Dry Marking System for Ballistic Pellets

Abstract

A coating designed to transfer on impact from a ballistic projectile onto a target. Due to the many possible applications for which this might find use, it has been designed to allow as open-ended a range of application as possible by separating the requirements of the marking system from the requirements of the projectile substrate. To this end the coating is designed to be applied to a wide range of materials and shapes. The coating itself is therefore independent of whatever carrier it is coated onto which allows the carrier to be selected for its own suitability for the application rather than conditional upon compatibility with the marking system.

Description

This application claims benefit under §119 of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/100,395, filed Sep. 26, 2009, all of which are/is hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.

FIELD

This invention relates to a dry marking system for ballistic pellets.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a partial side and partial exposed interior view of a ballistic pellet with a pigment transfer coating; and

FIG. 2 is a partial side and partial exposed interior view of another ballistic pellet with a pigment transfer coating and an imprinted identifier color code marking.

SUMMARY

A projectile comprising a ballistic pellet and at least one frangible coating on an outer surface of the ballistic pellet configured to provide a dry marking on impact with a target.

A method of making a projectile comprising obtaining a ballistic pellet and coating at least one frangible layer on an outer surface of ballistic pellet configured to provide a dry marking on impact with a target.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A frangible coating is applied to Airsoft BB's or other forms of ballistic pellets as a visual marker system for both game play and military and law enforcement training purposes. While it is intended for use with Airsoft industry standard equipment, it is equally applicable to other devices suitable for propelling the BB's and other forms of ballistic pellets used in these devices. BB's and larger or smaller contact devices may be coated in this manner as a means of transfering pigment to the target, indicating a “hit.”

Surface:

The surface of this BB is improved by allowing random surface character to develop in the coating process. This provides small imperfections in the surface on the order of (10̂-1 mm) to (10̂-2 mm). Smaller imperfections may also exist but are irrelevent, the large scale imperfections of the surface coating produces increased turbulent airflow across the surface when used with any launching strategy designed to exploit the Bernoulli Effect to increase range for the BB. The surface is frangible and fragments into intensely colored dust on impact with a target. This allows the BB to leave a visual mark of its passage for purposes of scoring during game play or other situations which may require markings. The coating may be applied as either discrete layers or as a homogeneous formulated mixture.

This coating can be applied to pellets of either metal, plastic or biodegradable formulation as shown in FIG. 1. The coating does not depend upon which formulation is used.

This coating is composed of pigments and optional optical brighteners which become bound to the binder surface. This surface then disperses on impact with a target object leaving the pigment behind as a visual indicator. The pigment surface may optionally be sealed against damage from moisture and coated with a thin layer of dry powder lubricant.

Ballistic pellets coated as described can be imprinted to identify them uniquely by color coding as shown in FIG. 2. Unique identification of pellets allows the competition venue to control the ammunition used during play and may address safety issues, revenue generation for the event, and quality and quantity of ammunition available to the competitors.

Ballistic pellets prepared according to described specifications are imprinted with speckles, bands or simple geometric markings using contrasting pigments to those used in the initial frangible coating. Multiple imprints allow a set of data fields to be color encoded onto the surface. The data can be used to identify the event, the team to which the markers were issued, the manufacturing date, or simply to provide an interesting appearance to the ballistic marker pellet.

The imprinting introduces small scale color patterns into the surface. The size, shape, and color of the markings may each hold a significant bit of data which interpreted as a whole allows batches of pellets to be identified uniquely from other batches of pellets as a color coded serial/lot number or the unique encoding may be repeated for multiple batches and used to uniquely identify the venue or competition event purchasing them.

It may also be used to give special visual impact to a ballistic marker pellet for novelty, such as imprinting the pellets with red, white and blue patterns, or imprinting “camouflage” colors onto the pellet.

Ballistic pellets coated as described can be additionally coated with an indelible security marker dye visible only under select wavelengths of light. An adhesive filler would be substituted for any pigments visible in normal lighting.

The mark left by such a pellet would be invisible to the unaided eye, but would fluoresce under illumination by a light source in the dye's excitation range.

Markers of this type could be used as a delivery system to mark the clothing and skin of a criminal suspect. They could be propelled either by manually operated ballistic devices, or loaded into non-injurious automated systems for dispersion singly or in bulk. They could be driven by spring loading, pressurized gas or gravity, striking the suspect and leaving a dye stain on his clothing and exposed skin.

Additional trace elements could be added to the pigment to increase specificity and extend the period that an identifiable mark remained. Micro-encapsulated DNA from diverse species of plants and marine life which could be easily identified, would be imprinted on the surface as described in GTBKM-002 with the exception that it would not leave a visible color coding imprint but would carry multiple sets of the tracking material, making the combination of chemical markers unique to the batch of marker pellets.

