VFC 416 + M150 Spring = Core-breach?

[War-Lock]

Hey ASC

I have a 2012 VFC m416 CQB w/ a 11.1v lipo i am currently using for target practice.

I am wondering if adding in a spring to bring it up to 450fps or 550 fps would cause any serious internal problems with it's stock setup.. This rig would be shooting on semi 95% of the time going firing ~1000 rounds a week.

Thanks

[ThunderCactus]

if its got a plastic cylinder head then you'll have to at least change that, possibly the piston too. Otherwise replace stuff as it breaks.
Should be noted, if you're going up to 550fps, you'll need to use at LEAST .36-.43g BBs to get any decent range and accuracy.
At 450 you should use .30, .32 or .36
Don't forget to upgrade the hop and barrel if you want better accuracy as well

[pestobanana]

If you are aiming for 450 FPS you only need a M120 or M130.

[lurkingknight]

probably a new, stronger piston (stock one can be weak) and correct AoE from the cylinder head with sorbo to protect the front of the gearbox... I suspect the gears might not like it and give out eventually after that.

some folks have used nylon pistons in builds with high rof and super strong springs like 150s -170s. I prefer to use metal rack pistons, but the fail point becomes the gears if the piston is properly prepared. The problem with nylon or other plastic pistons is that the metal portion of the rack for the release side eventually will cave in from holding the spring back. At the very least if you go with a nylon piston, take the metal rack portion off and glue it in with super glue or epoxy.

[Stealth]

For high-powered builds such as this, you will need:
* radius cylinder walls
* cylinder head (although the stock VFC one is half-decent and actually has some sort of damping ability)
* sorbothane pads
* full-metal rack piston
* replacement gears (if you're planning on achieving any sort of reliability beyond 1k rounds, you'll have to go Siegetek gears)\
* High-torque neo motor
+ a reliable power source (high discharge 11.1v lipo)

[War-Lock]

You guys are pro! Sounds like a $150-$200 worth of upgrades?

One more thing.

If i run Stealth's idea of a "high-power" setup, could i pop in an indoor spring (340 FPS) and go play few games, then when i want to go target shoot swap it out for my 500 FPS spring, would everything internally still be clockwork?

[Stealth]

Yes - if you drop down to a 7.4v lipo.
Or buy a computerized FET with ROF control (Gate MERF 3.2)

[lurkingknight]

yes and no.

I personally do not like swapping springs between games... once a gearbox is well tuned, I don't like jinxing that shit. Something comes back together slightly different, you'll never get it working the same way again. lol.

I would advise against running a powerful neodymium motor with less than m110 springs.. you get a phenomenon called overspin when a spring is that weak. Basically your gears might be spinning so fast that when you let off the trigger, there's enough momentum to spin a partial or even a full cycle, so you'll get bursts in semi auto.

You could do it, just realize you could run into busting issues. This is a problem if you're not allowed to use full auto at your games. Fancy computerized mosfets with active braking could help reduce it, but physics being the way they work... doubt you can eliminate it completely.

Those upgrades stealth is recommending are in the 400-500$ total area... riot gears are chromoly steel CNC machined... they run around 150$ just for the gearset. Add in another 100 or so for piston, cylinder head, nozzle, piston head and sorbo pad... 60$ for the motor... and you'll need a reasonably large battery to pull that (that can last a game) You'd also be silly at that point not to install even the most basic of mosfet at 30$. You're going to need a pretty good amount of amps to pull that spring and gearset trigger contacts don't like that amount of raw current arcing between them.

That kind of build is the envy of a lot of people on the field... but few can build it reliably. 500+ fps is crack the front of the gearbox off territory, even with a lot of those preventative things in place.

I'd have 2 rifles for that if I wanted high power target shooting outside of games. Some guns are more welcoming to that... like ares g36s with the quick swap spring, g&g p90, the KA elite p90, the g&g fn2000. These all have quick change spring mechanisms. A v2 requires you to open everything up and disassemble it all. Gearbox screw holes can strip, pistol grip screw holes WILL strip... it's a lot of needless assembly/disassembly cycles imo.


edit:
I had not considered the rof control from computerized fets. It's an option... bit of a hack depending on how the software handles the motor throttling/timing.

[War-Lock]

lurkingknight, Stealth, Thunder... i much appreciate the insight.

It seems that one day i'll embark on the "high-power" setup.. but not this season.

Alas, to settle my imagination..

