General

[P0E]

Necro/Skeletor,

Some additional dialog might help. Were the Hydrotec balls not breaking as easily as traditional paint? Did all of the Hydrotec impacts feel worse or just that one? I got the impression from Skeletor's shoulder hit that bounces leave less paint than a traditional round. Is this what you found?

Originally Posted by P0E

...
Can you carefully break it open to see if this light weight is due to an unusually large gap between the solidified fill halves?

I figured it would be hard to fully fill the ball, but damn. That looked like >30% of the ball was empty.

It didn't even occur to me the fill would liquify/settle prior to being shot and therefore have an unsymmetrical center of gravity. It must veer off target like a scud.

Hopefully they can consistently fully fill the balls in production.

I'm actually kind of sad my maximum mass estimations appear correct.

Note to self; Start buying Annihilation. 3.4g average mass! Beautiful!

Originally Posted by martix_agent

Link isn't working for me.

[storminnorman]

links are broken as well

[uv_halo]

Originally Posted by Kilroy

Unfortunately no tested the First Strike rounds to see if they break down in soil as claimed. Some guy left them in the sun and rain for a year with zero effect. These Hydrotec rounds are supposed to break down in the same way. Hopefully someone tests this out....

Actually, FS rounds are photo-biodegradable polystyrene. They were never claimed to break down in the soil. They require sunlight to break down but, what a lot of people are ignorant of is that "biodegradable" is a term wide enough to drive a truck through with no real differentiation between 'breaks down in one year under the sun" vice "breaks down in 100yrs under the sun".

Hydrotec claims that they are using a corn-derived polymer and, generally speaking these tend to break down in the soil (bacteria, humidity and a little heat), and they tend to break down quicker than other biodegradable plastics (i.e. polystyrene).

Unfortunately, I think Hydrotec has hit an unavoidable roadblock. It's a really simple problem, how do you seal two pre-filled halves of a shell without an air bubble, or void? If you have even the slightest amount of excess fill, it will leak out at the seam, and most likely interfere with the welding of the shell. If the shell halves are not attached to the sheets when they are being welded then, you could overfill, stack the two halves, blow off excess, then weld but, this is either one step applied sequentially to every ball, or a custom, complex machine applying this same process to many balls at once.

All that being said, maybe this whole test day was to see if they could determine if this is a viable product in it's current state.

[JKR]

For those who haven't heard or read about it, this was posted by Paul Ciesiun on his personal Facebook page:

Fans, I apologize for the silence on our page, and from HydroTec in general. For those of you who have followed this project, and me personally, I sincerely thank you. For those of you who are not aware, I am one of the inventors, and have been the driving force behind HydroTec for the last 9 years. In 2009, I agreed to be an employee of HydroTec as part of a deal with a local Chicago investo
r. However I regret to inform all of you that I am no longer an employee of HydroTec. It should also be known that it was not my decision, but was that of my investor.

It is also important to me that you all know and understand, that over the majority of this year, I have had little involvement in the company’s direction. This includes keeping our faithful followers updated and informed regarding the product. Further, I had no knowledge of, nor was I ever informed of any “launch” at Paintball Explosion. This was also the first time I had heard of an exclusively “indoor” HydroTec formula. My product plan and expectation has always been that HydroTec should be good for both indoor and outdoor play. Further, you should know that Chuck Hendsch is the sole remaining employee of HydroTec. HydroTec’s other employees, (Marketing Manager, Production Coordinator, Project Coordinator, and VP of Technology/Co-Inventor) have moved on from the company.

After nearly a decade of work on this invention, I am confident that in the proper hands and with the proper care, my invention stands to change the industry we all know and love. It is with that in mind that I refocus my efforts to overcome these recent obstacles and continue to pursue what I created. Thus, I have not given up.

Thank you again to all of you who have supported me, my vision, and HydroTec over the last decade.

- Paul Ciesiun

[GMAN1]

So hydrotech is officially kaput?

[JKR]

Not sure kaput is the right word...maybe on life support?

[desertT1]

Sounds like it's pretty much over at this point.

[JMac]

HUGE disappointment. I had really hoped they could pull this from the fire...alot of Field guys were excited about them, as I'm sure alot of you were as well. Bummer.

[P0E]

Originally Posted by JMac

HUGE disappointment. I had really hoped they could pull this from the fire...alot of Field guys were excited about them, as I'm sure alot of you were as well. Bummer.

Shame I'm not on Facebook. It would be interesting to know if..

"I am confident that in the proper hands and with the proper care, my invention stands to change the industry"

..means it's possible for them to get a consistent fill. Because what we have seen so far looks borderline unusable.

[Rover Lead]

I'm sorry to see any company involved in paintball go the way of the dodo, especially when they have been attempting to improve on an existing product. Hopefully Paul can turn things around.