I have some contacts that might be interested. A few have the finacials to take it a step up, but maybe to risk adverse to act.
I’m a fan of the development model, but not sure on some aspects such as the insurance portion. I think I’d like to see it based off the ADEX lower.
If you like shoot me a note and I’ll run it by them.
I’d be down for something like that.
Dumb question: what about, “community sourcing” the funding to develop this? Something like how Kickstarter does it, but with guns.
(For reference: http://www.kickstarter.com/)
While getting hundreds/thousands of dollars per person would be difficult, getting, say, $10 per person, but a LOT of people would make the project easier to swallow.
Also, the “open source”/“Crowd Sourced” design has been used to some success in another, large model. Local Motors has taken this approach to building cars. I’m sure we could make it work with guns, especially given the design work already put in.
(Ref: http://www.local-motors.com/)
-Adam
I like the design and the concept, and would like to support it. I’ll be watching to see if anything to support more directly comes up.
It sounds like most or all of the design work is already done. From that point, I see it mostly as a matter of getting one or more competent manufacturers (since it’s an upper they don’t need to be an FFL-holding manufacturer, but they do need to be competent) to tool up and start building. This doesn’t look like a home workshop item unless you’re an engineer/machinist with at least a CNC mill.
But I repeat, I would like to support this and will be watching. Seems like one approach would be a campaign to contact selected quality manufacturers and ask them to start making these.
Has a prototype been developed yet?
Also, if you want to PM me I have a few other questions.
I like the concept. A true piston upper designed to mate with a AR/M16 lower with no carrier tilt and increased recoil impulse. I always thought a modified AR18 type upper or a modified Robinson Arms XCR upper would be a good starting point. How far out are you from production? Would you use Mil Spec like materials and criteria?
Again, without a modernized, ambi lower to put it on, what is the point?
Adam S, that Local Motors link was awesome. I had never heard of that! It’s a really neat idea, I hope they can build the company. It seems like an AR upper would be far simpler to do in such a manner than a full car! As far as us, we’ve sort of got other irons in the fire with our bolt gun stuff. We’ve had this design for quite some time now but it just keeps getting pushed back and I don’t see it being a top priority for us anytime soon unfortunately.
Some other guy, yeah there’s only a few parts a guy could build without a good mill, but it was designed to be efficient to produce. Maybe the shooter could do a parts build like an AR, not doing any machining.
We have some prototype parts but we’re pretty busy with other stuff and we thought this might be a cool experiment.
Materials are pretty standard firearm stuff, 6061 Alum extrusion, 4340 and/or 17-4 SS for some breech parts, 4140 for other steel parts, some tool steel, etc. Finishes are mostly salt bath nitride for steel and hard ano for Al. So yeah that’s about top of the line right now without getting exotic. If we had to start using crazy alloys then maybe the design needs changed.
I dont find the AR 15 lower to be glaringly deficient.
Sure it could be improved slightly, but that could be a separate project.
For consumers, everybody already has one ( six ) lowers, so trying out a new upper is less risk/cost than a whole new rifle.
I would gladly add a proper piston upper to the stable, and it’s easier to finance than a SCAR.
Originally we wanted to make it for 600 dollars ish, but that’s very difficult to hit with US made and all machined (due to lower quantities). If someone made 50k of these then maybe it could be done using mass production methods like MIM, casting, forging, etc.
I think the manual of arms for the AR platform is glaringly deficient and to correct it requires “fixing” the lower, the only part of the AR platform that hasn’t really been addressed till late in terms of modernization (there are supposedly some ambi lowers about to hit the street). Me, once my hand is on fire control, it shouldn’t have to leave for anything. There are few rifles out there that can accomplish that. It will also more than likely be a requirement for whatever service rifle specification that comes down the pike so I think now is the time to address the issue. Judging by Magpul’s last success with getting a modular rifle into shooter’s hands I don’t really see this project coming in at a price point lower than the SCAR unless there are some great strides forward made in the use of polymers here.
Ok, lay it out there.
What do you think is broke and how do you think it should be fixed?
This may need a separate thread.
What is broke? That damn bolt catch/release that requires removing your hand from the fire control, that is what is broken. It is an easy fix. Make a lower with ambi mag release, ambi safety lever, ambi bolt catch/release. I want my hand to never need to leave fire control. If the wonder-upper has a ambi/reversable non-reciprocating charging handle; bonus.
Concerning this Massoud upper-
The Mauser has locking lugs that engage the receiver. This has two disadvantages the AR barrel extension eliminates.
