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paintballimpact.com / Paintballs / Paint
Paint
Paint is the ammo for the paintball player. Paintball paint is one of the biggest expenses for players because it can only be used once. And with the newest marker technology, paint is coming flying out of the barrels quicker than ever. Most paint rounds are .68 caliber. Paint is available in almost any color, and there are even glow in the dark paintballs available for night paintball.
Today's paintballs our water based, and are made entirely of non - toxic, food-based ingredients. Because the paintballs are water based, they are machine washable, and do not leave stains on clothes. Nevertheless, it is recommended that a player wash his paintball paint stained clothes separate from his other laundry just to be sure. Some paint washes off clothes easier than others.
In paintball, generation 1, paintballs from Nelson Paint were used. They were excellent paintballs, but they were oil based, and these did not wash off clothes easily.
The process of creating the paintballs is very interesting. First, the clear outer shell is manufactured. To form the hollow shell, water, a sweetener, a preservative, and the combination of food ingredients are mixed and heated in a huge hole. This mixture is combined with the gelatin to finish the shell. The gelatin is the part of the mixture that gives the shell its resilient shape. The gelatin use to make a paintball is the same stuff that is used to make gummy bear candies and gummy bears. The gelatin and mixture are blended together and heated for about 30 minutes. While blending and heating, any impurities such as clumps or bubbles are removed or smoothed out. The pure mixture is poured from the mixture, into a heated vat called the "gel tote".
Next food dyes are added to the mixture in the gel tote, and this new mixture is stirred and blended for the next 30 minutes.
While the gelatin capsule is being created, the paint fill is also being produced. Fill is often the term that describes the paint inside the shell of the paintball. Fill is made from polyethylene glycol, one of the main ingredients of cough syrup. The thin liquid is then thickened with wax, a similar wax as that used to make Crayola Crayons. The fill is encased by the gel in a place known as the feed room. Both the fill and gel are first loaded into a soft-gel encapsulation machine then combines the two products in a process similar to that used to make prescription medications. The machine also makes the shell and paint in the same process that is used to make bath beads, nutritional supplements, vitamins E and A, Omega 3 fish oil, garlic oil, etc. The first company to produce water based encapsulated paintballs was R.P. Scherer.
The soft-gel encapsulation machine spreads the gel into a cooled drum to solidify the material into a thin sheet, labeled a gel ribbon. The gel ribbons is cooled and hardened, and fabricated into the shape of a .68 caliber paintball round. Paint rounds are sold in cases of 500 or more.
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