Jack Wood Interview

[Junkie]

The man that designed the EGO and E-tek:

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PaintHR: Tell us something about yourself, who you are, what you do?
Jack Wood: I am Jack Wood and I am the lead designer at Planet Eclipse. I am responsible for the mechanical design of all Eclipse products.
PaintHR: When did you start to work at Planet Eclipse?
Jack Wood: I was working in the paintball company that Ledz and Julian bought and turned into Planet Eclipse. SO I have been here since the very first day. That would be 1991. 15 years this year.
PaintHR: Did you ever play paintball? If you did where?
Jack Wood: Yes I have been playing paintball for 20 years this year. I started when I was 14 at my uncles paintball site. He had one of the very first in the country. Soon after that I joined Ledzs team, the Banzai Bandits and played with them until the team disbanded in 2002. At that point I started to play for Nexus. I stayed with Nexus for the first 2 full seasons, at which point I started to take a back-seat in playing to concentrate on work and home life.
PaintHR: Let's start with the E-blade, did you have your fingers in it? What ever gave you the idea?
Jack Wood: Yes, of course I was involved. It was supposed to be a trial project for myself and Steve “Flash” Monks. He had just joined us to help us develop more electronic products. The Eblade was our first project together.
PaintHR: Cockers, tell us what you like and dislike about them.
Jack Wood: I like the way you can tinker with them and tune them. For mechanics or mechanical minded people it offers lots of opportunity to improve the performance. But that is also it’s big problem. It is too complex for the average person to really get their head around. That, plus the design is so old, and in making it so much faster (with QEVs, electro frame etc) we started to reach the limits of its endurance. To make the cocker more reliable and still fast, it would need a complete redesign to beef-up the week points.
PaintHR: Cockers are they really slow? Like everyone thinks they are?
Jack Wood: No, very far from it. With things we have learned from the Ego we feel we could now make a cocker faster than and open bolt marker, because of its firing sequence.
PaintHR: Why did planet eclipse leave the cocker platform?
Jack Wood: For many reasons. We wanted to produce our own gun. To do that you cannot endorse and improve a rival product. It would be like Mercedes AMG having a tuning factory to work on BMWs. It is just not good business sense. Plus WGP was in a time of upheaval with its sale to K” and they were becoming more difficult to work with.
PaintHR: The EGO is the hottest marker to have right now. Currently 7 NPPL pro division teams play with EGO's. Why?
Jack Wood: Teams want to use our gun. They come to us for sponsorship because they get an unbeatable package. They get full support at every event they will ever play in, to the point of having a tech go to their games or be in their pits. They have a gun that works. It is a real tank. These pro teams abuse their guns. They don’t know or don’t want to have to clean it. Talk to some of the teams and they are used to having 2-3 guns per player to just get through one event. Give them an Ego and they only need one gun. All XSV have just one gun. After last season they sold all their spare guns because they never got used. Plus, as you know, they are light, fast and accurate. XSV also like theirs because they can shoot paint more fragile than the teams they play against. It gives them an edge.
PaintHR: That’s intresting what you mentioned about brittle paint and the EGO. I have a EGO 06 and I have come to learn that I can shoot more brittle paint with it then I could have with my old DM4!? Why is that?
Jack Wood: Mainly to do with the bolt design. Everyone thinks that it is low pressure that helps you shoot fragile paint. That is true to a small degree, but the main problem these days is more to do with force feed loaders and the second ball in the stack getting clipped by the bolt coming forward to fire the first ball. That clipped ball falls into the breech and is fired on the next shot. It explodes in the barrel, and makes it look like a barrel burst. In fact it was already broken way before it was fired. We put the ramp on top of the bolt to help eliminate that problem, but it only works up to a certain point. You notice they added that to the new Angel One? Funny!!. That feature isn’t found on any of the spool valve guns. That would be the main reason.
PaintHR: The EGO, how did that come to be? Where you guy's bored? Wanted something different? What? Who's idea was it?
Jack Wood: We had wanted to make our own gun for years, but for one reason or another the timing had never been right. Off the back of the success of the Eblade we had the markets attention and a bit more financial stability to at last do it. It had always been a plan to do it, just picking the right time was the hard bit.
PaintHR: Now, take us back to the time when the EGO was just a idea. You there, good. Now tell us why did you guy's choose to go with the timmy style marker (poppet valve marker)? I mean why didn't you go with a spool valve system or just think of something new altogether?
Jack Wood: Well we wanted a gun, and felt we had to play it safe with the first model we released. I knew it had to be light, fast and above all reliable, and after working on every gun on the market, I knew it also had to be easy and quick to strip down and repair. Like I wanted to be able to replace the eyes without having to take the whole gun apart. What other gun can you do that on? The idea is to make a lasting impression with your first product. People remember if their gun breaks down more than anything else. It ruins a days play. So reliability is key. The poppet valve system is the most robust and reliable system to date. Spool valves inherently use a lot of seals. And something new would be unproven and would take longer to prototype and test. It seemed obvious at the time.
PaintHR: Why did you name it the EGO? What where the other options?
Jack Wood: A guy in production came up with the name. We had everything from Slayer to Banshee to Wyvern and every crap name in between. Then Dave pops up with Ego and it made perfect sense to everyone. EGO or E-Go, it just works.
PaintHR: Hope that guy got a raise!
PaintHR: The microswitch vrs the beam break trigger. Why did you guy's go with the beam break trigger? Also will there be any plans in the future to make a EGO 06 board with a microswitch?
Jack Wood: Optical switch because it has the potential to be a lot more simple to cure switch and mechanical bounce. Plus it is more advanced and high end. It has a lot of positives. No mechanical contact, no stressed components etc. The only negative is there is no tactile feedback from the switch. No “click”. 06 Micro board? Never say never!
PaintHR: Ah that last part of your answer just made a lot of people happy! Tell us more!
Jack Wood: Nothing to tell right now. Obviously we have been getting requests for this for a long time. It is just a case of finding the time to get it done. There is more work in that than you would think. Plus, we see no real rush as if you really have to have a micro switch, you can buy any number of boards out there.

