equipmentcounts
04-23-2006, 05:48 PM
121 cps noid while maintaining full pressure
Wait till you hit the punchline of the news which is the last sentence of the paragraphs lol -
Wicked Air Sportz does it again! Several years ago we sat down with the Koganei (Humphrey) engineers to help design the solenoids that have been used in tens of thousands of paintball markers world-wide. We helped determine how fast the solenoids needed to be, and helped improve their response time.
This time we sat down with the best in the business, and the results are staggering! Until now, every solenoid manufacturer has rated their valves to cycle at a maximum of 20cps. Yes, some do go faster than that (some as much as 35cps), but they eventually "wear" into a slower speed. When we made the first Intimidator boards, Bob Long's team was using them and destroying everyone with unbelievable rates of fire. The secret to Bob's team markers was largely due to a custom programmed board that we provided to Bob Long that showed the marker's cycle speed. After testing boxes of solenoids using this special board, the team had the fastest solenoids available... until they got full of grease and other contaminants and started slowing down to the 20cps range, where they are spec'd at. It's good to be sponsored by a legend!
Enter better technology! As you can see from the graph above, the new Wicked Solenoid can cycle in excess of 120 cps guaranteed! This means that the air passages will fully open and fully close 120+ times per second. Now, the only limiting factor in a marker's cycle speed is the design of the ram itself! The solenoid's "ON" time is 4ms. This means that it takes 4ms to fully open and allow air to flow. The solenoid "OFF" time is 2ms. This means that it takes 2ms for the valve to shut and stop the air flow.
Here is an interesting bit of information - the ON time for a Humphrey solenoid is 8ms. The OFF time is 14ms! Add these two values together and that gives you the total time that air is pressuring the ram assembly (22ms). The original Humphrey solenoids (before we worked with Koganei to make them better) had an OFF time of 18ms. Reducing the OFF time by 4ms also reduced the amount of air being used to pressurize the ram, changing the performance of a marker (sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse). In reality, all markers require a certain amount of air to make the ram operate. When the amount of air is altered, the performance changes. Changing the OFF time, changed the performance of the ram with the AKA markers as they were being slightly starved for air. This is 100% of the cause of the infamous "first shot drop off" seen in the middle of the production run of the Viking and Excalibur markers. This is also why a simple fix is to just secretly increase the actual dwell time, which is what we did to "magically" fix the problem that some of the less informed people believed to be a hardware problem. Yes, the new Humphrey performed better, even with a slightly higher dwell needed. The Wicked Solenoid is a "direct acting" valve design. This means that we can change how fast the valve opens and closes, to fine tune the solenoid's usage to a particular marker (ram) design. Direct acting valves also are virtually unaffected by contaminants such as grease, water, and dirt. You can literally blow out the "gunk" and the solenoid returns to 100% functionality. This is simply not possible with a pilot operated valve design!
Because the new Wicked Solenoid operates so fast (and with higher airflow), it simply will not work in most markers without a significant code change, and more importantly, superior solenoid output. These solenoids, even though being nearly 1/2 the size of the Humphrey solenoid, draw 8 times the power (4 watts vs. 1/2 watt). They work with our boards, but not most others (i.e. Tadao, Tag, Virtue, Advantage, Lucky, etc.) due to our superior hardware designs.
Special coding is required to drive the solenoid, and will be included when we release v3.0 for all Equalizer boards. We no longer use "Dwell". This really is the wrong term for this, and is a carry over term from the Auto-cocker's trigger timing. The proper term is ON time and OFF time, and these are now independently adjustable to control the slew rate at which the valve opens and closes. Without special coding, just increasing the dwell (even as high as 25ms) will not work in most markers, and would be incredibly inefficient.
That's sounds great, but does it work? Yes, it does! Jack Rice's Alien Remains and Interceptor will be using this new valve. The raw cycle speed of the Alien markers on a bench test is 38cps, with NO optimizations to the ram design. Now that there is a faster solenoid, optimizations to the ram design can be done to increase the cycle speed! Once loader technology caught up and then surpassed our marker cycle speeds, we were at the mercy of the solenoid's performance for high rates of fire. Now that has changed, and we can potentially exceed the speed of any loader, and likely any future loader when using this solenoid.
So, is there a catch? Well, yes, the catch is power consumption and quality of the board driving this solenoid. If there has been any doubt to whether the solenoid output on our boards is sufficient, then here is the proof. Expect your 9 volt battery to last about 120,000 shots instead of the normal 500,000. Considering that most people change their batteries way too early (6.7 volts is where a battery change should occur), this is likely never going to be an issue.
Expected release date: May 8, 2006
MSRP: $59.95! (Compare that to the replacement cost of a "stock" solenoid!)
NOTE: PRE-ORDER PRICING WILL BE $49.95 for first 500 units, starting May 1st!
Supports: Any marker using barbs (Intimidator, NME, etc. - even electronic Auto-cockers!) We will have other manifold mount versions available in the near future. Please remember, if you do not have an Equalizer board in your marker, this solenoid WILL NOT WORK!
