More locus of points.
This is where the complexity of the geometry starts to bite
If you aren’t cutting a square, which almost nobody does, then you have to make sure the part you’re cutting is capable of being cut. This shape, no matter how simple, cannot be cut.
You cannot cut a sharp inside corner using a round tool, The only thing you can cut is a round inside corner, and cut the sharp corner, if it is necessary, in a separate operation.
Look at the slide opening in my PPX.
There are NO sharp inside corners. Even the breechface has rounded corners, the barrel has simply been designed to mate with that. This means that no consecutive operations are required to make it square. That means when you put this chunk of metal into a machine, it comes out complete, and is ready for finishing and assembly. The 1911 slide, by comparison, needs about 30 operations after it is initially machined.
I can see a nice benefit of that slide & breechface lacking sharp inside corners.
Easier to clean.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Another benefit to no sharp inside corners: fewer stress risers.
In a firearm slide, that strikes me as a very good thing.
Stoner was a master machinist, not a gun guru. His main forte was tolerance stacks, and boy did he do a good job on the AR platform.
It certainly shows in stoners work.
Stoner was a browning. Each for his generations. I think the 1911 will still be being used 100 years from now, just as the AR will be.
Unless we figure out how to fire fletchettes electronically in a hand held unit with the effective range of a rifle.
Now that is something I would go in debt for.
MIM for the curious un-informed.
Machining For the curious un-informed.
Why do I get the feeling that when this series of lessons is all tied together the end result is going to be me walking into the local purveyor of things that go bang with a fist full of cash and walking out with a shiny new PPX.
Better start saving my pennies.
BGM