Saturday, January 30, 2010

How do Airsoft guns work?

How do airsoft guns work? Well its not that complicated to know. As mentioned in my previous post, airsoft guns are powered by air which gives it it's name ( "Air"soft....duh). There are different mechanisms in airsoft because there are 3 different types of guns. Lets use the basic inner mechanism of a spring gun.

As seen in this diagram from Airsplat (One of the famous retailers from CA), the bb's (the round balls) from the magazine start going up (thats is because of the spring in the magazine that makes the bb's go up) every time the person cocks the gun back. When the gun is cocked back, there will be a bb in the gun barrel and the spring will be pulled back inside the cylinder. When the person fires the gun, the spring will push forward and the piston will push the air from the cylinder to the narrow inner barrel and the bb will fire out of the barrel into a target. The power of the gun will depend on the power of the spring, the accuracy will depend on the length of the barrel.
The gas gun mecanism is a bit complicated but it still like the spring except using the piston and spring to fire the bb, it uses gas as its primary mechanism.

As shown here (another diagram from Airsplat), this diagram what a gas blowback version of a gas gun would look like. In order for the first shot to work, the person must cock the gun. When firing the first shot, the gas works two ways. 1) the gas pushes the bb out of the gun. 2) the gas pushes the slide back and when it comes back in a new bb is automatically ready to be fired.
The same works with the non blowback version except the gas doesn't push the slide back therefore saving little more gas for you.

The last and most complicated mechanism (thats why these guns are more expensive than regular spring guns) are the Electric airsoft guns (The one I will show you will be on an Automatic Electric gun). These guns are powered by batteries in the guns that help operate the motor; the motor helps function the bushings to pull the cylinder/piston back and letting the gun fire.
So when you fire the gun, the motor makes the bushings spin and makes the top gear (the one with the "teeth")spin 360 degrees and during that, it will attach to the piston that has the teeth in the bottom making it go backwards and when the gear goes halfway and the teeth are not connected together, the spring inside of the gun (with all it's force) will push forward and the air nozzle at the front will push the bb out of the inner barrel and into the desired target.

So those are the basic mechanisms for spring, gas, and Electric guns. For more info on the mechanisms, ask here on the comments below. Thanks and look out for more posts on Airsoft.
"All Airsoft: Want to know airsoft? Its all right here!!"

2 comments:

  1. I am very interested in Airsoft Guns, thanks for the great article!

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