This article is part 2 of a three part series that talks about the various
airsoft upgrades you can use to upgrade your gun. As you will see, there are a lot of parts out there to upgrade your Airsoft AEG. This article will talk about shims, bushings, gears, pistons, and piston heads.
Piston. An airsoft piston is essentially a flat-tooth gear that compresses air in the cylinder. This is what happens in an AEG gearbox; the motor turns the gears which then engage the piston and moves it back until the spring is fully compressed. Once the spring is fully compressed, the piston disengages the gears and flys forward compressing air in the cylinder. This puts a ton of pressure on the airsoft piston. It's good to have a metal piston in your AEG if you primarily shoot semi-auto, but if you often shoot full-auto, you run the risk of your gears being stripped.
Piston Head. The purpose of a piston head is to seal air into the cylinder. You can purchase silent piston heads and also piston heads with ball bearings, which help to increase the FPS of your AEG.
Gears. The sector gear, bevel gear, and spur gear are the gears that are used together in a airsoft gearbox. Airsoft Gears are probably one of the more expensive upgrades for an AEG. If you want to have high speed or high torque setup you will need steel gears because other wise the gears will probably break. You should also use helical gears because they are designed for high torque setups.
because there is more than one tooth in contact with the piston at a time, which makes them stronger than regular gears.
Helical gears are also more quiet than regular gears.
Bushings. The purpose of airsoft bushings is to keep the gears in place and allow them to rotate. You should probably replace your gun's stock bushings with bushings that are metal because your AEG most likely came with plastic 6mm bushings. For higher torque or speed setups, a new gearbox shell that uses 7mm or 8mm bushings would be good.
Shims. In order for your gears to stay aligned and correctly meshed, your gearbox has shims. If your shimming is to tight, your motor will wear down because it is working to hard to turn the gears. If you shim your gearbox to loosely, your gears may break
Raptors Airsoft Blog has published Part 1 of this series already, and part 3 will be published in the near future.
