Spydercocker Project

(click for larger image)

(click here for an older pic of the spydercocker)

Foreword:
(AKA: disclaimer)

I understand that this sounds appealing, and that many of you will want to attempt it.  However I do not recommend that ANYONE that is not extremely mechanically inclined try this mod.  For that matter I don't recommend anyone who is not extremely electronically inclined attempt this either.  My belief is that if you can't figure out how to do something on your own, then you shouldn't do it until you can.  I have designed all my own circuitry, custom made some of my own parts, come up with detailed plans for parts to be machined by someone with the right equipment.  And do not try to do this mod half-a**ed or you will be disappointed.  The reason that I mention all this is that almost every newbie that I have told about this project has gotten the idea into their head that they're going to build their own.  Then they say "teach me everything".  They don't know what closed bolt is, they don't know what pneumatics are, they don't know how a regulator works, they've never heard of going low pressure with a marker.  For that reason I have made this a project overview, rather than a step by step tutorial, because I SERIOUSLY do not recommend that ANYONE attempts this mod, unless they are extremely qualified, I cannot stress this enough.  If you do wish to make a closed bolt spyder such as mine, you should read this page as inspiration.  Do yourself a favor and do NOT return to this page when you run into design problems, or construction problems.  If you do you will rely on my experience to build it and not on your own ingenuity.  You will not develop a true understanding for how the marker works, and that will make it very hard to get the marker working and then maintain it.  If you only want to do this because of the performance, BUY AN AUTOCOCKER. Seriously.  It will probably work better, and if you get a good deal it could be less than half the cost, and won't require a couple hundred hours of your time.

With that said, you can email me at evandude@yahoo.com if you want to ask some questions about the project.  Be forewarned that I firmly believe in what I said above.

If you want to build your own spydercocker, take a look at the spydercocker one page hosted at ottersccustoms.com...  If you take the effort to follow that tutorial and build a mechanical spydercocker based on that design, then I'd be more than happy to give you a hand with making an electropneumatic spydercocker out of it.  It is much easier for me to guide someone from a mechanical spydercocker to an electro spydercocker, because all of the metalwork/fabrication/cutting etc is already finished, so focus can be given to the electronics.  I do not have the time to be explaining the construction of the mechanical system to everyone.  The majority of the emails I've gotten asking for help with the spydercocker, have been from someone who wanted me to give them a complete tutorial so that they could do it with an absolute minimum of effort and thought on their part.  But, if you take the time to educate yourself by building a mechanical spydercocker from the above site, then I respect that, and I will then put forth the effort of helping out with the rest.  Don't think that that is a waste of time or effort.  Other than swapping the mechanical 3-way valve for a solenoid valve, all the work you do in building the mechanical spydercocker will remain intact and necessary... And it gives you a chance to play around with it a bit, learn what settings to tweak for best performance, etc... because when you add in an electronic system, it adds more variables, meaning that there are more things you have to mess with to get it working right, so it's helpful to get as much sorted out before that as possible.

Background

    A while back I saw the Deadlywind R.A.I.L. kit.  It makes a spyder into a closed-bolt marker.  Warpig did a test to debunk the myth that closed bolt markers are inherently more accurate... Anyway, they aren't.  But that's not the only factor involved in a closed-bolt marker.  They are quieter, have less recoil, have little or no blowback up the feed neck, and are almost incapable of chopping paint.  You can usually stick your finger in the feed neck and shoot the marker and the bolt will just stop when it hits your finger; when a paintball is halfway into the chamber when the bolt comes forward, the bolt just stops rather than chopping it in half.  It makes a distinctive "KAK" sound.  Also, with little or no blowback up the feed neck, the marker will feed faster and more reliably.  
    Anyway, after I saw the R.A.I.L. kit, I moved on with life, and forgot all about it.  Then, when I remembered it and had enough money to buy it, I went back and they were done with beta testing. GRR.  So, being the inventive person that I am, I decided to build my own.  I finally found that someone else had done it before: the Spydercocker X..  This was a HUGE help to me.  So, I have set off on my own design, one that takes elements from the R.A.I.L. kit as well as from the Spydercocker X, with the balance being my own design. 

Starting off

   So, I had this great plan in my head.  But, I wanted to do this right.  For some idiot reason, I always do things half-@$$ed and of course I am never satisfied with how they turn out.  So, I browsed through my bookmarks, and I visited the BR machine co. webpage.  After a long series of emails detailing what I needed by way of custom parts, he made them up for me.  First off, let me say that this guy is amazing.  His work is excellent, and he was extremely helpful, and I ended up getting exactly what I wanted for a very reasonable price.  What I got was this: a custom valve, like the one on his page, but modified so there is no blowback;  a stainless steel hammer, with a groove all the way around, and no top hole for the connecting pin, threaded to accept an autococker cocking rod; and a bolt, which has a nylon front, like the other bolts on his page, but with an aluminum back that makes it rear-cocking to go into a cocking block.  I won't mention what I paid, because if he ever gets swamped with orders for these parts, I'm sure he'd like to charge more for them; all I will say is that the prices were in the ballpark of the prices he charges for his regular parts.
    As for the other parts: the autococker pneumatics I bought off of ebay.  I got an autococker back block from a friend.

A bunch of the parts

my checklist of parts

where the price is "-" it means that it was included with the above part.

total money invested thus far: 584 dollars.

Note that this does not include any of the shipping costs, or the various runs to home depot for a tool or part.  
I would place the real total at almost 700 dollars right now.  For those of you who will say "hey why not just buy a cocker"...
First of all, I don't think I could get an electronic cocker for 700 bucks.
Secondly...  yeah, why not?

So, with that, we shall begin:

The spyder in its last fully functioning "useless sear tripper" state, before I began hacking into it.

