Soft Air Guns

Introduction

Soft air gun is a name for airsoft guns that is given by Crosman and Cybergun. These guns are powered with gas, spring or electric. It fires small plastic pellets of 8mm or 6mm diameter. The spring operated air guns are also sometimes known as soft air guns. The inexpensive soft air guns are low powered and they are used by some players as the professional soft air gun users. But these new players play these guns in their backyard. The professional airsoft is played by using some of the most expensive models of the soft air guns. This concept is similar to the concept of paintball. The only exception is that the airsoft is the simulated as the military and has objectives rather than constant deathmatches.

The soft air guns are the replicas of the real firearms and they cannot be converted to fire real bullets. But body kits and fictional firearms is occasionally available. An example of this is M41A pulse rifle that featured in the Alien series of films.

Some inexpensive models of the soft air guns are caricatures of firearms like mini electrics or reduced scale models like boys models by some makers. The XM8 prototypes are the replica designs of the firearms that never wet into production or service.

All the soft air guns such as gas, spring and electric work on the same principle. The gas is compressed which in turn expands and forces the pellet down the barrel of the gun. Each type of soft air guns has its own pros and cons.

Spring powered soft air guns

These guns are single shot devices. It uses potential energy that is stored in the spring. The spring launches an airsoft pellet down the gun barrel. The user is required to cock the spring gun before firing a shot. This is achieved by pulling back the grip on a shotgun or slide on a pistol or bolt on a rifle. These actions compresses the spring and makes he gun ready to fire. Thus these guns are incapable of semi automatic or automatic fire. The power of the spring powered soft air guns is low as compared to electric and gas powered soft air guns. The power of the soft air guns depends on its cost.

Although most guns use spring for the propulsion of a soft air pellet but they are not considered in the same category as the single shot spring powered guns. The cost of the low end spring guns is much less than the electric powered equivalent guns.