Why Guns Take Years to Get Into Production
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- / forgottenweapons
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Today, let's take a few minutes to discuss why it's hard to actually put guns into production. Making a functional prototype is one thing, but the truly hard part is often translating that one prototype into a whole set of tooling and fixtures to mass-produce the design. Generally speaking, the whole development process is a 5-10 year endeavor, and even some of the guns we think of as the most reliable today were plagued with serious manufacturing problems early on.
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One thing a lot of people who are not machinist dont understand is wear on cutters changes dimensions which affects tolerances.
How are you posting this 2 days ago the video came out like 3 minutes ago
When it's screaming and throwing sparks, turn the inserts! 😂
I always thought that would be a thing, glad to know it wasnt a wrong thought! Im not a machinist but I do watch ThisOldTony so that ofcourse makes me qualified xD
@@comradeautukov977 patreon supporters get early access to videos. Its actually rather common on youtube
And then you need to calculate tolerances for tooling, and then tolerances for tooling for making tooling, and then tolerances for tooling for making tooling for making tooling...
As a mechanical engineer it is refreshing to hear someone else list all the excuses why your work is not going faster.
Now if only the customer could understand this
@@Perfectedketchup forget customers.
I just wish our own managers and sales people would finaly understand it...
@@Bird_Dog00 This! If things aren't going fast enough for the budget, pressure increases for the workers and production quality sometimes suffers.
@@TacticalTerry It's not just production quality.
Example from my workplace:
GM: "Oh, developement took longer than expected and the project is now behind schedule and we won't make the deadline for delivery of the 0-series production. No worries, I just "streamline" the schedule for the SOP phase from a week to 3 days. that'll save 2 days."
Seriously. What is it with managers? What are they being taught in their oh so expansive and expensive education?
Do they realy belive that they can just decree something and it then will magicaly happen?
Do they belive that all you have to do is just "want" something to happen strongly enough and the universe will to bend and reshape itself to their wishes?
Do they realy belive that if something goes wrong, it is just because the knuckle draggers down in the workshop didn't show enough enthusiasm for the project? That those grease monkeys just didn't want it to work strongly enough?
@@Bird_Dog00 Ahhh these are also very important points. I agree wholeheartedly!
Management has blind spots when it comes to understanding the work that the people in their work group do. Head management (CEO/CFO/etc) pressures upper management to meet objectives. Upper management talks with mid-level management and sets expectations and then the workers under the mid and low level management are automagically expected to produce results based on those expectations. (You and I know this, but I write this for others peeking inward at our conversation.)
In a bad company, the disconnect between upper management and the workers never gets solved. Workers do not get raises and bonuses are pulled when objectives are not met no matter how unrealistic the expectations and objectives are.
My company used to be like that, but upper and mid-level management decided to look in-detail into the work processes and complications at the lowest levels, and then they worked with everyone below them to reduce errors in the processes and try to communicate to head management as to where the company stands in its capabilities. From there, training and meetings happened to adjust the situation in a mostly practical manner so that we could still achieve great things without as many cases of burnout and punishment among the workers. Things are still imperfect, but it looks like the overall company has begun to run healthier than it has in the past.
Unfortunately at your company I believe the upper and mid level management may be isolating themselves in fantasy land (from what it sounds like) and are unwilling to harness enough time, resources and and patience to be the people who fix the issues that head management is noticing. The company my father worked for was exactly like this. From one side of their mouths, management wanted everyone safe and preached it a lot. From the other side of the same mouths, they required my father to drive up to 7 hours to get between job sites with up to 30 hours without sleep because management wanted him in the new job site location pronto. :/
The education of management must be purely theoretical at some point. They rely on numbers so much that they can't look up on occasion to see what is really happening around them. This is a problem that still clings to some of our management.
The people directly above your position will know how hard you work, but the company heads will only praise progress if their numbers are met. Everything else lives in a fog. :/
The only thing you may be able to do at your level in the company is to work with your team to keep morale up and also to try to eliminate anything unnecessary.
Example: People often come to me at work while skipping the project coordinator (which leaves the coordinator blind to problems that he should know about). In response to this, I answer what I am asked about, but I also copy the coordinator on the communications that I send so he is aware of what goes on under his feet (so to speak). Sometimes the coordinator knows something more than I do and clarifies something, and other times all is well and he has nothing more to add.
In this case, my coordinator is also the owner and chairman of the company, but he is very humble and practical so I feel safe going to him with issues and seeking his wisdom. In return, he has mercy on my mistakes and helps get information to the correct places as efficiently as possible. Sometimes he gets emails that I do not get, so I might ask him for a client's email response to help answer other questions that come up.
If you feel safe creating bonds on your team level and with the manager above you, it might help sort out info gaps if those are destroying production efficiency.
I feel for you and what you are going through. If you ever need to vent more I would be happy to listen.
you should make a seperate video on this 7th round garand issue that sounds very interesting
This please!
He definitively should!
Agreed
Already covered th-cam.com/video/-18t3FxdQkY/w-d-xo.html
@@reloader7sixtwo Ta muchly for that.
"It's compounded by the fact that you will never be able to predict and test everything."
This might be the wisest thing I have heard you say, Ian. I was an engineer for 45 years. I don't know how many times I tried to explain this to the man who just couldn't wait to start making money on something that seemed so simple to him.
@Fire Starter no idea what lasers have to do with engineering guns? As for computers, the most famous guns most people were designed before computers existed.
But besides that, no simulation is perfect and nor can it predict some idiot hotloading his home-made ammo with dynamite or something else stupid. The GIGO principle applies at all times.
@Fire Starter you think a 3D printer is more precise than a CNC? Fine, it might have less vibrations, but at the very least the grain size is going to be a tolerance limit. Also, like Ian said, it comes down to cost.... printing individual guns is SLOW. For prototyping a 1-off, yeah it's faster than spinning up an entire mold/press/ jig, but once it's going it never gets faster.