As a bandaid solution for my stock VFC 416- 2012 CQB on a 11.1v Lipo (shooting semi 90% of the time) would a m130 or m120 spring be used as a model to max throttle this AEG without causing internal breakdowns after 8,000 rounds?

Thanks

[iKliiu]

Do you have a mosfet in there? That might be one of the issues since you are using a 11.1 LiPo. Other than that, it can definitely last if you do the basic tuning (shimming, AOE, sorbo).

[lurkingknight]

there's a couple concerns for a stock aeg... especially when running 11.1 lipo

Whether you run a 90 or 150 spring, there's a few things that are likely to happen.

arcing at the trigger contacts this occurs regardless of what batteries you use.. but higher voltage and amperage will accelerate wear on these parts... eventually you'll burn right through them and they'll fall apart and you cant close the circuit when you pull the trigger... results in no fire. a simple mosfet wired in can fix that for you... it's a relay essentially, sending minimal voltage through the trigger contacts to trigger the firing and it bypasses the current going through the switch.

Shooting a gun only in semi actually increases the wear, because the block that closes the circuit in a semi mode shot is pushed into the gate and reset every time you pull the trigger. There's a little arm that gets moved by a cam on one of the gears that flip the trigger block back to reset it onto the physical trigger. You also voltage spike the motor as it always requires more energy to start something moving from a complete stop. In full auto, that little reset arm called the cutoff lever gets pulled out of the way and the block remains pushed into the gate until you release the trigger. The cutoff lever also wears as long as you are in semi mode, since it's always being ground by the cam on the sector gear, this is a wear and tear part.. the more you use semi, the faster it wears.


the stock piston in vfcs is a clear plastic one... it has a lifespan of 1-thousands of rounds. I've heard of them blowing up on the first shot with weaker springs. It's definitely an immediate weakpoint.

After that it's anyone's guess how long it has. The gears are generally the next fail point. You'll lose a tooth or something will shear. On VFCs I think it's the spur gear or the sector gear that gives out.

When some of us talk about AoE we're talking about the angle in which the first tooth of the sector gear (the one that draws the piston back) meets the pickup tooth on the piston (the tooth with the widest face at the back of the piston. Part of the AoE treatment with sorbo is that it pushes the piston back (a measured thickness) so that the tooth on the gear meets flush with the tooth on the piston, distributing the load across the face. Some setups from factory have it not bad to start others will drive an edge of a tooth into the pickup.. this can lead to shearing the back of the piston off.

The other part of the AoE correction is that by moving the piston back, you change the length of the stroke, slightly shorter, so when your gears are moving really fast from a high power motor or battery, that they will always pick up the pick up tooth, and not in the middle of the shooting portion of the cycle when the piston comes forward.

On some setups it's very possible for that sector gear to come for a 2nd cycle before the piston finishes the 1st. Be it from a compression jam that delayed the piston from coming forward or just really fast gears. That's called premature engagement and it usually destroys the rack on the piston requiring a replacement.

PmE can also happen on a smaller scale, sometimes you take a piston out and you see the marks on the 2-4th teeth where those teeth are starting to wear down from the sector gear having a weird mesh when they meet.

Installing sorbo has a 3rd effect of being soft and absorbent enough of shock from the kinetic energy of the piston assembly slamming into the front of the gearbox. It's been proven to help prevent the front of the gearbox from cracking off. Sometimes gearboxes will crack in cold weather... other times from excessive shock from repeated cycles.

[pestobanana]

Here's a question.
Are high power guns gameable or are they mostly for target shooting/showing off?
I'm a little teeny bit interested.

[Forever_kaos]

Depends how high power you are talking. Brian recently posted up a 480 fps limit game, usually allows 450.

I personally would like to see lower mag capacities and higher fps events, such as what Brian usually does.

[Stealth]

Hardball in mainstream?
Oh yes.

[lurkingknight]

friend of mine who likes to argue and think he's right all the time suggested that if you wanted to create roles for various weapons... fps rules could be changed to reflect that... something like:

500 for spring snipers
450 for semi locked dmrs and lmgs
400 for battle rifles
350 for smgs and pistols

would be hellish to try and regulate that.. on top of converting enough people to bother with adjusting guns to try it. But from his non technical to my technical comparison, I don't think that would be a big enough difference to matter, especially when you consider that short barrel guns can be tuned to shoot just as well as long barreled guns, adding a few extra fps probably won't result in a visible difference in ranges. The difference would need to be greater to create a real advantage.

However, I can see how this would change things tactically on the field if it DID work, and it would create an interesting dynamic in the gun that players would choose to field.