Now, I don't tend to have the quick reactions that many players do. I fold under pressure and get flanked often. With this in mind, the idea of a quick-release smoke that would give me just a few critical seconds of concealment sounded very attractive.
Think about it: you are in an entrenched position, but you see a whole squad about to flank you. They aren't in firing position, yet, but there is no way you can take out all of them yourself without breaking cover and being annihilated yourself. Best option: tactical retreat. The problem is that running requires that you break cover, too! If you could just get even a fraction of a second to build up some momentum, that would be all you need!
I will skip the full story and just give you the gritty results:
It does not seem possible to get more than a neat puff of mist when attempting to use airsoft or paintball grenades to disperse powders or other methods of creating smoke.
Having tried about a dozen different powders such as talcum powder, baby powder, kool-aid, and even printer toner [to see if a black powder would work better] in different amounts of packing and pressure, using different gases, and different sealing methods: I can certainly say that no configuration ever got the desired instant puff of smoke.
Save yourself the effort: you WILL end up having to replace o-rings and relube parts of your grenades (because of the fine powders), it WILL make a mess in your launcher, and you WILL NOT get a solid cloud of smoke - players will still be able to see you clearly. All you will have done is make a lot of noise and draw attention to yourself. At BEST, you might make some players wonder if you fired something more serious (such as a nerf rocket or shower spray) and make them hesitate for a moment.
There is a reason that the military uses smoke grenades that create smoke chemically and have a slower spread: let's say that you have a small explosive charge which could disperse a chemical (i.e. smoke) over a small area instantaneously. One of 2 things will happen:
1) in order for the smoke to "linger" it could be fairly light - but the charge will spread such a cloud too thinly for the smoke to be solid
2) in order for the smoke to keep from spreading too thinly, it would have to be heavy - but such a cloud would almost instantly fall to the ground
While there are some objects which create the smoke you would want as fast as you would want it - you can't get this effect using a compressed gas to spread a powder. Don't waste your time or money.
