Intank regulator project…
Hello Guys,
I thought I publish my project so far. I have been designing new regulator which will go inside main tank. The reasons are simple;
-it won’t take space between gun and tank
-it’s safe since everything is inside tank
-the big forces are all gone and replaced from stretching to compress
-there is good space for relatively big size regulator chamber which is needed (25ccm) for low pressure and wider pressure-range (more usable shots)
-the firing valve is separated from regulator design so one could use any valve available (although it needs connection thread for regchamber)
I already built two prototypes and tested them on dedicated testbench. The regulation works. I did few hundred of strokes and it regulates the pressure everytime to set value. I still need to examine different poppet-valve sealing materials since I am not 100% happy with current implementation. Over few hour period there is some pressure grawling noticeable meaning that first shot will be little faster than rest.
The difficulty for Talon regulator is the filling. It has to be able to handle bigger forces during filling and also has to pass trhough the air from regchamber to the tank. That was the reason for “inventing” poppet-valve to the regulator. It handles both. Eliminates the bigger forces against regulator-sealing and acts as oneway-valve during filling.
The regulator is designed for 300bar and the regulator body can handle 3x that pressure when it comes to strength.
When used with 100bar pressurerange the accuracy from first to last shot is about 1.6% leading to 1.2m/s velocity drop over whole range. Of course there is little bigger variation during string because of other factors.
This is how it should be assembled to the gun….
The princible of regulator…..
-spring lifts poppet-valve’s stem and air starts to flow from tank over valvestem to the regulator chamber
-pressure in regchamber raises and exceeds springdiscs force and regulator pistons moves to the right. Poppetvalve closes.
-shoot and the cycle restarts
-during refill the overpressure in regulator chamber (against tank) will push the poppet-valve open and air will flow to tank
-the regulation pressure is adjusted with big M14x0.5 thread in the “tophat”
-do realise that the flowchannel in poppetvalve is 10x smaller than through the regulator piston. The pressure is always same one bothsides of piston’s heads. So don’t get confused about the “reverse” design.
The parts….
Prototype number two…
Poppet-valve and integerated sealing…
About the scale of parts….
Bench testing….
In the bench the regulator is inside aluminium tube…
It’s not ready yet but it’s a step closer to our common goal… regulated Talon which can shoot consistent shots with wider pressure-range and wider ME range. Next I need to build or get main firingvalve to be able to perform some fieldtests with gun.
All Replies
Dude, you are Phenominal!!!! I have days when my SCREWDRIVER is more than I can handle! To have your talent…..if only for a little while.
Why don’t you try having the breech and tophat magnetic?
I think it was THX1138 on TOG who actually did this. Not sure of tophat material but he embedded magnets in the butt end of the breech. Should offer a pretty reliable/repeatable mating of the two parts (kinky 😉 ).
Mike,
You are the man….Don’t feel dissapointed, your stuff is the bomb!
I often see things I have done appear on others guns, only to realize I did not come up with anything new and it had been done a dozen time before me and an dozen times before that.
There is nothing new under the sun….but actually creating a regualtor that fits into an AF gun….well that accomplishment is new!
Now go dazzle us some more with your goodies 😆
Pete, Sure. Send a PM to remind me. I have to finalize the drawings first. I hope you can live with metric dimensions 🙂
Or unless you wish to wait a bit so that I can perform some more testing and finetuning. I have few ideas already which I would like to implement to improve the design.
Shadoh; I am sorry you feel that way. I have impressed myself wrongly then. My intentions were never to “shot down” your ideas. I always liked the fresh, new and colorful ideas you presented. In my previous job we used to say that you can make any machine work with “air drawed pictures”. Once you start modeling or drawing springs, walls, etc. with real thickness and material strength you quickly run out of space or the design is just impossible to make. Even after you can make the design work in 3D-model it still is very easily impossible to make.
I was wrong about the size of regulator chamber. And I am still not 100% sure about it. I never had any experience of regulators nor airguns untill late summer when I received my Talon. I designed the regulator with knowledge I had based on the basic physical facts about how much energy pressurised air contains. Being smart afterwards I should’ve realised that the amount of air what can be transferred away from regulator chamber through exhaust valve is not even near what I originally thought. Also I didn’t have the knowledge about what happens to pellet during firing. How long the valvestem stays open and how fast the pellet accelerates. That information has helped me to understand PCP-gun firing-cycle more and at this point I have an impression that without 2x size of dead volume (breech and barrel) the regulator can’t work with pressures available
Hmm.
