Myth becomes reality

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Myth becomes reality

Postby Tankwitch » Tue May 10, 2016 11:06 am

http://popularairsoft.com/will-gbls-das-m4a1-be-airsoft-game-changer-decade
The Real sword myth gun has become a reality. A Korean company has made the ultimate M4 AEG. I can't wait to see a review.

Edit: Fixed link
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Jewish Ninja » Tue May 10, 2016 10:10 pm

I thought the Real Sword was going to function with a solenoid? Which would be interesting to say the least.

This DAS looks nifty. I'm not too keen on a gear driving a large bolt, but I'm curious to see how it plays out.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Tankwitch » Wed May 11, 2016 1:21 pm

The BO M4 that's coming uses a solenoid and a linear motor. They claim it will last at least a million rounds.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Thu May 19, 2016 2:02 pm

I'm a little skeptical. The article says that the mass produced model's gearbox uses "moulded parts". That screams "plastic" to me. Molded thermoplastic is almost guaranteed to end up being a terrible choice for a mechbox. Also, if you look closely at the mechbox, you see square corners all over it. Square corners concentrate stress. My prediction is that users will see cascading failures. The metal screws will start to back out slightly from the mechbox, or vibration will enlarge the holes they ride in, because plastic. That'll generate torsional imbalances in the mechbox. Which will lead to shims / bearings start to drag. Which will generate friction, which turns into heat. Which softens the plastic, allowing more movement, and screwing up the engagement of the gears. So, my prediction is that if the gearbox doesn't just crack, because plastic, either the gears will shred or the gearbox will melt.

Also, It uses proprietary magazines. Which is craptastic.

Not sure where the battery lives. None of the pictures show wiring. I'm guessing it's under the handguard, which means that if you upgrade to a RIS/RAS, you're running batteries out of a PEQ box.

Not to be a tool: Architects design buildings. Engineers have to sign off on the plans before they can be built. There's a different skillset, and you learn to look out for different things.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby ClownBaby » Fri May 20, 2016 2:02 am

Steve for the Boom.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Fri May 20, 2016 2:30 am

Just checked their website. The "limited edition" with a CNC'd gearbox is for sale.

Price: $2,500 USD.

This low, low price gets you a kit to assemble yourself and one magazine.

Just for the sake of comparison, and not making any value judgements, I can basically order 2 Systema PTW kits for the price of 1 of these kits.

Or, I can buy a Shapeoko 3 desktop CNC mill ($1300 or so with all the bells and whistles), some 7075-T3 aluminum bar stock, and whatever internals I want and build my own traditional AEG, just with a bulletproof milled aluminum body and gear box. And then, you know, use the Shapeoko to mill my own upper and lower receivers for ACTUAL AR-15's.

I understand that M-4 platform AEGs are maybe 10% more complicated than a standard AR-15. That being said, the cost of a motor and gear box isn't much higher than the price of a high-end target trigger for an AR. The barrel is a damn sight cheaper to make for an airsoft, what with not needing to cut rifling and worry about heat treatment and whatnot. Gunbroker.com lists LWRC rifles for about the same price as these guys are selling their AEGs.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby ClownBaby » Fri May 20, 2016 11:19 am

Hah! Double-Boom!

So, Your not getting one? lol
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Tankwitch » Sat May 21, 2016 3:31 pm

You do realize that Airsoft is not really meant for the US market. It's meant for places that the ownership of firearms is highly limited like Japan or out right banned like Hong Kong. So the comparison to actual rifles is moot and very silly.

On topic you are right on some of the design problems with the rifle in the first post. But this is a common problem with any external first design. All airsoft falls into the problem that the internals are not built first. As standard Version 2 gearboxes have obvious failure areas. All basic airsoft and advanced airsoft rifles all suffer from a high failure rate. You just have to accept what your willing to have fail first.