PaintHR: Would you ask Jack about the excellent customer service they have? If it is a mandatory in Planet Eclipse marketing strategy or they are really cool guys?
Jack Wood: Both. We are players and know how it feels to have something not work. It costs us a lot (and I mean A LOT) of money to offer the level of support that we do. But it’s also the right thing to do. I think the players appreciate that, and that will hopefully lead to some loyalty from our customers. Plus they get piece of mind that if anything ever goes wrong, or they are in a pickle, we will bust our ass to make sure they get back on the field as quick as possible. I suppose we also care about how people feel about our products more than most other companies too.
PaintHR: Rumors floating around that XSV might be leavening P.E. as a sponsor and going with more money(For the 07 season); what are plans in the future to replace such a lingering giant? Is this even true?
Jack Wood: I hope they don’t leave, but who knows. There are always rumors about every team. I think they are Happy with us, with what they get from us. But if someone is willing to double their pay check from us, there is not much we can do. We have a pretty big stable without them though, so we would look to some of our other teams to pick up the slack.
PaintHR: Well this is just a rumor! But it would be really hard to imagine XSV shooting anything else but EGO’s
PaintHR: How long did it take to design the EGO?
Jack Wood: 7 months from starting the platform/principle sketches to releasing in San Diego 2004
PaintHR: What was the hardest part about designing the EGO?
Jack Wood: Making it user-friendly, reliable, fast, easy to maintain, robust, light, solid, easy to manufacture, look good and efficient. Pretty much everything about it then.
PaintHR: Who did the design for the EGO (the milling)
Jack Wood: Me
PaintHR: The E-tek, how long was this in the making?
Jack Wood: Since last year. About the same gestation period as Ego.
PaintHR: Why did you guy's make it at all?
Jack Wood: We felt we could offer a viable alternative in a market area that had very few competitors. We knew there was a market for a lower cost Ego, because when we moved to 06 Ego, the remaining 05s sold out really quick when we dropped the price a few hundred dollars.
PaintHR: Biggest differences between the EGO and E-tek?
Jack Wood: No LCD, No QEVS, Microswitch trigger, simple styling on everything from the bolt pin to the body and frame.
PaintHR: Tell us something about the E-tek, something not well known.
Jack Wood: It’s a very good gun for the money!
PaintHR: Why did you name it E-Tek
Jack Wood: Names are the hardest part of releasing any new product. So many have already been used, and you need something you can protect with copyright. We used Etek on some clothing, and liked the name and had it protected. It works. Not as catchy as Ego though, is it?
PaintHR: Why did you guy's use a microswitch in the E-tek? Why not opto?
Jack Wood: It’s a lot cheaper than an Opto switch
PaintHR: Tell us something about the EGO and E-tek that is a secret, something safe.
Jack Wood: There is nothing. It’s a pretty transparent gun. You get what you see.
PaintHR: What marker do you have, own?
Jack Wood: None

