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Harder BBs damages materials more.


Hiro

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...I think the big issue here isn't the safety aspect (as they failed to penetrate shooting glasses/goggles-can't rememeber which) it's more an issue of whether other players are happy expose their precious optics and other gear to a higher probablity of damage :-S

I'm more worried about the metal mesh goggles that a lot of us use. Plastic ANSI rated glasses will stop a lot. mesh goggles have a much easier breaking point.

 

ETA: they also have less flex to them, and I think the bb would punch a hole rather than just bouncing off. I would like to see someone test mesh goggles with these.

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For the love of god people, read this and try to digest it.

A lot of people just aren't thinking hard enough or don't understand materials enough and are reacting too harshly to the sight of bb embedded in glass.

 

See it like this. If a normal bb hits an wall and dents/breaks up or otherwise deforms then some of it's kinetic energy has been used up in the breaking of the bb. The same impact with a bb that doesn't deform (ie BBBmax) means that all the energy that went into deforming the normal bb has to be dissapated into other things, such as into the target or the rebound of the BBBmax.

 

In most airsoft scenarios where a normal bb hits a person's flesh, the bb is not visibly deformed. This shows that none (or very very little) of the energy has gone into deforming the bb and all of it has been transferred into the target and the rebound. Given these situations a BBBmax would not transfer any more energy into the target than a normal bb.

 

The issues come when an impact that does deform the normal bb, usually making a flat spot on the bb. These correspond to all the little round marks on out optics and gear. I agree with the opinion above that a lot of gear might get damaged by these bbs, starting with reddots and scopes :(

 

I think the big issue here isn't the safety aspect (as they failed to penetrate shooting glasses/goggles-can't rememeber which) it's more an issue of whether other players are happy expose their precious optics and other gear to a higher probablity of damage :-S

 

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When it comes to skin, the difference doesn't matter. The skin would absorb almost all of the energy regardless of the material (rubber, plastic, glass, wood, metal, plutonium), because the skin has a much lower harness factor than any of those materials. But we aren't talking about skin. We're talking about teeth, scopes, mesh goggles, plastic parts, etc.

 

I understand you're point but there is a point at which skin's surface tension fails and a bb can penetrate, granted it would take a lot of factors involved with something like that. Even if a glass or one of these "harder" bbs dose not penetrate the skin much more significant bruising would definitely take place.

 

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the point is, if normal bbs can penetrate skin, a harder bb may also do this to similar, or greater extent... considering the trigger fingers of many airsofters, the chance of a harder bb doing more damage from a hosing is very real. Materials physics aside, more dense and heavyer object has better penetrative qualities over a less dense bb that STILL breaks the skin.

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And then there are the PR implications, whether or not they DO more damage.

 

---

Little Timmy, hiregunner at his first airsoft game, gets a bad bleeding finger shot.

 

"How did it happen?" asks mother.

"I got shot by another player. He was using special BBs. Like glass ones"

 

Following day, front page of Blahville Herald:

"DANGEROUS 'ARMY' GAME USES GLASS BULLETS".

 

 

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take this example.

 

Take a head, say my head, and bang it against a brick wall. Yeah that's it!

 

^_^ jks guys jks

 

Heres another example:

 

2 paintballers. One keeps his paintballs in the front of his happy pouch overnight. The second keeps his in his dads gin freezer.

 

Which one hurts more when they fire at each other?

 

Same weight, same item for all intents and purposes. Less deformation on the frozen balls, because all those poor little molecules are cuddling together tighter to try and keep warm, therefore different hardness.

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I understand you're point but there is a point at which skin's surface tension fails and a bb can penetrate, granted it would take a lot of factors involved with something like that. Even if a glass or one of these "harder" bbs dose not penetrate the skin much more significant bruising would definitely take place.

Excellent point. In addition, I think that not only are you going to have to worry about worse bruising, but also minor bone fractures to places like the back of the hands and the forehead.

 

And then there are the PR implications, whether or not they DO more damage.

 

---

Little Timmy, hiregunner at his first airsoft game, gets a bad bleeding finger shot.

 

"How did it happen?" asks mother.

"I got shot by another player. He was using special BBs. Like glass ones"

 

Following day, front page of Blahville Herald:

"DANGEROUS 'ARMY' GAME USES GLASS BULLETS".