So bitching about an untested and new system about how it's going to fail is absurd. I bet you with it's stock performance being pretty good and the EBB recoil that's solid, if you let it come into the market and see what it can do. I bet you this AEG will could be a GBBR killer.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Sat May 21, 2016 5:03 pm

Tankwitch wrote:You do realize that Airsoft is not really meant for the US market. It's meant for places that the ownership of firearms is highly limited like Japan or out right banned like Hong Kong. So the comparison to actual rifles is moot and very silly.


The Linked Article wrote:How is the interest right now in the DAS M4A1 in South Korea? Will it generate more interest from Koreans and participate in airsoft games?

It is embarrassing to say, but we did not check any opinion in Korea. Guns are very sensitive here, and we have really restrictive regulations pertaining to airsoft. Many Koreans are interested in DAS M4A1, but, under such circumstances, it is difficult to encourage them to buy DAS M4A1, and take up airsoft game. GBLS will lobby to reform the laws, and set up a favorable environment for airsoft's popularization. As the first step, we decided to sponsor a Korean airsoft team in the USA. You will see the team supported by GBLS sporting DAS patches in the game shortly. While we cannot provide our products to domestic airsoft teams, we expect the video of our sponsored team to bring a perspective change on airsoft, and be the stepping-stone to boosting it here in Korea.

When will you be releasing it for the South Korean market? How about the global airsoft market? What will be the pricing (in US Dollars)?

The guns fitted for Korean regulations are not good for airsoft games, so there are no plans to release them in Korea. We will go to the global market first. Expect 300 limited edition units to be released soon.


Sounds like they designed this to fill a hole in the US market. And yes, in this particular instance, it is okay to compare the cost of an airsoft to the cost of a firearm when both are effectively available to the end-user in the intended destination country.

Tankwitch wrote:On topic you are right on some of the design problems with the rifle in the first post. But this is a common problem with any external first design. All airsoft falls into the problem that the internals are not built first. As standard Version 2 gearboxes have obvious failure areas. All basic airsoft and advanced airsoft rifles all suffer from a high failure rate. You just have to accept what your willing to have fail first.


See, here's the deal: We already know that there are problems with stock airsoft designs. We know where the failure points are, and generally it boils down to the original TM system was designed to shoot around 8 RPS at around 250 FPS on full auto, and semi was sort of an ill-advised afterthought.

If folks are looking to advance the state of the art (which I wholeheartedly support!!), it's probably a better idea to make sure that the new system has different failure points than the old system. If the old system has metal gearbox shells that fail, using a plastic gearbox is probably a bad idea. If the areas that fail are areas where stress concentrations occur, let's minimize them in a new design. The external design is already limited, since the market knows what it wants in externals. Now it's a matter of taking that shell and rebuilding the stuff that goes into it.

Tankwitch wrote:So bitching about an untested and new system about how it's going to fail is absurd. I bet you with it's stock performance being pretty good and the EBB recoil that's solid, if you let it come into the market and see what it can do. I bet you this AEG will could be a GBBR killer.


300 units at $2,500 per is $750,000. Sounds like they are trying to use the first production run to finance the purchase of the tooling for later runs. Not saying it's shady or even bad. Pretty smart if you can make it work, actually. But, the problems they are going to run into may kill the product. And since they have all the IP rights, it'll pretty well kill any future development along these lines by competitors.

I fully support finding new ways to do stuff. I just want the end result to actually work. If I can look at it and see problems right out the gate, that kinda bums me out.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Sat May 21, 2016 5:07 pm

ClownBaby wrote:Hah! Double-Boom!

So, Your not getting one? lol


Probably not. I'm much more likely to just start building my own parts at this point. I keep running into the same failure points with the ones I run, and it'd be a better use of my money to find ways to fix the problems I have rather than spend money buying new problems attached to a proprietary micro-ecosystem.

