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Culex is a prototype design that I created in August 2006. It functions with a blowforward valve similar to a Mayhem or Assault-80, using a poppet valve layout somewhat similar to a Mayhem, but with the firing operation found as a mixture of an Ion with that of an mQ valve (that's how I see it anyway). This page shows some declassified pictures of the marker and its internals, however I am picky about what I show and what is revealed, so there isn't too much information listed here. In the future I may post some other things but it depends on the legalities.

I wanted to produce this design because it's relatively simple in terms of moving components and operation. The marker's two-stage firing assembly makes it not the most simple markers I've designed, but I was also interested in making something unique too. The primary factor when designing this was producing the correct arrangement while keeping the design stable across the long axis (to prevent misalignment due to manual tolerances on my part) as well as simply being easy to fabricate in the first place. Some design features were omitted in light of making it easy to produce and the design is very lean in that regard.

This wasn't designed to be groundbreaking, but rather a quick homemade project to amuse me while thinking about the creation of more complex things. However, Culex does have a couple important features that are paintball firsts, the notable of which being the self-timing valve system. When I say self-timing, I mean to say the gun doesn't use a dwell "time" like other markers. Instead the firing of the solenoid is linked to the bolt movement via sensors, allowing the controller logic program to monitor the internal status, and automatically de-energize the solenoid when the time comes. This feature is built into the prototype but is not visible in any of the pictures I've posted.
For the moment that's all I wish to say. More details will follow when I produce the next generation design.

Details:
After finally finishing the main part of the functional components, I took it outside for an early photoshoot...

After that promotion was finished and my wits cooled, I still had to complete the electronics and add some support features, such as minor milling to the body, eye milling, drill for detents, and some other activities. The true imagined shape of the "milled" prototype was thus revealed to us.

The electronics are finished however for the purposes of the marker's operation I choose not to show them. The working board, however, can be seen in the picture below (using a DM membrane pad for an on/off method).

Here are a couple cool pictures I took during various steps of the component fabrication.

The exterior of the original internals are seen below.

After completing the internals and testing the marker for functionality, I quickly returned to the drawing board for a couple small tweaks here and there. Eventually I had revisited each of the internal components one-by-one and ended up recreating just about all of them over time. This was needed to fix some minor design considerations, and make the parts better suited for anodizing.

I initially made this thread on the Tinkering Tech forum. At the time of this writing, the prototype marker is still raw. I hope to put the finishing touches onto it soon. Until then, that's all the info for now.

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