ugr|dual
10.09.2005, 01:57
http://www.pbportal.de/files/logos/techt.jpgEin neuer Tuning Bolt für die ION... der Techtpaintball Lightning Bolt als Alu für $50.
http://www.pbportal.de/files/news/2005/naturelightening8hf.jpg
Die ganze Geschichte:
Ion Lightening Bolt
The Lightening Bolt is designed to be the highest performing bolt on the market.
While others opt to use alternative materials, we decided to keep it real and use aluminum. Aluminum is light weight and extremely durable. Bolt durability is crucial when it comes to any spool valve gun design. One scratch in your bolt could cause a major air leak. Because of this, we feel that an aluminum bolt is the best choice.
We've also made air efficiency a top priority. That is why we've chose to use a dual o-ring design in the rear part of the bolt. The second o-ring seals off the firing chamber while the bolt is in the forward position, cutting down on air consumption.
How the Lightening Bolt came to be.
After looking at what was available and listening to the rumors about how so many amazing bolts were due to hit the market, yet very few did, we decided to take the challenge of making "the" bolt into our own hands. What we came up with is for you to decide.
Up until now Ion owners have had 3 options when it came to bolts.
The Stock Bolt- Very Gas Efficient, but heavy. But lets be honest, its the best $285 gun to ever be produced, so we can't hate it too much. Overall, it was durable, and efficient, but it had a good amount of kick.
The Orange Bolt- A very cool looking bolt made out of carbon fiber by some genius in Germany. The whole thing just sounded like a cool bolt, everyone just had to buy one. It was much lighter than the stock bolt, and man I'm telling you it has to be great, it was made by the Germans!! But alas, it got mixed reviews.
The Lucky Bolt- Cool design, some mystery plastic material never seen in paintball. Now its a light bolt too, I'm not sure how light, but I've heard its light. It's put out by some people I hadn't heard of before, but whatever, most people haven't heard of us. Either way, it was pretty cool bolt design too, basic, but effective.
But even with all these choices we decided to make our own.
When designing the bolt we too where torn about what material to use, but after talking with various people in the industry that produce some great aftermarket parts, we opted to use aluminum for our bolt. Its old school material in paintball, but there's a reason for that.
The reason is that the bolt is the most crucial part in the Ion. It experiences more abuse than any part in the Ion. The front and middle sections of the bolt are in constant contact with the o-ring in the rear part of the breech, as well as the inner goring on the bolt stop. And as we all know, when any two objects touch, there's some degree of fiction. Friction causes wear, and wear leads to malfunctions. In the Ion, this type of wear leads to a leak that can't be fixed with loctite or teflon tape. Its because of friction and it's unavoidable effect on parts that we made our bolt aluminum.
But you grease the bolt people said. This is true, but no matter how much you grease, you'll still have friction. And once the bolt starts to wear, you'll never get it to stop leaking down the barrel. This is exactly why you don't see Smart Parts using plastic bolts in Shockers anymore, and it's exactly why the stock Ion bolt isn't plastic. Smart Parts is exactly that, smart, we chose to follow their lead when it came to material selection.
So we knew we needed to use aluminum. Great. We took a stock bolt and just stared cutting it down. We cut away everything we could think of. When we where done we cleared away the shavings, looked in amazement at what we had created, tested it, said "man that's great!" and then went back and found ways to cut it down even more.
In the end, we needed to find a balance between a bolt that was super light yet could withstand the abuse of a kid that wanted to dry fire his gun 24/7, had no idea how to grease his gun, and who on occasion could be seen picking up "clean" (dirty) paintballs out of the grass and popping them into his hopper.
This is the front of the bolt tip and the rear if the bolt back
You'll see that what we came up with is basically an extremely hollow bolt, that is made up of a bolt tip, and a bolt back that we loctite together. As you can see on the picture on the left we hollowed out the very front part of the bolt completely. We opted to hollow it out because this part retained the most weight. Its hollow all the way to the back holes.