The encapsulating material would both protect the DNA chemical marker from degradation, and provide an adhesive surface to cling aggressively to clothing and skin.

The marker would leave no visible mark on clothing and nothing other than a possible impact mark on exposed skin, but an excitation light source would reveal the mark, and a DNA sample of the impact site on clothing or skin would reveal a DNA signature including as contributions each DNA imprinting element included in the manufacture.

A coating designed to transfer on impact from a ballistic projectile onto a target. Due to the many possible applications for which this might find use, it has been designed to allow as open-ended a range of application as possible by separating the requirements of the marking system from the requirements of the projectile substrate. To this end the coating is designed to be applied to a wide range of materials and shapes. The coating itself is therefore independent of whatever carrier it is coated onto which allows the carrier to be selected for its own suitability for the application rather than conditional upon compatibility with the marking system.

Claims

1-3. (canceled)

4. A projectile comprising:

a ballistic pellet; and

at least one frangible coating on an outer surface of the ballistic pellet configured to provide a dry marking on impact with a target.

5. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 wherein the ballistic pellet is made from at least one of a solid metal, plastic, and biodegradable material

6. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 wherein the at least one frangible coating further comprises one or more base pigments.

7. The projectile as set forth in claim 6 wherein the at least one frangible coating further comprises one or more optical brighteners.

8. The projectile as set forth in claim 6 further comprising further comprising one or more additional pigments imprinted on the at least one frangible coating, the one or more additional pigments contrast from the one or more base pigments.

9. The projectile as set forth in claim 8 wherein the one or more additional pigments are imprinted on the at least one frangible coating to encode one or more identifying data fields in the at least one frangible coating.

10. The projectile as set forth in claim 9 wherein at least one of a size, shape and color of the one or more additional pigments is used to encode the one or more identifying data fields in the at least one frangible coating.

11. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 further comprising at least one seal on the at least one frangible coating.

12. The projectile as set forth in claim 11 further comprising at least one dry power lubricant on the at least one seal.

13. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 wherein the at least one frangible coating further comprises at least one marker which is only visible under a first range of wavelengths of light.

14. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 wherein the at least one frangible coating comprise at least one fluorescent material.

15. The projectile as set forth in claim 4 further comprising one or more trace elements imprinted in the at least one frangible coating.

16. The projectile as set forth in claim 15 wherein the one or more trace elements comprise DNA.

17. The projectile as set forth in claim 16 further comprising at least one encapsulating material for the DNA.

18. The projectile as set forth in claim 16 wherein the at least one frangible coating comprise at least one fluorescent material.

19. A method of making a projectile, the method comprising:

obtaining a ballistic pellet; and

coating at least one frangible layer on an outer surface of ballistic pellet configured to provide a dry marking on impact with a target.

20. The method as set forth in claim 19 wherein the obtained ballistic pellet is made from at least one of a solid metal, plastic, and biodegradable material

21. The method as set forth in claim 19 wherein the at least one frangible layer further comprises one or more base pigments.

22. The method as set forth in claim 21 wherein the at least one frangible layer further comprises one or more optical brighteners.

23. The method as set forth in claim 21 further comprising further comprising imprinting one or more additional pigments on the at least one frangible layer, the one or more additional pigments contrast from the one or more base pigments.

24. The method as set forth in claim 23 wherein the imprinting the one or more additional pigments on the frangible layer further comprises encoding one or more identifying data fields in the at least one frangible layer with the imprinting.

25. The method as set forth in claim 24 wherein at least one of a size, shape and color of the one or more additional pigments is used to encode the one or more identifying data fields in the at least one frangible layer.

26. The method as set forth in claim 19 further comprising coating at least one seal on the at least one frangible layer.

27. The method as set forth in claim 26 further comprising coating at least one dry power lubricant on the at least one seal.

28. The method as set forth in claim 19 wherein the at least one frangible layer further comprises at least one marker which is only visible under a first range of wavelengths of light.

29. The method as set forth in claim 19 wherein the at least one frangible layer comprise at least one fluorescent material.

30. The method as set forth in claim 19 further comprising imprinting one or more trace elements in the at least one frangible layer.

31. The method as set forth in claim 30 wherein the one or more trace elements comprise DNA.

32. The method as set forth in claim 30 further comprising encapsulating the DNA with at least one encapsulating material.

33. The method as set forth in claim 30 wherein the at least one frangible layer comprise at least one fluorescent material.