• *Effective 3/27/2024 - The discussion of the creation, fabrication, or modification of airgun moderators is prohibited. The discussion of any "adapters" used to convert an airgun moderator to a firearm silencer will result in immediate termination of the account.*

Is this concept printable?

Alternate manner in which to stop the long spans of casing around the "head" OD from "flapping".

Yes, a few inner tube vent holes get plugged by the 9 mm long supports, but there are plenty of vents:

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Thanks, OldSpook,

The non Tesla Valve reflex airstripper cone is the first to see muzzle blast, as the pellet uncorks. See image below. Because the reflex volume is small, I spaced the first cone so close to the muzzle that it would act just long enough for the pellet to enter the bore of the cone, and thus be shielded from the initial blast. Air that follows the pellet would encounter the second to fifth cones, all equipped with TV air foils.

The ID of the printed tube that lives in the shroud is not very large at 27 mm. Perhaps your TV baffle style is more flexible in terms of engineering the bore to bypass ratio; but there is very little room the way I support the airfoil to drive very large flow ratios.

I understand that the distance the reverse airflow travels affects its delay, but my mental model does not consider the forward and reverse air flow streams to travel at the same speed: Air following the pellet cannot travel faster than the pellet, because the pellet is in the way. Air that is accelerated by its pressure drop, by expanding somewhat radially (before being directed forwards) can easily travel faster than the pellet. So, the extra distance it might have to travel to "time" the pellet motion might need to be much further than twice the distance the pellet travels.

Now, I hear what you say about the frontal flow destabilizing the pellet, but providing that flow is symmetrical, I see air flowing from the front of the pellet as what normally keeps it stable, on the way to the target. So, in my opinion, providing that air flow is symmetrical, a short duration frontal flow at greater than pellet velocity won't do much more than slow the pellet down a little. Air flowing from behind over a waisted pellet, by contrast tries to flip the pellet over, so it would travel head first into the dominant air stream. The fact that the pellet is spin stabilized prevents that.

Consider the original FX smooth twist barrels achieving an effective spin rate of perhaps 1:48. Pellets fired from such barrels did not depend on spin for stability. On the contrary, the spin was just enough to null out anomalies in the pellet. A side benefit was that they were not prone to long range spiraling that is seen with 1:16 twist rates and pellets starting out at 950+ FPS. With such slow spin rates, it is air traveling from behind the pellet that would destabilize it, hence FX used air strippers to reduce muzzle blast acting on the pellet on all their PCPs with the original smooth twist barrels. Such air strippers are still a good idea.

Now, we are talking about conventional rifling and twist rates, in the case of the OP's PCP. So, that should help keep the pellet stable while it is encountering less than perfect airflow.

Back to my design's TV vent area; I have not tallied up the combined flow area, but just looking at it, it falls short of the ideal 12 to 1 ratio you mentioned. It looks 2:1 at best. I assume that more vent area improves sound suppression, at the cost of accuracy? If so, my TV design probably does not have enough reverse flow to cause much of a concern about accuracy. It also means that sound suppression is not as good as it might be with more aggressive reverse flow. But, the design I offer has four tesla valve stages, rather than one or two.

Each baffle stage, TV or conventional, should strip air from behind the pellet. So, concerns about turbulence destabilizing the pellet is more relevant near the barrel muzzle, and less of a concern towards the moderator muzzle. And my very first baffle in the design under discussion is not a Tesla Valve.

I get that too slow a pellet may run into the reverse flow of a Tesla Valve. I would argue that unless the pellet velocity was low because a heavy for caliber pellet had been used, such concerns would be overblown: Shooting a conventional pellet at low velocity implies that the pressure and volume of air applied to that pellet was low - possibly due to tuning for low power. As such, the airflow would be weaker and would not outpace the pellet; or if it did would not have much effect on it.

Connected to the above is perhaps something we can agree on: Tesla valves work better, the harder you drive them. As in, higher power for caliber. A detuned PCP shooting through a STO gas diode, or a custom Tesla Valve moderator is likely to seem less impressive with regard to sound suppression, compared to other moderators. But then again, low power PCPs are not that loud to begin with. This is why STO make "high flow" and medium flow" Tesla Valve moderators - to reasonably match them to the power you are shooting at.

What matters ultimately is if this integral insert shroud extension provides the sound suppression Mr.H expects, without increasing group size. If it is a miserable failure with respect to grouping, the first thing I will try, is adding a barrel band type stabilizer. The second is to remove all the tesla valve air foils from my design, and have a conventional baffle version printed, for comparison. If both the TV and non-TV versions group equally poorly, it is probably not my failure to design a good TV that is the cause of the lack of performance.

