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Loaders, commonly known as hoppers, hold paintballs for the marker to fire. The main types are gravity feed, agitating and force-feed. Stick feeds are also used to hold paintballs, although they are not considered to be "hoppers".
While agitating and force-feed hoppers facilitate a higher rate of fire, they are subject to batteries failure, as well as contact with moisture. Thses are upopular with woodsball and scenario players. Ball breaks pose a problem for all hoppers, regardless of design. When a paintball leaks paint into the hopper from a break in the hopper, the gelatin shells of the paintballs can deteriorate, causing them to stick together.
Stick feed
Stick feeds are mainly used on pump and stock-class markers. They consist of simple tubes that hold between ten and twenty paintballs. Stick feeds are usually parallel to the barrel; player must tip the marker to load the next paintball. Some stick feeds are vertical, or at an incline to facilitate gravity feeding, though this contravenes accepted stock-class guidelines.
Gravity feed
Gravity feed is the simplest and cheapest form of hopper available. Gravity feed hoppers consist of a large container and a feed tube molded into the bottom. Paintballs roll down the sloped sides, through the tube and into the marker. These hoppers have a maximum rate of eight balls per second. Gravity feed hoppers are very cheap, since they are made of only a shell and a lid, but can become jammed easily as paintballs accumulate above the tube. Occasionally, rocking the marker and hopper can prevent the paintballs from jamming at the feed neck.
This problem is exacerbated when using a modern, fully-electronic marker. Most economic and mechanical markers use a blowback system for recocking, or other methods where a large reciprocating mass is involved. This will shake the balls in the hopper slightly, facilitating gravity feed. A marker with both electronically controlled recocking and firing will often exhibit no shake whatsoever while operating. Because of this, small packs in the hopper are not broken up, and feeding problems are exacerbated.
Agitating
Agitating hoppers use a propeller, spinning inside the container, to agitate the paintballs. This prevents them from jamming at the feed neck, allowing them to feed more rapidly than gravity feeds. Older tournament-level hoppers are of the agitating type, since the higher rate of fire requires a reliable hopper.
There are two types of agitating hoppers: those with sensors - called "eyes" - and those without. The eyes consist of a LED (light emitting diode) and a photodetector, typically a phototransistor or photodiode, inside the neck or tube of the hopper, to detect the presence of a ball. The eyes prevent the marker from shooting until a ball is fully loaded into the chamber. In a hopper, the eyes detect when a ball is absent, causing it to turn. Agitating hoppers without eyes will quickly deplete batteries and may bend or dent paintballs, causing a short, less air efficient, skew shot. Agitating hoppers with eyes will only spin in the absence of a ball, preventing damage and prolonging battery life.
Force-feed
Force-feed hoppers use an impeller to capture paintballs and force them into the marker. The impeller is either spring-loaded or powered by a belt system, allowing it to maintain constant pressure on the stack of paintballs in the feed tube. This allows force-feed hoppers to feed paintballs at a rate exceeding 22 ball per second, since the mechanism does not rely on gravity. Force-feed hoppers are the dominant type used in tournaments, being the only type of loader capable of maintaining the high rate of fire of electropneumatic markers.
Some markers use force-fed loaders shaped as firearms magazines. These are preferred when a low profile is required, as in woodsball 'sniper' positions. Even more unusual are fully-contained magazines, incorporating both a source of propellant gas and force-fed paintballs.
The newest type of force feed hoppers communicate wirelessly with the marker's electronics using radio frequency. This allows the hopper to begin feeding paintballs before the pneumatic system of the marker has begun cycling the next shot. This system almost totally eliminates mis-feeds and can increase the speed of the loader and the battery life because the loader is only in operation when the marker is preparing to fire.
From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintball_marker
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