You'll also notice that there is a hole in the rear part of the bolt. That hole extends up in to the shaft as far as we could go. The walls here are super thin yet strong. Notice that the rear part has a different finish than the front piece, that's because its made out of different aluminum. We used 2011 grade aluminum on the rear part because its 50% stronger than 6061 grade aluminum typically used in paintball. We knew that if we were going to cut it down this far had had to be strong.
This is the back of the bolt tip, and the front of the bolt back
This picture shows the area in which the two bolt pieces screw together. On the bolt tip we hollowed out the part that screws into the back. At first this wasn't hollow, but then we thought why not everything else on this bolt is. It reduces weight and increased the firing chamber.
Plus on the bolt back, you'll notice that hole extends all the way through to the section that we call the "rib cage". This allowed us to expand the firing chamber size and reduces the overall weight even further.
The 'rib cage" is 6 open ribs. The gas flows in, the gas flows out, it allows for a great flow rate. In the rear part of the bolt you might ask why there's three o-ring grooves. Well only two are meant to have o-rings, we added the middle groove to reduce the weight even more. And for those of you that don't know, having two o-rings on the back part of the bolt, instead of one, allows the bolt to seal off the firing chamber as the gun fires. This saves on air consumption.
Where did all this cutting and shaving get us? We haven't put it on a good digital scale yet, but our little hand held scale gave us a reading of around .70oz or 20 grams with o-rings. For an aluminum bolt that's ULTRA LIGHT.
It's great to see the look on peoples faces when they first fire their gun, after replacing the stock bolt with our bolt. In most cases they don't say anything at first, they just smile from ear to ear, and it's usually followed up with, "That's awesome!".
So yeah, that's the story of the Lightening Bolt. We put allot of hard work and thought into it. Our objective was to give you, the buyer, another option when it comes to purchasing a bolt. We feel its the best option, and we hope you do too. We hope it serves you well for a long time to come, as well as gets you many kills out on the field.
And yes, we are aware that our "Lightening" is different from "Lightning" is typically spelled. There are two reasons for this play on words. First, AKA makes the Lightning Bolt, and the second reason.....I think you can figure it out.
If you aren't sure about how to install a new bolt, then you may want to consider our Ion 101 DVD. It covers all the basics of the Ion and can really help you understand how your marker works. Click here for more info on that.
Ion Lightening Bolt
$49.99
http://www.pbportal.de/files/news/2005/naturelightening8hf.jpg
Die ganze Geschichte:
Ion Lightening Bolt
The Lightening Bolt is designed to be the highest performing bolt on the market.
While others opt to use alternative materials, we decided to keep it real and use aluminum. Aluminum is light weight and extremely durable. Bolt durability is crucial when it comes to any spool valve gun design. One scratch in your bolt could cause a major air leak. Because of this, we feel that an aluminum bolt is the best choice.
We've also made air efficiency a top priority. That is why we've chose to use a dual o-ring design in the rear part of the bolt. The second o-ring seals off the firing chamber while the bolt is in the forward position, cutting down on air consumption.
How the Lightening Bolt came to be.
After looking at what was available and listening to the rumors about how so many amazing bolts were due to hit the market, yet very few did, we decided to take the challenge of making "the" bolt into our own hands. What we came up with is for you to decide.
Up until now Ion owners have had 3 options when it came to bolts.
The Stock Bolt- Very Gas Efficient, but heavy. But lets be honest, its the best $285 gun to ever be produced, so we can't hate it too much. Overall, it was durable, and efficient, but it had a good amount of kick.
The Orange Bolt- A very cool looking bolt made out of carbon fiber by some genius in Germany. The whole thing just sounded like a cool bolt, everyone just had to buy one. It was much lighter than the stock bolt, and man I'm telling you it has to be great, it was made by the Germans!! But alas, it got mixed reviews.
The Lucky Bolt- Cool design, some mystery plastic material never seen in paintball. Now its a light bolt too, I'm not sure how light, but I've heard its light. It's put out by some people I hadn't heard of before, but whatever, most people haven't heard of us. Either way, it was pretty cool bolt design too, basic, but effective.
But even with all these choices we decided to make our own.
When designing the bolt we too where torn about what material to use, but after talking with various people in the industry that produce some great aftermarket parts, we opted to use aluminum for our bolt. Its old school material in paintball, but there's a reason for that.
