NGA are BS artists and its still just a parts gun.
Its worth noting that they have dropped their whole "our rifle is coated with sooper dooper secret ceramic" schtik and now admit to it just being ceracoated. They also seem to have removed nearly all of their unbelievable claims from their website and the long rambling posts in which the owner claims that only his crack team of highly trained professions can properly assemble an AR15....presumably because they own the worlds only functioning torque wrench or something.
BS artists? I'll admit there was BS around here in the past but
artists? Now that's going too far!
Parts gun? I probably shouldn't respond to this since it may just be standard troll-bait, but here goes...
The X7 has the following NGA-made components: LR and half of the parts kit, forend and its parts kit, muzzle device, gas block, optional rails, and we do finish machining of the UR and barrel. We don't make the barrel, BCG, charging handle, gas tube, most of the LR extension kit, trigger group or plastic furniture. Springs and hardware are a mix. Some are made to our spec and some are std.
The X8 is scheduled for introduction at the very end of the year. All of its components have been designed and NGA will produce everything except barrel, trigger group, furniture and small hardware.
Some of the new stuff on the X8:
Lower receiver and extension are machined from a monolithic billet.
Upper receiver and forend are also machined from a single billet.
The fire control group puts Geissele components in a unique frame along with integrated safety cylinder and is dropped into the lower as a unit. This allows trigger module replacement without having to drive out pins. We'll discuss this further later if there's any interest.
All controls are mirrored left and right with identical placement, function and appearance, except the safety lever on the trigger finger side is short or omitted by preference. The new charge handle can be unlatched from either left or right. We'll get into all of this more later if there's any interest.
My intent here is to dispute the "parts gun" label. I will not say that these things are amazing, better than anything else or particularly innovative, although that's the goal of course.
Regarding ceramic coating... I think this topic was handled poorly by NGA in the past. Some of the claims were BS imo and deserved lots of criticism. We still coat most everything with some type of Cerakote because it is beneficial. It isn't magic and has some drawbacks but the +'s outweigh the -'s. It's actually a long topic and we still consider the whole process proprietary so I won't be telling anyone how we do what. I'll be interested to see how much you all know already about Cerakote.
Finally, regarding the slam against our "long-winded claim" that only we know how to assemble an AR15 and you don't, well who's being the BS artist now? All I said was there's a lot more to it than "most" people are willing or able to do properly and especially so regarding assembly of the X7. In fact, part of the reason for the X8 is simplification of assembly while improving precision at the same time.
Does that help start the conversation?