PaintHR: The SL66 AMAZING marker! Who did the design? Also, what gave you guy's the idea for the name?
Jack Wood: I did the design, as usual. Few people realize how much work went into that gun. Trying to make an already light gun lighter, without compromising its strength is pretty difficult, you know. Almost every aluminium external component is different on that gun. I really like it, and am really happy with it. Well, the name. We already had on 06 XSV Ego (with stock 06 frame) and a 6.5 XSV (with a STAR Frame) so I went for 6.6 version. Then SL for super-lite. And Mercedes has an SL55 so I thought an SL66 would be cool. Just me being stupid really.
PaintHR: The EGO 07, tell us everything you can about it. Please provide us with a picture!
Jack Wood: What Ego7???
PaintHR: Will the EGO 07 have something new, something that the EGO 06 doesn't have? If so what is it?
Jack Wood: What Ego7??? You guys are crazy..........
PaintHR: What new items/products will planet eclipse be releasing in the near future?
Jack Wood: Come on now, you should know better than that.............
PaintHR: Do you have a picture of your evil laboratory at Planet Eclipse?
Jack Wood: No, too much secret stuff in it, sorry.
PaintHR: Well you didn’t give us anything! No new scoop on the EGO 07, no scoop on new products from eclipse in the future, no pic of your evil laboratory! You have got to give us something! Anything! Come on, there is surely something you can tell me! Something new!
Jack Wood: This business has changed a lot over the last few years, and one of the biggest changes, as you well know, has been in protecting intellectual property. It has become one of, if not THE most valuable commodity in the business. Think about how much Smartparts made off licence fees of one patent. For that reason we now have a very strict confidentiality agreement on all future developments. Sorry, just the way we have to do things now. I suppose I could mention that we have some new finished coming out soon that we have been working on for the last few months. It looks pretty cool. A little different. And no, it’s not Aurora! Oh, and a new bolt that works really well. A few of our pro teams have been testing them for us and we have been getting fantastic feedback. It’s nice to have a new product coming that will make a real difference to a lot of players……….
PaintHR: There are lots of upgrades out there for the EGO. Are there any of them that made you say. Gosh! Why didnt I think of this!
No, not really. Pretty much everything that comes out as bolt on accessories has been prototyped and tested by me at some time in the past on one gun or another. I had a pressure balancing valve on an Impulse about 7 or 8 years ago. Wish I knew about patents back then. Think I could probably have retired by now if I had……… No, every part and decision made on the Ego was fully thought through and is there for a reason. There hasn’t been an accessory that I though should be on any of our range as standard.
PaintHR: What happened to the shaft barrel kits?
Jack Wood: We never did a Shaft Kit. It is definitely something we are looking into though for the future. Again, it is a time thing. One day soon though. I hope we will do a full kit, in different bores and lengths in a nice case. That would be good. What do you think?
PaintHR: I think that’s great! I first saw the Shaft on a Nexus EGO and loved the way the front and back parts of the barrel screwed on to each other!
PaintHR:What do you dislike about the EGO, is there anything that makes you say: "Man I wish we did this differently!”
Jack Wood: Yes, of course. That is why you keep refreshing it and changing the bits that annoy you. I hate the Frame tag at the back of the gun, but at the time it fulfilled all the criteria. I loved getting rid of it on the Etek. Makes the gun more rigid and easier to strip down. Removing the QEVs made that possible.
In closeing thank you for takeing the time to answer our questions! I want to add that were all eggar to see whats in store for us with the EGO 07 (hehe)
Jack Wood: You guys are crazy!!! WHAT Ego7???? No problem. Thanks guys, and hope it wasn’t too boring for you all having to listen to me waffling on.
Cheers Jack

http://www.painthr.com/index.php?opt...=221&Itemid=51

[Brain]

" These pro teams abuse their guns. They don’t know or don’t want to have to clean it. Talk to some of the teams and they are used to having 2-3 guns "
Sad......

[scpaintballer01]

Originally Posted by Brain

" These pro teams abuse their guns. They don’t know or don’t want to have to clean it. Talk to some of the teams and they are used to having 2-3 guns "
Sad......

i dont blame them, i hate messing with my gun cause i know it works and i know ill probably mess somthing up..:tdown: sombody want to replace a hose for me? lol.