The barrel extension is the true receiver as it contains the pressures and stresses of firing.None of the stresses are contained by the upper receiver. The Massoud upper receiver would have to be beefed up and made of steel, or at least a steel insert sleeved to a beefed up upper with a resulting increase of weight.
Each time a Mauser barrel or bolt is changed, the headspace has to be checked and usually has to be adjusted by either re-timing the barrel, cutting the chamber deeper or lapping the bolt to the receiver. None of this is required with the AR barrel extension because the design allows the manufacturer to not only hold everything in tolerance but keep the processes in control as well. While the Mauser design can be held to tolerance, control is in the hand fitting of the parts. Interchangeability of parts without hand fitting required is lost.
Using an op-rod system places the reciprocating mass above the centerline of the bore, giving it greater leverage to induce muzzle rise. It may not be a big thing in itself, but it’s not an improvement over AR recoil management.
What we have, is a heavier upper with with fewer parts interchangeability than the AR and a higher center of gravity from an over the bore op-rod and a taller profile, none of which are improvements over the current generation AR upper
Fellas, let’s move the “lower deficiencies” to another thread so this does not devolve off topic. I’ve explained why a whole new lower is not desirable in this case. Also, Magpul has nothing to do with this project, as I stated previously.
We are looking for honest opinions. If anyone feels there is no need for another AR upper option or is against doing an open source project for some reason, feel free to state your case. However I am failing to see why this would not be a win-win and a cool endeavor.
If the benchmark for pricing is a SCAR (2k+), I would be surprised if a machine shop or combination thereof couldn’t beat that mark handily given a basically free TDP.
Mistwolf, you have some good points which have been dealt with, outside of your knowledge since you don’t know the design particulars.
I mentioned a steel trunion, this houses the lug abutments and handles the stress of firing. The upper receiver is made of Aluminum. This is basically the setup of both the ACR and SCAR. (The SCAR “barrel extension” is a trunion that bolts into the aluminum upper reciever). The ACR has a steel trunion in addition to using AR barrel extensions. Further, this upper could be configured to use a barrel extension type of setup, and then theoretically the trunion could be made of 7075.
Anytime you change any bolt or barrel you should check the headspace. At any rate, a skilled gunsmith once told me that he rarely saw an AR that would headspace correctly if you just had a collection of components (not like a full rifle built by whoever). One of the benefits of the Mauser style system, which is used by Accuracy International, is that you can cut barrels very efficiently. This is why it was developed by Mauser. You can, for example, order an AI barrel and the gunsmith can cut it without having your rifle in his hands. A gunsmith merely cuts the chamber to the correct depth and ships you a barrel. Headspacing off of an inner collar is the easiest way I am aware of for cutting barrels. In fact Badger Ordnance uses this method on their M2008 action as well. Parts interchangeability is actually increased. The only real advantage an AR has here is that the assembler can trust the barrel provider to have set the headspace correctly and hope that his bolt is in spec. Also there is some weight savings because you have a little less steel. What do you do if you order an AR barrel and either it or your bolt are out of spec slightly?
Weight savings, this would probably be a toss up but I don’t have exact numbers. With this upper, you ditch your AR buffer and I believe the carrier weighs less because it is way shorter, but you have a steel trunion and the piston assembly. 6 of 1 on the weight.
A piston inducing muzzle rise, I’m not sure where you got that. Perhaps in theory it could because of a small amount above bore weight as you mentioned, but maybe the downward force applied to the barrel by the piston would offset that. Do you have any data, high speed vid, or any evidence of this occuring in other piston guns? I know the piston Sig 556 rifle I shot was one of the sweetest shooting rifles I’ve handled.
Let me just clear one thing up so people don’t think I’m attacking the AR. The AR is not shit. Its inline operation was a great idea. It has advantages. The system has disadvantages. Until we get plasma rifles, nothing is really going to just make the AR (or any other semi modern rifle) obsolete.
I’m not in any way disappointed with this requiring advanced machining, I was simply noting who the real target audience was - at the least better machine shops, and really true manufacturers with engineering staff are a far better fit. Obviously M4c has a significant representation from this group, but this upper isn’t something I see being built on a hobby level, other than buying a complete/partly complete upper and attaching it to their lower.
