I don’t know if plouffedaddy posted his review yet but here is the youtube link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3XT6S5GbI.
I’ve never heard of these and I looked up the company name here with no results. The drop test in the video with a fully loaded mag on the feed lips looked promising. I didn’t see much if any damage from the drops. The only features I didn’t like were the much larger baseplate and the raised ribs. So has anybody here heard of them, use them, or have any info?
We have a couple floating around the shop here. They look fine, I have only fired a few magazines worth of ammo through them, but they functioned just fine as well. They are noticeably more flexible than a P-MAG. I don’t know if that is good… or bad over the long term.
That’s what always bugged me about Lancer mags. Not that it was a problem… just didn’t inspire confidence in the mag.
I subscribed to their yt channel just to see if I might see some manufacturing or other testing videos and they uploaded a new video of them dropping it twenty feet or something. Maybe the flex is so they don’t snap but give a little. I remember reading something about blade-making being about hardness vs flexibility. Too hard (stiff) and the steel cracks, too flexible (soft) and it won’t hold an edge. I also don’t remember seeing a Lancer mag in the video, I wonder if the Lancer performed similarly?
We shot that drop test video (The 6 foot one) quite a long time ago and at the time, we couldn’t get our hands on any Lancers. But I want to be the first to say that we have drop tested Lancers since then and they won’t break from a 6 foot drop. There is a point above that where the steel feedlip bends, but we didn’t want to make a video with that because we felt it would look like we were picking on the Lancer.
The Lancer is a tough mag and certainly in a different league as far as toughness when compared to typical glass re-enforced nylon ar mags.
PS. I know some people will look at us dropping our mag from 20 feet and say that is pointless overkill, and it kind of is. But we have gotten so many questions/comments in the past couple of months about how there is no way our plastic feedlips could be as tough as Lancers. So we decided to make a video and show everyone just how tough our mag is. It’s in a league all it’s own. I guess because our mag is clear the comparisons are inevitable, but I have a lot of respect for the Lancer mag and we welcome anyone to compare us to them.
Thanks for the reply. Have you done any testing as far as UV/sunlight causing bleaching or weakening of the polymer? Also, it’s customary here to put your company name/affiliation in your signature line.
I know this is going to sound stupid, but I looked all over my account and could not find where I put in a signature…can you point me in the right direction?
As far as the polymer, we have spent over a year and a half tweaking, testing, and getting it just right. There have been numerous chemical, environmental, and UV tests (among others). The plastic had to meet several requirements as far as these criteria are concerned, but it ended up far exceeding our expectations. UV did not effect the plastic. The lab noted that plastic was virtually unaffected. I think they exposed it to 10,000 hours of UV…like 416 days. Once they finished that test, they then measured it’s physical properties and found the plastic retained over 99% of it’s impact resistance and tensile strength. So I would call it gtg as far as UV.
One other noteworthy characteristic of the plastic is it’s thermal stability. It easily survived a 6 foot fully loaded drop on concrete at -40* F. We also left the mag fully loaded for a couple of weeks at 200F to make sure the plastic wouldn’t get soft and spit rounds out…it had no problems at that low of a temperature (it doesn’t melt until over 700F).
Disclaimer: I work for ETS Group, the manufacturer of these mags.
PM Sent with instructions for editing signature.
ETS group, would like to check these out when time allows. Do you do all sales or have retail sales markets?
Just like to mess with new equipment and form my own opinions. PM me if this is against site rules.
About the Lancers…Ive used the five I got free when I bought my LMT several years ago. I was LEERY of them to say the least, but you know, they have been 100% for me. They are the 1st Gen, I guess youd call them.
You know…the perception of the mags being somewhat flexible equating to them somehow being too weak was something we knew would be an issue with our material. From everything I have seen and know about AR mags from all of our testing, the mag need only be strong enough to hold the rounds in place when fully loaded. If the mag can keep the rounds in when hitting it on the bottom then it’s rigid enough, being more rigid than that gains you nothing. But when you feel aluminum and a glass re-enforced nylon mag (like a Pmag) they are extremely stiff, and that feels strong. But when dealing with materials it’s important to remember that there are several different mechanical attributes that are important.
In the case of the AR mag, the 4 attributes that are most critical are tensile strength (is it rigid enough to have the feedlips hold in the rounds when fully loaded), creep resistance so the lips don’t spread over time when loaded (even metal creeps, most people don’t know that, but it’s usually at such a low rate that in this application it can’t even be measured), ductility - the ability of the material to absorb energy without deforming or breaking (typically the more rigid a material is, the more brittle it is), fatigue - when a material is exposed to repeated stress cycles (every time a round is stripped off and the next round pops up to the feedlip the mag experiences a cycle of stress). Fatigue is why really old aluminum GI mags will spread, typically it’s not creep with the aluminum but it’s fatigue from literally thousands of feeding cycles over its life. New GI mags are a lot better due to their manufacture processes. Our material was exposed to 1000psi (far more than the feedlip will ever see from spring tension) and it took 100,000,000 cycles to fail. The creep rate of our material was measured at 1000psi for for 100,000 hours at room temperature and the amount of creep was less than .01%.
So to sum all this up, when you all are judging the mechanical characteristics of your AR mags remember that “stiffness” is only one part of the equation and as long as it hold the rounds in, that really is all that matters.
Embedded it so folks don’t have to leave the thread.
Are there any retailers stocking these? I’d be interested to try a few.
How are the internal side rib’s compared to a GI mag, P-Mag or Lancer AWM? I ask because the 300BLK guys have been looking for a mag that would allow us to load longer OAL’s where the internal rib of the magazine is usually the limiter due to feeding issues when trying to load long. The round doesnt ride out of the mag right and it generally hits in between the feed ramps.
There’s a list of retailers on the ETS website. I found a store about an hour away from me that carries them, so I’m going to go pick some up to try out here in the next couple weeks.
We have tested our mags with lots of different .300 rounds. The only one we have found to be a problem thus far is Lehigh’s controlled fracture round, it’s too long OAL. Other than that there hasn’t been any problems we are aware of.
Another mag to buy in my never-ending, ‘own an example of everything’ AR mag quest
I watched the instructional vid on their site. The product looks interesting.
I wouldn’t mind picking up 4 or 5 of the coupling versions to try out.
Well what we are looking for is a mag with either no internal rib or a very small one so we can load rounds out longer. The problem with the .223 mags is that we have to end up loading short, basically where the OGIVE measure .250 it touches the rib, this is the same measurement as the case mouth on .223. The case mouth rides on that rib for .223, the bullet rides the rib for 300BLK. We would like to be able to seat stuff like 208g AMAX or 220g SMK’s out to mag length, but its not possible. Im seating 208g AMAX’s to 2.120 which is DANG short for that bullet. They run great and have decent accuracy, but the jump to the lands is REALLLLLY long. A few guys are shaving down ribs on Pmags or cutting them out completely on GI mags and can load long with no feeding issues.