Failing that, I'll buy a Systema. They've been around long enough to have an established user community.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Tankwitch » Sun May 22, 2016 4:08 pm

I have no clue why you are insisting that this has a plastic gearbox. It does not. For the holding of gears even basic cast pot metal has enough strength. Yes the price kills it for almost all players, but what they are selling is a preproduction model. Originally meant for stores not end users. Estimates have it that the production cost to end users is going to be a third of the preproduction model.

A simple Google search shows that the major complaint about this model (Sharp edges in the casting) also exists on the Systema gearbox. I know of no major problems that comes from this design flaw, the major stress points are in a separate part to the gearbox.

This is airsoft when has IP rights ever factored into the clone market?
Can someone explain to me why Americans think airsoft and firearms are the same thing and are comparable?
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Sun May 22, 2016 7:25 pm

Tankwitch wrote:I have no clue why you are insisting that this has a plastic gearbox. It does not.


The Article You Linked wrote:While almost all the parts for the mass production gearbox version are moulded, the limited edition's ones are CNC-milled and assembled by Mr. Kim personally.


Molded = poured liquid plastic. Cast = poured liquid metal. Now, there are exceptions to this (Metal Injection Molding, for example). But MIM is mixing metal powder or flakes into a plasticizing binder so that injection molding equipment can run it. This is great for prototyping, but absolutely terrible for anything subjected to stress. The overall strength of the end product is basically the strength of the plasticizer, not the strength of the metal. I (and you) are also assuming that they are CNC'ing the first production run out of metal. Worst case, they are cutting plastic parts with a CNC.

Short answer: The article you linked says the production units will have plastic gearboxes.

Tankwitch wrote:For the holding of gears even basic cast pot metal has enough strength.


Except where it doesn't. Like, version 2 gearboxes that crack. Like, M249 gearboxes that crack. Like pot-metal gearboxes that keyhole when the bushings or bearings fail. As above, molding is heating something up until it flows, then using gravity or pressure to force it into a cavity. When it cools, it retains the shape of the cavity. Until it heats up again (friction) or fails (cracking).

Tankwitch wrote:Yes the price kills it for almost all players, but what they are selling is a preproduction model. Originally meant for stores not end users. Estimates have it that the production cost to end users is going to be a third of the preproduction model.


Right. Um. Where to start?

Yes. This is a limited edition pre-production model. It is hand built using CNC'd parts. This is good, assuming the parts are CNC'd out of an appropriate material. Not great, per se, but better than the follow-on production units.

You can CNC gears. The end result is not great. You can do this with a 2 or 3 axis CNC machine (or a 5, but there is no effective difference when it comes to a gear). The number of axes is irrelevant. What IS relevant is that a CNC unit runs a spinning bit very fast. This bit is in a head unit. The head unit is moved along however many axes the machine will operate in. There are a couple of ways to move the head unit. You can use a stepper motor and belt (think: most home 3D printers, inkjet computer printers) or with threaded rods. But, regardless of how you move it, it moves in jagged little steps, even if these steps are really really small. The better equipment uses smaller steps (among other cool things), giving you a better resolution. There's also backlash, climb cutting versus face cutting, and a whole bunch of other stuff that machinists are much better at explaining than I am. The end result is that you don't really get square internal corners or true curves when you CNC stuff.

You can do a much better job using other processes than a CNC unit. A lot of better gears are wire cut, for example.

Now, on top of that, you run into hot / warm / cold working of the material. As the mill end cuts, it creates heat. Create enough heat, and you melt / temper / work-harden / weaken the material. You can "fix" this by heat treating the end product. You can also case harden the final product. Think baking at 400+ degrees for a few weeks in a high-carbon, low-oxygen environment to change the surface properties of the final product.

Now, if somebody handed me a design (or better yet, handed it to a team of guys who know what they are doing!) and told me to figure out how to produce it in a manner that is as close to bulletproof as it can be made, it'd probably end up costing around $2500. But my website would be full of industrial buzzwords talking about the steps I'd taken and the aerospace materials I was using. Because that's where the unit cost would come from.