BTW be warned..........just remember that it took WAS 1.5years to finally complete the WAS board for the Impulse after announcing it. Some people payed for the board in the beginning and waited all that time to finally get it and still needed to send it back because of a programming flaw -
Wait till you hit the punchline of the news which is the last sentence of the paragraphs lol -
Wicked Air Sportz does it again! Several years ago we sat down with the Koganei (Humphrey) engineers to help design the solenoids that have been used in tens of thousands of paintball markers world-wide. We helped determine how fast the solenoids needed to be, and helped improve their response time.
This time we sat down with the best in the business, and the results are staggering! Until now, every solenoid manufacturer has rated their valves to cycle at a maximum of 20cps. Yes, some do go faster than that (some as much as 35cps), but they eventually "wear" into a slower speed. When we made the first Intimidator boards, Bob Long's team was using them and destroying everyone with unbelievable rates of fire. The secret to Bob's team markers was largely due to a custom programmed board that we provided to Bob Long that showed the marker's cycle speed. After testing boxes of solenoids using this special board, the team had the fastest solenoids available... until they got full of grease and other contaminants and started slowing down to the 20cps range, where they are spec'd at. It's good to be sponsored by a legend!
Enter better technology! As you can see from the graph above, the new Wicked Solenoid can cycle in excess of 120 cps guaranteed! This means that the air passages will fully open and fully close 120+ times per second. Now, the only limiting factor in a marker's cycle speed is the design of the ram itself! The solenoid's "ON" time is 4ms. This means that it takes 4ms to fully open and allow air to flow. The solenoid "OFF" time is 2ms. This means that it takes 2ms for the valve to shut and stop the air flow.
Here is an interesting bit of information - the ON time for a Humphrey solenoid is 8ms. The OFF time is 14ms! Add these two values together and that gives you the total time that air is pressuring the ram assembly (22ms). The original Humphrey solenoids (before we worked with Koganei to make them better) had an OFF time of 18ms. Reducing the OFF time by 4ms also reduced the amount of air being used to pressurize the ram, changing the performance of a marker (sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse). In reality, all markers require a certain amount of air to make the ram operate. When the amount of air is altered, the performance changes. Changing the OFF time, changed the performance of the ram with the AKA markers as they were being slightly starved for air. This is 100% of the cause of the infamous "first shot drop off" seen in the middle of the production run of the Viking and Excalibur markers. This is also why a simple fix is to just secretly increase the actual dwell time, which is what we did to "magically" fix the problem that some of the less informed people believed to be a hardware problem. Yes, the new Humphrey performed better, even with a slightly higher dwell needed. The Wicked Solenoid is a "direct acting" valve design. This means that we can change how fast the valve opens and closes, to fine tune the solenoid's usage to a particular marker (ram) design. Direct acting valves also are virtually unaffected by contaminants such as grease, water, and dirt. You can literally blow out the "gunk" and the solenoid returns to 100% functionality. This is simply not possible with a pilot operated valve design!
Because the new Wicked Solenoid operates so fast (and with higher airflow), it simply will not work in most markers without a significant code change, and more importantly, superior solenoid output. These solenoids, even though being nearly 1/2 the size of the Humphrey solenoid, draw 8 times the power (4 watts vs. 1/2 watt). They work with our boards, but not most others (i.e. Tadao, Tag, Virtue, Advantage, Lucky, etc.) due to our superior hardware designs.
Special coding is required to drive the solenoid, and will be included when we release v3.0 for all Equalizer boards. We no longer use "Dwell". This really is the wrong term for this, and is a carry over term from the Auto-cocker's trigger timing. The proper term is ON time and OFF time, and these are now independently adjustable to control the slew rate at which the valve opens and closes. Without special coding, just increasing the dwell (even as high as 25ms) will not work in most markers, and would be incredibly inefficient.
That's sounds great, but does it work? Yes, it does! Jack Rice's Alien Remains and Interceptor will be using this new valve. The raw cycle speed of the Alien markers on a bench test is 38cps, with NO optimizations to the ram design. Now that there is a faster solenoid, optimizations to the ram design can be done to increase the cycle speed! Once loader technology caught up and then surpassed our marker cycle speeds, we were at the mercy of the solenoid's performance for high rates of fire. Now that has changed, and we can potentially exceed the speed of any loader, and likely any future loader when using this solenoid.
So, is there a catch? Well, yes, the catch is power consumption and quality of the board driving this solenoid. If there has been any doubt to whether the solenoid output on our boards is sufficient, then here is the proof. Expect your 9 volt battery to last about 120,000 shots instead of the normal 500,000. Considering that most people change their batteries way too early (6.7 volts is where a battery change should occur), this is likely never going to be an issue.
Expected release date: May 8, 2006
MSRP: $59.95! (Compare that to the replacement cost of a "stock" solenoid!)
NOTE: PRE-ORDER PRICING WILL BE $49.95 for first 500 units, starting May 1st!
Supports: Any marker using barbs (Intimidator, NME, etc. - even electronic Auto-cockers!) We will have other manifold mount versions available in the near future. Please remember, if you do not have an Equalizer board in your marker, this solenoid WILL NOT WORK!
BTW be warned..........just remember that it took WAS 1.5years to finally complete the WAS board for the Impulse after announcing it. Some people payed for the board in the beginning and waited all that time to finally get it and still needed to send it back because of a programming flaw -