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Bottle Blows Up

Russell Smith

The Paintball Association
Perhaps it is the right time to tell you all this information about regulators in the UK and indeed Europe.
According to very informed sources very very few regulators in Europe meet current regulations in fact one of the two we know that meet the criteria is in fact made in the UK.
The chances are you will not be using an approved system and you can judge the consequences yourselves.
I am not saying the others are dangerous just that they do not meet Pi criteria.

The system that is approved is: http://www.powerball.co.uk/airborn_airsystem.html

There is one other available that I believe is made in Germany, I have seen all the documentation and test data for the above system and to say it is compressive is an understatement.
It is also the only regulator that has the approval of H-Pac.


Russ
 

Rabies

Trogdor!
Jul 1, 2002
1,344
8
63
London, UK
I cannot believe that we now have a situation with a new make of bottle almost regularly exploding and some people actually seem to think this is an acceptable hazzard of the game !!! It is not (at least in my opinion it should not be).
But it appears that the bottle itself is intact after each of these accidents - it's is always the reg that has blown out; the tank has withstood the bursting pressure. No use banning the tanks if it's actually the reg at fault and then the same regs go on to be used on other tanks with the same results.

No good just banning stuff unless you know what needs to be banned.
 

Rabies

Trogdor!
Jul 1, 2002
1,344
8
63
London, UK
Perhaps it is the right time to tell you all this information about regulators in the UK and indeed Europe.
According to very informed sources very very few regulators in Europe meet current regulations in fact one of the two we know meet the criteria is in fact made in the UK.
The chances are you will not be using an approved system and you can judge the consequences yourselves.
I am not saying the others are dangerous just that they do not meet Pi criteria.

The system that is approved is: http://www.powerball.co.uk/airborn_airsystem.html

There is one other available that I believe is made in Germany, I have seen all the documentation and test data for the above system and to say it is compressive is an understatement.
It is also the only regulator that has the approval of H-Pac.


Russ
OK, now I've seen a PI-marked regulator. Any idea if the test specs are freely available?

Rich, Powerball/Arrow do make a Pi marked reg, I can pretty much guarantee that the bottle will have been as supplied to Nige from Planet with the reg attached (Protoys?) and it might appear that the filling requirements of this type of bottle are different to others (not exactly helpfull when you have 3 bottles to fill in a 2 minute x-ball pit stop - I know teams running some regs in CPL/SPL last year removed the filters under the fill nipples to speed up fill rates). We don't know what happened yet, but I'm sure Kitch and the site operators will take all points this thread into consideration.
Absolutely, I don't want to preempt the findings of the investigation, just making suggestions as to what aspects might be looked at.
 

Pee Wee

FREE AGENT!...
Oct 19, 2003
181
8
28
hey soldiers carry grenades on themselfs all the time, they dont seem to mind :D
 

Russell Smith

The Paintball Association
OK, now I've seen a PI-marked regulator. Any idea if the test specs are freely available?
The test specifications I viewed and checked (briefly) were the original documents are very comprehensive and amounted to an amount of test data that would fill a phone book.
I reckon if you contacted Powerball they would tell you all you need, I do remember one piece of information and that was the pressure destruction test on the regulator was unmeasurable because the test rig was unable to create pressure high enough for it to fail - now that is reassuring.


Russ
 

Robin Hood

Formerly Jermy
Feb 6, 2002
2,545
30
73
An island in the rain
aren't all Stako tanks supplied with a reg preinstalled? This reg would not be manufactured by Stako, it would be bought in from a third party (most likely a Far Eastern manufacturer), so isn't it more likely that the design or the materials used in these regs is at fault?
If you bought through skill.com.pl who were supplying Stako's at Millenniums I believe from the beginning, then you could buy the bottle on its own, with a CF Hyper Flow or with a Smart Parts max flo micro. Although I believe they just bought in the bottles and regs seperate and sold them together as when I purchased one they came seperated and I had to combine the bottle and reg.

Planet had the Protoyz ones (http://www.protoyz.com/) attached, who look like a Dutch company. Did anyone else in the UK ever stock Stako's with the same or different regs?