Your main question is Liquid or solid

liquid grenades gets there energy from streached rubber
Solid grenades get theyre from gas expension (co2 or pyro)
Pyro is being somewhat regulated,

What you need to find is a way to use a spring to disperse the solid content (like) seeds

it already exists in nature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6afGgZrnnA

Better video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlJidD2dWPE
((some seeds contain two elicoidale structure that untwist when the pod ruptures spreading the seeds all over in a very nice patern

What you guys need to do is create a grenade that uses that system ( or ribbon spring (clock)) but also include a 3 sec delay

For example the outer shell could open 1/3 in the middle creating an annular spread patern or it could use spinning (like the tornado = unefficient in tall grass

Work with dryed peas (eco)

Mimic a US army design and color (we are big babies... with money)

Price? If there efficient, easilly field reloadable, and retreavable (biping)... tornados cost what??? and they do sell regardless of there limitations

Cheers

Pete

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Sportco

Man... I love that idea... remember those key ring that would chirp when you whisled!!!

((Only operational after detonation of course!))

Heh, I was thinking of something like a cross between an SDU-5/E distress strobe and a PASS device (those chirping locator things firemen use in case they get lost/disabled). Then every 15 seconds or so you'd get a brief chirp with a slightly delayed flash (chirp first to get you looking in the right direction to see the flash, specially at distance since the flash would reach you before the sound if you're far enough).

[Sportco]

Originally Posted by Drake

Heh, I was thinking of something like a cross between an SDU-5/E distress strobe and a PASS device (those chirping locator things firemen use in case they get lost/disabled). Then every 15 seconds or so you'd get a brief chirp with a slightly delayed flash (chirp first to get you looking in the right direction to see the flash, specially at distance since the flash would reach you before the sound if you're far enough).

Yeap... that idea sound more efficient!

Cheers