Regulator is almost 100 years old invention. Basicly they are all the same. There is the spring, piston and chamber. The challenge in AF guns is the filling through main valve and therefore through regulator. This could be easily solved with separate quickfill-port but I wanted to keep the design compatible with existing filling systems.
The latest version of this regulator is at version 7. Each version has handful of subrevisions with minor tweakings in concept. I have about 150+ different 3D model/design of the elements inside as it has evolved. Some of them are posted to public and some only to Marc for peer-review. Some never lived overnight. I have put way more than 200 hours of effort only for designing the concept plus more than 100hours for making the protos and testing functionality. I have openly shared the designs and all the experience I have got through testing with rest of the people here. I have said that I don’t make them for sale myself and won’t get any profit of it. I will also offer my help to anyone who want’s to make them and sell to others.
After that work hearing that it “borrows” ideas and implying that I have stolen someone’s work makes me frankly feel quite dissappointed.
Your reg is very good. I would like to try to build one. I have a lathe in my garage. Do you have any drawing with dimensions on them that you are happy to post ?
Pete
As an ex engineer i know where you come from Shadoh when you say “on a lower level than themselves “. Engineers have to believe in themselves otherwise your be to afraid to machine anything . I use too turn quarter tone steel billets ,at 3000 rpm ,on a 20mm hold, at 30 bar ,in horizontal cnc lathes 😯 and i trusted no one but myself . I questioned all programing and tooling that was chosen by anyone else because if it gose wrong then im to blame and i got the crap !. I questioned design by people who had degrees and 3 times the wage than me , because from experience i knew how / what could be machined and what in order. Ideas are good 😀 but they are just that “an idea” , making them come reality requires the next step up and that means questioning of design. I agree with mcMike when he said you need to draw to size ,as this is the only way to figure if building it would be possiable. We all borrow ideas ! because theres very little new stuff in the world ,it all been done ! 🙂 . Unless someone like you came up with an idea for tank regulator that uses the length of the tank for its volume but is fully an adjustable and serviceable without having to drain the tank ……………dont keep it to yourself 😀 . And Shadoh you realy need to get some machinery ,start saving ,your never look back………. 😀
I only ask because before, in other threads, you gave me the impression that the chamber could be very small, small enough to fit in a valve body. I questioned the chamber volume size in those threads and you said it was workable. Your reply was the main reason I even looked at “in valve” regulators and spent the time on those drawings. You always kinda shot down my ideas due to the fact that they werent to scale and that I needed to do some real world modeling and math.
My pictures were just a way to express my ideas on a subject and I always stated that fact. You are obviously an engineer. Having dealt with many engineers in my life I can tell you that they tend to put others who are not an engineer on a lower level than themselves when it comes to ideas. I say that the idea is the seed from which “real world” things grow. The idea comes first and the math comes after. I cant help but mention that many of your drawings look like they have “barrowed” from other folks, as well as my, ideas.
My original thoughts were that you would need a good size regulator chamber volume inside the tank. Its the reason I suggested an in tank regulator to begin with in that original thread made very long ago. I actually have another in tank regulator idea which I lost when my HD crashed before I could get it posted. Its an in tank regulator that uses the length of the tank for its volume but is fully adjustable and serviceable without having to drain the tank. It also has the spring chamber vented to the outside air and uses very few Orings and the design is uncomplicated and should be an easy part to machine. I do however have some questions on how I would like to put it together. I would need an engineers opinion on that ). If I can get drawing program back on this machine I will try to get it posted for folks to pick apart.
😯
Holy hell………… I’m quite sure many of us are now drooling at the thought of putting one of those in our own guns….
Extremely nice work. I’m speechless.
It’s not quite that simple I’m afraid.
Basicly you need 500ccm normal pressure air to get 30FPE energy for shot. There is “dead volume” in the breech and barrel which are about 12ccm. The regulator is 20ccm (ratio is about 1/3).
You can’t never take _all air_ out of regulator chamber. Not even half but around 1/5 fast enaugh. And you do need to take it out very fast. In about 2ms before pellet is gone.
