Which is the more reliable?

[John Meadth]

Identical twins buy the same model air pistol, one with an electronic trigger, the other mechanical. They get into heavy training, 150 dry fire shots a day 5 days a week and a live fire match on the weekend, say 75 shots a match, for 40 weeks a year. Approximately 30000 dry fire and 3000 live fire shots a year.

Both guns are new, mechanically (and electronically) sound at the start of the year. Neither gun suffers disproportionate (to the other) wear and tear to non-trigger sub-systems over the year(s) ahead.

Which trigger system will fail first?

Why?

[John Meadth]

Sorry, batteries can be replaced - no harm, no foul

[paw080]

Dear John, The electronic trigger will fail first because the twin holding it will hit his brother over the head, damaging head and trigger alike....
....because that's how twin brothers are.

Tony G

[Bowman26]

The first one to break will be the one that is no longer working prior to the other. The reason is because it will have broken. :)

Hard to predict something like that as time has not proven out the electronics for the lonnnnnnnnngggggggggg haul. Where as I have a Remington Model 12 and Colt Woodsman that are a combined 150+ years old and both have sweet, never been touched or needing fixing triggers to this day. It will be 25-50 years before your question is answered.

Personally I have shot several electronic triggers and while I love technology and progression I would not own one at this time as I feel the mechanical triggers overall feel is better than electric. I don't doubt quicker lock times etc but the feel just does not appeal to me. All subjective of course as with any trigger.

Usually going to be much easier way down the road to fix mechanical over some proprietary electronics board.

I have seen a Daystate Airwolf with electronic trigger almost catch on fire when the battery wires shorted out inside the stock. Luckily someone had the big allen wrench at hand to take the action out and disconnect the pack. It was chared but the board was not damaged just needed new batteries and was fine. BUT think about a fire inside a WOOD stock with a bottle holding 3000 PSI attached, loaded in your car in its case and catching fire as you go down the interstate EEK!

If you want to check out some really cool but still unproven technology search for Daystate Grand Prix and Airwolf MVT. Built in chronys with pressure sensors and LCD screens where you tell it what velocity to shoot and it self adjusts and keeps consistency if FPS. Big $$$$



Bo

[jbshooter]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

[Freepistol]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

That will be great if it works! Please, let us know what you discover.
Ben

[Guest]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

That will be great if it works! Please, let us know what you discover.
Ben

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the solenoid on the Walther directly drive the firing pin, where on the Morini, it releases the firing pin. Two very different sets of requirements concerning voltage and amperage. Of course, you could make the circuit work, but it would take enough modification (i.e. use the Morini voltage impulse to trigger another circuit to fire a much more powerful solenoid) that it might not be worth the trouble. I'm definately curious if you undertake the challenge. Keep us posted.

toznerd

[Philadelphia]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

That will be great if it works! Please, let us know what you discover.
Ben

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the solenoid on the Walther directly drive the firing pin, where on the Morini, it releases the firing pin. Two very different sets of requirements concerning voltage and amperage. Of course, you could make the circuit work, but it would take enough modification (i.e. use the Morini voltage impulse to trigger another circuit to fire a much more powerful solenoid) that it might not be worth the trouble. I'm definately curious if you undertake the challenge. Keep us posted.

toznerd

I have a Walther CP5 and with that particular model, yes, the elctronics merely actuate a solenoid that releases the sear. The pulse to the solenoid is 8 mS on each trigger pull. All the electronics really do is gate that pulse -- so holding the trigger does not hold the solenoid (there are other benefits of what they do, but that's the functional crux of the matter).

I don't have the Morini but having seen older ones and descriptions of them, my understanding (and a bit of an educated guess) is the electronics drive either a buck or flyback dc-to-dc converter to charge a large high voltage capacitor; the trigger pull connnects the output of that capacitor to a coil wound around the firing pin itself which sends the firing pin at the primer. The function of the electronics is similar in concept to the electronic flash of a camera. Step up the voltage and store it; release it and you get the functionality.

For both, the designs tend to be ahead of their time really stretching what was available in clever although naive ways, and repairing them using the latest available technology of today is a relatively simple matter. No swat at the engineering used in either, but they seemed to use the outer bounds of the specifications of the parts they employed (I view it as naively believing what's printed on specification sheets instead of actually characterizing actual parts). That's usually a recipe for failure.

