Paintball History

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Paintball USA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... yE3ponTsQ4

Fred Schultz, Tom Kaye, and a bunch of others play paintball in the main street of Disney's MGM park.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Catalogue of old gear:

http://noairsoftforoldmen.blogspot.ca/2 ... tball.html

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

The first multiplayer game of paintball was played today in 1981.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

So who wants to be a prick and shoot original oil-based Nelson paint?

http://www.nelsonpaint.com/pellet-mark.html

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Weltman:

http://www.catshackreports.com/2011/06/ ... amage-inc/

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Some of the reasons people aren't the biggest fans of Smart Parts:

In 1997, SP contracted with a company called PVI (Pneumatic Ventures Inc) who came out with the first successful electropneumatic paintball marker. For a short time, all was well. But SP got greedy, and decided to order more of the markers than the company could make. This caused a breech of contract, which SP used to end up getting the Shocker to themselves. PVI ended up going bankrupt, and SP bought the patent to the Shocker, and changed it over from the original PVI folks to the Gardners. Then they sat on this for a bit. In 2004, SP decided that they wanted royalties for every single electropneumatic marker being made. The Spyders and Tippmanns were safe, but everything else came under the patent that they had. So they sent out Cease and Desist letters to everyone, including hitting up Bob Long being served in person, at Cup, literally just before his team was going onto the field to play a game (I believe that it was the finals game of the brand new NXL, Bob Longs team against the SP All Americans). There ended up being two lawsuits over this situation, between SP and ICD, and SP and AKA. Tom Kaye ended up folding up shop with the AGD, so no more E-Mags. But AGD still exists, just without Tom Kaye in the picture. Of the two lawsuits, ICD ended up partnering with National Paintball Supply, now known as Kee, just to get out of the situation, and due to a lack of funds to keep the lawsuit going. AKA ended up not able to keep their lawsuit going either, so they signed an agreement to no longer make electropneumatic markers. This ended AKA in paintball for the most part. And AKA was way ahead of the curve with their stuff too. So innovations, like the Evil Ehm, a two tube Viking that was getting 2000 shots from a 68/4500 tank, when other non-AKA stuff was getting between 1600 and 1800 shots from the same tank, a new spool valve marker, and so on.

I have heard that they owned a patent on circuit boards that caused companies like Virtue and Tadao to have to pay them a royalty on every circuit board that they make as well. Not sure about that.

So basically, they have been a shady company, and now, with GoG, I believe that it was William Gardner who was the shady one, since Adam runs GoG, and they are just chugging along.

Why do newer players hate smart parts? Because the vets have hated them since the start. The gardeners have incorporated extremely shaded business practices since before they were in paintball.

Why do I hate smart parts?

I have been playing paintball since 1996, not a terribly long time but long enough to justify my hate. While I do not believe it is important to understand every detail or is chronological order there is enough evidence to support the fact that the gardeners were shady business men that cared more about their pocketbooks than the sport, companies, and players collectively.

