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my grandfather has a patent. he had his product manufactured in china in a plastic injection moulding factory. its expensive as hell, but still halfway decently cheaper per part for the nessecary parts that size than finished mags go for now. further, I have a friend that builds machines very simliar to plastic injection machines, and a lot of thier buyers are gun companies and aerospace. I checked, and one of thier machines that could be adapted to make the plastic parts you need will cost about 20-40 grand. I might be able to get one cheaper, but its still going to be WAY more money than I want. then you have to make the dies, blah blah yada yada yada.......

 

simply put, let another company do it like suicide bopper suggets...but do it in BULK. order them by the thousands of parts if you want to resell the things....

 

THEN there is the matter of the correct spring... :/ AND the metal lips on the top of the mag....you would need ANOTHER injection amchine, but of a different type, AND a ceramics setup to mould the metal parts, and that all is MORE dies, and if not a seperate machine for it, an engineering degree to change over the plastic injection parts to wax injection parts.

 

just thought I would share a bit of what I know.....as usual this is practical knowledge and not the word of god, and if anyone out there wants to bitch at me for missing a word or spelling something wrong or have a zero in the wrong place, you can suck my @#$% :)

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THEN there is the matter of the correct spring... :/ AND the metal lips on the top of the mag....you would need ANOTHER injection amchine, but of a different type, AND a ceramics setup to mould the metal parts, and that all is MORE dies, and if not a seperate machine for it, an engineering degree to change over the plastic injection parts to wax injection parts.

wax injection? you mean lost wax for molding metal parts?

 

o.k., here's the deal. I've been to a few firearm manufacturing plants and gotten 6 inches from the machines while they're cranking out firearms and firearm parts.

 

If you wanted to do a plastic mag with metal lips it would require 2 steps (each step having it's own set of steps)

 

#1) make the feed lips part. this would be a simple stamped piece of sheet metal. the die for this would run a few thousand. it would actually be a few dies which would progressively form the final piece

 

#2) The plastic mag would be shot in one piece. Prior to shooting the plastic, the feed lip stamping would be placed in the mold. the plastic would encompass the metal lips and make it one with the mags.

 

The mold for the plastic mag would cost $5,000 - $10,000.

 

So you're looking at around $13,000ish in molds alone. Add in cost of materials, machine time, shipping, trial and error on the springs and it gets quite costly.

 

How many do you honestly think will sell? Sure, if you sold them @ $20 each you'd sell a ton. However, you'd have to sell 40,000 just to break even. How many Siagas do you think are out there? Whose going the front the $20,000+ for a product that you hope works right out of the gate?

 

I'm not too optmistic. I'll be the first one in line if someone steps up to the plate, but i'm not too hopeful.

 

We need a big company to realize the potential. One who already works in injection molding (Tapcos AK/Galil handguards).

 

Caspian

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A buddy of mine is a Tin Knocker, I think I am gonna see if he can make one. I had him make me bullet traps and birdhouses, this should be within his talent level, maybe. I am thinking if we can get the dimensions correct it just a matter of putting them into the plasma cutter and letting it do its work, bend it in a brake, spot weld it, add a spring and follower (thats the tough part-the follower). Sounds simple, wish it was that easy! I will give it a try if he will.

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haha you know what would be awesome...take a block of steel, because i doubt aluminum will be as sturdy, becasue we are going for the lowest price, he owns a tool manufacturing co and has some laser machine that cuts shit out and every other milling/metal manipulation machine avaliable

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http://www.emachineshop.com/

 

these people will mold or mill anything we want

for the right price

they are just waiting to help us solve all saiga mag problems once and for all

bust out the calipers

im just here to help me help you help yourselves help others

 

:ph34r:

Why dont we just send these guys an 8 rnder and have them duplicate it? If we all order together (I think there is enough of us) We should be able to meet a reasonable min. order and price.

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Totally agree with the above poster.

I don't think we should be at the mercy of everyone else for our mags.

Let's all get on with the bidness and see if we can't make a domestic mag happen.

