Ultimate Trigger Response Build Documented
Dec 20, 2013 13:32:55 GMT -5
O'Dwah and Gimpalong like this
Post by ctres on Dec 20, 2013 13:32:55 GMT -5
Since I tend to post in the technical section fairly often I figured I’d go ahead and post a little write up on my current primary build for those that are interested. I often see a lot of questions on tech stuff, but people don't often post on what DOES work so I figured this might be useful to someone. Mods, since this is not a tech question per se, I wasn’t sure if it should go here or the gallery, but since it is mostly tech oriented I chose to stick it here.
The main goal of this build was to get the absolute best trigger response possible without building a gun with a ROF>30rps such as a DSG, while also ending up with a gun that will be seriously reliable for the long run. My approach is a very high torque motor with very high speed gears. This means that the motor doesn't have to spin very many times to cycle the gun. High torque motors also reach their top speed sooner than high speed motors which is why they give such good response. The point of this write up is to document what is possible with an AEG and maybe shed some light on techniques that others can use to improve reliability of just about any AEG. Most of the techniques I mention here are pretty well documented but this is sort of a compilation of all of the tweaks and mods that I think are most important to ensuring long-term reliability. I chose the parts based on recommendations mostly from airsoftmechanics where guys have builds way crazier than this. Everything on the final build list I can highly recommend.
Anyways, the base gun is an older gen VFC 416 that I bought second hand as just the externals for about $150. It started out with a random JG gearbox that I had laying around but when I sold my G&P Block II CQBR a little over a year ago I decided to go ahead and do my dream build internally. This build has been the product of about a year’s worth of on and off tuning during times when I felt motivated and wasn’t busy with college or work. There were many times where it sat for months either in pieces or missing key parts.
The current build started off with a lonex 16:1 complete box and a JG blue motor. I immediately took apart the gearbox and corrected Angle of Engagement with sorbo, swiss-cheesed the piston, swapped out the aluminum piston head for plastic one to minimize moving weight, installed a Jonezy basic FET (highly recommended), and switched to deans. I was never happy with the Lonex gears since no matter what I tried they always gave me issues with shimming, but I stuck with them until last summer when I picked up some RiotSCs. Every other Lonex part has been phenomenal though. If anyone is thinking of something similar without splurging on the Seigetek gears I would say save yourself the time and money and get some SHS gears. I would have done that, but at the time SHS gears were having QC issues so I decided to avoid them.
With the JG blue, 11.1, and Lonex 16:1 gears shortstroked 3 teeth the gun shot around 27rps and had very quick trigger response, but a whine that tended to annoy me. It wan’t anything more than most guns have but it wasn’t what I was looking for. It sat like that for about 6 months until I broke down and got some Riot 10:1 gears. Along with these I built a frankentorque motor, which is a neo magnet can with an armature from a ferrous high torque motor. Basically since ferrous magnets are much weaker there needs to be way more turns per armature on a ferrous motor to get any decent torque compared to a neo magnet motor. My armature came from one of those stock Dboys motors which are already super slow, so in a neo magnet can from an SHS high torque it is ridiculously strong but super slow, hence the uber high speed gears. This means that response is great and the motor runs really cool.
I installed the motor with the 10:1s and found that with a new grip I was using I could not adjust the motor out far enough to shim it to my liking. I then idiotically filed down the metal base plate of the grip where the metal part of the motor endbell touches the baseplate to allow the motor to back out farther. I reassembled everything, fired a few well-shimmed shots and promptly fried my mosfet due to the short I had created. Word to the wise: never do this.
The gun then sat for another 4 months before I had the time to work on it. I replaced the fet with a BTC Specter, which I have been very impressed with. I ended up solving the motor height issue by cutting down the shaft of the motor a little bit so that the pinion sat a little farther down, and that is how the gun ended up where it is now. A full build list of the internals is below.
Build List
VFC externals
Lonex 8mm V2 shell w/ Lonex bearings
Lonex red piston
Stock JG cream colored piston head: bearings removed
Lonex bearing spring guide
Lonex Cylinder head, cylinder, nozzle, and tappet plate
Scatterplot sorbo and neoprene pad
Lonex m100
BTC Specter
RiotSC/Seigetek 10:1 gearset
Frankentorque Motor (SHS HT can with a chaoli armature)
11.1V 1300mAh 25C stick lipo
Modifications
Radius the gearbox windows to improve shell durability
Removed Gearbox wiring guides to allow lower gauge wiring
Soldered Deans connectors
AOE corrected with ¼” Sorbo pad and 2nd and part of 3rd teeth removed from piston
Gears shimmed bevel-pinion method
Motor Shaft cut and pinion moved down about 1.5mm to allow better meshing with bevel
Motor Grip filed/sanded to ensure perfect motor alignment when installed on receiver
With the above parts list and modifications the gun has faster trigger response than I’ve ever seen in person on any other AEG, though it is probably similar to some videos of DSGs I’ve seen. With 20ms precocking on the Specter it literally sounds like a polarstar (see vid below). It clocks in at 346 FPS w/ .20s with very little variation, so it’s perfect for CQB. ROF in FA is about 24 rps. Anyways, onto the pictures and Video.
