jrboon - 4/18/2010 3:47 AM
I tested today and I took the Gamo Big Cat spring and the Gamo Viper spring both took 180 lbs to compress to 98- 99% of their compression.
The E3690 spring was the same 180 lbs.
Now with this said my testing was not done with thousands of dollar equipment.
I fabricated a heavy metal dual post frame for which a 3" (bore) air cylinder set on top with a 16" stroke it was a little big a 2" cylinder would have done fine, apply pressure and watch the spring and scale.
At about 98-99% compression ( could see day light between coils ) my scale read 180 lbs and the air pressure gauge had 26 psi which when you do the math it comes up 183 lbs..
I know you want to know how I retained the spring.
I measured the id of the springs and used a .5 inche rod 14" long with a .250 thick x 1.00 OD washer welded on it.
This rod slides inside of another rod with a bore that is a little bit bigger which is attached to the piston rod of the air cylinder.
But like I said this is what I could come up with. Not laboratory testing.
WOW..I ran you numbers over my spring programme.....In some ways it exsplains a lot...
why air gun springs fail/brake from time to time & lose power after a while...where most springs can run for 20+
years with next to know drop in force....
To get your numbers I had to raise the temper rate on the programme up to 7.3 thats very high
compaired to the normal defalt setting of 6.8....
7.3 requires a normalizeing process of 9 hours at 310 degs....
Yep I think your numbers are right..And that exsplaines why air gun springs fail or lose power
To get the power from a spring of air gun size the temper has to be pushed to near the limit......
Pete