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SuperIon is a triple-barreled marker, composed of Ion firing assemblies, that I use at Big Game format events. Pictures and basic information about the SuperIon can be found in the my markers SuperIon page. This page in the custom work section is devoted to how I made it, and the trials therein.

Here's a brief synopsis of this marker's features:
· Independent circuit boards for each marker.
· Independent regulators for each marker; velocity is controlled by each regulator for each individual marker.
· Each trigger pull will produce three shots (one from each marker) so long as a ball is present.
· Each marker uses its own anti-chop eye system. Upon pulling the trigger each marker with a ball in the chamber will fire whereas the others will omit the trigger pull.
· Stock board firing modes are available, should the user so choose (although this is overkill).
· Any of the three markers can be activated or disabled at any time.
· Each marker uses its own air source to prevent pressure dropoff during rapid fire.
· Relatively minimal modifications were done to mount the markers together. Primarily, mounting holes were drilled to link the frames and bodies together. Most of the other modifications were weight reduction or cosmetic.

- Note number 1: Somebody suggested while I was making this thing that I write up a "blog" as I go along. I'm not really fond of blogs or otherwise journals in general, but I do concede that it might be interesting to arrange information about the project in approximate chronological order, to help explain my thought process, and then write it in first person. So...that's how this page is arranged. Some of it isn't accurate to the true order of things, so bear with me.
I wrote this page in July 2006 and uploaded it in November when I finally decided to bring it into public light.
- Note number 2: The only thing to remember here is I didn't have one straightforward step-by-step creation method for this project. It was heavily conceptualized, both in my head and on the computer, but even then the majority of it was on-the-fly work. I came up with an idea and visualized it for a while, then made changes to it or another part of the depending on the situation. Some parts of this project weren't planned out at all. Sometimes that's okay, and it's how this went down.

Conception:
Around here we play a lot of Big Game format events. These involve a massive playfield, more than a thousand players on each team, and just about any marker you can find. Some people even take out a "sidearm" in addition to their main gun. What a perfect place to use a double gun! It will turn a lot of heads as well as be useful out on the field, especially when you're trying to attack an area housing 150 players on the opposite team.

I've wanted to make a "double Ion" for a few months, but once I started making actual plans for it I quickly decided it'd be nicer to go for the triple Ion instead. That way the gun would be centered in the middle and have that much increased firepower. Disadvantages would include being heavier and requiring more money to shoot (since you'll be firing another one shot for every pull, already two shots in the first place). This will be expensive to run...much more expensive than it will cost initially. But that's okay, it's money well spent. Also remember that I won't be shooting it continuously, I do own other guns too...so it won't be used continuously while I'm on the field.

Arrangement:
Okay, so what exactly will this take? I would essentially need three separate Ions, at least two regulators, and at least two tanks for them. The main part of making this work would be mounting the guns together so they're connected, and move as one unit. For this I decided that making a V-shaped mount would work okay. I want to place at least two of them on the gun (maybe more if I have enough room). These will be easy for me to make, while at the same time being probably the most difficult part of this whole project....or at least the most time consuming.

The idea behind this is to forget about combining guns into the same unit, and just let each individual gun do its thing. Except all mounted together. That way, each gun will perform just as good as if it were all alone; each gun would have its own functional eye system, etc etc. The alternative would be to combine electronics and synchronize the guns, but that might not turn out as good since every gun works differently. That'll be saved for another day.

Only one gun will need to have a trigger. So the first issue is why not use only one frame, instead of three? Performance would suck if I used one solenoid for all markers, so I will put one solenoid for each assembly. I figure it'd be a lot easier to let the frame act as the mount and protect the electronics/solenoid, instead of making a custom housing or tray mount for everything. If I did that, I would essentially be recreating the stock frame, except shorter, which would be a waste of time in my opinion. Using stock frames to carry it out will make the setup a little more big and bulky, but it's the better route I think. The two side guns won't need triggers, I can connect everything to the center gun.