What it looks like externally: Soon to be somewhat revamped
Specter in its packaging
Specter installed in the Lonex Shell
Final Gearbox build (with the exception of the azimuth piston: I have since switched to the Lonex red)
Trigger Response Test (Not super good quality, but you get the idea. I'll take some better video soon, along with some chrono shots to show ROF)
s1232.photobucket.com/user/ctres94/media/977_zpsad813113.mp4.html?sort=3&o=0
I’m a huge perfectionist when it comes to tuning guns, so of course I’m not 100% satisfied yet. There is a slight bit of overspin that I want to fix so that I can fully decompress the spring by turning off precocking and firing a shot in semi. I plan on solving this by putting in a guarder 120 that I have and then short stroking by 2 or 3 teeth to put the fps below 350 for CQB. There is also a little bit of whine that is audible when precocking is not engaged that I need to track down and reshim slightly. Also, the barrel group is still just some cobbled together stock parts. I have an R hop, lonex chamber, and a Prommy Stainless 6.03 barrel waiting for it but I am looking for someone who can do a high quality cutting job on the Prometheus barrel. It is a 509mm and I need a 10.5 inch barrel, so I want it cut in half, recrowned, and a new window cut in the other half. If anyone can do this let me know, there will either be money or the other half of the prommy in it for you.
To sum it up, I am very happy with how this turned out. This was pretty much a no-expenses-spared build, but it still ended up cheaper than something like a polarstar and accomplishes everything I want and need. Looking back I probably could have accomplished almost the same thing by keeping the JG blue and switching to a SHS 13:1 gearset which would have saved me $100 and gotten pretty similar results with the specter. If anyone wants to do something similar on a budget, that’s the route I’d recommend.
More on the Specter
So since the Specter is still pretty rare I figured I’d do a separate portion on it in case someone is interested in one. Black Talon Concepts (BTC) is the new name for AWS which made the raptor and other programmable fets. Basically the Specter is a drop in fit for most V2 gearboxes and brings all of the features you’d expect from a high end programmable mosfet, as well as some that you wouldn’t. Hands down the best feature is the super short trigger pull IMO. It is easily half the pull of a standard V2 trigger. This was one of the most important parts to me when considering trigger response. It’s also unique in that it has a little switch that the cutoff cam on the sector gear hits rather than retaining the standard cutoff lever. This means that the mosfet knows exactly when each cycle completes, which gives it the ability to accurately give features like precocking without additional sensors. One minor thing that the Specter does is remove the physical safety latch due to space constraints. With the specter installed you can still pull the trigger on semi but nothing happens since it is electrically disconnected.
As for the features, I actually have ended up using more than I originally thought I would. The ones I’m currently using are:
Precocking in semi (definitely one of my favorites)
Lipo voltage monitoring
Resettable Digital Fuse
The fuse and lipo monitoring are just safety features that don't effect the performance of the gun, but are a nice reassurance to have. Prior to the Specter I didn't have either in my gun, and I never ran into any problems, but some people are very adamant about having a fuse. The precocking on the other hand is phenomenal. You program the fet to decide how long you want it to wait before the power is cut off once the cycle is completed. I have been running mine at 20 miliseconds which puts the piston almost completely cocked back, meaning that the instant the motor starts moving the piston is released. Having a piston with a full metal, or at least partially metal rack is strongly encouraged since the piston stays under the stress of the spring for an extended time period which can cause premature failure if the piston isn't strong enough.
There are several more features such as ROF control and burst modes that I don’t care about and haven’t messed around with yet, but I can say that everything I have tried so far has worked perfectly and I’m super impressed. It would have taken extensive modification just to get the shortened trigger pull from a standard trigger, and I still would have been left without precocking. A lipo monitor, fuse, and fet would have taken up much more space outside the gearbox, but with the specter I can run any stock I want with a buffer tube lipo without needing the extra space of a crane stock. For these features alone it is easily worth the price to me.
