And if someone makes a part, with whatever process using whichever material, and that part fails due to design, the fault lies not with the process or material, but with the engineer.
Bingo.
Put your research effort on finding out who puts a premium on building reliable, durable products and who stands behind their products 100% and buy from them. Let them worry about the technical details and you can take comfort in relying on their reputation.
It's a sound strategy. And, frankly, for most of us it's the only reasonable strategy. Seeing us argue about forged vs cast vs MIM as if that's the primary deciding factor in the strength of a part must be highly amusing to people who really understand metallurgy.
The first step is realizing that "steel" is not just one material. There are something like 3 to 12 major classifications of types of steels and literally thousands of different steel alloys--certainly more than 4500. All of them have different properties. And there are many different materials (at least 16) that are commonly used to alloy steels. Altering the concentration of these materials in the steel by tiny fractions of a percentage point can dramatically affect the properties of the resulting alloys regardless of how the final part is formed.
The second step is understanding that even if we focus on just one alloy, the pertinent properties of steel alloys (tensile strength, elongation, hardness, etc.) are highly dependent on the heat treatment.
Third, if we compare parts that aren't completely identical, then that adds another level of complexity since we're now evaluating the durability/strength of the parts design itself in addition to all the other variables.
IF, we could find two:
- Identical parts
- Made from identical steel alloys
- With identical attention to quality control
- And identical attention to proper manufacturing processes
- And which have identical heat treatments
THEN and ONLY then could we have a chance of making an intelligent/accurate general comment about the relative durability of the two parts based exclusively on the method used to form the part.
There are numerous factors which contribute to the strength of the final part. The manufacturing method is just ONE of those factors and isn't really even high on the list of things that are likely to affect the final result. Trying to make an assessment of durability/strength purely on the basis of the manufacturing method of one gun (or part) is ridiculous.