I keep having to explain to the 'young' guys that Murphy Rules With An Iron Fist. You plan for everything you can think of, and maybe you succeed, but then it is the thing that hits you sideways that you never thought of that derails you. Example: Years ago I did a live broadcast event in a country that, shall we say, wasn't exactly known for freedom. Everything was lined up with umpteen levels of redundancy. Event day came and the government official who had helped us with "things" was nowhere to be found. He defected to the rival country next-door. Needless to say, things didn't go well after that. You learn to plan for the unexpected - always have a disaster plan and always expect that something will go wrong. Most of the time you're fine, but the Universe seems to like to spring things on you at the worst possible time and place. ;-)
@Fire Starter 3DP metal often isn't very durable as it's prone to microbubbles that propagate fractures. It's the most loose and awful way to assemble a metal part, which is why we just don't use it to make anything that forms a pressure vessel, (like the receiver of a gun does while firing).
High end 3DP metal, such as used by SpaceX for the turbopump propellers in the Merlin rocket engine, are extortionate. It's used there because the primary demands are light weight, high heat tolerance, and very, very precise measurement tolerance. A mas-produced gun using 3DP parts would be far more expensive than the competition, and probably still prone to failure due to the lack of structure in its metal components.
If you want to learn more about this, Real Enginerring did a great video with microscopic footage of the laser sintering process showing the trapped air bubbles. It's like a part made of the sloppiest welding known to man. Fine for making anything domestic or aesthetic, useless for most heavy applications.
@Fire Starter I retired from hi tech sheetmetal we used lasers and computers still does not make a usable part right off every time.
Its like he did this as a favor to Brandon Herrera and his AK-50 progress.
Exactly what I was thinking
Yupp funny qurilation have a great day 👍
Beat me to it
no SLAP rounds in the AK50.v
Oooga booga where ak50
Alternate title: “Why Ian WILL NOT be designing his own firearms”
Dang, I was looking forward to modern guns with wooden furniture
@@AlistairAi They make wooden ar furniture.
More accurately, “Why Ian will not be PRODUCING his own firearms “.
@@gregdaweson4657 as standard I meant
Alternate title: “Why there is still no AK50"
Short answer: if you rush it, it blows up.
And then you'll have to stick a thumb in it
@@ieuanhunt552 Nice...😉
Although, in that case it wasn’t the gun, it was the round being used. SLAP Rounds are no joke.
[CCCP has joined the conversation]
Much like 3D printed guns haha
@Fire Starter yes. but there's a bunch more to it then that.
Tool design, factory layout, materials sourcing, cost/weight reduction where applicable... Even when you have that knowledge and tooling, it takes a long time to get right unless you're making something very simple.
AK-50 BMG from Brandon Herrera. His recent AK-50 update is a good presentation.
And he has taken Kentucky Ballistics' accident to heart and plans to fire that puppy remotely from a tripod.
Yep.
The Smith Machine Group FG42 is another example.
This is a great example.
Beat me to it..
instagram.com/p/CPUCXTNr08P/?
I was tasked with starting an ar15 production line. We had the technical data, prints, and everything else. It still took 3 months to spin up as we played around with cycle time and toolpaths.
That's wild I work for Sturm as a cnc tech on the AR line and getting a line up and running from start to finish in 3 months is pretty quick despite what many people may think.
Guns are easy; making tools is hard; debugging is hardest.
Same with cars, trains and everything in between.
Did you watch the video? That's exactly what he just said! From working prototype (ok, can do) to production (hard) i.e. debugging as you say. Your comment is moot
"guns are easy"
*looks at G11*
...sure
Guns are easy. Sucking tools is hard. Sucking tools at gunpoint is hardest.
@@jasong6027 You're as much of a tool as the machines discussed in the video if you think that comment wasn't intended to be a summary of the video
To me the fact that those large caliber break actions dont explode at the breech end every time you shoot them is simply incredible. Given that the barrel and breech are virtually flush with each other with no recessing of the cartridge, every shot is a mechanical miracle.
Except when they do haha
(Kentucky Ballistics)
@@Isosceles371 to be fair now that is what gappens when you us most likely counterfeit high liwer rounds.
I think he's talking about double barrel rifles guys
@@gunrelatedvids not necessarily double barrel; merely that you fold it open to load
The funny thing about tolerances, clearances & manufacturing capabilities, especially when you're talking about high-speed guns (Gatling's in my case) is that you're trying to satisfy competing goals:
- Want the mechanism to be smooth and reliable up front? Design the clearances you need and tighten up the tolerances a bit.
- Want the weapon to be functional from -65°F to 160°F? Open up the tolerances a bit.
- Want the weapon to function reliably for 100,000 rounds between overhauls? Start out with the clearances and tolerances a bit tighter and let part wear open them up... but not too much, you still need it to behave well when it fires round 99,999.
- Want the weapon to not have to be cleaned of grease, dust, and gun gas gunk too often? Open up the clearances a bit so the build-up doesn't bind anything, but keep the tolerances tight so that the mechanism doesn't get sloppy.
- Does the weapon have parts (like the barrel) that get really hot (and grow) during firing? Open up the clearances on the interfaces to those parts to keep the stresses manageable, but keep the tolerances reasonably tight so that you don't lose part interchangeability.
- Have a customer that wants the weapon at the cheapest price? Manage your part clearances and open up the tolerances as much as you can (precision costs money).
- Want to maintain good round control over the life of the weapon? Minimize the clearances and tighten up the tolerances on the guide features.
- Want to use a gun that fires at 4,500 spm as a sniper rifle? Manage your clearances and tolerances throughout the entire temperature range of the weapon - realizing that your gun barrels at the end of your engagement are 1/4" longer than they were when you started because of thermal growth.
You can't succeed in everything at the same time, so the design process includes a number of trades - what are you (or the customer) willing to give up in order to get something else?
"limits and fits" was invented as a reliable means of making firearm parts fit and function together. It was subsequently adopted in other Engineering fields where parts interchangeability is quite important.
Ford motor company really advanced manufacturing tolerances. That work was based off guns, but it fed back into ww1 and ww2 gun production m
Joseph Whitworth (who apprenticed under Henry Maudslay the inventor of the screw cutting machine lathe) was the key name behind machined precision parts - including standardised screw threads. Earlier designs used filing jigs and brass parts.
GD&T became a thing because of torpedo manufacturing.
But the real fun begins where tolerances accumulate over a chain of interacting parts (like in a moderately complex gun, surprise, surprise). Add the temperature changes and it becomes _too_ much fun.