Programming is very simple and is done by holding the trigger down and plugging in the battery. The motor will vibrate four times, and then you use the trigger to give your inputs. The manual does a great job explaining this, and I have had no issues getting it to do exactly what I want.
If you have any questions on the Specter itself or this build in general let me know I'll be happy to give more details.
The main goal of this build was to get the absolute best trigger response possible without building a gun with a ROF>30rps such as a DSG, while also ending up with a gun that will be seriously reliable for the long run. My approach is a very high torque motor with very high speed gears. This means that the motor doesn't have to spin very many times to cycle the gun. High torque motors also reach their top speed sooner than high speed motors which is why they give such good response. The point of this write up is to document what is possible with an AEG and maybe shed some light on techniques that others can use to improve reliability of just about any AEG. Most of the techniques I mention here are pretty well documented but this is sort of a compilation of all of the tweaks and mods that I think are most important to ensuring long-term reliability. I chose the parts based on recommendations mostly from airsoftmechanics where guys have builds way crazier than this. Everything on the final build list I can highly recommend.
Anyways, the base gun is an older gen VFC 416 that I bought second hand as just the externals for about $150. It started out with a random JG gearbox that I had laying around but when I sold my G&P Block II CQBR a little over a year ago I decided to go ahead and do my dream build internally. This build has been the product of about a year’s worth of on and off tuning during times when I felt motivated and wasn’t busy with college or work. There were many times where it sat for months either in pieces or missing key parts.
The current build started off with a lonex 16:1 complete box and a JG blue motor. I immediately took apart the gearbox and corrected Angle of Engagement with sorbo, swiss-cheesed the piston, swapped out the aluminum piston head for plastic one to minimize moving weight, installed a Jonezy basic FET (highly recommended), and switched to deans. I was never happy with the Lonex gears since no matter what I tried they always gave me issues with shimming, but I stuck with them until last summer when I picked up some RiotSCs. Every other Lonex part has been phenomenal though. If anyone is thinking of something similar without splurging on the Seigetek gears I would say save yourself the time and money and get some SHS gears. I would have done that, but at the time SHS gears were having QC issues so I decided to avoid them.
With the JG blue, 11.1, and Lonex 16:1 gears shortstroked 3 teeth the gun shot around 27rps and had very quick trigger response, but a whine that tended to annoy me. It wan’t anything more than most guns have but it wasn’t what I was looking for. It sat like that for about 6 months until I broke down and got some Riot 10:1 gears. Along with these I built a frankentorque motor, which is a neo magnet can with an armature from a ferrous high torque motor. Basically since ferrous magnets are much weaker there needs to be way more turns per armature on a ferrous motor to get any decent torque compared to a neo magnet motor. My armature came from one of those stock Dboys motors which are already super slow, so in a neo magnet can from an SHS high torque it is ridiculously strong but super slow, hence the uber high speed gears. This means that response is great and the motor runs really cool.
I installed the motor with the 10:1s and found that with a new grip I was using I could not adjust the motor out far enough to shim it to my liking. I then idiotically filed down the metal base plate of the grip where the metal part of the motor endbell touches the baseplate to allow the motor to back out farther. I reassembled everything, fired a few well-shimmed shots and promptly fried my mosfet due to the short I had created. Word to the wise: never do this.
The gun then sat for another 4 months before I had the time to work on it. I replaced the fet with a BTC Specter, which I have been very impressed with. I ended up solving the motor height issue by cutting down the shaft of the motor a little bit so that the pinion sat a little farther down, and that is how the gun ended up where it is now. A full build list of the internals is below.Build List
VFC externals
Lonex 8mm V2 shell w/ Lonex bearings
Lonex red piston
Stock JG cream colored piston head: bearings removed
Lonex bearing spring guide
Lonex Cylinder head, cylinder, nozzle, and tappet plate
Scatterplot sorbo and neoprene pad
Lonex m100
BTC Specter
RiotSC/Seigetek 10:1 gearset
Frankentorque Motor (SHS HT can with a chaoli armature)
11.1V 1300mAh 25C stick lipo
Modifications
Radius the gearbox windows to improve shell durability
Removed Gearbox wiring guides to allow lower gauge wiring
Soldered Deans connectors
AOE corrected with ¼” Sorbo pad and 2nd and part of 3rd teeth removed from piston
Gears shimmed bevel-pinion method
Motor Shaft cut and pinion moved down about 1.5mm to allow better meshing with bevel
Motor Grip filed/sanded to ensure perfect motor alignment when installed on receiver
With the above parts list and modifications the gun has faster trigger response than I’ve ever seen in person on any other AEG, though it is probably similar to some videos of DSGs I’ve seen. With 20ms precocking on the Specter it literally sounds like a polarstar (see vid below). It clocks in at 346 FPS w/ .20s with very little variation, so it’s perfect for CQB. ROF in FA is about 24 rps. Anyways, onto the pictures and Video.