Construction

Ram Mount

The first step was to build the base onto which the ram will mount. The ram is to be mounted in much the same way that the Spydercocker X ram was mounted, on the side.  
   

And the part with ram mounted, positioned on side of my friend's spyder:

and also the newly drilled and tapped hole in the side.  

FYI don't ever use a dremel and a wood drill bit to drill holes in aluminum.  It took me 20 minutes. I could have done it in 30 seconds with my real drill and a cobalt bit.

3-Way Valve Mount

My original idea was to mount the 3 way valve the same as on the spydercocker X.  However, like I said, I want to do this right, so I scrapped that idea entirely.  Now on to its replacement..

Solenoid valve

I swear, finding and purchasing a proper solenoid valve must be harder than buying nuclear weapons.  It took me probably a good 8 hours searching through manufacturer data sheets, and then when I found a valve, I couldn't find anywhere to buy it. So, I got a replacement solenoid from another electropneumatic paintball gun.  I never was able to come up with an elegant method for mounting this thing, so my current method will have to do. 

Pneumatics regulator

My original plan was to mount the pneumatics regulator into the end of the low pressure chamber, like on the R.A.I.L. kit.  This would require me to drill and tap the hole for it, and it is rather ugly in my opinion.  Then, upon examining my palmer stabilizer, I realized I could mount the regulator in the gauge output port, which was facing forwards, and it would be parallel to and below the LPC.  However, because of the 15 degree angled VA that I paid 40 bucks for, I couldn't do this, because the reg wouldn't fit past the LPC.  I was NOT about to give up my cool VA either.  So, I sat down and looked at it for a while, and then I popped a 90 degree 1/8" elbow into the output port.  This allowed me to put the pneumatics reg parallel to the palmer.  However, there is little to no clearance, so using a standard 1/8" elbow was almost impossible; I could only seat it about 2 turns before the reg ran out of clearance.  This meant gobs of teflon tape, and just wasn't a good idea.  Then, I found a rather expensive little SWIVELING 1/8" elbow at my local paintball store... I've never seen one before then, but because of the swivel, the elbow stood out further from the regulator, allowing me to not only thread it in as far as I needed to, but also to be able to pivot out the LPR for easy removal, without using a wrench.

One cool thing is that I can now run the pneumatics hose from the reg in the groove formed by the two regulators, keeping it safe from tearing off; this is good because the other two hoses will be on the side of the gun, whereas the regulator output hose would be winding up from the bottom, more prone to tearing off.  

Anyway, since the pneumatics regulator outputs such a small pressure, I was able to check for leaks by holding my thumb over the output nipple and gassing up the marker.  I heard a leak, but it was just a bad macroline fitting.  the regulator mounts had no leaks. 

Electronics

I originally used a dual monostable timer IC circuit for a simple control mechanism.  That was about as simple as it gets, but sort of defeated some of the purpose of having an electronic marker: it was adjusted with a couple of very touchy knobs, and had no indicators or buttons, let alone firing modes.

So, my project for some time now has been a full control board utilizing a microcontroller.  The software for the board is nearly completed.  The microcontroller used is in-circuit programmable, so I can reprogram it via a 5-pin connector.  The board implements three menu buttons (up, down, and select) and has a full "soft-menu" system, somewhat similar to that of the ECS software for the impulse.  Through this menu system, all important settings can be changed (rate of fire, dwell time, and recock time) on the fly.  The board implements a full serial communication system, currently supporting serial communication with a PC through an interface program that I wrote.  (screenshot)  Through this program, all settings (minimum, current, and maximum values for each setting) can be changed.

Future plans include a standalone device that connects to the board for changing settings in the field, for when a laptop is either unavailable, or not worth the hassle.  The current menu system on the board allows current values for each setting to be modified, but not the minimum or maximum values (would make for too complex a menu system) so this device will bridge that gap in functionality while still remaining fully portable.  This device will be a box, small enough to be handheld, with an LCD screen and several buttons and indicators, be battery powered, and connect to the board via the same 3-pin connector as the serial PC link.

Also in the works, probably my next task actually, is an anti-chop eye system.  As you can see, there is a fair amount of space on the board at the top left, more than enough for ACE circuitry.  I will probably work on this soon.

The board is now working, pics are somewhat outdated...  I'll have to get some more taken soon.  Haven't tested it on the marker yet, but it seems to be firing just fine.  Of course, there's going to be some limitations as to fire rate because of the maximum speed the sear solenoid can operate at, but I turned the BPS rate up to about 30 (which for the hardware setup is basically uncapped) and it was firing obscenely fast.  I will have to do some BPS testing when I get a chance to try it out on the marker.

The board is currently assembled with point-to-point wiring on perfboard, but I intend to make a real printed circuit board for it.

Close-up of recessed menu buttons.

Power for the control circuitry comes from the hopper, via a cable, as shown below.  The hopper contains a pair of adjustable voltage regulators to supply the circuitry in the grip with two selectable voltages.  However, my new board requires approximately 7 to 9 volts for the solenoid power switching circuitry, but has an onboard voltage regulator to supply the control electronics.  This means I only need two of the three wires in the power cable, freeing up the third wire.  This would be perfect for implementing an intellifeed system of some sort, which I hear works quite well with the evlution II hoppers.  That may be my next mini-project.

(closeup of cable plugged into grip)

(closeup of additions to eVLution II)

Here's another progress pic, here I've got my uber-cheap but uber-1337 polished aluminum beavertail, and my (almost invisible) lexan solenoid battle-armor installed.

Note how nice and orange the picture looks.  Gotta love my digital camera.

The final experimental incarnation of the spydercocker before it was assembled and ready for use:

(click for larger image)