@@rrolf71 Differential thermal growth is a big deal! You are so correct to point it out. For example,
I saw this video on my lunch break and thought I would add a relevant anecdote as a gun designer. Just this Monday I did the first testfire of the first production samples of a new design. I made the original prototype about 4 years ago. There are changes I still need to make that I did not realize were issues until I actually had it in hand (and a few issues I knew would be issues but the people who make decisions didn't believe would be issues till I put it in their hands). These production samples will be basically destroyed. High round count test fires, drop tests, intentional bore obstruction tests, and if anything survives I will start being stupid with the gun and intentionally breaking things, putting them back together wrong any way I can, just doing anything to make it break or fail and then doing whatever I reasonably can to counter any problems those tests show. While the samples all ran fine so far there are still things that will be easier to make better now than later if we find them, though some things may be left in simply because the practicality of changing them outweighs the likelihood or severity of the problem. Hopefully we will be able to actually start selling it early next year. Five years for a relatively simple blowback PCC. And prototypes of the pistol version have been waiting at ATF for over a year for classification. I could go on for days about development of firearms and the issues we encounter, from not only the engineering side but also the marketing, logistics, and even legal side, with patent applications and patent searches about every little detail to avoid what Springfield is experiencing currently for example. CAD/CAM, CNC machines, 3D printers, and the internet have drastically changed how firearm development is done and made things so much more efficient, so it is realistic for a team to get out a firearm in a year or two as long as it is not a large departure from existing design, but it is not uncommon for some guns and some companies to still take several years to get things right, especially because as MIM and polymer parts are more and more required to be cost effective the sophistication of the tool design as well as the time and effort (read MONEY) required to make those tools is exponentially higher. If a part is being milled and it needs tweaked it is often as simple as changing a few lines of G-Code, zero cost and can be done mid run. If a part is being injection molded and needs a tweak then it could cost tens of thousands of dollars and lose weeks of production doing it. Anyway, I could go on. Yes, it takes a long time to get anything right, especially guns, because a small mistake can literally mean the difference between life and death. Thank you for the video.
2 years later update?
As a engineer I can tell you that usually its like this.
With experience you can get something thats working on the first try, the third try its going to be ok and on the fifth iteration and beyond its going to be good.
I imagine this applies to designing guns as much as designing other machines.
As a fellow engineer I can attest to this. I always figured its a lot harder with guns, since on machines you usually have a baseline to go on in regards to the tolerances. Which isn't the case for a new firearm.
@@UserAccountID I mean, it's only a side project. A fully running Prototype isn't even there yet, but now he made some good steps so that might be done in like a year or two.
I'm not even sure if the gun will go into mass production, I dont really see a market for it 😅
@@davideberth2603 there's enough AK nerds out there that will scrape together $10k for an AK that shoots .50bmg.
@@UserAccountID If its mostly one dude working part time, having a GOOD AK-50 by 2035 is optimistic. But an ok one might be doable.
As someone who programs/sets up CNC mills and lathes, I can absolutely appreciate this video. Many ppl underestimate how much truly goes into manufacturing precision parts.
Yea, I work in tool maintenance for a company specialiseing in stamping and deep drawing.
All those issues are realy familiar with me.
Especialy the whole "figure out the cause of some weird, random malfunction" part.... :-D
Aw hell, anybody can do setup work... Just ask our company's management, they'll be happy to tell you. 😑
I'm a cnc operator in a gun factory. You guys who program and debug the machines are our heroes. I just wish you weren't so uptight 🤣
@@tomislavobrovac3257 you and me both my guy lol
Never skimp on quality control or you end up missing a few fingers.
Or an eye if your name is Mauser! O_X
Heard fingers , long hair & eyes horror stories from our shop class teachers in high school, getting fingers /hand lopped off or hair /scalping in a drill press. Eyeballs popped etc. Safety First☝🏻
I work at a manufacturing facility that makes IV's and other medical equipment. I fix their robots and automated systems. I noticed a lot of keywords that I hear at work all the time, like: scrap rate, root cause, tolerance, tooling, reject rate, etc
terumo?
I worked a factory job in a tier 2 auto parts manufacturing/painting factory. A large paint line, cream dip oven bake type. We painted rear axel housings, you know the differential bell housing with axel tubes and many attachment brackets. One station, pressed in the bolts for the diff cover and then the axel housing went on a stand where the housing can easily be rotated. In one hand you held 2-3 no go/go gauges and an orange dead blow nonmarring hammer in the other. You adjusted these brackets to easily accept the gauge, each gauge was rectangular able to gauge two brackets each. Once all brackets were adjusted and welds examined specific points were marked with paint markers. These type of factories have whole Quality Control departments, whose sole job is to make a round daily taking parts off stations and clamping them in a QC fixture to ensure tolerances were in spec. These people had authority to stop any production immediately and technicians would identify the issue and make adjustments/repairs to fix whatever issue was identified. All parts containers are labelled with station, person and date/time information in code form. Parts that could be out of spec were sorted and any that were separated and put in waste/recycle bins.
As design and manufacturing equipment gets better and better, accuracy is improved in parts production and overall design to production times have to deal with how much money is potentially being made contrasted with the costs of r and d plus production. Things could be very rapidly be mass produced accurately if cost were of no concern. People want return on investments not simply producing the highest quality masterpiece priced in range everyone could afford. Hopefully we’ll get there one day though.
Now imagine how difficult it is to make millions of ringpull drinks cans that have metal cuts that are *just* the right depth to not puncture the can, but can be easily pulled open
You have just explained why my job as a draftsmen is necessary. Thank you.
But don't you just fool around on the computer for 15 minutes and then the computer makes the drawings? So really its no value because its just some lines.
i wish i had the skills to do the job you do as a hobby
@@someguy2741 yeah the computer creates the images but you still have to label the correct dimensions and tolerances for machining
@@someguy2741 Don't you dare stop moving your hands while you think about how to solve design issues, either. Because if hands aren't moving, you're not working!
@@simoncleret lol. Why arent you done yet and why did it take so long to reply to this comment!
This video should be required viewing in every engineering and business school to illustrate the complexities and potential costs of R&D done properly.
When someone asks "why are there no reproductions of the Sturmgewehr", then I need to point out, what the (deserved or not) reputation of german engineers of ww2 is...
BTW, when Rheinmetall was asked to produce what would become the MG3 (basically a MG-42 in 7.62), they had the same problem - even though they were the guys that built it during the war, there was no more data avaiable, and they had to reverse-engineer a couple of surviving examples.
