Bottle Blows Up

[Echowitch]

That is the only non Stako explosion at filling that i have EVER heard of...

Your stats point makes no sence! How many people do you think use normal fibre wrapped tanks and have done over the last 10 years!?!?

These tanks have an aluminium inner liner, Stakos have a plastic inner liner.
3 Stakos have exploded in the past year..
Either of these contructions WILL explode if oil is added to the mix. The point with the Stakos is that at 1 maybe 2 or 3 of the recent Stako explosions, no oil was proven to be added!!
Surely even the most ignorant can see this as suspect?? Even if you can't see that, surely you don't even want to take the risk?????

No offence Itchy but you are part of the problem that people saying "Don't Over-react" are referring to. You instantly blame Stako when it could be mere coincidence. You are inciting rumour and supposition. And to top it off having a jolly good rant as well.

CALM ........DOWN !!!! Seriously go have a green tea, or listen to some Enya, or something

I and others have not said that we are ignoring this. Merely that we are waiting to see what the experts have to say on the cause, then people can take action either personally or from a league/site point of view.

As some have already shown, (Mick and Mo of Freekz specifically,) they are taking sensible precautions, but not flying off of the handle. And Im not 100% stating that Stako are innocent, but they have been vindicated by the Millenium Board once already, and may be again in this case, but we need to wait and see what the experts investigation says.

 

[Devrij]

Nige, did you know that with 3 stickers of your name you can make a surprising variety of words? I digress. If nothing else, this has raised awareness of the importance of safety when using compressed air, which is a good thing. It sucks that someone had to get hurt, but I plan on talking to the guys on my team about equipment/filling safety (esp as we use a dive tank) and getting more info myself. Until this is completely figured out by those in the know, the least we can do is make sure we all know exactly what we're doing.

 

[Jeff Abbott - Dye]

Mick and Mo were not there.

When I saw the tank go, my immediate thought was that Nige had lost his arm and by thatl, I mean I thought his F**king arm had been blown off. Thankfully, it was the remains of his gun falling to the floor.

Think about that before you tell someone to calm down.

This is no joking matter. Just because Nige is "ok" doesn't change the fact that this sh*t is for real and if nothing is done someone will be picking someones arm up off the floor and putting it in a bin bag for the paramedics..... or worse.

keka

No offence Itchy but you are part of the problem that people saying "Don't Over-react" are referring to. You instantly blame Stako when it could be mere coincidence. You are inciting rumour and supposition. And to top it off having a jolly good rant as well.

CALM ........DOWN !!!! Seriously go have a green tea, or listen to some Enya, or something

I and others have not said that we are ignoring this. Merely that we are waiting to see what the experts have to say on the cause, then people can take action either personally or from a league/site point of view.

As some have already shown, (Mick and Mo of Freekz specifically,) they are taking sensible precautions, but not flying off of the handle. And Im not 100% stating that Stako are innocent, but they have been vindicated by the Millenium Board once already, and may be again in this case, but we need to wait and see what the experts investigation says.

 

[Demonic]

Ever considered that we have seen an increase in failing bottles (mainly stako) because we are now manafacturing them with lower fail safe tolereances in the intrests of weight saving and performance (and too few people factually know what they are doing)!!!!!

If these bottles are religiously filled by the book and all filling equipment is maintained by a professional oufit (with logs) there is no reason for this to happen.

I work for an Oil and Gas company and frequently test valves that are up to 60 cubic litres in size up to 15000 psi (the working pressure for these is 9000 psi) ocasionally one out of a thousand might fail but there is no way it will reach the commercial market and be a hazard (unless a passed and safe for use valve its tampered with at the final user)

I persoanlly believe there is no one person or organization to blame here as I think it is a culmination of several factors.

more than anything, we as a sport need to have easy access to those who know what their talking about, as with everything in this sport you can get 6 different answers that are all wrong for the same question.

HPA is a very dangerous and often fatal media to be working with and very few people know in depth what they should be doing. Every individual user must take responsibility for their own education of using HPA , otherwise it can have serious consquences for yourself or someone else using it after you (as have may have been the case here)


Phil

 

[Broni]

I think everyone can agree that it's an extremely lucky situation that no-one was seriously/fatally wounded or killed.
Imagine what that would look like to the rest of the world looking in on the Paintball community, it wouldn't look good and in the end accidents like these just need to be avoided or we may not have fields, markers and air systems to play with.
I won't blame Stako for what happened, I'm in no position to and I don't think you can talk about dropping a blanket ban on them unless they are proven to be holding the bag so to speak.

It now comes down to personal choice if you use the Stako bottle or not, since statistics are showing that (at the moment) they are the most likely to fail.

