Paintball Gun Prosthetic

[Elliotnim]

Hi everyone, I'm a ME/ BME Major working on a paintball gun prosthetic arm for a project. My first iteration had A LOT of flaws. Many of which I believe were due to a lack of experience with paintball and preexisting options to solve problems I'm having. I'm looking for someone with experience modifying paintball guns to possibly interview and get some information on common modifications and products I might be overlooking in order to help me avoid "reinventing the wheel"

Please email me if you're able/ willing to help thanks in advance
bedrockdesignsllc@gmail.com

Elliot


EDIT 1: Sorry it's taken so long but here's my update: The prosthetic will entirely replace an arm below the elbow and have muscle sensors as the actuation for firing. My past flaws were using a hopper fed gun and a heavy aluminum tank connected to the arm. My current plan is to buy a paintball gun from Amazon with rubber balls and a hose for moving the tank to a belt/ backpack. My biggest questions are as follows

Are there any drum mags that feed towards the center or would work in line with the barrel? (I'm trying to modify everything to essentially fit inside a cylinder)

Are there any options for an electronic trigger system for a gun or would that be something I have to completely design myself? I'm using Arduino as the brains so there's lots of flexibility.

How much can I expect to spend on parts for making and modding this project keeping in mind I can 3d print any small part I can design for free just with about a week and a half wait time?

EDIT 2: here's the link to my YouTube video showing my rough CAD model for the main pieces
youtu.be/I07uPBARP6M

[Cdn_Cuda]

I could see there being a lot of variables that could go into this. Perhaps share some of issues you encountered so people can get a better feel for your project. Are you looking to make a more accessible paintball marker for someone with a disability?

What type of paintball marker did you base your design off on? Are you looking at mechanical operation or electronic?

I’m sure a couple of our resident wizards will be able to help you.

[Elliotnim]

That smart parts ion is exactly what I'm looking for. How much work would it be to remove the handle and fore grip while keeping machinery intact? I'm looking for a 4" maximum diameter including protective shell and skeleton with about a 12" length

[Cdn_Cuda]

The trigger frame comes off, you can relocate the front regulator. Internals are mostly just hoses but there is a board and solenoid. Ion can easily be turned mechanical and it SMAV3 replaces the board and solenoid, making the internals much smaller. Check out the Smart Parts forum.

[Elliotnim]

Awesome, it's on its way along with rubber balls a tank and a hose. I'll probably post videos and stuff on YouTube or Reddit to document things

[Chuck E Ducky]

Give us an idea of the disability your looking to work around and I’m sure between 3D printing and whats available, We got the expertise to help you out.

[Elliotnim]

Just a single below the elbow amputation. This would be mounted with a 3d printed socket (professionally made through my job) and ideally not need the other arm for stability while firing. Think robocop or terminator with a built in gun arm

[MrBarraclough]

Elliotnim I think Megaman might be the better image here

[scottieb]

Grab a PV1 Shocker. They have an input on the side to fire the marker without a pull of the trigger. The feature was designed for people with disabilities to allow them to play the sport.

[WORR13]

pretty rare though. a remote mounted microswitch on some kind of electro would also be viable

[Elliotnim]

Ideally it would be a gun that has a basic electronic button instead of a trigger

[DocsMachine]

We need more information. What is it you're trying to modify?

Are you trying to mount a marker so that it attaches to a prosthetic socket, rather than trying to make a prosthetic hand "hold" it? There would be issues with getting it angled right, or being able to angle it on the fly. The player could eventually learn to simply raise and lower for distance, but some method to alter the angle, so the gun remains more or less at eye level would be ideal.

Is this a case of a single prosthetic or both? If the person has one functioning hand, that could be used to refine the aim.

As for a trigger, any electronic marker can be fairly easily adapted to accept a remote trigger- it's typically just a microswitch, so the person could have a button in their other hand. Or in the case of both arms, something like a bite trigger. For the latter, it might be an idea to get special dispensation from the field to allow a reasonable-cadence full auto, say 8-10 shots per second.

If it's a case of both arms, I can still see issues with goggle safety, barrel covers and reloading, but nothing is insurmountable.

Doc.

[Elliotnim]

This would be a single arm using muscle sensors. I'm hoping to tear down a gun and use the components plus some after market 3d printing and home Depot trips to make a cylindrical gun that has a center of mass as close to the center of volume as possible

[MrBarraclough]

Does ammunition capacity matter? Magazines for mag-fed markers typically hold 10-20 rounds, depending on size and type. A type of tubular built in magazine called a spring feed would easily fit within your form factor, but with the tradeoff of limited capacity and being a bit slow to reload. If you're going with an off-the-shelf marker as the core and don't want to add a hopper, then you may want to look at magfed adapters that allow normal hopper-fed markers to accept magazines via their existing feednecks. These typically orient the magazines parallel to the body/barrel, which would better fit within your design parameters. Look for something called a universal magfed adapter. There are some 3D printed ones out there.

Wild idea: If ammo capacity is indeed a big issue, there is something called a Q-Loader that may interest you.

I agree that an Ion is likely your best choice, being cheap, compact, and electropneumatic. Since the HPA tank will be connected via a remote line anyway, you could actually move the HPR to the tank side of the remote line if you wanted, to save weight. The tradeoff is that adjusting the velocity would require more shots to dial in, since there would be a much larger volume of air passages downstream of the HPR.

[Elliotnim]

This is exactly what I was hoping already existed out there. I was given the advice to stay away from drum mags from a gunsmithing coworker as they are unreliable, especially because mine would have been feeding towards the center which was a little discouraging to hear after hours of CADing but your information is the perfect replacement. I will be posting videos and pictures on my YouTube and Reddit respectively over the next few days. Hopefully we have a janky prototype with a couple weeks. Thanks again

[The Great Equalizer]

To me the obvious paintball feeding solution is an AGD Warp Feed mounted on the belt harness with the air tank or built into a backpack. You would then pin the feed conduit to the player's sleeve with velcro bands. I've never played with one so I hope someone else chimes in. The only issue I can see is that maybe its not powerful enough to push paintballs from a belt harness up the torso and down the arm to the prosthetic.
http://www.warpig.com/paintball/tech...ed/index.shtml

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzj44do_xt0

Looking for Warp Feed backpacks I came across this too https://newatlas.com/strikeloader-pa...ackpack/28807/

[redsquirrel]

Elliotnim Neat stuff here. Any update on this project?