So, I know I'll need these parts:
-Three firing assemblies (bolt, fire chamber, boltstop, swivel donut)
-Three breech sections with feednecks.
-Three frames. I might be able to get by with broken ones depending on what regs I decide to use, so I'll work on that later. Broken frames will be MUCH cheaper so that will be the "goal."
-Three regulators of some kind (will decide on that later).
-One trigger.
-Three boards and three solenoids.
-Three exoskeletons...? Do I want to go with the "classic" look of just the fire chambers? It'd be easier to use exoskeletons, so I'll just go with that. Maybe I can paint them later or something, or whatever...
-Two tanks for the gun. I will go with CO2 tanks for this. No nevermind, I don't like using CO2, but I will use screw-in tanks.
-Three barrels.
-Three hoppers.
-Screws and such.

At this point I will need to do some shopping and acquire all the parts I need. I've got enough parts to make one whole gun plus a number of other parts, so I won't have to buy too much.

-A few weeks later, I've got all the crap I need for this, and it was very cheap. If there's one thing I am, it's patient....I've learned things pay off when you're not rushed. Now for the fun part, putting everything together.

(please note, my thought process doesn't exactly coincide with the selection of components in the above picture. Please bear with me as I exercise some creativity here).

The Mounts:
This will be the only real part that must be made from scratch. I've got some aluminum stock available so I think I will go with 1/4" thick aluminum, as that should do the job okay. I whipped together some sizing ideas in CAD then measured them out...eventually I arrived at a useful V-shape that I will use, with some arbitrary dimensions.

This should leave just enough room for the hoppers to fit on top. I might have to go with a higher feedneck for the middle gun, but if that comes up I'll just make it from scratch as well, that'll be only a couple minutes on the lathe.
(edit, turns out I didn't have to worry about this).

I believe that keeping everything on the same horizontal plane will help make this easy. I could stack the middle gun higher up which would be cooler overall, but making a mount for that would require more effort so I'll avoid it. Anyways, the first step is making the mounts.

So there it is, the mount to hold the gun together. The mount looks a little uneven but this is due to the hand-filing I did to the edges so they wouldn't be sharp and cut me all to shreds. This will go on the bottomline of the frames and screw up to them to attach. The question is....where to put the other one? After checking it out I decided the best place would be right under the vertical adapter. I originally wanted to put it on top of the vertical adapter, but I decided against it.

The Pneumatics:
Alright, first concern is how many regulators to use. I tested this out using parts I had available and quickly came to the conclusion that I would not be able to surpass any reasonable fire rate if I used one or two regs with any number of tanks less than "one for each gun". From what I saw, each gun needs its own reg in order to keep up, so that's what I have to do. The original plan wasn't to use three of everything, but plans change when I find out new information.

With this in mind, and after a lot of consideration, I decided to go with manifold style Max-Flo regs that would be mounted to the gun someplace. The reason I went with these is because the manifold style reg is extremely versatile, being that it has four 1/8" NPT output ports around the outside of the reg and one 1/8" NPT input port. This means I can hook them up to the gun very easily, since 1/8" NPT fittings are easy to find [or make] and also have a room for a gauge. I can drill the regs for 10-32 screws and attach the front banjo fittings directly to them instead of the vertical adapter.
(edit, please note that I didn't end up using 10-32 fittings, as you find out later).

The importance of this is that it means I won't use vertical regs to operate the guns. This means I dont have to worry about frames that are perfectly functional, which severely cuts down on the cost I had to pay for the parts I needed. To be specific, I won't be using a vertical adapter, so those threads can be stripped out. I also won't be using the front banjo fitting connection, so that can be stripped out too. I know people have had these problems in the past so I was able to quickly buy the frames I needed for $20 each secondhand. Which was in my opinion, a very generous price considering the frames will be useless to everybody else!

Anyway, after a bit of experimentation and imagination, I decided to mount the regs under the trigger section on the side frames. This was a very hard decision, since it turns out no matter where I could place the regs, they'd still be in the way of something, so I just picked the least in-the-way spot and went with it. I drilled and tapped the reg bodies for 6-32 screws and mounted them into position from the inside of the frame forward (where the grip panels would normally wrap around the front). The middle gun needs to be a bit different though, since I actually have to hold that frame with my hand. After a little more fooling around I ended up deciding to mount the reg to the front V-mount, but I'll do that later since the gun needs to be put together first.