I can repair the Walther design (I've done it) and believe I can repair the Morini high voltage designs as well (never done it, but there's not much to it). Keep the guns running. :)

PS: -- edit to add -- before I forget, in the storage capacitor designs the dc-to-dc converter produces potentially lethal voltage stored as a potentially lethal charge in the capacitor, even with batteries removed. If you don't know pretty well exactly what you are doing, don't mess with it.

[Weekend Shooter]

I do have an MG5E which by the name alone might raise alarms. There is one more advantage of the electronic over the mech trigger and that it's so easy to dry fire. During comps, you may leave the firing line and when you get back, you will need to do a handful of shots to warm up again which the mech trigger makes it more difficult to do. The MG5E elect trig can also be changed to mech in case it needs to be chucked at maybe €200 which is cheaper than the whole gun.... assuming that you liked the gun in the first place.

[toznerd]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

That will be great if it works! Please, let us know what you discover.
Ben

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the solenoid on the Walther directly drive the firing pin, where on the Morini, it releases the firing pin. Two very different sets of requirements concerning voltage and amperage. Of course, you could make the circuit work, but it would take enough modification (i.e. use the Morini voltage impulse to trigger another circuit to fire a much more powerful solenoid) that it might not be worth the trouble. I'm definately curious if you undertake the challenge. Keep us posted.

toznerd

I don't have the Morini but having seen older ones and descriptions of them, my understanding (and a bit of an educated guess) is the electronics drive either a buck or flyback dc-to-dc converter to charge a large high voltage capacitor; the trigger pull connnects the output of that capacitor to a coil wound around the firing pin itself which sends the firing pin at the primer. The function of the electronics is similar in concept to the electronic flash of a camera. Step up the voltage and store it; release it and you get the functionality.

I am not familiar with the CP5, so I don't know which system it uses.

The circuit you descirbed above is what is in the Walther FP. There is a schematic on the Yahoo FP group. The old Walther FP had a solenoid, in which the plunger was also the firing pin. It used a lot more current (heck, it had a neon bulb as a charge indicator!)

The Morini has a solenoid with a light and fast plunger that releases a catch lever that holds back the striker (much like all modern electro-mechanical firing systems.) It has a fairly small electrolytic cap that is close to the size of those found on the flash circuit of disposable cameras. It produces a fair amount of high voltage, but based on the extremely fast re-cycle time, I doubt it is a terribly powerful impulse (I still would not play with the cap, without discharging it.)

toznerd

[Philadelphia]

I'm thinking of getting a CM84E board etc to replace the one in my Wather FP. any comments would be welcome...

That will be great if it works! Please, let us know what you discover.
Ben

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the solenoid on the Walther directly drive the firing pin, where on the Morini, it releases the firing pin. Two very different sets of requirements concerning voltage and amperage. Of course, you could make the circuit work, but it would take enough modification (i.e. use the Morini voltage impulse to trigger another circuit to fire a much more powerful solenoid) that it might not be worth the trouble. I'm definately curious if you undertake the challenge. Keep us posted.

toznerd

I don't have the Morini but having seen older ones and descriptions of them, my understanding (and a bit of an educated guess) is the electronics drive either a buck or flyback dc-to-dc converter to charge a large high voltage capacitor; the trigger pull connnects the output of that capacitor to a coil wound around the firing pin itself which sends the firing pin at the primer. The function of the electronics is similar in concept to the electronic flash of a camera. Step up the voltage and store it; release it and you get the functionality.

I am not familiar with the CP5, so I don't know which system it uses.

The circuit you descirbed above is what is in the Walther FP. There is a schematic on the Yahoo FP group. The old Walther FP had a solenoid, in which the plunger was also the firing pin. It used a lot more current (heck, it had a neon bulb as a charge indicator!)

The Morini has a solenoid with a light and fast plunger that releases a catch lever that holds back the striker (much like all modern electro-mechanical firing systems.) It has a fairly small electrolytic cap that is close to the size of those found on the flash circuit of disposable cameras. It produces a fair amount of high voltage, but based on the extremely fast re-cycle time, I doubt it is a terribly powerful impulse (I still would not play with the cap, without discharging it.)

toznerd

I see what you're saying in terms of the lethality of the Morini circuit, but functionally it appears very similar to the Walther FP (dc-to-dc boost circuit charging a capacitor). If the electronics croak, either are easy enough to fix.

The CP5 uses just a solenoid activated through a one shot (monostable multivibrator). About as simple as it gets.