This is what you get when you outsource critical parts. You don’t control the process start to finish. Plus it’s easier to blame the supplier.
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This is what you get when you outsource critical parts. You don’t control the process start to finish. Plus it’s easier to blame the supplier.
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Wonder who the supplier is.
Definitely not a typical hammer
https://www.midwestgunworks.com/page/mgwi/prod/3005514
Last edited by fixer; 11-25-2020 at 07:44 AM.
At least it seems none of the P320’s in these “dozens of examples” have gone full-auto...
Probably because two bad parts in a batch of thousands is hard to catch in batch testing and standard inspection procedures. Unless they do NDT on every single part, it’s certainly possible to miss something like this, even if they did everything in house. One might argue that a broken hammer should not allow for this type of specific failure, which is as much an issue of design as anything else.
Even a 320 with a broken striker foot won’t do that.
Last edited by Archer1440; 11-25-2020 at 08:34 AM.
"If I ever needed to hunt in a tuxedo, then this would be the rifle I'd take." - okie john
"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." - Michel De Montaigne
The multiple rounds being fired suggests that a grip safety is not as useful as a firing pin block that is activated by the trigger. A positive firing pin block controlled by the trigger should not allow a broken hammer to fire the weapon as the firing pin's travel is blocked until the trigger releases the safety. The grip safety may serve as a good drop safety but is not proof against part breakage. This is consistent with the experience of the Swartz firing pin safety that uses the 1911 grip safety.
I distrust weird guns like this one. It’s just not that easy to design a reliable and safe gun.
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Shabbat shalom, motherf***ers! --Mordechai Jefferson Carver
It sounds more like a QC/component supplier problem than a design defect. EZ's have been around for a couple of years now. I chalk the current issue up to the gun panic's massive demand leading to manufacturers being too hasty to get things out the door. It happened in 2008 and after Sandy Hook, I remember.
The majority of S&W customers do not want to pay for the QC that would consistently catch 2 bad pieces out of a shipment of 5,000. Some PF members might, but when it's time to vote with cash, even many PF members are tightwads. It's one of the reasons why guns like an 870 Wingmaster are no longer common. It's why the 870 Express is getting clobbered - A similar gun from a foreign manufacture with less QC is 30 bucks less at WalMart and selling like hotcakes.
How much manufacturing experience do you guys have? This is like when people say "Cops should shoot the gun out of the bad guys' hand", without understanding much about being a cop. I love vertical integration in manufacturing, but it's unlikely that S&W is going to become a better SME on MIM than a MIM manufacturer. So outsourcing makes sense on a process that S&W doesn't have 150 years worth of established knowledge base. If S&W made that part in house, it could (probably would) be worse.
It's hard to believe that something as important as the hammer can be sold by a third-party vendor for $10.49. How many companies have made profit on that part, and it's still 10 bucks? Unless MIM has advanced a long ways in the 10 years since I dealt with people in that industry, that is a horrible geometry to make in MIM. I suppose those ejector pin intentions visible on the side view could be from the die that makes the wax patterns for investment casting, but at that price I doubt it.
Even if they did 100% NDT, based on a LOT of experience with customer returns of 100% inspected parts (or 200% or 300% inspection - 100% inspection multiple times), unless it's robotic/automated, it's still only about 90% effective. That's why when customers care, they specify and pay for automated/robotic inspection on critical parts.
Are you sure that's MIM? The pics at the link show tooling marks from a lathe, and that geometry lends itself to a bar fed lathe or screw machine. It could have been made from bar, but overhardened enough to become brittle. If you still have the broken parts, send them to me and I'll section them and post pictures of the microstructure(I'm a Metallurgical Engineer).
https://www.midwestgunworks.com/page/mgwi/prod/pin-6
I checked my serial number and mine is good to go. I really enjoy my EZ 9. Everything they advertise about it is true. I've lost a lot of upper body strength and couldn't rack the slide on my older automatics. With the EZ-9 I have no problems.
I'm surprised at how light the recoil is on this gun. The magazines are a pleasure to load.
One of their suppliers had a QC problem but that's not to say the gun is bad. I've spent a lot of money on guns in the past that broke do to poor quality control.