After a bit more consideration I found some quaint little 1/8" NPT push-to-connect fittings that will fit the hose size I need. Perfect! Screw these into the regulators' output ports and the only other step will be to cut hose to length and pop it into the fittings.

The Electronics:
Last step, and turned out to be the fastest "step" needed to be done. Even though it went quick, I scrutenized on this for a very long time. After a lot of consideration (and several false-starts) I ended up going with "relocated" trigger switches. I originally wanted to use a more complex "one board for three guns" setup, but instead of bothering with that I just went with the easier "board for each gun" setup. It was a lot easier this way and I'm glad I didn't bother making a whole new board, for time concerns. I'll leave that for the next multi-barrel marker I make.

The main benefit to this (besides for being EASY) is that it's more conventional in terms of how the gun will work. Each gun will operate individually just like a stock Ion on drugs. This additionally allows me to activate however many of the guns I want, not just all of them or none of them. This way, if I want to save paint or air, I can just turn on the "side" Ions and leave the middle Ion off. Or, if one of the guns is broken, I can turn on the other two and thus still have two functional guns without wasting air.
(please note that this feature turned out to be extremely, EXTREMELY useful on the field. I ran into many situations out there where I quickly deactivated one of the side markers so I wouldn't have to sick too far out from a bunker. This action had crossed my mind before I played with it on the field, but I didn't think it would be useful...I was very wrong and it turned out to be invaluable!)

There were many ways to make this work but the one I ended up using I think was the easiest. I milled out the frame behind the trigger so I could mount the microswitches directly in there. This way the single trigger itself actually pushes on all three switches. They're not hit all at once, but it's close enough. If the trigger is pulled fast, it won't even be noticeable. In some cases it will be good for the guns to fire in a staggered manner (not all at once) so this will allow me to do both, whenever I want.

I attached wires to the modified switches, epoxied them together, and mounted them in the frame.

The next thing to do is connect the switches to their respective boards, using wire lengths. This was pretty easy, just took a lot of wire and heat-shrink to finish it up. The way it works is I removed the microswitches from the two side boards, and connected wires to the empty switch terminals. The wires lead to a disconnect, then over to the center marker where they attach to the "new" switches mounted on the middle frame. I used the same 2-mm Molex connectors that I use with literally everything else I do (paintball or otherwise) which will allow me to disconnect the side guns from their trigger switches in the middle gun, so I can remove the side firing assemblies for regular maintenance.

In the above picture, the two left boards have no trigger microswitches, and will be used as the "side" boards. The right board will be used in the center gun so it still uses the stock microswitch setup.

The Trial Assembly:
The only other thing to do is put it all together. Put the body sections together, screw on the solenoid assemblies like normal, then drop them all into their respetive frames. I took this picture mid-way through.

Again, since each gun uses its own switch, reg, and electronics, it means the firing assemblies are interchangeable and can be moved around as needed. The only thing that would have to change is the input pressure for the guns.

The orignial setup is designed to house screw-in tanks on the gun itself. I drilled and tapped some cheap bottomline ASAs then attached them to the front of the side-marker frames. The two side tanks will be in front and the middle gun tanke will be in the regular bottomline position.
(please note that I ended up removing these mounts and using tanks on my back instead, so this was wasted effort.)

If you're interested to know what I did for the internals, I'm using modified stock bolts without QEVs using the stock solenoid of course. I'm not worried about efficiency or cycle rates on this, since I obviously won't be bunkering people on a supAir field or whatever. This is a scenario gun made to deliver massive firepower at once, not to get the most shots per tank than the guy next to me. Besides, it's just a project gun...I'll save the performance for my competition markers.

So anyways, here's the final product, in all its glory.

I actually ended up taking it all apart again so I could properly clean and maintain the firing assemblies (this is why I called this section "trial" assembly). They had been sitting around for a long time before I put the gun together, so they needed a good once-through before action. It's of course a good idea to be sure this gun is in top shape before we go to play with it, since troubleshooting leaking problems at the field is virtually pointless due to how long it takes.

Performance & Impressions:
This concludes the building-of page. If you're interested to know how the marker is on the field, follow this link to my Impressions page.

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