The reason you don't have STG44 reproductions widely available is because you'd need a stamping press and a set of good stamping dies which are very, very expensive to manufacture and most companies don't want to take on that kind of expense. They would all have to basically contract a stamping facility to use their press because odds are NO ONE in the American gun industry is going to purchase an industrial stamping press. HOWEVER, it can technically be done and wouldn't even be all that hard. It's just a matter of cash.
The movies have lied to me once again...sigh, it only took Tony Stark like 4 scenes to make the Mk1, damn it.
Well to be fair, he did say that your prototype can be remarkably fast compared to production since you can bodge bodge bodge until it works and not have to actually figure out tolerances, etc
One-offs are easier
This is Gun Jesus officially defending AK Jesus from wHeRe aK50 guys.
We need INSAS Buddha to moderate
@@MykeruMedia more like INSAS Rama. Buddhists are actually a tiny minority in India.
The tooling and tolerances is the main problem in many stories. Then there might be the engineer who has forgotten the difference between US and British inches, let alone centimetres.
The US and British inch, as well as the Canadian inch, became the same decades ago. Certainly a thing a good while ago, but not at present day. Assuming modern metrology equipment of course.
Hey, let me tell you about the first time I used a Taiwanese tape measure. Oh yeah. They have 10 inches to a foot here... 🤔🧐😱🤬😓
That's why you check tolerances every X cuts or X amount of guns. The problem comes from how much is too much or too little and how often do you check. That's one of those never ending problems unless you are working with indestructible tools.
@@stewbacca117 noice to know, now I know where to order my **** measuring devices from. Gonna trick all the ladies lulzzzz
The difference was more critical in the 19th century - the .303 rifle was the result in the difference between the Enfield inch and the British standard inch. Enfield was using a standard 1% longer than the British standard. I am aware of 40 different inch standards in use in Europe prior to the metric system being adopted. The American inch has been a metric derived unit since 1959 and the old definition is due to be finally legally phased out in 2022. (Legal American inches prior to 1959 were slightly longer and British inches slightly shorter than the current standard but machinists had been using the modern standard definition since the 1930’s).
*Heavy Binaric chanting* The Adeptus Mechanicus continues the search for the lost Stg44 STC....
Well they had to put through every weapon to town on Mars dude God knows how long it took the lasrifle to work right still waiting on my mastercraft hellgun bro I hope when it does come out someone uses it to serve the emperor right tear against chaos and xenos.
Why would the AdMech be searching for that when they've got perfectly serviceable autorifles or stubguns available? Besides, the MP44 is a bit shit
@@HBK-6S The joke is that modern civilisation has lost the specs the "STC" equiv of some ancient but venerated peice of tech, making modern gun nuts somewhat similar to the Admech in a way, not that the Admech in 40k literally wants the STG desighn.
interchangeable parts, production line, reliability, efficiency, cost-effect those are very difficult problems, people are tend to ignore those problems since we're already in a mass production-consumption era, but the problems are still there and requires great deal of time and money investment with social scale corporation
Try to combine an engineer, a metallurgist, an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a military strategist at the same time.
And a zen master, since it's about that level of self-control that is required not to punch management.
I think you misspelled "John M. Browning". Hahahaha! Exactly making your point though, these folks are few and far between.
@@jasonrye9600 Mr Browning wasn't a metallurgist nor strategist. In case of many (if not most) his designs, he wasn't involved in setting up nor running production at all.
@@randomnobodovsky3692 I will take your word on the lack of involvement in the production side, but I can't imagine Mr. Browning was unqualified in the metallurgy field. Experienced with it, if not certified (or whatever metallurgists are). Strategist- nope, I guess not. Well, nobody's perfect!
@@jasonrye9600 You don't have to take my word. I encourage you to read up on his professional life.
Most of the designs he was famous for were sold by him to other companies - where local talent set up production (and, usually, modified his original design).
Regarding metallurgy. Depends on your definition of being qualified in the metallurgy field. To provide an example: most of e.g. modern mechanical engineers have working understanding and some knowledge in this field but they aren't metallurgists. Knowing basic properties (which he surely did) does not make a metallurgist. It's like being able to do everyday math vs being a mathematician.
I don't want to detract anything from him - he was an extraordinary designer (and quite a businessman). But saying he was much more detracts from people who turned his ideas into mass-produced metal.
Why did the M1 not cycle on the 7th round?!
I need answers!
I'm literally dying to know!
+1
+1
Hatchers Book of the Garand. Good reference on the m1 in general, and early US automatic rifle development too. Basically the follower would not apply correct support if the clip was in with the top round on a certain side. They fixed it by changing the follower geometry and giving it a small amount of rotational movement. At least as I recall, I don't have the book on hand. I do know it took them years to figure out, and this was after it had been adopted and was in production.
Maybe because the gun could only count to six...?
Erm, of course guns are hard, they are often made from *steel*.
Please be a troll
@@TheBananamonger Why waste your money on steel pipe when PVC can be had for a fraction of the cost?
@@trent8678 Just a tad bit of tomfoolery.
IS THAT A GLOCK?
That why we stopped using steel
Tool wear is also a major challenge. My dad was a Master Tool and Die maker part of his early work was making and resharpening cutting tools for the production line along with six die sets to crush couplings tight on hydraulic lines used on big earthmovers. Tolerances on some hydraulic parts can be in 1/10,000 of an inch plus minus 1/100,000 range.
This is why Brandon Herrera gets so frustrated with people constantly asking when the AK-50 will be ready.
Designing a gun is hard enough. Designing one around the pressure generated by .50 BMG is on another level.
You can't just scale it up; you can't scale the molecules of the metal up. More massive parts with higher stress on the same size molecules can do some janky stuff, and janky combined with explosives can be a really bad time.
All jokes aside, in this case as an engineer, I can tell one thing. The problem starts not when you develop (in your mind) a perfect gun, but when : " why should we buy it."
The military is not concerned about production costs, at least initially, then again, if prototype is too complex, then it's harder to sell.
If you want to sell a gun, before you design it, you need a clear picture why do you need one.
There are numerous engineers who can work out manufacturing process , but if the idea wasn't worth it including the complexity, then the gun is not worth buying it.
That is why many guns failed. Browning was not only a great gunsmith and engineer, but he also had a good idea why those guns were needed, and he had a pretty good way of selling it.
