1911Tuner
Moderator Emeritus
Well said, rwartsell. It seems that in this age of the common man, all too often experience is trumped by belief.
"If THIS gun performed perfectly for ME, then THIS gun is the best gun ever made and if THAT gun didn't...it's junk."
And no amount of reasoning will convince "him" otherwise.
As for MIM, of course it can be polished. It's metal. Any metal can be polished...even lead. The question is: "To what end?"
And good MIM can be very good, while bad MIM is worse than junk. The problem is that one can't usually tell the difference between good MIM and bad MIM by visual inspection. On the upside...if it's bad...it generally shows up pretty quickly. If an MIM part lasts for 500 cycles, it'll probably last for 50,000.
As many have noted, the widespread use of MIM is about cost of production and keeping prices low enough to sell more guns...not about making a better gun. If experience has taught us nothing else, it's that making a part or a whole gun cheaper rarely results in a superior product...and "good enough" doesn't mean that it's optimum.
It just means that it's been made more affordable to the common man who drives a common van, whose dog doesn't have a pedigree.
The GOOD thing about MIM is that as long as the process is strictly followed...and the material is consistent...every part that pops out of the mold is dimensionally and functionally the same from the first one to the last.
Finally, not every part of a gun is suited for MIM or investment casting. This is why we don't see MIM or cast barrels and cylinders, among other parts. If the engineers could have found a way to successfully make these things using the MIM or investment cast process, you can bet the farm that they would have by now.
"If THIS gun performed perfectly for ME, then THIS gun is the best gun ever made and if THAT gun didn't...it's junk."
And no amount of reasoning will convince "him" otherwise.
As for MIM, of course it can be polished. It's metal. Any metal can be polished...even lead. The question is: "To what end?"
And good MIM can be very good, while bad MIM is worse than junk. The problem is that one can't usually tell the difference between good MIM and bad MIM by visual inspection. On the upside...if it's bad...it generally shows up pretty quickly. If an MIM part lasts for 500 cycles, it'll probably last for 50,000.
As many have noted, the widespread use of MIM is about cost of production and keeping prices low enough to sell more guns...not about making a better gun. If experience has taught us nothing else, it's that making a part or a whole gun cheaper rarely results in a superior product...and "good enough" doesn't mean that it's optimum.
It just means that it's been made more affordable to the common man who drives a common van, whose dog doesn't have a pedigree.
The GOOD thing about MIM is that as long as the process is strictly followed...and the material is consistent...every part that pops out of the mold is dimensionally and functionally the same from the first one to the last.
Finally, not every part of a gun is suited for MIM or investment casting. This is why we don't see MIM or cast barrels and cylinders, among other parts. If the engineers could have found a way to successfully make these things using the MIM or investment cast process, you can bet the farm that they would have by now.