Replacing mim parts

[ltxi]

MIM parts are good. 55 Chevy's are good. Old wives can good, MIM or otherwise. Neither bird strikes nor clogged jets are good. I'm not very good anymore and I'm neither MIM nor CNC.

[Bawanna]

Now that's profound right there, I don't care who you are.

[skiflydive]

Something as minor as a bird strike can totally ruin the compressor vanes of a jet engine. Just sayin.

As a pilot I can tell you there is NOTHING minor about a bird strike.

[Popeye]

I believe your reading more into the quality of mim parts more than needs to be read into when your talking about everyday civilian pistols.

[Bawanna]

There ya go right there. MIM has come a long way and yes you do get a bad part now and then, but you get a bad machined part now and again too.

If it didn't work they wouldn't be using them.

Sometimes a machined part will work better or improve things some but MIM parts work.

[ltxi]

As a pilot I can tell you there is NOTHING minor about a bird strike.

x2...

[CJB]

Actually B'man, its more of a case parts being nearly unable to be manufactured, if made solely by machining processes.

Think of it this way, we all - you, me, them... - do the job with the tools available to us, or we dont do the job at all. Seems simplistic, no?

Consider this - no matter the brain behind the most early firearms designs, those designs were only as good as, and were completely restained by, and confined within, the known manufacturing processes of the day. As folks figured out how to drill, and then deep drill metal, old wrapped steel barrels gave way to thicker, stronger muskets, then rifles, as the ability to create rifling was invented.

Time passes slowly....

Mr Browning learned how to make things from his father Johnathan. In turn, John Mose' had the tools of the day at his disposal. He had the forge and hammer, he had the miller as it was called then), the lathe, the driller (also as it was called), saw, chisel, knife, files, sandpaper and buffer. He had sand casting, and crude lost wax casting. All the parts he created were made with those tools of manufacturing, and once assembled, became his gun designs in real wood and steel.

Don't you think that Browning considered how he was going to make the parts, as he designed them as cutouts, then wood, and finally steel? Yes he did. Do you think he could have conjured up all sorts of wild and fancy designs if he he had molded polymer and mim parts?

Look what Ruger did with casting..... they took it to an art form.

Things progress.

Have a good look at the lever part of the P or PM slide stop. Its not machined. Have a good close look... under a 7x or 10x loupe. Its either cast or molded. The machined part is the pin. You realize, that that lever, as designed, cannot be easily machined by any economical process, no?

Colt learned how to create cast slide stops very early on. Probably back in the 70's. Rumor has it, Ruger has ghost-cast for them, and other firearms companies for a very long time.

Each process has its limitations, each its benefits, and each its shortcomings. If the part is designed to be made by a certain process, and its soundly designed, and the manufacturing process is good, then you'll get a very good usable part, that gives long service life.

Consider the low number Springfield rifles.... oh dayhum... we burn the steel when heat treating 'em and they're blowin' up. Those were forged steel receivers, but not good.

Its all about limitations, process control, manufacturing checks and balances.

On that latter term - we reloaders use our own manufacturing checks and balances.

Many reloaders loadin lots of 50. If there are two primers left over after you have 50 supposedly manufactured cartridges... you know there is a problem. You have introduced your own simple procedure to ensure that all the primers were seated before charging and seating.

Nothing wrong with injected metal molding... if you are creating a good part from the design right on up to finished part. If you cheapie cheapie things... expect problems. If you exceeed the process capability... expect problems. Its pretty simple really.

[ltxi]

Now...if we can just figure out how to make these things entirely out of plastic with plastic mags and ammunition sos we can get them through metal detectors.

[Bawanna]

Didn't Glock already do that?

[ltxi]

Didn't Glock already do that?

Sorta, just not enough plastic. However, everyone knows this now and it becomes a gift to anyone who can do the slide, barrel, and mags at least. Plus the ammunition, of course. With the ammo one could most likely get by with current non-magnetic cases and plastic bullets.

[muggsy]

As a pilot I can tell you there is NOTHING minor about a bird strike.

As a former mechanic with USAir, I'd have to agree with that statement.

[les strat]

There is good MIM, and there is bad. I just viewed a photo of an SR1911 that the MIM front site had severed due to recoil. I have the same pistol and have never had a problem, but I have read of a few others that have. But if there is a weakness in the MIM during molding, it can create "fault lines" that are prone to breakage.

[jocko]

good and bad in any product, just like people. really to me no indication of anything.

[JustinN]

I had a tungston ring. Those are supposed to be scratch resistance, un-cuttable, etc. The batch of tungsten my ring came out of was bad. It scratched all to hell quite quickly. The company replaced it and the new one did not have any issues, but it can happen with anything.

[Planedude]

True enough, when we were working on one of the first STOVL F-35s We installed a $70K heat exchanger in the jet. It came with five pages of signed and stamped inspection documents showing it had passed extensive testing a had passed a 45min, 75psi pressure leak-down test.
We had forgotten to test the air conditioning lines above the installed exchanger, so I said no problem and reworked the test parameters to include the heat exchanger.
You guessed it, it leaked, badly, at 5psi. Blew really pretty soap bubbles for the video we shot an sent back to Honeywell after they told us it wasn't their product at fault, it had to be our plane.
No matte the product, it's price or the level of inspection on it's way out the door, some C-eeeeee-rap get through. I try not to take it personal when I find it, at least not anymore.

The MIM parts in my Taurus 1911 look awful, but work just fine... (Shrug??)