 

No kidding! That will be bad

 

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I talked to Sonny, the owner of the terrain vehicle earlier today, and asked him to do some tests with low-powered AEGs against the windshield.

 

At least some here understand the implications with these BBs. I am myself not overly worried for my eyes, maybe a little for my teeth, and I know these will damage gear like red-dots, optics, radios, maybe AEG-recievers. And any field with normal house-windows will be in danger of having them damaged.

 

Will ask him tomorrow as well if he have random stuff laying about to test-shoot.

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I'm more worried about the metal mesh goggles that a lot of us use. Plastic ANSI rated glasses will stop a lot. mesh goggles have a much easier breaking point.

 

ETA: they also have less flex to them, and I think the bb would punch a hole rather than just bouncing off. I would like to see someone test mesh goggles with these.

 

ok let me try and get this straight... you are saying that a softer BB that shatters on impact would be more ideal to use instead of hard, unbreakable BB's when someone is wearing those asinine mesh goggles that have been proven to be unsafe?

 

I think the big issue here isn't the safety aspect (as they failed to penetrate shooting glasses/goggles-can't rememeber which) it's more an issue of whether other players are happy expose their precious optics and other gear to a higher probablity of damage :-S

 

this I can accept as the "bottom line" to the issue of the Bioval BB's and quite frankly it cracks me up thinking about the hardore mil-sim "geardo" completely decked out in Multicam who is crying at a mil-sim airsoft game about his shiny new EOTech getting shot out by a little BB :P

and to make his day even worse he slipped and got mud all over his brand new $600 CIRAS rig ;)

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ok let me try and get this straight... you are saying that a softer BB that shatters on impact would be more ideal to use instead of hard, unbreakable BB's when someone is wearing those asinine mesh goggles that have been proven to be unsafe?

Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying, and now you sound like an idiot, so I think I'll rest my case.

 

 

this I can accept as the "bottom line" to the issue of the Bioval BB's and quite frankly it cracks me up thinking about the hardore mil-sim "geardo" completely decked out in Multicam who is crying at a mil-sim airsoft game about his shiny new EOTech getting shot out by a little BB :P

and to make his day even worse he slipped and got mud all over his brand new $600 CIRAS rig ;)

And a snob. Way to go.

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Heres another example:

 

2 paintballers. One keeps his paintballs in the front of his happy pouch overnight. The second keeps his in his dads gin freezer.

 

Which one hurts more when they fire at each other?

 

Same weight, same item for all intents and purposes. Less deformation on the frozen balls, because all those poor little molecules are cuddling together tighter to try and keep warm, therefore different hardness.

 

Your example is not really as applicable in this this case is it might seem.

 

A paintball is usually full of a thick fluid at normal temperatures whereas a frozen paintball is solid throughout. A normal bb is hard and brittle normally, even if it less hard and more brittle than the BBBmax.

 

The idea that i was trying to get across before was that in an impact that leaves the projectile in a similar condition, the energy transfer should be similar. So in a hypothetical case if a given impact is of a velocity low enough that the warm paintball does not burst (this assumes a "perfect" paintball has a hard and brittle skin which doesn't deform significantly until it cracks open) , the same impact with a frozen paintball would not impart any more energy than the warm one. This scenario is a closer match to normal bb vs BBBmax on flesh than your original case where the warm paintball bursts vs rock hard frozen paintball, as normal bbs don't crack and deform when they hit flesh.

 

 

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Nooo it doesnt!

 

Crush a BB. Its like a chalky powder inside. Crush (if you can) a Bioval. The material is tighter packed, so there is less room for the particles to move and 'give' on impact. Thats what I was on about with the paintballs. When you freeze a liquid, it doesnt gain mass but the particles are more densely packed because of the freezing.

 

Its simple physics, man!

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this I can accept as the "bottom line" to the issue of the Bioval BB's and quite frankly it cracks me up thinking about the hardore mil-sim "geardo" completely decked out in Multicam who is crying at a mil-sim airsoft game about his shiny new EOTech getting shot out by a little BB :P

and to make his day even worse he slipped and got mud all over his brand new $600 CIRAS rig ;)

 

It's a bit more complicated than that. The terrain we use for milsim events are lent by the army as well as some of the vehicles. Damaged windscreens like seen at Tango-One, will result in the army to be reluctant to let us use their facilities and equipment. Besides this, a windscreen with those kind of damage will be illegal to drive on public roads, at least in Denmark. Our cars are not only used at milsim events, it also serves as our everyday mean of transportation. So we are some what dependent on the vehicles being in a road worthy state after the game finishes.