Tankwitch wrote:A simple Google search shows that the major complaint about this model (Sharp edges in the casting) also exists on the Systema gearbox. I know of no major problems that comes from this design flaw, the major stress points are in a separate part to the gearbox.


The article says the parts will be molded. Melt plastic, pour or shove it into a form, and let it cool. I have a stack of textbooks on mold design, castings, etc. A very simple (very, very simple) explanation of why sharp corners are a bad idea for molds OR castings (keep in mind, this is a gross oversimplification) is as follows:

When the liquid "stuff" (molded or cast) cools, it tends to cool from the outside in. crystalline structures tend to form on the surface and harden inward. Where you have a sharp corner, you get little tiny crystals. It takes less energy to shove little crystals around than it does to shove big ones around. Because they are all jumbled about, they are all sort of pushing on each other. That internal pressure means that it takes even less energy to dislocate some of the tiny crystals. Once microscopic cracks form, they tend to spread, since the concentrated stress has an easier time splitting and shoving stuff at the ends of the cracks than it does breaking apart the existing crack surface.

Also, when you look at where stress concentrations occur, they tend to occur where thickness changes radically in a part. They also tend to be greater further from the centroid of the part (it's a lever arm thing). You can reduce, but not eliminate a lot of this by filleting (rounding) the edges of the part rather than chopping it square. The greater the radius of the fillet, the less impact corners have on concentrating stress.

When the motor turns the gears, the bearings resist this motion. They transfer some of this resistance into the gearbox shell. When the piston slams forward and back, some of this motion is transferred into the gearbox shell. This transfer leads to fatigue and work wear of the parts. The wear is greatest at the areas of greatest stress concentration.

I'm not advocating that Systema is the end-all be-all AEG design. Far from it. I did mention, mostly in passing, that I'd be more likely to buy a Systema than a GBLS DAS M4. However, I'm even more likely to purchase tooling and produce my own parts for existing AEG designs than to buy either.

Tankwitch wrote:This is airsoft when has IP rights ever factored into the clone market?


I own a couple of airsoft M-4's. Right around a dozen, give or take a few. A couple of other AEGs that take STANAG mags as well. I don't know how many airsoft STANAG mags I have. Off the top of my head, I have three dozen realcaps, a couple dozen midcaps, a couple dozen hi-caps, 18 or so Echo1 FATMAGS, and a dozen or so drum mags (I'll eventually get around to converting them into realcap Beta-C mags!) With very very few exceptions, I can use any mag in any STANAG-capable platform. I can borrow STANAGs from friends. I can loan mine out. They all (generally) go pew-pew.

Rather than using existing designs, the fine folks at GBLS have designed their own proprietary magazines. So, rather than using interchangeable mags, that rifle is now on an island. The only place I can get spare mags is from them. They don't list spare mags as being available for individual sale yet, so I have to pray that they'll eventually sell me spares. I either have to convince everyone else I know to make the switch to their platform, or have them carry a couple of mags for me, and carry a couple non-GBLS mags for my teammates. When the battery dies or the gun shits the bed, now I have to remember to unload all of the precious special mags from my kit and replace them with non-GBLS mags.

Stock buffer tubes allow me to use a bunch of different aftermarket collapsible stocks. If the buffer tube is proprietary, chances are I would be stuck with the stock collapsible stock.

Not to mention: What type of battery does it use? Where is it stored? Is the flash hider removable? What threading is on the barrel? Can I use my existing tracer units, or do I need an adapter? When something breaks, how easy is it to get replacement parts?

Tankwitch wrote:Can someone explain to me why Americans think airsoft and firearms are the same thing and are comparable?


They are, and they are not. Generally, firearms are seen as much more precisely manufactured than most airsoft guns. They are engineered to withstand much greater instantaneous forces than airsoft guns. Firearms tend to use more expensive materials in their construction, although this is not always the case.