Great vid! I'd love to see you being invited by a weapon manufacturer to make some kind of documentary about the whole process and behind-the-scenes reality of that work. Would be cool.
Would be cool but that is the secret sauce that companies don't what the competition to know. It is very hard earned knowledge and extremely valuable. Take this video example. 5 years of tinkering to get it right for even a small group of 5 engineers and technicians will cost the company millions in wages.
It would be nice if he can explore the history of gun manufacturing through touring historic arsenals. Imagine him explaining Springfield Arsenal and how its manufactoria practices were copied by the world over...
@@adama1294 Exactly. I once happened to be on a tour in a firearms factory (a mass-producing one, not a butique) and they covered some screens, control panels and similar. Unless you are James Bond, for an outsider, no tour of self-respecting factory would give you any useful data (that aren't known publicly by anyone with proper education/training).
The German examples at the end are amazing.
Someone who isn't full on weapons would never knew that.
Another example of why we can't remake some things. " Why Can't we Remake the Rocketdyne F1 Engine? " on the channel " Curious Droid " and for good measure " Ultimate Saturn V Launch with Enhanced Sound " on the channel " Starship Trooper "
They actually can - it was proposed as updated design in 2013 by P&W (called the F-1B) to take advantage of current manufacturing technology and reduce the vast amount of skilled handwork that went into the F1. Even so, while the updated design would produce a staggering 1.8 million lbs of thrust, it was still an extremely expensive design, and that massive amount of thrust simply wasn't needed for current spacelift needs.
Brandon Herrera approves this message
Cant even make a hand made prototype in the time a full production gun is made.
@@0Asterite0 to be fair it's a passion project without preorders or the founding of someone like smith and Wesson
You beat me to it.
@@0Asterite0 its almost like he has two functional prototypes
Getting parts takes time
So that means the G11 is still on the way! Right guys? Right...?
It came out a few weeks ago. I've already put several thousand rounds through it to great effect in Warzone.
Well, they said they'd fix east Germany before getting back to the G11. That's still not done yet.
G11's problem is more politics than engineering if you think about it
I imagine given enough time the technical data will be up for grabs and a company will create a much simpler cost effective version. The problem would be the ammo.
Everybody's an armchair engineering expert until it comes time to do engineering shit 🤔😂🛠️
CAD only helps speed things up because I'm sobbing onto a keyboard instead of less waterproof paper drawings. 😭😅
I felt this comment hard bro
The tease,
Ian throws his arms up (building the tension),
“Why on the seventh round?”
I get an advert....... oh, you know how to torment me, don’t you Sir!
Good play by the way.
Ian might not of had any control over the placement of that ad.
The best term I have learned recently, is “tolerance stacking”... thank you Ian for breaking it down
This is a significant factor in the failure of Hudson and the H9. They released a product where issues cropped up and they didn't have the capital to fix them while also paying off their debts. In fact they were far enough behind that some of their suppliers sued them for failure to pay after having already delivered parts. The lesson to be learned is that whatever you are making, assume you will spend multiples of what you planned getting it done before you turn a profit.
This is true outside firearms, as well. When making the original Star Wars film in the 1970s the studio was willing to put up $8 million to make it. George Lucas spent almost $12 million and still wasn't happy with it, in the end. Lucky for them it went on to be the most popular thing ever and they made their money back (and then some). There are also movies that look like successes when you compare production budget with ticket sales but then you look up the marketing budget. Several of the Fast&Furious movies spent more on marketing than on making the movie and those were NOT budget films.
Ian - I’ve learned so much from your channel, but THIS is the best presentation you’ve done yet. Tolerance stacking can generate really elusive gremlins in any complex machine.
I really like KelTec’s innovative product ideas but perhaps they should hire you for process review and QC. When I bought a PF-9 the salesman told me “every once in a while they spit out a lemon. Just bring it back.” My initial incarnation literally couldn’t get through a single magazine without jamming. We sent it back. 10 days later I got the original frame back with virtually everything else replaced. It has worked flawlessly ever since, but someone had to take the time to find replacement parts that got an A in “plays well together.”
I would love to see you do an expose on the “you need a 500 round break-in period” BS from some manufacturers. I got that from Kimber on a 1911 with an extractor that could clock roughly 20 degrees coupled with a firing pin stop that literally flopped around in the slots at the back of the slide. Assuming you could get through 500 rounds without losing your mind, it would have only made the problems worse due to excessive wear on the extractor claw. 50-100 rounds for an extremely tight gun produced for gun range accuracy, OK. Breaking in a rifle barrel is a real thing IMHO; however, that’s completely different from a gun that jams right out of the box. Frankly, I think the 500 round garbage is to deflect the many people who buy a gun, maybe take to the range once or twice, and then never fire it again. (And if I’m wrong in my assumptions and assertions, please correct me!)
As a retired automotive product designer, I can relate to everything in this video. In my 40 years of design work I started with hand drawings and at the end was doing solid modeling on computers. Most of the work I was doing wouldn't get into final production for 4 or 5 years.
The best illustration of this concept is the development and production of the KE Arms WWSD 2021 lower receiver.
As a machinist, and hobbyist gun maker and inventor, I have to give Ian a lot of credit for taking a very precise science and, in this case, ‘dumbing’ it down for the masses. He eloquently and concisely gets the point across while adding just enough fact and history to keep it entertaining. That’s the whole reason why I subscribe. That, and to give me ideas on what to build or mimic in my next pewtoy.
Having worked in manufacturing and making prototypes of new products, this video hits the nail on the head, and can be applied to a lot of things.
"AK's are super cheap, you just easily stamp them out by the millions"
Right, look into an AK factory and see how easy and cheap that is.
You definitely need a small investment
@@matthewpham9525 yeah, small, like a city sized factory.
@@rslover65 The fact that 15-20 relatively undeveloped countries were able to produce them reliably speaks to how easy they are to make. (they were designed to be relatively easy to make). The scale of the factories says more about how many and how quickly certain countries wanted to make them.
@@atomicsmith really? Then why have American companies failed so far to make a decent one at a decent price? Or at any price at all? PSA had gotten closest, and those aren't as good as com bloc surplus.
@@atomicsmith Because the Soviets sold entire factories and full documentation to these countries and sent experienced engineers along. AK is designed to be built quickly and cheaply - but on a large scale, in big factories. The design does not lend that easily to small scale gunsmithing.