The reason is that the bolt is the most crucial part in the Ion. It experiences more abuse than any part in the Ion. The front and middle sections of the bolt are in constant contact with the o-ring in the rear part of the breech, as well as the inner goring on the bolt stop. And as we all know, when any two objects touch, there's some degree of fiction. Friction causes wear, and wear leads to malfunctions. In the Ion, this type of wear leads to a leak that can't be fixed with loctite or teflon tape. Its because of friction and it's unavoidable effect on parts that we made our bolt aluminum.
But you grease the bolt people said. This is true, but no matter how much you grease, you'll still have friction. And once the bolt starts to wear, you'll never get it to stop leaking down the barrel. This is exactly why you don't see Smart Parts using plastic bolts in Shockers anymore, and it's exactly why the stock Ion bolt isn't plastic. Smart Parts is exactly that, smart, we chose to follow their lead when it came to material selection.
So we knew we needed to use aluminum. Great. We took a stock bolt and just stared cutting it down. We cut away everything we could think of. When we where done we cleared away the shavings, looked in amazement at what we had created, tested it, said "man that's great!" and then went back and found ways to cut it down even more.
In the end, we needed to find a balance between a bolt that was super light yet could withstand the abuse of a kid that wanted to dry fire his gun 24/7, had no idea how to grease his gun, and who on occasion could be seen picking up "clean" (dirty) paintballs out of the grass and popping them into his hopper.
This is the front of the bolt tip and the rear if the bolt back
You'll see that what we came up with is basically an extremely hollow bolt, that is made up of a bolt tip, and a bolt back that we loctite together. As you can see on the picture on the left we hollowed out the very front part of the bolt completely. We opted to hollow it out because this part retained the most weight. Its hollow all the way to the back holes.
You'll also notice that there is a hole in the rear part of the bolt. That hole extends up in to the shaft as far as we could go. The walls here are super thin yet strong. Notice that the rear part has a different finish than the front piece, that's because its made out of different aluminum. We used 2011 grade aluminum on the rear part because its 50% stronger than 6061 grade aluminum typically used in paintball. We knew that if we were going to cut it down this far had had to be strong.
This is the back of the bolt tip, and the front of the bolt back
This picture shows the area in which the two bolt pieces screw together. On the bolt tip we hollowed out the part that screws into the back. At first this wasn't hollow, but then we thought why not everything else on this bolt is. It reduces weight and increased the firing chamber.
Plus on the bolt back, you'll notice that hole extends all the way through to the section that we call the "rib cage". This allowed us to expand the firing chamber size and reduces the overall weight even further.
The 'rib cage" is 6 open ribs. The gas flows in, the gas flows out, it allows for a great flow rate. In the rear part of the bolt you might ask why there's three o-ring grooves. Well only two are meant to have o-rings, we added the middle groove to reduce the weight even more. And for those of you that don't know, having two o-rings on the back part of the bolt, instead of one, allows the bolt to seal off the firing chamber as the gun fires. This saves on air consumption.
Where did all this cutting and shaving get us? We haven't put it on a good digital scale yet, but our little hand held scale gave us a reading of around .70oz or 20 grams with o-rings. For an aluminum bolt that's ULTRA LIGHT.
It's great to see the look on peoples faces when they first fire their gun, after replacing the stock bolt with our bolt. In most cases they don't say anything at first, they just smile from ear to ear, and it's usually followed up with, "That's awesome!".
So yeah, that's the story of the Lightening Bolt. We put allot of hard work and thought into it. Our objective was to give you, the buyer, another option when it comes to purchasing a bolt. We feel its the best option, and we hope you do too. We hope it serves you well for a long time to come, as well as gets you many kills out on the field.
And yes, we are aware that our "Lightening" is different from "Lightning" is typically spelled. There are two reasons for this play on words. First, AKA makes the Lightning Bolt, and the second reason.....I think you can figure it out.
If you aren't sure about how to install a new bolt, then you may want to consider our Ion 101 DVD. It covers all the basics of the Ion and can really help you understand how your marker works. Click here for more info on that.
Ion Lightening Bolt
$49.99