Externally, they are similar enough to draw comparisons. From a value perspective, most Americans will feel that a firearm has a higher cost to manufacture and a higher intrinsic value than an airsoft gun.

As to differences? My 10mm subcompact handgun will outrange most fully-upgraded airsoft sniper rifles. Therefore, it is absolutely valid for me to question why an airsoft gun that is primarily marketed at US consumers costs more than a top of the line ACTUAL rifle that is also marketed to US consumers, especially when they both share external features.

* * * * *

Barring actual experience, my PERSONAL belief is that this product is more hype than substance. This is based solely on a review of the linked article and the GBLS website. I PERSONALLY would not spend $500, or the theoretical production unit cost of $833, let alone $2500, on the product based on the information provided and the inferences I have made.

I'm not saying that you should not spend your money on this product. I'm not saying that the company should be boycotted, or people should receive hate mail, or anything like that.

What I am saying is that my experience and my perceptions and my surface evaluation of the literature all lead me to believe that this product will not meet my expectations regarding being a good value for the money. My baseline expectation is that I will be able to shoot at least the cost of the gun in ammo before having major failures. With the ammo I shoot running me about $20 per 5000 rounds, I'd expect this to successfully feed a MINIMUM of 625,000 rounds, or 125 bags, of 0.2 g pellets (on semi-auto at about 1500 rounds per 7 minutes) before requiring a major rebuild. I strongly doubt that this product will live up to my expectations.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Tankwitch » Tue May 24, 2016 2:27 pm

Nice technobabble.

I must point out that the cost for expendables for airsoft so low that if you judge it based on trying to get the cost of expendables equal to the cost of the equipment you'd never buy an airsoft gun. So you should check out BO airsofts supergun that they are building I'll include a link. They claim it will last a million rounds.

Here is a link to arnies thread about this gun with more info:
http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/215678-das-m4a1-by-gbls-korea/
Here is a youtube vid showing the battery compartment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxj9Jzq97o&feature=youtu.be
Here is a link to the BO super gun:
http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/215692-bo-mto-phantom-magnetic-aeg/

I'm tired of trying to reason with you. You've started using tired argument tricks, and that saps my will to continue.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Steve » Tue May 24, 2016 3:01 pm

Tankwitch wrote:Nice technobabble.

I must point out that the cost for expendables for airsoft so low that if you judge it based on trying to get the cost of expendables equal to the cost of the equipment you'd never buy an airsoft gun. So you should check out BO airsofts supergun that they are building I'll include a link. They claim it will last a million rounds.

Here is a link to arnies thread about this gun with more info:
http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/215678-das-m4a1-by-gbls-korea/
Here is a youtube vid showing the battery compartment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxj9Jzq97o&feature=youtu.be
Here is a link to the BO super gun:
http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/215692-bo-mto-phantom-magnetic-aeg/

I'm tired of trying to reason with you. You've started using tired argument tricks, and that saps my will to continue.


I'm sorry that you feel this way. I'm also sorry that you are unable to formulate replies that are useful and informative. Rather than continuing to speculate about materials and functionality, it might be better for us to wait until full-production models are on the market before continuing this discussion.

However, as you are such a fan of including links, I've included one for you:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

I'd probably recommend starting with "ad hominem", move on to "burden of proof", and then just go from there. And before you get too butthurt, I'd also suggest looking back through this thread. You'll notice that I took the time to separately address each of your primary claims. You, on the other hand, lumped things together and cherry-picked things to address while completely ignoring what I had included.

The real reason you are "tired of trying to reason with me" is that I actually apply reason and critical thinking. You, on the other hand, have demonstrated that you are either unable or unwilling to do so. You're probably a decent person in the real world. But online, you kind of come off like a useless douchebag.
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Re: Myth becomes reality

Postby Jewish Ninja » Tue May 24, 2016 9:42 pm

you kind of come off like a useless douchebag.


<3 Steve. I also learned a bunch of stuff about production of parts that I never knew, so thanks for that :D
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