The speed of this exhaust is logaritmic. First 1% is 100x faster than first 10% and first 20% is 5x faster than first 30% and so on. This will set the theoretical lower limit for regulator chamber size (the volume of breech+barrel). Since you can only use 20% of the regulator chamber volume it needs certain minimum size. There needs to be enaugh pressure and volume to push the used air to the barrel.
If I have some time I will make more deeper study about the chamber limits. It’s quite easy to put some material inside regulator-tube and perform few tests.
Mike, I know its volume that is doing the work but if it takes more than one or two shots to get the regulated chamber down to its regulated pressure then the chamber is to big. Its taking all those shots to bleed the chamber down to working pressures. If the chamber was the right size it would only take one or two shots, IMO.
That is like a dream come true for most of us here.
Thanks Mike
Thanks. It’s a personal challange. I just want to know what I can get out of this gun 😛
Did little more testing. This time with 16grain pellets. I set the regulator for 1600PSI and loaded tank to full (2900PSI). I expected little more and when I calculated efficiency ratio it was only 85%. I _think_ I got over 90% with other setups. Need to examine that more. With 870fps and 1200PSI regulator pressure efficiency seemed to be better. Gotta recalculate those.
Anyway, I _almost_ reached 100 30FPE consistent shots. I am sure it’s possible with little more finetuning. There is some creeping in velocity during string. Started from 890 fps and ended to 900fps before tank pressure was same than regulator pressure and then it’s downward slope as supposed. Creeping can be because regulator needs to set for new pressure or it can be design feature. Perhaps related to the secondary piston.
Progress so far… 90 consistent 30 FPE shots with 10fps total variation.
Mike, your work is outstanding. Sorry about the car, ” can’t make an AF rig shoot with a reg without shooting a hole in your raidiator” Its good to see this project of yours come together, shot count is awesome.
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Mike,
I didnt mean to insult you with my statements, that wasnt my intention at all. I only meant to point out that others have put allot of time and effort into this very idea including myself. Unfortunately, at least in my case, I dont have the resources to take my idea’s to the next level and for that I envy you. If you look at all my posts that were in response to one of your threads, both here and on the ToG, they are in praise of your work or suggestions on how you might make something better, at least IMO.
When I say barrowed I meant exactly that and never said the word stolen in my post. Maybe inspired would have been a better word? I myself am inspired by the works of others if not directly then indirectly. This thread started with you posting your new regulator design
I thought this looked allot like stuff that has been discussed on the ToG so I put up a link and some pics.
http://www.talonownersgroup.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5041
You said you checked out the link and liked some of the ideas there and it gave you some nice tips. Your next regulator design you posted soon after was this one
Now maybe its just me but it looks like some of the ideas in your new regulator may have been inspired from that thread at least conceptually? You spent allot of time on the ToG maybe you saw that thread before? I dont mean to sound like an ass but I dont think saying that some of your ideas may have been inspired by the work of others on a very similar concept was out of line or insulting. Everyone likes to receive credit for something they have done. You wouldnt put “(c)2007 mcMike” on all your design pics if you didnt feel the same way, or bother posting them for that matter. You say that your design is free for everyone to use and I believe you. Would you say the same thing if someone started producing these things for profit or even if Airforce started putting them in all their guns?
When I say you “shot down” my ideas I just meant the way you dismissed them due to the fact that they werent drawn to scale or done in a 3D modeling program. It was like my ideas werent valid or didnt mean a whole lot. That kinda rubs me the wrong way. I expressed my ideas using the tools that are available to me. I felt that the drawings I did helped to illustrate what I was thinking better than I could express them in text.
A good example of what Im talking about is
Its like your complimenting my pretty pictures and then dismissing them all in the space of two sentences. Maybe its just me misunderstanding or maybe its just the way you express yourself. In just about every one of my colorful picture posts I made sure folks knew that they were just concept drawings. They were about the idea not the geometry. Thats what a concept drawing is after all. I dont think that because they werent done in cad makes the concepts any less valid an idea.
I know I dont express myself very well and ramble on far past the point. Mike, I love your work, your skill and most of all I love your 3D drawings. I would love to have that available to me but for now I have to stick with my 2D colored pictures. I can say allot more with those pics than I ever could with words. When I use words I just tend to mess things up. Dont let someone like me take away your enjoyment of these airguns. I for one only purchased this airgun because of its possibilities, not because of its stock configuration.