Why use carbon fiber in paintball
January 24, 2010 on 5:07 pm | By admin | In SportsMany Paintball Barrel products today still use aluminum for their construction. This works well and is rather light weight, but there are better materials avaialble today than aluminum for making these barrels. So why is it not used?
We have to look a bit at history to understand where barrel technology came from to answer this question. Around 10 to 15 years ago, barrels were made of brass or stainless steel. These worked well, especially the stainless ones, but eventually players decided that saving weight on their paintball rigs would allow them to perform better. As the sport became faster and more competitive, this became more true over time. Aluminum was adopted as a light weight yet very strong material to use in paintball products, and so more and more parts were made of aluminum instead of heavier steal, stainless, or brass or bronze.
But since this time, even better materials have become available, specifically various composite materials. The best material in this list is variations of carbon fiber. A number of manufacturers make carbon fiber barrels for paintball guns, but they are still not adopted as a standard in the market place.
One major reason for this is cost. Alternative materials, and specifically caarbon fiber, tend to cost significantly more than aluminum, so this is a deterrent to adopting something other than aluminum. So today, these materials are used by only the most serious (or hardcore) players in the sports that use them. So in paintball, it takes a very serious player to be willing to spend the price of some whole guns just to procure a carbon fiber barrel. But those who do have a definite edge in the sport.