Guns take years to produce. John Browning-"i should design a bunch all at once."
I will forever appreciate the way you can articulate ideas so clearly.
I've been involved in productionizing mechanical products for 40yrs so I agree with all you've said. I would like to see you explain something like gun barrel design & manufacture.
The history of guns tracks the metallurgy of barrels & the ability to do accurate gun-drilling.
One point in your explanation was on tolerances, all good but the build up of tolerances is important in a mechanism. All components can be in tolerance, but if all at bottom end the assembly can be off.
Excellent video! As an engineer, I would be interested in a video about what new technologies can help to shorten the times from concept to production (CAD, CAM, 3D printing, etc.) and what example there is that new technologies have achieved. . Some examples of the WWSD process would also be good. Greetings from Argentina
I think I enjoyed this video more than any other! In an internet of oversimplification, here's a breath of fresh air. I spent a lot of my career in production, and yep, it's hard. Just making the production tools run is hard, figuring out what they need to be making ~exactly~ is even harder. Excellent video, excellent examples! 8^)
This was really helpful for understanding the process. Cheers for the effort.
Absolutely love videos like this! Would love to see more like them talking about gun design, build process, etc
While this video lacks "cool gun", the content is fantastic in regards to how the cool gun is made. So many people overlook the tool-room to production transition and the creation of jigs, gauges, etc. that are so vital to a successful line. The other thing often missed is the incredible expense associated with buying and installing all the machines to do the single operation functions. It takes big money to pull it off. And that's why so often we hear of the inventor and the backer in our history of guns.
"It takes a room full of mathematicians and physicists and a billion dollars to get to the everyday work of a competent machinist." Edward Teller
Ian, your rants are still more courteous than most folks normal conversation. I dare say there are things that will make you raise your voice and potentially be unpleasant but I've never heard any of it on your videos. You may be one of the politest people on TH-cam, even when you're essentially calling in to question the reasoning capabilities of another you do so pleasantly.
You've also very nicely highlighted one of the reasons why design and manufacturing are often widely separated in engineering. Just because someone can think it up doesn't mean someone else can make it in a cost effective, consistent manner. I also know enough about machining to know that I don't know enough about machining to have a valid opinion. I'm far better with composites and mouldings and even that had a fairly large margin of error built in without trying to contain explosions.
Please keep making content like this as well as everything else when and where you can. It's educational and informative as well as being extremely interesting to many of us.
Ian there was only talking about dimensional tolerance. That leaves out material composition heat treat tolerance coatings tolerance... You can nail all the dimensions and have a part be a little too riddle or a little too ductile and it won't do its job.
Or maybe it does his job just fine but it beats up the part next to it.
A good example too is minor tweaks making big differences. There's a series on SOTAR where he shows differences in metal surface treatments. And similarly on small armed solutions. An AR bolt carrier that is dimensionally identical but nitrided instead of phosphatid is a little bit more brittle in one impact point so they have to change the dimensions very slightly to get the same wear properties. And in a lot of cases when they take the same thing and make it in nickel boron coated, then that can mess up the screw threads for the gas key and cause leaks. So they have to add a manufacturing step of chasing the threads. Many manufacturers don't do that which makes nickel boron carriers potentially less reliable even though they on paper are better. If somebody does the extra step of chasing the threads and making sure the gas key is well sealed then they probably are better.
A gun is a relatively simple device compared to something like a car. Even a car from the 1920's . Imagine the interaction between parts in a 2021 car.
To put it in perspective, a car weighs thousands of pounds to control an explosion that is roughly the same energy as a 5.56 cartridge. Cars rarely fail in normal use, lighter weight firearms are right on the edge of failure every shot.
Yeah and look how well production cars are holding up these days. Also no splodey splodey near face so if it messes up who cares
Hence why a car costs as much as many people’s salaries, and guns are expected to be relatively cheap
Should be renamed "GOOD guns are hard" I can make a gun with a piece of pipe and a nail in 15 minutes.
Well said! You've hinted on these things in the past, but I love how you've addressed the subject. Wish I had known this as a teenager.
This video is excellent because it applies to far more than just guns. Aircraft and warships are two other common examples where we see these happen.
Aircraft generally have prototype and pre-production versions, with the early aircraft partially handmade and partially using the new tooling. The F-35 has been criticized as the early aircraft will only be used for testing and training, but spare parts will not fit as precisely in later aircraft and there have been tweaks since the early low rate initial production aircraft.
Ships rarely have a prototype built before the rest of the class, but lead ships in general have far more defects than the subsequent ships. One noted example of a prototype ship are the first two Littoral Combat Ships, built using R&D funds and with significant differences from later ships. Notably, Independence had a problem with galvanic corrosion in the water jets, corrected on the next ship, but to this day you’ll hear about how the entire class cannot last in salt water because it’s made of aluminum. The recent confirmation that the first two ships will be decommissioned has many attacking the ships as garbage, but the plan for the last several years was the first four were supposed to be an R&D division because of their differences from later ships.
Regarding tolerances, one key example I know of is the Type XXI U-boat. This is widely regarded as one of the most important submarine classes ever built with almost every post-WWII submarine incorporated lessons from the boats, but the subs were built in sections by different manufacturers and shipped to the yard for final assembly. The first Blohm & Voss boat was so bad it became a dedicated training ship at the yard, and working out the proper manufacturing tolerances prevented hundreds of submarines from being completed on schedule (a bigger problem than even Allied bombing) and kept most of the 118 completed from going on patrol.
The US, by contrast, built several ships by modular construction during the war, with far fewer issues. However, certain shipyards built better quality ships than others. Cramp built submarines often had to be completed at a different shipyard, and a certain production block of Electric Boat submarines (centered in the 340s) were preferred for the best postwar conversion programs. Manitowoc could not transition from the Gato to Balao class on schedule because they lacked production drawings, though they generally built good boats. For destroyer escorts, the Dravo, Wilmington built ships were preferred for foreign sale during WWII, cancelled unusually early during the phased slowdown, and sold off extremely quickly postwar even compared to other Cannon/DET ships.