I personally won't be buying a Stako anytime soon and from what I've heard, neither will any of the people who were at the incident.

 

[John C]

This is no joking matter. Just because Nige is "ok" doesn't change the fact that this sh*t is for real and if nothing is done someone will be picking someones arm up off the floor and putting it in a bin bag for the paramedics..... or worse.

keka

I dont think anyone in this thread is suggesting we do nothing about it.


What people are saying is, rather than taking the first plausible idea and running with it, we should allow the experts to find out what really happened and take steps to prevent it happening again based on their findings.

Banning the wrong thing can be counter productive, because it would restore confidence without improving safety.

 

[Gadget]

Glad to hear that you didn't leave any bodily parts scattered around the field.

Were all thse tanks being filled to 4500psi.
Thats something that connects all the reg failures we are discussing.

Perhaps we should be talking about going back to 3000 psi.

That's what I do - I've only ever filled my 4500 tank to 3000, simply because I'm bloody scared of the forces involved. It's bad enough when macro blows at 800psi, can't imagine what a tank going pop must be like.

 

[Fisz]

That is the only non Stako explosion at filling that i have EVER heard of...

Your stats point makes no sence! How many people do you think use normal fibre wrapped tanks and have done over the last 10 years!?!?

[...]
Either of these contructions WILL explode if oil is added to the mix. The point with the Stakos is that at 1 maybe 2 or 3 of the recent Stako explosions, no oil was proven to be added!!
Surely even the most ignorant can see this as suspect?? Even if you can't see that, surely you don't even want to take the risk?????

To quote an answer from the expert from H Pac:

Hi,
we only know of 3 failures, 1 in Madrid when we found the can of oil on the table after the event, one at a Dye training camp and we have seen that cylinder and this one yesterday, all were stakos with plastic liner all we oil induced but only difference was at our event the oil came from an aerosol and we dont know about yesterdays, we only work to breathing air standard so we have a known quality to work to.[...]

Stako have been in touch with me and are anxious to find the root cause.

regards


Trevor

Well, about my statistics not making sense... They're not making sense to you because they don't fit your reasoning. They're perfectly in line with mine though.

As to the oil in the tank, the above quote from H Pac clearly states that the only case in which they're not sure if oil was the culprit is the one from yesterday, and that's just because they haven't had a chance to inspect the tank yet.... Nothing like bending facts to suit your theory... Same with the "Only Stakos blow up" argument you used in this thread already, which was proven to be wrong.

The bottomline is, you're coming across as ignorant for ruling out any other reason than the fact that it's the plastic liner in the tank that is the cause of those explosion, even though it has already been proven that:
a. In at least 50% of the incidents oil was introduced into the system.
b. In 100% of those incidents the result was the destruction of the regulator, while the tank remained intact (no catastrophic explosion on part of the tank).

I think we should keep all the options open until the experts are 100% sure.

On a related note, not too long ago a friend of mine removed a reg from his bottle and removed from his non-stako tank quite a lot of dirt and fine aluminium dust. He was happy he found out before that stuff had a chance to ignite in a freak accident.

 

[DANIEL]

Anyone want to buy a second hand stako?

There must be loads of Stakos being used, I've used one since last year and have played most weekends. So it is not certain that all Stakos are time bombs.

But I agree that it does need looking into, it may not have been the bottle itself that was to blame but it might be weaker or more susceptible to this kind of thing regarding heating up and temperatures.

 

[Jeff Abbott - Dye]

Agreed but don't you think it would be safer and more prudent fo rsite operators and event organisers to take action to limit the risk and their liability?

By all means we need to look at this in the long term but until we reach that point we have to take every reasonable step to minimise the risk of similar "accidents".

All I am saying, is that until we find out what is going on, we should not fill or use the product in question?

If there was a fault discovered on an aircraft after 3 had crashed, do you think they would still allow the planes to fly until they discovered the cause?
I am just astonished at some of the posts here, saying calm down, have some tea, lets just hang around until we figure something out...

We are all responsible for our own safety but more importantly, we are just as responsible for the safety of others.....or so I thought...

After the first explosion, the tanks were tested and everyone said they were ok. Then there was a second and now a third but there are still people prepared to take the risk of using one and there are organisers out there still prepared to take the risk of letting people use one on their site.

It's madness.

keka

I dont think anyone in this thread is suggesting we do nothing about it.


What people are saying is, rather than taking the first plausible idea and running with it, we should allow the experts to find out what really happened and take steps to prevent it happening again based on their findings.

Banning the wrong thing can be counter productive, because it would restore confidence without improving safety.