So, I might have done a poor job, but probably not because of neglecting to consider the factors you mentioned :) That said, it is possible that I should have made the TVs longer and used fewer of them.

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Thanks, OldSpook,

The non Tesla Valve reflex airstripper cone is the first to see muzzle blast, as the pellet uncorks. See image below. Because the reflex volume is small, I spaced the first cone so close to the muzzle that it would act just long enough for the pellet to enter the bore of the cone, and thus be shielded from the initial blast. Air that follows the pellet would encounter the second to fifth cones, all equipped with TV air foils.

The ID of the printed tube that lives in the shroud is not very large at 27 mm. Perhaps your TV baffle style is more flexible in terms of engineering the bore to bypass ratio; but there is very little room the way I support the airfoil to drive very large flow ratios.

I understand that the distance the reverse airflow travels affects its delay, but my mental model does not consider the forward and reverse air flow streams to travel at the same speed: Air following the pellet cannot travel faster than the pellet, because the pellet is in the way. Air that is accelerated by its pressure drop, by expanding somewhat radially (before being directed forwards) can easily travel faster than the pellet. So, the extra distance it might have to travel to "time" the pellet motion might need to be much further than twice the distance the pellet travels.

Now, I hear what you say about the frontal flow destabilizing the pellet, but providing that flow is symmetrical, I see air flowing from the front of the pellet as what normally keeps it stable, on the way to the target. So, in my opinion, providing that air flow is symmetrical, a short duration frontal flow at greater than pellet velocity won't do much more than slow the pellet down a little. Air flowing from behind over a waisted pellet, by contrast tries to flip the pellet over, so it would travel head first into the dominant air stream. The fact that the pellet is spin stabilized prevents that.

Consider the original FX smooth twist barrels achieving an effective spin rate of perhaps 1:48. Pellets fired from such barrels did not depend on spin for stability. On the contrary, the spin was just enough to null out anomalies in the pellet. A side benefit was that they were not prone to long range spiraling that is seen with 1:16 twist rates and pellets starting out at 950+ FPS. With such slow spin rates, it is air traveling from behind the pellet that would destabilize it, hence FX used air strippers to reduce muzzle blast acting on the pellet on all their PCPs with the original smooth twist barrels. Such air strippers are still a good idea.

Now, we are talking about conventional rifling and twist rates, in the case of the OP's PCP. So, that should help keep the pellet stable while it is encountering less than perfect airflow.

Back to my design's TV vent area; I have not tallied up the combined flow area, but just looking at it, it falls short of the ideal 12 to 1 ratio you mentioned. It looks 2:1 at best. I assume that more vent area improves sound suppression, at the cost of accuracy? If so, my TV design probably does not have enough reverse flow to cause much of a concern about accuracy. It also means that sound suppression is not as good as it might be with more aggressive reverse flow. But, the design I offer has four tesla valve stages, rather than one or two.

Each baffle stage, TV or conventional, should strip air from behind the pellet. So, concerns about turbulence destabilizing the pellet is more relevant near the barrel muzzle, and less of a concern towards the moderator muzzle. And my very first baffle in the design under discussion is not a Tesla Valve.

I get that too slow a pellet may run into the reverse flow of a Tesla Valve. I would argue that unless the pellet velocity was low because a heavy for caliber pellet had been used, such concerns would be overblown: Shooting a conventional pellet at low velocity implies that the pressure and volume of air applied to that pellet was low - possibly due to tuning for low power. As such, the airflow would be weaker and would not outpace the pellet; or if it did would not have much effect on it.

Connected to the above is perhaps something we can agree on: Tesla valves work better, the harder you drive them. As in, higher power for caliber. A detuned PCP shooting through a STO gas diode, or a custom Tesla Valve moderator is likely to seem less impressive with regard to sound suppression, compared to other moderators. But then again, low power PCPs are not that loud to begin with. This is why STO make "high flow" and medium flow" Tesla Valve moderators - to reasonably match them to the power you are shooting at.

What matters ultimately is if this integral insert shroud extension provides the sound suppression Mr.H expects, without increasing group size. If it is a miserable failure with respect to grouping, the first thing I will try, is adding a barrel band type stabilizer. The second is to remove all the tesla valve air foils from my design, and have a conventional baffle version printed, for comparison. If both the TV and non-TV versions group equally poorly, it is probably not my failure to design a good TV that is the cause of the lack of performance.

So, I might have done a poor job, but probably not because of neglecting to consider the factors you mentioned :) That said, it is possible that I should have made the TVs longer and used fewer of them.

View attachment 427750
It's all in the pudding.
 
