PCA, Plastic Cased Ammunition, what's next

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Rob62

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While at the range today I noticed some unique fired cartridge cases laying on the ground. Upon picking them up, I discovered that they were .223 Rem caliber with a headstamp of PCA.

Since I haven't seen these kind of casings before I was very interested. So when I got home I did a web search and found the company that makes these cartridges. Here's the link:

http://www.natec-us.com/products.asp

I'm pretty excited about this new development in ammunition. I can't wait until there are some field reports of people actually using this stuff. I wonder if there is any limit to what can be made with these parital plastic cases - .458 Win mag maybe?

Anyway I thought I'd share the link for those that may be interested here.

Rob
 
There are a couple of posts about PCA SPECTRUM ammunition in the ammo forum of AR15.com. I've only put about forty rounds through my AR to test for function and it worked fine - although it appears that some of the guys doing torture testing managed to melt the polymer case.
 
Caseless ammunition is centuries old. Heck, ask any muzzleloader. ;)

Have we've gone full circle?:D
 
Caseless ammo HAS happened. Not much is available to the general public and not many guns have ever been made to fire it, but the first modern caseless stuff was made, I think, in the 1980's.
 
Yes, the G11 was/is a cool gun.

An interesting bit of history...Daisy actually made a .22 that fired caseless ammo but got in trouble for doing so because they weren't a licensed firearms manufacturer. Don't know how much the guns sell for but I've seen a box of the ammo that was manufactured for them.
 
i think caseless is an interest idea but still not worth it until you combine it with other new designs. how about if your magazine only held bullets and a liquid propellent was sprayed into the chamber on each shot like a carborator?

i'd also like electro-thermally enhanced ingnition technology, that would really kick ass and make a viable one cartridge system for assault rifles, machineguns and sniper rifles.
 
I tested the natec plastic 223 in a Bushmaster, a KelTec SU16, and a savage bolt action. It's loaded on the light side similiar to WWB 223. The big drawback is if the chamber is very hot a round that sets in the chamber for more than a moment will do the heat shrink shrivle. Leaving the shooter to eject the metal base and dump the plastic out of the bore. The ammo is not sealed either making it vulnerable. No military will ever use this ammo in its current form. It's good plinking and varmit fodder for bolt actions.
 
VL/caseless

Daisy did NOT get into trouble with the ATF for selling the VL/caseless system.
The problem with the VL/caseless system was that it didn't sell worth a hoot.
It was too easy to damage the ammunition. You could knock the propellent right off the bullet. You had to keep the ammo clean. The ammo was NOT water proof. Even loading with sweaty hands could be a problem. Hangfires were very common.
It fired using the Diesel principle. Compressed air heated the propellent to fire the round. Any heat source would fire it as well. If the o-rings started to wear the gun would misfire.
Velocity was inconsistant, leading to mediocre accuracy.

And the most important thing was that the ammo was expensive. And you only had one choice.
Remember that back then GOOD .22 rimfire ammo was only 1¢ per round or less!
Why pay 3 or 4 times as much for something that only gave you .22 LONG performance?
 
Caseless

Can anybody think of a caseless semiautomatic pistol that works signficantly differen from a regular one? I don't mean some large, blocky, sub-caliber machine pistol like HK was cooking up, but a regular service-sized pistol.

Until somebody comes up with a caseless handgun idea that's any better than what we've already got, it probably won't catch on.

Caseless ammunition's real advantages lie in automatic weapons with large magazines. I think a caseless bolt action rifle is downright silly, personally.
 
How is plastic case ammo new, Hello, shotgun shells. Paper at first then plastic. Yea the other ones polymer, oh well, its still a plastic case.
 
I actually found a distributor for the Natec plastic ammo (think it was posted on another thread here somewhere.) I'd love to try it but it's a bit pricey for .223, and I did just go a little nuts buying ammo last week...

hksw -- The Voere VEC91 has always interested me, but most of the links I could find on it are hysterical VPC-drivel about how criminals will no longer be so obliging in leaving casings behind when assaulting little old ladies with (presumably) fabulously expensive Austrian bolt action rifles. I'm under the impression that it was never imported. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen one. And the UCC caseless ammo looks really intriguing, but some type of percussion primer would have made it *really* interesting. 'Electrische zuendung' just seems too impractical.
 
I'm betting that's not a great idea. The plastic could have different physical properties after the rapid heating and pressurization from the first firing. Also I've heard that one of the weaknesses of these cases is that the brass head occasionally rips off of the plastic that forms the rest of the cartridge during extraction. This may have been a problem that's since been corrected in the new production rounds, but firing them twice could only exacerbate the problem. And how would you seat and crimp the bullet?
 
I bought some at a local gunshop a few months back, and just yesterday saw some at the Market Hall gunshow. However, when I tried it, I had a case-head separtion after about 40 shots that left the neck in my chamber. I had to use a broken case extractor to get it out. It was kinda distressing since I've never had any problems with this AR before (chrome-lined Colt barrel).

I had really high hopes for this ammo, since I thought it would be the thing to reduce the weight of the ammo load (it is approx 30% lighter than brass-cased ammo). Unfortunately it didn't work for me, although some may have success. I read in one of the SHOT show reports that Natec was working on a .308 version, which I would be curious to try too.

Aha, I do still have the pic online: Remnants (128k)
 
It almost sounds like adding some oriented fiberglass strands would solve the case neck seperation problem, and maybe adding a second inner ring to the base so that if the plastic shrinks with heat it grabs onto the inner ring would solve the base seperation issue....
 
I had never heard of this stuff. I was at the range about 2 weeks ago, was checking in at the front desk and a guy comes out with a PCA case (38 special) that was split at the rim. He had to force the revolver open to clear the round.

I think I'll pass.
 
I've played with this stuff a bit. Posted my results (chronograph and a picture of a failed case) on a TFL thread here.
 
I got to try some out at a carbine class a few months ago. (The PCA stuff.) It functioned flawlessly in my AR (DPMS) but it was loaded light. Compared to the XM193 I shoot, you could tell a CONSIDERABLE difference. I didn't have the opportunity to verify zero with PCA vs. my regular ammo, but I'm betting POI would be different at anything beyond CQB distances.

We tried the stuff out in reasonably hot, although not cooking hot guns. They were all at least SOME dirty, as well. Nobody experienced any case head separations during that trial. (8 shooters with various ARs.)

I wasn't impressed with it overall, but felt that if it could be obtained cheaply, it'd make decent practice ammo for 3-gun/CQB type stuff.
 
I tried it in an NEF Handi-Rifle, and it shot fine, but dirty !:eek: Iam going to try it in my friends .223 Saiga next time I'm over there, but after reading some of the above results, I'll have a case exctrator handy!
 
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