I think the open-source “TDP” you issue could have separate levels of compliance, such as:
-basic design - almost just concept of operation
-key dimensions that make it compatible with an AR lower (it’s fairly useless without this, of course)
-additional key dimensions that would allow interchangeable parts within the upper between brands/makes
-material and strength specifications
-testing specifications
-probably others that wouldn’t be obvious to me
If it were divided up this way, a manufacturer could advertise which portions of the TDP they complied with. They could do a top quality build that complied with everything, or a plinker build that met only the first three, and had cost saving measures elsewhere. They could indicate compliance with all except for specified deviations - maybe they used certain MIM parts while you spec’d forged or barstock, or they did a plain 4140 barrel instead of a CMV, or nitride instead of chrome, etc. This is effectively where I see the AR market being, except that apart from the efforts of people on this site, you can’t really determine what parts of the TDP that any company other than Colt is complying with. Your open source could bring that out into the open for this design.
This would be terrific at $600, but I think it could be commercially viable at up to about $1000, considering what a high quality DI upper with a rail setup costs.
Some other guy, you are correct I think as far as targeting actual machine shops and manufacturers and such. There is still room for input from the AR enthusiast community here and room for guys to do design work. I looked at that Local Motors site and they would have mini design competitions for things like a hood scoop or graphics package.
I do like the idea of different levels of TDP compliance, especially for things like barrels (chrome vs nitride vs bare metal) etc. This is the kind of ideas we were hoping to generate. Keep those wheels spinning.
An open source TDP would have one big advantage for pricing, basically it would have low overhead (I’m including design/R&D costs here). In fact it would have such an advantage that care would have to be taken not to run the current AR piston upper companies into the ground or seriously hurt their sales. They have to pay their bills and employ a number of Americans, and the more companies around=more competition=better designs.
Justin
Not to state the obvious, but another big advantage of an open source TDP is that a really good machine shop without any design engineers could still build a good product just by carefully following the TDP. I expect the broader manufacturing companies would still do better, but who knows. And a shop doesn’t necessarily need to build complete uppers - they could build just one or two parts, carefully to the entire TDP for those parts, and provide a useful service. Compare if someone today were building nothing but AR bolts, but building them to the design and quality level of LMT or KAC bolts, without infringing anyone’s IP.
As for existing piston upper companies, I see three options for them:
Win for consumers. Win for good, adaptable businesses, whether or not their existing design is better or inferior. I’m not going to cry if some company has an inferior design and refuses to consider a replacement that has already been engineered for them, or was dependent on an excessively high profit margin to survive with their proprietary design.
As we’ve seen various firearms makers liquidate or get bought up, the value of standardized designs becomes apparent for future spare parts and accessories. As an example, I think Robinson Arms has some good designs, but I know if they go out of business there will likely be no spare parts, and that’s a consideration for a product I might hope to own and use for 40+ years.
As you develop this, I think there will need to be some sort of process for determining, approving, and “mandating” as part of the standard clarifications, increased details, and outright changes in the open source TDP. I’m sure that once production starts there will be features that either aren’t ideal, or can be improved a worthwhile amount, or were not even thought of but become important to the design. It would be good if there were an organized way for version 2.0, 2.1, 3.0 etc. to be implemented and standardized so that improvements could be made and cataloged. You might even want to include in the open source license some provision that certain types of improvements had to be made available to all without separate licensing - primarily any improvements that would take over the design and turn it into a proprietary design that got a cheap start if they were able to be protected from use by others - while also allowing other categories of improvements to be protected and not require any free licensing. This could get legally complicated and I expect you’ll want to consult with IP lawyers both experienced in software (where open source is fairly well known) and separately experienced in mechanical design, where this is a fairly new idea.
I’m sure someone will say “kill all the lawyers” etc., but if you release this completely free and then one company comes up with, and patents, a single improvement that has a dramatic effect, or is even just plain necessary for the basic design to work, all of sudden that company effectively owns this design that you created, and the intent of an open source approach could be killed early in the development. I see parallels with the GNU software license, although it’s somewhat at the extreme end and not necessarily what you want to copy, although I think it would be worth looking at for ideas.
The advantage of the AR barrel extension design is that there is little variance between barrel assemblies and bolts. If your gunsmith is telling you he has seen few ARs built from components that didn’t need head spacing, as in needing adjustment, his experience runs counter to most of those on this forum who work on ARs for a living. Many on this forum will tell you it’s very rare for the head space to be off when using a new drop in bolt with a new barrel assembly.
When you mention the Mauser type design, I’m thinking original Mauser 98 bolt action. That action doesn’t use a collar.
I’m not certain I’d want to trade a barrel extension for a trunnion in the receiver.I know what a pain it can be dealing with the trunnion as used on the HK roller lock action.
As for the reciprocating mass being above the bore line adding to muzzle rise, that’s easy to figure out using simple physics. The further from the bore line the reciprocating mass is, the more leverage it has. It’s a principle modern arms designers have been aware of for many years