What it looks like externally: Soon to be somewhat revamped
Specter in its packaging
Specter installed in the Lonex Shell
Final Gearbox build (with the exception of the azimuth piston: I have since switched to the Lonex red)
Trigger Response Test (Not super good quality, but you get the idea. I'll take some better video soon, along with some chrono shots to show ROF)
s1232.photobucket.com/user/ctres94/media/977_zpsad813113.mp4.html?sort=3&o=0
I’m a huge perfectionist when it comes to tuning guns, so of course I’m not 100% satisfied yet. There is a slight bit of overspin that I want to fix so that I can fully decompress the spring by turning off precocking and firing a shot in semi. I plan on solving this by putting in a guarder 120 that I have and then short stroking by 2 or 3 teeth to put the fps below 350 for CQB. There is also a little bit of whine that is audible when precocking is not engaged that I need to track down and reshim slightly. Also, the barrel group is still just some cobbled together stock parts. I have an R hop, lonex chamber, and a Prommy Stainless 6.03 barrel waiting for it but I am looking for someone who can do a high quality cutting job on the Prometheus barrel. It is a 509mm and I need a 10.5 inch barrel, so I want it cut in half, recrowned, and a new window cut in the other half. If anyone can do this let me know, there will either be money or the other half of the prommy in it for you.
To sum it up, I am very happy with how this turned out. This was pretty much a no-expenses-spared build, but it still ended up cheaper than something like a polarstar and accomplishes everything I want and need. Looking back I probably could have accomplished almost the same thing by keeping the JG blue and switching to a SHS 13:1 gearset which would have saved me $100 and gotten pretty similar results with the specter. If anyone wants to do something similar on a budget, that’s the route I’d recommend.
More on the Specter
So since the Specter is still pretty rare I figured I’d do a separate portion on it in case someone is interested in one. Black Talon Concepts (BTC) is the new name for AWS which made the raptor and other programmable fets. Basically the Specter is a drop in fit for most V2 gearboxes and brings all of the features you’d expect from a high end programmable mosfet, as well as some that you wouldn’t. Hands down the best feature is the super short trigger pull IMO. It is easily half the pull of a standard V2 trigger. This was one of the most important parts to me when considering trigger response. It’s also unique in that it has a little switch that the cutoff cam on the sector gear hits rather than retaining the standard cutoff lever. This means that the mosfet knows exactly when each cycle completes, which gives it the ability to accurately give features like precocking without additional sensors. One minor thing that the Specter does is remove the physical safety latch due to space constraints. With the specter installed you can still pull the trigger on semi but nothing happens since it is electrically disconnected.
As for the features, I actually have ended up using more than I originally thought I would. The ones I’m currently using are:
Precocking in semi (definitely one of my favorites)
Lipo voltage monitoring
Resettable Digital Fuse
The fuse and lipo monitoring are just safety features that don't effect the performance of the gun, but are a nice reassurance to have. Prior to the Specter I didn't have either in my gun, and I never ran into any problems, but some people are very adamant about having a fuse. The precocking on the other hand is phenomenal. You program the fet to decide how long you want it to wait before the power is cut off once the cycle is completed. I have been running mine at 20 miliseconds which puts the piston almost completely cocked back, meaning that the instant the motor starts moving the piston is released. Having a piston with a full metal, or at least partially metal rack is strongly encouraged since the piston stays under the stress of the spring for an extended time period which can cause premature failure if the piston isn't strong enough.
There are several more features such as ROF control and burst modes that I don’t care about and haven’t messed around with yet, but I can say that everything I have tried so far has worked perfectly and I’m super impressed. It would have taken extensive modification just to get the shortened trigger pull from a standard trigger, and I still would have been left without precocking. A lipo monitor, fuse, and fet would have taken up much more space outside the gearbox, but with the specter I can run any stock I want with a buffer tube lipo without needing the extra space of a crane stock. For these features alone it is easily worth the price to me.
Programming is very simple and is done by holding the trigger down and plugging in the battery. The motor will vibrate four times, and then you use the trigger to give your inputs. The manual does a great job explaining this, and I have had no issues getting it to do exactly what I want.
If you have any questions on the Specter itself or this build in general let me know I'll be happy to give more details.