Shady Business Practices
The gardeners owned a failing patent office before jumping into paintball. In which they used to sue a lady who tried to patent her carve your own jack a latern kit (something like that) through them. They used this business and experience to procure patents and proceed with even more frivolous law suits. Which as a whole led to the downfall of the sport as a whole.
Crappy Aftermarket Parts
Smart parts started off making great splash anno patterns and junk aftermarket parts. For those who remember I am specifically talking about the "magic box" which even if it worked, which is did not (proved in a pbn thread according to cockerpunk and Tom Kaye) it was a device designed to cheat. There are reasons you still see lots of beautiful automags and cockers and not many with "Smart Parts", simply because they knew back then that the claims weren't worth the instructions. While crappy parts continued in smart parts Legacy I will continue to mention more but some should have their own bullet.
PVI
PVI invented the shoe box shocker. smart parts marketed it. They then made an order to large for PVI to fill, then canceled the order bankrupting the company and buying the rights for pennies on the dollar. They then proceeded to patent the dual solenoid electronic trigger which was frivolous considering they did not invent.
Palmers
They sued palmers after they patented the ported barrel system.
Belsales
NOTE smart parts DID NOT MAKE/MANUFACTURE BELSALES PRODUCTS THEY WERE THE US DISTRIBUTOR. However, after coming out with the POS, also called the SFT smart parts dumped their remaining Belsales Evo Autocockers, including body kits for cheap. This forced the price of cockers (especially belsales) down and led to the decline in truely great craftsmanship. Belsales will always be the greatest company in paintball. Keith and Steve are among the best pioneers of the sport as well as Danny Love, Tom Kaye and some of the other fathers of paintball. Keith and Steve are not only among the nicest / most respectable people in the sport (still today) but they came up with ingenious things like in line regulators, lprs, improved rams, bolts, and had the finest machining the sport has seen. From 1989 onward they set the bar for what quality was. The gardeners set out on a path to destroy this.
AKA
Yet another company that smart parts basically destroyed. This company was so far beyond the competition at the time. Compare a viking to a shocker sft or something of the time period and youd be blown away until 2007-08.Smart parts sued them over the above mentioned patent on the dual solenoid electronic trigger. Because of this AKA was forced to stop making vikings, the evil m, and of course the excal. Then WGP turned around and sent them a cease and assist letter that stopped them from making autocockers.
AGD
Smart parts single handly killed the emag. enough said.
WGP
Scared of being sued sold to JT USA and turned to shit.
WDP
was forced to pay thousands of dollars (rumor is 50 grand) in fees.
ICD
sued while receiving cancer treatment
Bob Long was served papers before an event to screw with him.
Smart parts single handily stopped the growth and innovation of the sport by suing half of its competition, WGP sued the other half. Aside from DYE who had their "ducks in a row".
Making Claims Vastly Untrue
Smart parts guns were never more accurate, reliable, consistant or effecient. Shoot one. Bill however insisted that they were going back to the shocker turbo.
Making Crappy Guns and Profit Off the Upgrades To Shoot Right
HE bolt? Regulator? Boards?Shitty Feedneck? Yup on most of the guns they made even the 700$ shocker these things all sucked, but people bought them because they wanted to play Dynasty in their backyard.
Aside from that- the negative aspects of the company greatly outway the good ones and to be honest I would rather them have kept the fisher price toy ion than destroy all small label great craftsmans, made in America type guns.
While there are many people in Paintball that are shady few come close to the level of devilish tendencies than the gardeners.

In many peoples opinion they change the sport in a horrible way and we are paying the cost for that now.

Think if Tom Kaye had patented HPA with paintball guns. Pro teams would still be shooting e mags, which deabateably would be awesome but he did not because he knew it would help paintball as a whole.

The gardeners took the opposite approach which was basically fuck paintball, fuck the pro teams using the companies we're putting out of business, fuck the fields that sell those guns, fuck the mom and pop shops, fuck every player that doesn't put money in our pockets for a product that we purposefully make shitty so that they have to buy an upgrade.



That is why you should hate smart parts. Almost every single act that company did was bad for paintball. however I have no qualms with people buying their stuff now as SP does not get the money. you wont see me with any of that stuff but 300$ for a shocker certainly beats 1000 for a luxe.

http://www.techpb.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=198015



They nit-pick a bit over the timeline details (buddy up above isn't completely correct), but you get the general idea.

This comes up from time to time. Here is a summary of what transpired.

Smart Parts obtained the electro-pneumatic patent from PneuVentures Inc (PVI). In the late 1990s / early 2000s Smart Parts entered litigation with companies that did not license the technology.

No company has ever challenged the validity of the patent in court. Each defendant either stopped using the patented tech, or settled the lawsuit before going to trial.

When Smart Parts entered into litigation with WDP (aka Angel), WDP was able to track down one of the original engineers that formerly worked for PVI, Edward Hensel. WDP determine that PVI failed to enact the proper agreements to make the inventions Hensel was working on during his employment PVI property. WDP also determined that much of the R&D was done at home on Hensel's personal time. WDP compensated Hensel for his stake in the patent. WDP then argued all of this in court.