For material selection, Little Ship, Big War makes an interesting point on US DE construction. To speed up steel production (which was a bottleneck during the war), the new steel plates were not given the final Bath to remove the mill scale of impurities on the surface of the steel. This steel rusted far more readily than normal, passing the burden onto the DE sailors to scrape and paint. For Abercrombie, Pete Kish waged war on mill scale during a stay at Manus, and after 25 days the entire stern of the ship had been scraped to the bare metal before being primed and painted with “several” coats of primer and two coats of deck blue.
Military small arms development may have also reached a point where there's no room for practical improvement to the technology. That may be why so much attention has been given to ammo development recently , which also has limitations. That's also why the Army can't seem to find a replacement for the M4 rifle that's improved enough to justify the cost.
Small, incremental improvements are still possible and being made: In metallurgy, in machining, in plastics, but nothing revolutionary, and it takes more and more investment to get smaller and smaller progress. Something like ICE cars in recent decades - companies have been shaving the tiniest improvements in engine efficiency, aerodynamics, production costs, and all the cars start to resemble each other, regardless of the manufacturers.
Time for new technology….. lasers !
InRange needs to make a game show called Guess That Stoppage. Where the contestants are described or shown a pic/vid of a gun malfunction and they guess the cause. Like final jeopardy.
And the contestants should be mainstream GunTubers! I love the idea!
I used to work at a gun factory and just making the barrels was a very long and labor-intensive process. Parting, reaming, buttoning, cutting, facing, truing, threading, profiling, heat treating, polishing, anodizing, testing, and quality control.
There's a gun in my collection that I think illustrates this problem quite well. Back in the '90s, a company down in Texas made a Luger clone in stainless steel. Unfortunately, as many of you may know but they apparently didn't, stainless steel isn't a drop-in replacement for regular steel in mechanisms with moving parts and bearing surfaces. So even if they had the entire Luger TDP (and they probably didn't), if all they did was make the parts to the original specs, it was never going to function properly... as indeed it does not, and never has, even after it went back to the factory for modifications shortly after I bought it.
I guess Ian lacks in knowledge somewhat. Sure, in Fallout1 and 2, you had to go to a gunsmith who knew how to make some specific modification to your weapon, and it would take some time to make. But in later games- just put some junk together and it instantly becomes a perfectly working modified gun or an explosive.
Exactly. Everybody knows that if all you have is some old plumbing fittings, metal strap, and rusted hex head bolts, the easiest sort of gun to make is going to be a semi-auto weapon with detachable magazines, or a double action revolver!
You mean you can't use parts from a .22LR rifle to fix a .50BMG rifle and expect it to work? What other lies have we been told?
@@satannstuff the Jury Rigging perk in New Vegas illustrates the well-established engineering principle of "it's magic, I ain't gonna explain it"
@@HugoEckener127 Mmmmm, Jury Rigging, most broken perk in all of Fallout. It not only lets you turn all the nearly busted junk guns you get from fallen enemies and random loot into a small number of relatively worthwhile full CND weapons, but also lets you keep using those lovely unique weapons permanently. Repairing This Machine with a busted BB gun or varmint rifle always makes me giggle
Sig employee: “hey boss should we figure out the tolerance zones before we produce and ship out all these guns?”
Sig supervisor: “Tolerance zones? We just measure all the guns our beta-tes....I mean...our customers send back and sort it out from there”.
good work, I love videos that explain misconceptions like this one)
This gave me flashbacks to a particular NVH issue on a gear driven transfer case that caused years of headaches for me. A truly insane amount of time can go into investigating the origin of bad parts.
I'd totally like a workshop walkthru where some guy tells and shows ian these machines and stuff, be pretty cool
I don't think that Ian needs someone to explain, as he is a mechanical engineer and a certified CNC machinist :)
@@rockarola55 i mean for us more ley people,
@@MrViridus I would still prefer that Ian did the explaining, as he is a brilliant teacher. I've shot guns for a couple of decades and I knew enough to strip and clean them, but not much more. Thanks to Ian I now know the difference between roller delay and toggle delay, I know the obscure weapons of countries around the world and I know intimately how my guns work...he is bloody brilliant at explaining complex things in simple ways :)
There's talkers and doers and talkers ALWAYS know more about how to do something better than the people who actually do it ... if it weren't so sad it'd be funny imho
Insightful statement; sounds true to me.😕
Really interesting video. I never knew that about the Garand, I’ll have to look it up.
depending on the time period. there where semi automatic machine tools. starting around the 19th century, which could make numerous cuts in one machine, but still controlled by a man.
Examples are, turret lathes, screw machines and semi automatic milling machines.
Surely there must be a market for new manufacturered C96's
I've done production machining. So I know what you are saying about getting all those tolerances right. There are other factors that come into play during the production run tho. Tool wear is the most common. Then there's tool spring. The tendency for the cutter to bend away when pressure is applied to it. Then there is chip control. How to keep chips from building up and interfering with the cutter. Then there is tool breakage. In a CNC machine this can be disastrous if a drill breaks, and then a tap comes along and tries to thread that hole! Then there is the engineer who draws a perfect part only to find that what's on paper doesnt necessarily work in real life. Tight tolerances may be needed, but after shooting many rounds in a row the metal expands and those tolerances will come together and jam up the works. And when you have everything tuned and running right, some plant manager will come along and try to change something. Starting the whole process of tuning the machine all over again. Spending a week breaking tooling, producing scrap, and wearing out tools faster. And all just to save 1 and a half seconds of machine time.
The LA85 brass shaving thing is relatable. I work in Software engineering and IT and the amount of tickets / complaints that end up on my desk saying X thing is broken when its actually something usually several steps earlier in the pipeline that are a completely different departments issue.
This is for all of those who post "WheRE aK-50 At, wHaT aBOUt aK-50?!" Well there's a reason, things take time, especially when you're chambering some really spicy rounds. Just ask Scott from Kentucky Ballistics.
Edit: I see I wasn't the only one that had that pass my thought bucket like a 6.5×52mm round.
Can't wait for the Hill & Mac STG44!
Is that still a thing? The STG-44 was designed to be a disposa-gun and building such a thing to modern expectations of robustness and longevity was the biggest problem H&M ran into.
@@dbmail545 meaning it was designed to be used until some part of it broke and then just dispose of it? Any sources on that? Not saying it isn't plausible, i just haven't heard that about the '44 before
@@dbmail545 Then why did they survive and continue to function, even seeing combat use to the present day?