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OldSpook,

Since you have a lot of experience making Tesla Valves work, I would invite you to create a TV section that I can drop into my design, as you specify. Then Mr.H would be able to test at least two configurations.

The space to be populated with one or more TVs would be some or all of that fitting into the dimensions shown below. The file format I prefer for this is STEP. Merging STLs is a pain. I would simply strip out my design to form a tube with a 22 mm ID, then place your design elements as you specify, and save the combination as a STL.

I could send you a STEP file of my empty shell for you to populate. Or, you could start from scratch and design a complete insert moderator extension from the ground up.

Something to consider.

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I cannot make a drop in section from non-specific information. Thanks for the general guide lines.
Well, I was working on a longer post with "more specific" information but I really need to get back to actually building more units to test. I appreciate your concern for more detail. Maybe you should build half a dozen varying the parameters I mentioned and confirm (or disprove) my assertions for yourself. That way you will have exact measurements and information you trust.

Have a great day. I've got some ideas I want to put into plastic.
 
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Nice looking moderator.

I guess it's time for me to point out that the Tesla valve (in that form) is tunable. Our testing has shown that the ratio of bore area to vent area can be tuned to favor accuracy or suppression.

We have ascertained, by testing, that total vent area over bore area should be approximately 10 or 12 to 1 to achieve maximum accuracy.

A lot of moderators will make a gun quiet at the cost of accuracy.

Those ratios in the first battle and the jump between the barrel and the first baffle have a heavy influence upon accuracy.

I guess I should also tell you there is a "lag" time established by the distance the air being redirected has to travel before it meets back up with the outflowing airstream. If that lag time is too short it will destabilize the projectile. Air is compressible. Another way of putting that is we have, by testing, also shown that there is a minimum velocity associated with any Tesla type valve. If the muzzle velocity of the pellet is not high enough it will be hit by that backwards flowing stream/shockwave and be destabilized. You can calculate that number because you know the distance of travel from the time pellet enters the baffle to the time that it traverses out the exit and you also know the time it takes for the shock wave exiting behind the pellet at the muzzle to make the round trip.

Hope that's helpful.
😉
Thanks for your input on this Spook!👍
 
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We might be ready for some trial prints to check key dimensions. I will slice the model into a few sub parts that can print faster, then measured. If those check out, the whole 10 inch tall model can be printed. If any key dimensions are off on the test prints, the CAD model will be refined so that the 3D printed dimensions might be closer to the desired dimension on the next print.

The "ribs" on the insert "stem" that fits inside the shroud are 0.1 mm tall, on top of the tube OD of 27 mm. This is because PETG typically shrinks at the ID and OD from the CAD dimensions, by perhaps half a percent below the nominal dimensions captured in the print file.

Using ribs to build up the part makes it easier to identify where a part is too tight, and to dress it with a file or by sanding. My goal would be to make the part fit MR.H's shroud without slop and without requiring force. By my estimate, the ribs will need to be sanded down by 0.001" to achieve that; assuming TorqueMaster does the print job. The test parts may indicate I need to lower the ribs a smidge before printing the whole part.

Vetting the 28 x 1 male thread, without the shroud tube in hand might be tricky.

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Solidworks reports the solid volume of the above part as 120 CCs. So, if PETG has a specific gravity of 1.2, the mass of the part would be 144 grams, or just over 5 ounces.
 
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Mr.H,

How confident are you about the concentricity of the rear shroud end plug, to the barrel and to the shroud? Is there any need to make a new end plug? Is the stock plug longer than it needs to be?

What retains the stock rear shroud end plug?
It looks like a piece of Delrin was machined to the I.D. of the shroud tube. That piece(sleeve) was machined to match the O.D. of the barrel. The shroud sleeves right on to the barrel. Very snug fit. Once the shroud mates with that "pinwheel" threaded insert, the barrel screws in place.

I must have had that shroud on and off the gun a dozen times since the beginning of this thread. There has been ZERO change of POI, which I think suggest that concentricity of the gun/components is good.

I'll send some photos later this morning.
 
It looks like a piece of Delrin was machined to the I.D. of the shroud tube. That piece(sleeve) was machined to match the O.D. of the barrel. The shroud sleeves right on to the barrel. Very snug fit. Once the shroud mates with that "pinwheel" threaded insert, the barrel screws in place.

I must have had that shroud on and off the gun a dozen times since the beginning of this thread. There has been ZERO change of POI, which I think suggest that concentricity of the gun/components is good.

I'll send some photos later this morning.
Let me know if you need other photos. This is on my kitchen island, the lighting isn’t as good as it could be, but I wanted to get these to you now..

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