 

First, we need to contact this emachineshop and hash out the details.

I don't know if they are firearms friendly or not, but mention anything gun related to someone who isn't a "gun person" and they immediatley think everything about the project is illegal. So, even though it is perfectly legal for them to make the magazines, I would wager a dollar to all takers that if they aren't "gun guys", it's an uphill battle from the start.

 

So, whoever has an 8 round mag to let them engineer it out and get some price quotes, start making phone calls and talking to people.

I am in for at least 5-10 mags if we can get them under $30 each.

 

It would be nice to see this happen within the space of a couple months...

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The mag body is the hard part. For the rest it would be easier to adapt a spring/follower/floorplate combo from another gun, preferably US made or US replacement parts. I'm not shure what to use for the S-12, but falcon arms is advertising (SGN) fn/fal US rebuild kits for $6.50. That may be a candidate for .308 and maybe .410?

Blackjack started with a buffer, maybe someone here will make a go with mags. If they do anywhere as good as Blackjack, I will probably go broke-I just dropped a wad over there this evening!

 

 

G O B

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First, we need to contact this emachineshop and hash out the details.

I don't know if they are firearms friendly or not, but mention anything gun related to someone who isn't a "gun person" and they immediatley think everything about the project is illegal. So, even though it is perfectly legal for them to make the magazines, I would wager a dollar to all takers that if they aren't "gun guys", it's an uphill battle from the start.

I checked the site out and they do jobs according to your CAD design on their software. I emailed them to find out if they could just duplicate something if we sent them an example. I know I probably wont be able to accurately measure and map out a magazine in a program I dont know how to use, but maybe someone here can. It has to be perfect though, 1000 mags that dont work because of a .5mm miscalculation will be no laughing matter. Hopefully they can just duplicate one.Are their any patents or anything we would have to worry about?

 

Once we have that figured out we just need to pray that they arent anti gunners.

Should we just come right out and ask before they get any more details about the job?

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Now thats something you could trip over and poke an eye out on! If your going to contract a cnc shop to box and pan out 20 rounders, I would suggest a drum type mag. How did the ATF say it?...oh yea! ..."A revolving type cylinder". But seriously, you guys are on the right track. There are plenty of job shops out there that would jump at a private order of something like 500-1000 units. They would naturally need 1/3 cash up front for matierial and tooling. Forget about synthetics. A mom and pop machine shop could crank out 1000 formed sheet metal magazines in a few weeks easily. They would mill the top of the mags to fit the application (rifle) and either stamp or form the bodies on a break. Then just tig the two pieces together and smooth them out. The followers and floorplates would be a simple press job, and the springs would have to be ordered from somwhere that deals in that sort of thing. You would recieve the mags in bare steel, but Ill bet they go for about $30 a unit if ordered at a high number. I worked for a few job shops but never saw an order for magazines, or even HEARD of such a thing. But Im sure it can be done. Good luck guys.

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I had a discussion with my foreman and shopowner about making a die to make steel mags. We specialize in building dies, molds, punches and gauges etc. We can build a die no doubt about it. The problem is the cost and uncertainty as to if it would be profitable. Lets face it the saiga 12 gauge is not a very popular shotgun right now but has enourmous potential now that the AWB is gone. I believe interests will increase dramatically so long as they keep being imported. But thats a whole other problem as well.

 

Id love to see US mags too and especially be a part of building the machinery that makes them. Plastic mags like the current ones would be even better IMO but I have no knowledge in the area of injection molding. I wonder which of the two would be more profitable to produce? It seems as if plastic mags usually go for more than aluminum or steel mags.

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I agree with the previous poster above... if we can get them under $30... especially in steel... I'd be in for 10+.

that's the problem.

 

Due to the relitavely small volume of mags (as compared with a Glock mag), the unit price would be around $30. So to say you'd pay $30, then you're asking someone to step up to the plate and risk financial losses for nothing.

 

No one is going to front the money for dies without a chance at making a profit. People don't invest just to break even.

 

Caspian

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