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Zastava/Yugo M77 magazine. In progress


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Ok, little update.   Follower tooling came back Friday late.. We had to run and get it right at closing time to have it over the weekend.   We have them rolling through right now, about halfway th

Saiga-12   Done Vepr-12 (design done) M77 - designing mostly complete Galil .308 (m77 based, likely to shuffle downward) Saiga .223 Catamout Fury-12 (saiga 12 based) Valmet .308 mags (low produc

We are making great progress on this project..   Metal for the body stamp plates is due in around a week. Testing has been very useful and productive, we had about 8 corrections to make and they al

We stopped work to make the Vepr-12 mags.. My brother is going to go back to work on the M77 Friday, and I'll be finishing up the Vepr-12s hopefully by Monday.

 

We need to send the die plates for the M77 off for heat treatment before we can make any samples. They have piercing components that must be hardened to survive use. 

Normally we would stuff them in our heat treat furnace, but they are too large to fit.. So we are sending them to the big vacuum furnace in Daytona.. Once that is done the project is at about 75% complete.

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Chevy, I fixed the text a little, should be less painful to read now (gotta forgive our cellphone and tablet using friends).. However to answer the question about a drum.

 

 

Drum shaped objects are a different type of stamped/formed product. Many are spun and then formed with a wheel, hydro formed, or deep drawn. (none of which I have machines for)

 

I have ability to do basic forming and cutting dies.. If your curious give this video a look, it sort of explains the different processes. Most of our magazines are bending dies, not drawing. The only drawing dies I have are for the followers on the .308 mags. They are small and use large springs to hold the blank holder in place. A drum would require a press with a hydraulic blank holder and the ability to run a backer hydraulic in addition to the primary hydraulic..

Those machines are normally around $500,000 to upwards of $2 million.I doubt I can get the capital for that.

 

This video gives a pretty decent over view of metal forming.. You can see the press size is much greater for the drawing operation than any of the others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ph3AOxvcR4

 

Spin forming

 

Hydroforming

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, body die stage two was finished today. Follower is being worked on tomorrow, follower will take us into next week sometime.

 

Follower, floor plate, spring guide, and front support dies are the remaining parts to complete. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Floor plate tooling is complete. Floor plate retaining plate is being worked on.

 

Follower needs a trim die still.. That will be a fun project for sure, I want to send it to a EDM shop if possible.. Because its a little hard to get the level of precision from a mill.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Floor plate tooling is complete. Floor plate retaining plate is being worked on.

 

Follower needs a trim die still.. That will be a fun project for sure, I want to send it to a EDM shop if possible.. Because its a little hard to get the level of precision from a mill.

Any news? :)

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Most of the tooling is at heat treatment.. Everything on these is high ton forming, so heat treatment is required for the tooling to survive.

 

We should have some pictures of the prototype mags fairly soon.

 

We are trying to complete to test mags inside of three weeks as that is when Vepr-12 batch two gets here. Hopefully we will get to a point that we can order the steel and start work right after the Vepr-12 are done.

 

Mark is still working on the follower, last I checked on him he had smoke coming out of his ears, so he must be making progress.

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The tooling is setup to make all the sizes from 5 to 20 (maybe more). They will have a single 1/8" full capacity view hole in the back of each size magazine, its part of the design for QC testing and part setting so it is on every single one. The follower design should be extremely tolerant of dirt and grit due to its low contact design. Magazine body should also be more tolerant of dings and dents due to the stamping pattern.

 

I've been trying to jump back and forth between the Vepr-12 mag build and making the prototypes for the M77, but the Vepr-12 mag build is going so smooth that I have only had about two hours of spare time in the last 11 days.. On the positive side, the vepr-12 mags are almost through my portion of the build and I can focus back on the M77 again.

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Any info on when another batch of your Vepr 12 mags will be available? I just got a Vepr right before the ban hit on the saigas and veprs, but i've held off getting magazines for it until yours are available, I cant justify spending 100 bucks on a polymer mag from russia when I can get a US made all steel mag from you guys,for half the price too.

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For the Vepr-12 mags

In about three weeks the first half should be done and shipping, then again about a week later, and then again about three weeks after that.. 

 

We are almost done building them, but the finishers and assembling takes time.

 

M77 are still in pre-production.

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  • 5 weeks later...
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We are actually working away on it the last couple weeks.. I have piles of parts coming in from all over to finish the tooling out.

 

I know I've been talking about the larger presses for awhile, but they are now set in position with new high flow valves, giant manifolds, safety lock outs, and we should be getting them filled and test fired inside of the week. Then we get to make our first whole stampings.

 

Most of the parts will be in by Thursday, panel box is mostly wired, the logics program is being completed, still need to mount up my oil tank, high flow pumps, filters and gauges.

 

This is probably one of the most expensive machines we have built to date, a lot of the expense is to improve speed without risking injures. The time to produce a part directly effects cost of the part, we came up with a new guarding solution that reduces part change time while improving protection over a light curtain.

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Another little update. Got tied up on a little side project that was very positive.

 

Since we started making small formed parts, the dream has always been to acquire multiple duplicate presses so that parts can be made to completion in a continuous operation.. Anyway on Saturday we bought four complete press lines from an industrial window maker with a total of 19 small self contained press units, they turned out to be the white elephant of the auction since no one knew what they did. They went stupidly cheap. They are just the perfect tool for making the small internal parts.

 

These should help cut the production time and thus reduce the cost on future production.

 

 

The large presses are coming together, still waiting on three hydraulic lines that did not ship with my order. However they should be here in the week, which will allow us to get the rest of the details squared away.. Maybe I'll paint this one if I get really bored.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Update: 

 

Large presses are up and running good. Still making the adapter plates/blocks to mount the tooling. One of the presses need a block to close up some extra daylight, just a little 5"x 48" x 20" block of steel (1200+ lbs) which we had to cut down to 24" to get 10" of height out of. I don't have anything that can cut 20" wide so we ended up cutting through it with a cut off wheel in an electric saw, which is like trying to open a coconut by licking it.. So got to spend a day poking around a steel scrap yard looking for the right block and then another trying to cut the thing in half. Probably saved $1000+ on the blocks of metal, and saved a week waiting for it to come in from the steel supplier.. Plus it gave me something to do while everything was closed the last couple weeks.

 

I have been playing with the pile of scrap hydraulics and have them mostly tagged to which part each will do. I still have a couple pallets of mystery parts to tag for future machine building. The big valve assembles will likely be useful.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Our short bushings came in for the die set (die shoe) at 7:30pm. Took about four hours to get everything reassembled within .003" of perfection. Body dies are now mounted up and ready to start making test magazines.. I really like the way we have the new press setup, its safe while not overly clumsy.

 

Hope to have photos of magazine parts shortly.

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First stamping was perfect, realized an update to stage one was not reflected on stage two so a little clearance slot had to be widened a little bit. That was finished about three hours ago. Stage two is being setup should be tested in an hour or so..

 

Be aware that the above is a test magazine, we are confirming sizes for our steel order and we need to order springs, once we test the spring design we have selected.

 

Rear lug is probably going to look more like an AK pattern magazine with a support flange on the sides.

 

Ours on the left.

 

cimg2127.jpg?t=1421868800

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Ok Floor plate seems to be looking really good. Its very low profile meaning the mags should fit in more pouches.

 

Also a photo showing the feed lips, they are stamped with reinforcements to prevent bending while being small enough to fit is tight receivers such as the M77

 

 

m77-for-web-3.jpg?t=1422126965

m77-for-web.jpg?t=1421871534

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