It is a very common thing when a paintball gun starts chopping paintballs. In most cases, it is caused by the loader that is feeding paintballs to not be keeping up with the rate of fire the gun is putting out. Let me start by saying there are two totally different things that can happen that have fairly mixed terminology. My gun is chopping and my gun is breaking paint. These two are totally different and are caused by totally different things.My gun is breaking paint means that the ball is being fed into the gun perfectly and when you pull the trigger, the ball breaks in the barrel of the gun. Not to get too far into this but that is usually caused by low quality paint, old paint, bad weather conditions or too high of velocity. That is a subject for a different time because this article is written to focus on chopping paint.
When a paintball gun is chopping paint it means that a paintball is not all the way into the breech and the bolt begins forward progress. In most cases, the bolt has enough force to chop the ball in half and send half of the paint into the barrel already broken and half of the paint back into the loader. Once this happens, you will need to clean out your loader, paintballs and barrel in order to shoot another accurate shot. If you find your paintball gun to be chopping paint you need to determine the cause of the problem. In most cases, there are two different things that would be causing your gun to chop.
1. If your paintball gun has electronic anti chop eyes, your eyes may not be working. This is a simple fix that begins with checking the eyes of your gun. For this you would need to remove the loader and paintballs but leave the tank on the paintball gun. Make sure the eyes are turned on and fire the gun. If the gun instantly shoots, you have a problem with your eyes and it is allowing your gun to fire without a paintball fully dropped into the breech of your gun.
2. If your paintball gun does not have a set of electric eyes then your chopping is due to the loader on the gun or the rate of fire the gun is set at. In most cases, people are using a standard gravity fed hopper and when your gun is shot at a rapid pace slows loading to the gun. With paintballs not being constantly fed because you have to shake your loader, there is a delay in the drop of the ball. If you pull your trigger as the loader is delayed; well, you just chopped.
The easy fix for this would be to purchase an electric paintball hopper/loader. These electronic loaders have an agitator built in so when you fire your gun, it moves the balls around and causes them to load faster. Examples of that type of loader would be the Halo TSA, Revlution, VL Eye Force, Extreme Rage DB. Those loaders all feed about 10-12 balls per second and are priced around $30. If you need a faster loader you would want one that is force fed. The force fed loaders are about $65-$150. The force fed ones don't just agitate the paintball in your loader but force them into the gun. This lets them feed anywhere from 18-40 Balls per second. If you need something in that range, I would recommend the HALO B for about $85






