Change is fine.
Improvement is great.
Forward thinking is rare.

When ARs produced from exotic metals add up to sum total in the neighborhood of $5-6k very few will buy them.

And anybody will have one fuck of a time pitching $2k barrels. Anywhere.

When did I in turn ever imply that you did? Not once.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder or some hidden vendetta against the "other" AR owners out there? Or possibly just enjoy arguing? Or just rebutting reason?

You can "what if" this shit until the cows come home, listen to some here that are in the Engineering and Manufacturing industries. You will likely learn more than you realize.

Talk with some PMS, Engineers, and facilities that actually make finished products. Talk to material suppliers.

Put the time/effort/funds into the research. Then report back.

Or....keep posting random links to super cool exotics and bickering.

Oh, and don't hate on the guys with the "Eotech, Trijicon, lasers and so forth", somebody actually put the effort into product development to bring these advances.

How often I cannot definitively answer but it is an issue with both upper/lower receivers, along with pivot/take down pin hole issues.

Many examples of upper receivers with north of 200k on them.

Example of common upper receiver failure: (Originally posted by Henderson Defense and common to all brands in his experience).


Eta: IIRC, the upper is not Colt but Charles Daly. But again, experienced by Ron with all makes.

You forgot Colt and PSA Premium (TC) bcgs.

Not one that is accredited.  I won't say by which agency.

I'm curious about that super duper strong magnesium alloy.  Also just what that means.

HKPOF is curious, so he might develop some interest in pursuing engineering or one of the materials sciences.

Since this is not the first time this sort of expedition has been forged on this topic, some input from another member here that appears to have some grasp of metallurgy and reality:

"Nickel based superalloys are a poor choice for rifle barrels. Inconel 625, Hastelloy X, SuperTherm, etc perform very well in high heat application or corrosive atmospheres, but since nickel is relatively soft, they are poor performers in high wear applications. Passivation on the surface layer will withstand extreme heat and resist corrosion in some very nasty solutions (look up a test solution known as "green death") But the passivation layer is largely nickel oxide it is quite easily damaged by high friction surface loads, like a bullet travelling at 3000 fps. 

People tend to confuse nickel based superalloys with stainless steel. Stainless steel has a lot of iron in it, as where superalloys have little to no iron and very low carbon content, (Inco 625: 5% Iron and .10% carbon) This makes for poor anti-wear qualities. We can talk about face cubic centered and body cubic centered structures, intermetalic phases and creep resistance until we bore everyone to death. But none of that is related to wear, it is all related to heat and corrosion resistance. 

On the other side of the superalloy game you have the wear resistant alloys. Stellite being one of the most widely recognized tradenames. These alloys are very hard and as such have excellent wear resistance properties. These alloys also have little to no iron but very high carbon content (1-2% not fractions of a percent) since nickel is soft it isn't used. But cobalt, chrome and tungsten are very hard, and make up the bulk of the alloy. Seems like the perfect solution. The alloy is hard, so it offers fantastic wear resistance properties, but it's next to impossible to machine, it can have cracking problems (hydrogen embrittlement as well as inter-granular attack) So, not really a good choice for rifle barrels. 

Forging. Yes Inconel 625 can be forged, in fact forging is quite common and maximizes the properties of superalloys by further grain refinement. Unfortunately forging of nickel based alloys doesn't yield the same resulting strength increase as it does in carbon steel. Alloys are a lot like AR15s, someone always wants to know "what's the best one to buy?" The answer in both cases is the same...it depends on what you want to do with it. I've worked with nickel and cobalt based alloys my entire working life, they are pretty amazing. But even after 30 years of this, I'm still impressed at how good steel is for a lot of applications. There have been a lot of very smart people that have selected the material used for rifle barrels. Steel is pretty hard to beat."

Same thread for quote above.

LINK

(For anybody else that has interest).

Keep in mind, Ron's range has 3 goals: make money, keep guns serviceable, and shoot targets at 25 yrds.

Ron's input is amazing, and appreciated by many (myself included). It gives many an idea of which manufacturers' components stand out, gives us a baseline type data point of what to expect.

200-500k rds a month is something that likely none of us will ever encounter.  And many of us want our guns to group past 25 yrds.

IIRC, the highest round count from a single bbl from Ron's range was ~82k. Gas port erosion was horrid and rifling was nearly non existent past the port, but the weapon still printed groups at 25 yrds well enough to make the tourists grin.

That being a 4150 ordanance grade chromed bore steel barrel. No black magic/voodoo/exotic formula there.

Or, replacing a $150 component every 200k rds. I could definitely live with that. (Not that any AR that I own will ever see that type of round count). Unfortunately.  

Definitely.

Unfortunately a Colt M4 receiver costs me in the neighborhood of $150.