The court determined the following:
PVI was the inventor (not Smart Parts or the Gardners hence the quote referenced earlier from the Judge)
Edward Hensel was an inventor and owned a stake in the patent.
Smart Parts owned a stake in the patent (purchased it from PneuVentures).
WDP lawfully purchased a stake in the patent from Edward Hensel.

Because the court determined that WDP lawfully obtained a stake in the patent the lawsuit was dismissed.

This left WDP and Smart Parts jointly owning the patent and made WDP the only electronic marker manufacturer that didn't pay royalties to Smart Parts.

Eventually in 2006, WDP returned their stake in the patent to Smart Parts as part of a bizarre three-way lawsuit settlement between Dye, Smart Parts, and WDP. They all agreed to cross license each others tech and drop the lawsuits. In the process, WDP returned it's stake in the patent to Smart Parts but received a license to use the tech. Smart Parts received a license to use Dye's spool tech and WDP's Datalink and LCD tech. Dye received a license to use WDP's Datalink tech and a license to use Smart Parts elctro tech.

Fast forward to late 2009 / early 2010, and Smart Parts goes on hiatus, can't pay the bills, and the bank calls in it's lien on all of their intellectual property (mostly patents).

Eventually, Smart Parts goes bankrupt, Kee purchases their intellectual property from the bank, and the courts liquidate Smart Parts remaining assets.

[[PX] Nebuchadnezzar]

Weltman:

http://www.catshackreports.com/2011/06/ ... amage-inc/

We saw him @ Canadian Carnage!

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Yeah, I actually posted that because we saw him. It was, just, crazy seeing Damage Inc. there with Weltman so I figured I'd post that so people actually knew who he was.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Why were paintball guns so primitive in the 80's when we had this in the 70's?

Skip to around 17:30

Patent for a semi and fully automatic pneumatic gun ......... with photo-cell eyes.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

1955 special effects guys creates gun that pneumatically fires gelatin containing red dye:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1 ... 81,3190549

http://books.google.ca/books?id=uiUDAAA ... ts&f=false

http://sfxequipment.com/capsule_gun_ross_taylor_2.php

Dude later won an award for his special effects work on The Empire Strikes Back. There should be a holiday named after him.......or something.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Tippmann History:

Here’s an old time line up through 2002.

After that there was the Custom Pro 2005, Triumph 2006, C3 2006, X7 2007, Alpha Black 2008, TPX 2009, Project Salvo 2009, SL-68II rerelease 2009 & Phenom 2009

Hope this helps.


Smg-60
Introduced in 1986
Tippmann's first gun and the first semi-auto paintball gun ever.
Also the first paintball gun with a large refillable CO2 Tank. This gun
was to far ahead of its time and banned on most fields.

SMG-68
Introduced in the Late 80's
Designed to replace the SMG-60. This gun was built to use the
more popular .68 caliber paintballs.

SL-68
Introduced in the Late 80's
Tippmann's first pump gun. Designed to match the technology of the
time. This pump gun was allowed at all fields and tournaments.

68 Special
Introduced in the July 90
This gun was the first Gravity fed semi-auto paintball gun ever made.
Almost all current paintball guns today are derived from this design.

SL-68 II
Introduced in January 91
Designed to replace the SL-68, this gun was the longest running
Tippmann gun. Production stopped in 2003

Pro/Am
Introduced in April 92
Designed to replace the 68 Special. More efficient, lighter weight and designed using CAD software.

Pro-Lite
Introduced in January 94
Developed to replace Pro/Am. Reduced price significantly
by going to plastic injection molded parts.

Factory FA
Introduced in December 95
This fully automatic, gravity fed paintball gun was the
first to use the Cyclone Feed System. This gun was too
technical and production was stopped in late 1996

68 Carbine
Introduced in Nov 1996
very similar to the Pro-lite
But first to use the CVX gun value system

Model 98
Introduced in September 1998
first die cast gun designed to reduce cost
and increase production. Production stopped
in late 2000 and restarted in late 2001 for Wal-Mart.

Pro Carbine
Introduced in March 1999
this gun was a merger of the
best features of the Pro-lite and 68 carbine.

98 Custom
Introduced in November 2000
Designed to replace Model 98 with
more features in the receiver so the gun
could be customized by the consumer easily.

