The DYE Rotor

DYE has been a mainstay in the sport of paintball almost from the beginning, providing high quality playing clothing, packs and other soft goods for players who wanted the best. As time went on, they started delving into the hard parts, mask, and marker market, with private label autocockers, and spool valved markers like the DM series, which started with the DM4. Their DM series markers are among the most successful in the sport, powering The Ironmen to their 2008 NXL Championship as well as their domination of the NPPL Circuit. For 2009 DYE has chosen to enter the hotly contested hopper market, which includes standouts like the HALO, Reloader B, Magna, VL Vlocity, and Hard Corps Torque loaders, all of which are used by top teams around the world.

So what does the Rotor bring to the table? For starters, it boasts a full 200 paintball capacity, which for the all-important breakout portion of the game, can give a player the advantage by enabling him to put more paint in the air over a longer period of time. DYE has a video on their website showing a modified DM8 with the eyes turned off and the rate of fire set to unlimited. In the video, the marker is firing at 40 balls per second in short bursts, and the Rotor keeps up with no skips or chops.

Out of the box, we noted immediately that the majority of the shell for the Rotor is made of a softer plastic than the ABS or polycarbonates used in current loaders. It’s the same material used on the old VL Revolutions and VL2000′s, which were nearly indestructible. Accenting the matte black plastic of the shell are polycarbonate accents that allow the user to see inside the loader to monitor how much paint he has remaining in the hopper. The lid is color matched to these accents, and if you decide to change the color of your loader or buy a different colored marker, you can buy kits to change the color of your Rotor.

Taking the Rotor apart for servicing or cleaning is accomplished without tools. To remove the top half of the shell, you pull up on a release situated directly beneath the lid, and then push a button further down to release the top half from the remainder of the hopper. Form there, you pop out the various components of the loader, including the drive system out of it. Each piece of the drive line is individually replaceable, which over the long term can reduce the cost of owning a Rotor.

The Rotor uses a mechanical sensing element to detect the presence of a paintball in the loader’s feedneck, so it’s not always running. There are two elements in the force feed mechanism that pushes paintballs into the marker. They’re a pair of gear driven, counter rotating arms to push the paintballs down the feedneck. The anti-jam duties are performed by a pull trigger mechanism, which reverses the feed arms to clear over sized or misshapen paint. The Rotor is powered by 3 AA batteries. For this test, we used Energy Paintball batteries.

We tested the DYE Rotor on two separate markers, a Planet Eclipse Ego 8 and a Dangerous Power Threshold.

What makes it all work!

The profile of the loader on-marker is very low, which reduces a player’s profile on field, which can give him a higher chance of continued survival on-field. On most paintball hoppers, the feedneck is generally located at about the mid-point of the loader. The Empire Magna and VL Evlution II loaders put the feedneck at the front of hopper, placing the bulk of the hopper’s weight at the back of the marker. The Rotor splits the difference between these two extremes, placing the feedneck about 1 inch forward of the loader’s mid-point lengthwise. This gives a nice balance on-marker, without the hopper being subject to spinning around backwards during slides and running and gunning and other high-stress movements on-field.

The Rotor is a very quiet hopper, due mainly to the small, low amperage motor driving the gear train. The on-off switch has a nice, positive feel to it, and the button lights up with a brilliant blue LED when it’s on, so there’s no doubt when the hopper is on or off. The lid is easy to open and close, and while the opening to pour paint in is a bit on the small side, upcoming accessories like the integrated speed feed will make this less of a factor.

The DYE Rotor is an expensive hopper, with an MSRP of $150, and current street pricing right at that $140-$150 range. However, if you’re looking for a hopper for the long haul, the Rotor might be the ticket for you. DYE is known for making quality equipment, and we can’t see DYE staking that reputation on a hopper unless it was up to their very-high standards. For more information, check out www.dyeprecision.com