Wife’s younger brother is the chief manufacturing engineer at the Sturm Ruger pistol plant in Prescott, AZ. He treated us to a tour of the plant, and I was most impressed.
He explained each step of the production process, the speed of the fully automated CNC tooling, which makes the pistol’s production possible, is amazing and something to behold. He led us through for just one pistol, whereas a completed gun is boxed for shipment every 30 seconds, and it was just one of the many different models made in the plant. All CF pistol barrel rifling is broach cut while fully submerged in an oil bath, and watching it was like zip, done. Watching round steel billets transformed into slides and barrels at such speed, was hard to follow.
They are months behind for filling outstanding orders, and have had to stop taking new orders for three months to fill existing orders. Every day over 40,000 rounds of ammunition is fired, just for the proof testing of guns being shipped.
There are over 800 employees in the plant working two long shifts and they are adding new space and machine tooling to increase production even further.
He explained each step of the production process, the speed of the fully automated CNC tooling, which makes the pistol’s production possible, is amazing and something to behold. He led us through for just one pistol, whereas a completed gun is boxed for shipment every 30 seconds, and it was just one of the many different models made in the plant. All CF pistol barrel rifling is broach cut while fully submerged in an oil bath, and watching it was like zip, done. Watching round steel billets transformed into slides and barrels at such speed, was hard to follow.
They are months behind for filling outstanding orders, and have had to stop taking new orders for three months to fill existing orders. Every day over 40,000 rounds of ammunition is fired, just for the proof testing of guns being shipped.
There are over 800 employees in the plant working two long shifts and they are adding new space and machine tooling to increase production even further.