How did APD begin? APD was born out of a need for improved hopup consistency, which played a large role in "accuracy" and "effective range". The first designs were a humped rectangle of polycarbonate with a square of rubber (urethane, silicone, sorbothane, vinyl etc) glued to the bottom, and was basically an modified version of the flat hop. Later, APD would introduce a companion hopup arm, which was keyed to the nub to provide spacial stability as the bb was fired. A similar modification was made to the VSR platform, both of which performed very well; however, aside from the few noted improvements, airsoft technology has stagnated, mostly due to the lack of a good platform to work off of. In other words, there were too many fundamental flaws in the original airsoft design, likely due to the "if it works, why fix it" mentality. TM had produced a working system, and others had just copied the design. APD exists to bridge the gap between analytical solutions and experimental results. Very little progress has actually been made since the introduction of the AEG by TM. Small improvements, mainly driven by the airsoft community such as gearbox radiusing, sorbothane shock absorbers, mosfets and others. There have been a few "gamechangers" of note such as the Systema PTW, which had very little actual effect on the mainstream airsoft community due to failures, performance, and cost issues. The Polarstar Fusion Engine was a step backwards in a sense, but was in many ways a big improvement over current airsoft tech. The third area is in the area of electronics, driven largely by community members such as Gandalf (Terry Fritz) at Extremefire. Improved CrMo from RiotSC at Siegetek was another step forward. R-hop by Hunterseeker5 at HSArmory brought improved hopup consistency. Sorbothane cylinderhead pads were introduced by Scatterplot reducing noise and stress. Other improvements such as the G-hop, Flat Hop, and others were through contributions from various people such as Gungineer, Star_Folder, Soccer77 and others. What is the purpose of APD? The goal if this project is to give users a high performance platform which can readily accept modifications or can outperform any existing system out of the box while maintaining a reasonable price. With an education in Aerospace Engineering and a background in aerodynamics, structures, mechanical systems, manufacturing, controls, and materials with the addition to a small, in-house (literally) machine shop, I can reduce the overhead of needing additional specialists and of outsourcing manufacturing work, which allows me to compete with the companies from overseas. In addition, a large emphasis is placed on the performance, quality, and durability of my products, whereas many companies focus on the quick buck. Where is APD going? I've recently added a page called "APD Helix Drive System (AHDS)", which is the culmination of three years of experimentation, design, and integration. As I have recently graduated, the design is soon entering its sourcing and prototyping phase, and is expected to enter its testing phase late-2013 to early-2014 with a release date scheduled for mid-2014. Join The Discussion! |
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