new users guide to upgrading

A question I get a lot is how can I make my gun shoot this far, or this fps, or this rof? Most mainstream upgrading that shops can perform for you wont require a expert technician, however it never hurts to have a expert technician building your gun. The extreme upgrading which we will talk about later should be left to only the most seasoned and skilled technicians. the first step in any upgrade project is to develop a plan. When making this plan ensure that you do the proper research to ensure that your weapon is a good candidate for upgrading and the parts you are going to purchase are adequate.

If your reason for upgrading is just to have a reliable skirmish ready rifle that will not let u down in battle then most players will be pleased with a stock gun with just a few mods to improve reliability, accuracy, and rof. A new shim job , Aoe correction , clean and relube and a seal check can greatly increase performance and reliability of a stock gun without the need for new parts. The main factor in reliability is how hard you run your gun. If u take a stock jg an hook it up to a 14.8 lipo don't expect it to last long. To maintain reliability I wouldn't recommend running any stock gun on an 11.1 lipo. The reason being is that even though the gun may run well for a limited amount of time the gearbox wasn't truly designed to handle the mechanical and electrical stress that a lipo can deliver. I only recommend using a lipo on a gun that has had the proper modifications made to handle the current. for most guns A 9.6v NIMH battery will perform just fine and will not cause as much stress as a lipo could. One of the most important things you can invest in to maintain reliability is good quality ammo. Don't buy bbs from a supermarket as there surface polish is well crap and they shatter easily on impact. Be sure to keep your barrel regularly cleaned and the hop up is turned of after each game day to prevent the bucking from sretching.

Now we will move on to the aspects of more high end upgrading and the factors that can play into the several types of upgrades. rof, , fps , high precision . Rof. this is the setup that most people want. the main focus here is accuracy by volume and sending as many rounds downrange as possible. there are to types of rof builds that can be attempted, a SSG ( single sector gear ) or a DSG ( dual sector gear ). we will start of with SSG. there are limits to which u can push a SSG before u run into issues such as nozzle and piston return time. 50 rps is typically considered to be the limit of what a SSG can do before the risks out weigh the rewards. In a SSG moderate speed setup of say 35-40 rps the following factors come into play and must be addressed . AOE, gear ratio , motor tpa and amperage consumption, Wiring : mosfet required, gear ratio spin rte when compared to piston return time, piston assembly weight , battery quality and amperage output and discharge rate, compression , and also shock transfer. im not going to get into extreme detail about each factor but I will elaborate a bit. AOE or angle of engagement has to be perfect at this speed to avoid piston pickup tooth failure. AOE can be corrected by using sorbo and neo pad which also serve as a shock buffer to protect your gearbox shell. Gear ratio , In most stock guns the stock ratio is 18.1, meaning that for every 18 pinion rotations 1 piston cycle will be completed . so if u know your motors maximum rotation speed while under load and you know your gear ratio you you can get a estimate of your rpms. for example a motor spinning at 30000 rpm while under load on a stock 18.1 gearset will produce around 1700 rpm keep in mind im rounding these numbers up to whole, so 1700 rpm divided by 60 for the seconds in a min gives u 28 which would be your rps here is the equation, motor rotation speed ( under load ) divided by gear ratio=x x divided by 60 = your rps. keep in mind tht there are many factors that can effect those numbers but that's how u can get a rough estimate. motor tpa ( turns per armature ) has to be balanced for speed but still have a good amount of torque. IMO a good balance for spped is the 12-15 tpa region when paired with a neo magnet motor can .2 high of a tpa and the rof decreases, to low and u wont have enough torque. Also the amperage consumption needs to remain low to prevent unwanted heat and stress in your motor and electrical system. wiring should always be replaced with a minimum of 16 gauge multistrand and wired into a mosfet. My personal favorite is the hunterseeker 5 mosfet which can handle any battery you can throw at it. ill now cover piston and nozzle return rate. piston return rate is critical when building a high speed gun because if its not then you can run into issue with pre mature engagement which would mean bye bye gears or piston. Nozzle return rate refers to the time it takes for the air nozzle to travel forward and seal with the hop up bucking, if the return time is not correct then the system can suffer fps loss. also I shouldn't have to state it but I will, a excellent shim job is required for all high end builds. Now its time to move on to my personal favorite, DSG builds . a dsg or dual sector gear is a type of sector gear that has teeth on both sides of the gear with two release gaps in between. this can greatly increase your rof into the 80 rps range on ceratin setups and then the only thing holding you back is bb feeding lol. A dsg setup should only be attempted by the most experienced technician because it involves complex gearbox tuning and calibration as well as technical skill to get the system to function properly. im not going to dive to deep into the aspects of dsgs as there are a ton of posts on ASM forum about it. Now we will dive into high fps builds. I consider a high fps build to be anything over 500 fps. A high fps build is never as easy as slapping a m150 spring in and going for it no, there are some complex physics and tuning involved in high fps builds. to start off all of your internals need to be up to par, especially the gears, motor, and piston. for gears its riot sc or nothing as they are virtually indestructible , piston wise the shs 15 tooth and lonex ed are both excellent options, motor wise its lonex a2 or nothing. all the internal components need to be up to par including the battery. the wiring needs to be atleast 16 gauge wired to a mosfet. also don't forget cylinder to barrel volume matching. You will need a moderately hard bucking to contain the high pressure spike coming from that stiff spring. the optimum setup would also have it pared with a er hop which can greatly increase the range of the weapon. keep in mind that for optimum results you should always tune your piston weight to bb weight. a heavier piston assembly can transfer a greater more consistent energy to a heavier bb throughout a longer barrel . If the piston assembly is to light it can be slowed by the air Colum behind the heavy bb. keep in mind that the negative results would be minimal but for the best possible setup everything needs to be balanced. since the high fps market is mainly dominated by the semi auto dmr market don't fotget to do the correct selector plate modification to make it run semi auto only. we will now move on to high precision which can be classified as high fps , accuracy , or rps, or my favorite a combo of all 3. high prrecission is going to require all of the DIY mods that im not going to elaborate on because there are a million posts about them on other forums. In a high precission build try to keep all the parts from the same company if possible so the tolerances and specs can remain as clos as possible. in order to have long range accuracy at a good fps and rps a lot of fine tunig will be needed so as well as the others leave it to the experienced techs. im not going to say much more on high precision as ive already mentioned most of the stuff required already. Keep in mind that I did not include everything needed to build the above builds many things were left out because u can find all of that info on other places or just msg me personally and I can tell u anything you want about teching. to find all the mods needed for the previously stated builds check out airsoft mechanics forum as it has all the info u could ever need. any questions a you have just post a reply and I can answer it or edit the OP. thanks , korey.