About ZDSPB.com
My name is Andrew L DuBuc (also known as Ydna on the internet and otherwise) and I'm the guy behind this website. The site begun as a tech resource for Smart Parts markers back around the year 2002, but grew to encompass a larger portion of the paintball market, as well as operating my repair business between the years 2003-2007. I no longer operate the repair business, but the underlying tech site will be here forever; I have no plans to ever take the site down and will keep updating as long as new and interesting information can be found.
I've been involved with the industry for many years and am glad to have taken part in such a tight-knit group of developers in that time. I hold no specific "allegiance" to any company in particular; I hold the belief that most paintball products have their own minor advantages and disadvantages, and I make a point to avoid quantifying anything as being wholly better or worse than something else. Is a Shocker better than a DM? Who knows; they're both quite good products. As an engineer myself I respect the opinions and experiences of others, and am fully aware that few players want to hear babblings about personal experiences, so I simply leave them out. I provide the facts and you can form your own opinions.
I consider myself an independent entity and enjoy helping others regardless of their background. I'm automatically friends with all players, tinkerers, airsmiths, and anybody else with very little exception. I want the paintball community to come together as much as possible.
About Me:
By trade I work as a design engineer and production/automation technician. I can't really get more specific than that since it's a fairly broad career, but I can say that I've worked in many industries including robotics, automotive and vehicles, machine tools, food industrial processing, product packaging, medical (ultrasound), and of course paintball. Over the years I've designed every aspect of paintball equipment, from triggers to feednecks, firing assemblies to regulators. I have several patents pending on future designs. In general, my specialties are dealing with machined components and assembles, electronics integration, and pneumatics applications. I co-founded the companies Thin Air Sports and Nummech Products, the second of which is a paintball subdivision of my engineering business.
My website is zdspb.com, which currently exists mostly as a technical resource for advanced paintball equipment. The site has become a support resource for thousands of people each day. See the site statistics page for more information.
I'm frequently asked how I got started working in the industry. The short answer is that it took many years of spending every aspect of my life engrossed within the game above everything else. From the very beginning I've acted as a repair tech for virtually every marker available, and was factory certified or authorized for nearly everything during my role as a repair tech. This business lasted for several years until such time that I begun experimenting with my own customized parts and modifications for markers, which then branched into designing new components for them, and eventually blossomed into the fabrication of entirely new markers and technologies from scratch. In 2010 I begun development of several contract designs, so to keep up with the workload I merged my home machine shop with that of a fellow machinist colleague, marking the creation of Nummech Products.
In addition to this website I am also a moderator for several pbnation.com forums (DLX, PGi, Michigan regional, and all Smart Parts forums). In the past I administrated shockerowners.com, ionowners.com, nerveowners.com, and smartpartsowners.com, however those websites are no longer in operation.
Contact me using my regular e-mail ydna-at-zdspb-dot-com.