A-5
Introduced in April 2002
Designed with cyclone feed
System and easy to field strip
With no tools.

http://www.mcarterbrown.com/forums/tipp ... story.html

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Dr. Hensel is the man who invented the electronic marker as we know it:

http://www.mcarterbrown.com/forums/dead ... story.html

He still teaches.

Dr. Edward Hensel is a licensed Professional Engineer with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He is currently professor and department head of Mechanical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He teaches senior design project and product development classes in mechanical engineering, as well as a variety of technical subject areas. Dr. Hensel has a recognized entrepreneurial track record in developing externally funded research programs, and has consulted to a variety of startup companies, multi-national corporations, US National Laboratories, and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Hensel has worked in a variety of technical areas over the course of his career. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University and his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University with his dissertation and subsequent research activities focused on inverse heat transfer, remote sensing technologies, and algorithms for high temperature applications. Application areas included temperature and heat flux diagnostics of high energy devices, aerospace vehicles, and thermal control of avionic test and evaluation systems. Dr. Hensel worked for several years applying the concepts of remote sensing and inverse theory to the characterization and remediation of hazardous and nuclear waste disposal sites, and detection of foreign objects below ground. Prior to coming to RIT, Dr. Hensel was actively involved in running a manufacturing facility that focused on product development by student teams, and using innovative technologies for modeling and compensation of manufacturing equipment.

Dr. Hensel's focus at RIT is on the formation and guidance of multi-disciplinary teams to tackle a wide range of engineering problems. He is interested in fostering technology advances in a multi-disciplinary setting, so that students and faculty from a wide range of backgrounds can develop innovations and learn the state of the art in engineering.

His job is to guide the mechanical engineering department at RIT to achieve the following goals and objectives.

Our goal is to establish the mechanical engineering department at RIT as one of the top 25 ME programs first in the nation, and then in the world.

We should accomplish three tasks, in pursuit of our goal:

(1) Demonstrate a revolutionary advance in engineering education whereby we turn every entering student into graduates who achieve outstanding success.

(2) Provide solutions to three compelling problems of national and global significance.

(3) Other ME departments must emulate us. We must disseminate our model of education and research, and become the role model to which other institutions aspire.

Patents Electrical

Control unit for paintball gun

United States Patent 7,603,997
Issued October 20, 2009
Inventors: Edward Hensel, et al

An electrical control unit preferably can control operation of a paintball gun having a solenoid valve with an input port that receives compressed gas from a compressed gas supply and an output port connected to a pneumatic mechanism. For instance, the electrical control unit can contain a network of electronic components configured to receive an input signal from a trigger-actuated switch and...more

Variable size reduction apparatus and process

United States Patent 6,325,306
Issued December 4, 2001
Inventors: Edward Hensel, et al

A size reduction apparatus and process for reducing the size of a heterogeneous or homogeneous article or articles using variable and interchangeable interior parts for varying article output size and an air handling system for introducing air and/or fluid into the process of size-reduction. The components of a heterogeneous article are separated and used to aid in the size-reduction process.

Selected Publications

· Statistical phonon transport model for multiscale simulation of thermal transport in silicon: Part I – Presentation of the model, Thomas W. Brown III, Edward Hensel, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Volume 55, Issues 25–26, December 2012, Pages 7444-7452

· Statistical phonon transport model for multiscale simulation of thermal transport in silicon: Part II – Model verification and validation, Thomas W. Brown III, Edward Hensel, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Volume 55, Issues 25–26, December 2012, Pages 7453-7459

· Three-phonon Interaction Assessment in Bulk Silicon, Thomas W. Brown III, Edward C. Hensel, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Nanotechnology: Fundamentals and Applications, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 7-9 August 2012, Paper No. 326

http://www.rit.edu/kgcoe/staff/edward-hensel

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Old NPPL rosters:

http://www.warpig.com/paintball/tournam ... ster.shtml

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

The Joy Division vs Dynasty controversy in the NPPL of 2006:

http://www.paintballforum.com/tourney-t ... versy.html

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

2005 XSV vs Infamous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRkkruM0HK4

Some good "chirping" by Matty Marshall around 10:30.