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Your example is not really as applicable in this this case is it might seem.

 

A paintball is usually full of a thick fluid at normal temperatures whereas a frozen paintball is solid throughout. A normal bb is hard and brittle normally, even if it less hard and more brittle than the BBBmax.

 

The idea that i was trying to get across before was that in an impact that leaves the projectile in a similar condition, the energy transfer should be similar. So in a hypothetical case if a given impact is of a velocity low enough that the warm paintball does not burst (this assumes a "perfect" paintball has a hard and brittle skin which doesn't deform significantly until it cracks open) , the same impact with a frozen paintball would not impart any more energy than the warm one. This scenario is a closer match to normal bb vs BBBmax on flesh than your original case where the warm paintball bursts vs rock hard frozen paintball, as normal bbs don't crack and deform when they hit flesh.

 

I think a better analogy would be a bounced paintball versus a splattered paintball. The bounced ball would transfer more force to the flesh if the ball's shell dose not break...

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Nooo it doesnt!

 

Crush a BB. Its like a chalky powder inside. Crush (if you can) a Bioval. The material is tighter packed, so there is less room for the particles to move and 'give' on impact. Thats what I was on about with the paintballs. When you freeze a liquid, it doesnt gain mass but the particles are more densely packed because of the freezing.

 

Its simple physics, man!

 

Sorry to disappoint you mate.

 

Simple physics give density as "mass per unit volume", so the same same weight of bb will have the same density if it's the same size - regardless of material. Actually in the case of water it reduces density on freezing, hence why if floats on water. Get your head around that :P

 

I see what you're saying about there being "space to move" in a chalky bb, but i'm not sure that the movement is so much that it makes a significant difference for bbs that aren't deformed on impact. Actually i've found that quite a lot of bbs aren't made of powder but are solid plastic throughout, so the difference must be the properties of the plastic itself.

 

One thing is for sure though, these BBBmax are made of material that is much harder than normal bb and much less brittle.

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Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying, and now you sound like an idiot, so I think I'll rest my case.

 

 

 

And a snob. Way to go.

 

have fun picking BB shards out of your eyes and saying "gosh I wish people would use BB's that don't break on impact".

 

snob? don't really get that one.

I just think its funny when mil-sim gets a little too mil for some people.

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It's a bit more complicated than that. The terrain we use for milsim events are lent by the army as well as some of the vehicles. Damaged windscreens like seen at Tango-One, will result in the army to be reluctant to let us use their facilities and equipment. Besides this, a windscreen with those kind of damage will be illegal to drive on public roads, at least in Denmark. Our cars are not only used at milsim events, it also serves as our everyday mean of transportation. So we are some what dependent on the vehicles being in a road worthy state after the game finishes.

 

I play on military bases with loaned military equipment too and would never dream of doing damage to any of those vehicles and anyone elses vehicle for that matter.

I think Biovals would be appropriate to use at regular airsoft games but for those rare special games where I know vehicles will be present I'm pretty sure I'll either be extremely careful with my shots (we shoot foam rockets at most vehicles anyways) or switch BB brands for the day.

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Does the benefits (if any) out weigh the potential damage (if any) that could be caused by the pellet?

 

they're very slick and feed well in my mags which has proven to be a major issue for me with other less smooth BB brands.

they're also biodegradeable so thats a benefit too.

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So how DO paintballs get harder if theyre snuggled up to an ice-tray as compared to sitting on a room temperature shelf?

 

Answers on a postcard...

 

---

Anyway, Im with Bella in that I wont play at a site where these things are in use.

 

I'm not 100% on the reason but i'll give it a go :P

 

Most material do change in density when going from one state to another, usually getting more dense the more "solid" it gets. So if you cool Carbon Dioxide from a gas to a solid, the solid is of a greater density. Water is an exception to this rule though.

 

The hardness isn't a result of the change in density but rather a change of state. So the water goes from being a fluid structure to a crystaline structure (at least i think so hehe). Actually the change in density is more a result of the change in state rather than the other way around.

 

That's my take on it anyway :) hope it's vaguely on the right track.

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