Great video! Most of this applies to just about any mass--produced commercial product, too. One thing you touched on is the relationship between product development and process development; sometimes the product design drives process development, and sometimes it's the other way around; you start with the process and develop the product around that. Another concept you touched on is "good." We consumers tend to judge the quality of a gun based on things like how well it shoots, etc. But that is meaningless if it doesn't make money. A manufacturer has to look at profitability first - if you can't sell it at a profit, it doesn't matter how "good" a particular gun design is, it won't be made on a large scale. We tend to think we can "figure something out" just by looking at the end result, but that's hubris. Sometimes the reason for a particular design element is so far removed from the final product it's hard to make the connection at first glance. And most people have a hard time understanding what it takes to go from hand-crafting one item to having a factory that spits them suckers out by the pallet-load.
Hey Inn, I am a CNC precision mechanic in Switzerland and I am fascinated how guns work and their history too. I can give you my skills and help you to learn french. I promise I won't make complicated machining to make your dream guns (because I'm Swiss).
I'd love to experiment and create guns though, that are just fun to shoot !
Obviously, it might take a while as this is the purpose of this video. Still, it's cool to dream !
this is why
MACs oft-repeated
"guns are simple machines
so this shouldnt malfunction"
is rather a fail... dozens of inter-
related factors make a gun
more or less reliable and
there are costs to every
desired benefit
Yeah.
A semi-automatic firearm basically has to harness the potential energy of a cartridge to eject its case and reload another one without exploding while sending a small slug of metal at high speed out one end, activated by a mechanical switch and dependent on mechanical timings to function.
Like any machine, it’s a lot of parts that gotta be in the right place, especially if you’re going to try that with a pile of random parts. Guns are a good example as it was one of the first things which people did make for that.
Hopefully the "where AK50" crowd have learned something.
It's ball busting it will never stop ak50?
Apparently not because they're all in the comments shouting about how this is iAn DeFeNdInG bRaNdOn, rather than actually recognizing that between SMG, HMG, Hudson Mfg. and Jim Sullivan interviews, Ian has probably had this video coming for a long while.
Great video! I think there's almost no knowledge in general public of how complicated it is to mass produce complicated stuff. How every tolerance, every inefficiency can affect your manufacturing process. Really appreciated that someone is talking about it.
I worked at a construction mobile crane manufacturing company in the US and I can tell you that in 2007 we probably produced the best quality product that we ever could and it was actually amazing. We are running 3 shifts 23/7 and every unit was already sold. All of our vendors were producing only for us our rejection rate was reduced to almost nothing no personal movement in production, no pressure for cost reduction at all no pressure for new design development all of engineering was focused on production throughput not on cost. It was amazing everyone was happy if a little tired. Everything was running better than I thought even possible. It was really a sight to behold. And then 2008 and every thing went to hell even though production was cut to less than a quarter of the year prior our quality was terrible by the end of the year.
Same reason why the AK-50 will take a long time
Great explanation on difficulties of manufacturing at scale. And why Chinese knockoffs mostly suck.
Great vid Ian. Unless it's urgent design takes along time and a lot of unknown problems can occur and have to be solved before even simple products are ready for the open market.
Thanks Ian, I love your channel and I always learn something and love your presentation.
The basis of your argument is generally for gas operated designs that do not rely on a previous chassis or iterative improvement.
Iterative improvement is an even longer development cycle that leads to even more sub-par products (as in the first batches are inferior to the latter ones). This kind of development is more suited to things were previously made examples can also be altered, such as code. But by far, It's greatest advantage is that you get many examples early on and don't have to wait until the technical package is finished.
@Fire Starter its not strong enough to the point of holding pressure of big boy rounds like 7.62 nato or 50bmg
Iterative changes have less parts to develop than a new product,but the interaction between the original and the changes has problems that need to get solved as well.
Case in point, m4 carbine as first introduced and original. 40 cal glocks,
@Fire Starter They do indeed know how to measure things using lasers, that does not solve the problem of figuring out the tolerances and technical package but it does make quality control far easier.
Computer design has really helped in all of engineering, so my guess is that they have also benefitted. Still, computers are not magical and lots of effort are still needed.
As for the 3d printing, it is painfully slow and relatively expensive. It is mostly used to create molds and some very especific parts. It is not a method suited for mass production.
@Fire Starter To be precise, one does not exactly "measure tolerances", but measure actual dimensions. Tolerances are range of acceptable dimensions (onecan't measure an abstract idea). Also, as manufacturing "tool", lasers are extremely limited in what they can do - and even when lasers can do something, it's prohibitively expensive and/or wildly impractical. They can do what they can do, like any tool, and engineers know that.
If only a complex set of problems could be solved by "let's use lasers!"... Sadly, it's only what happens in movies.
Brandon Herrera has entered the chat
I can really see your engineering background coming through. I am super interested in this kind of technical knowledge and looks like a lot of other people are too. You should really make more videos like this!!
Great video. This reminds me of machine tech in trade school. I was one of the only students not from Boeing, so we used a lot of Boeing drawings in study. They had huge tolerances, which a person might assume is bad, but it's the opposite. To make a huge jet like the 747 work with largely +/- .020 our even +/- .050 is amazingly good engineering. Especially when you take those dimensions into three dimensions.
And then, even if you have the entire concept and manufacturing side sorted out, there are (or can be) the logistical and political issues.
We did a minor revision on a proven product. The process took almost three years to get right.
Something Ian didn't mention was tolerance stacking. He talked about tolerances and ranges. A knock-on issue from that is where the tolerances from individual parts that have to work in combination may cause unreliability. Taking the 1 inch +/- .05 example, the part next to it may have an initial range of .5 inch +/- .025 inch. However, if you have the first part at .95 and the second part at .475, they may not like each other very much because the fit is now too loose. If either of the parts is closer to their maximum instead of the minimum, they'll work just fine, though. The opposite may also be true where each might be at their maximum (1.05 and .525) and they fit too tightly causing binding. All of that would necessitate either tightening up the tolerances for both parts, or ensuring that the combination of tolerances is within a specific range via fit checks during assembly. Either of those propositions would add extra time and expense, of course.
Thanks for making this, transferring from prototype to mass production at high yield is an important under-appreciated field of engineering. Much love for explaining engineering concepts such as tolerencing and step yields.
Oh yeah, new video!