https://www.ebay.com/str/coloradojudd
Freestone Armory has most m&p parts available at different times on their ebay store. I see a few metal plates there now.
"...we suffer more in imagination than in reality." Seneca, probably.
I reached out to S&W customer service about a month ago asking if they made metal mounting plates for the 2.0 CORE pistols and they told me that all 2.0 guns come with plastic plates and that they no longer made metal plates.
I had an LE SKU M&P9 M2.0 full size that I believe was a T&E gun that came with metal optic plates. Although it was a M2.0 the optics footprint and plates were the same as my first gen M&P9 ProSeries CORE guns. I don't recall the manufacturer date on the box since I no longer own it but I do recall it was an earlier production, maybe 2018. I assumed it was just an early T&E/demo model and that was probably why it was configured with the "M1.0" CORE metal plates.
Between the latest 10mm and 9mm CORE product releases, S&W seems to be going all in on their CORE mounting system. Hope it proves durable and they start shipping metal plates.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
How many rds were on those screws with the SRO when it sheared? I personally love the CORE system over the MOS style plates. I get more threads of the screw in the slide of the CORE system holding the optic. I'm still using the plastic plates because the CHPWS have been out of stock for quite some time, but the more rounds I have on the factory plastic plate, the less I worry about them, since they are not holding the optic down, just filling the gap. I think the screws are the weaker link and have a definite round count lifespan.
I agree with this, when I started shooting M&Ps I was shooting 40 almost exclusively and never thought twice about it. Maybe I am older and softer now and wouldn't like it, but I never really was put off by mine.
I am also pretty interested in the 4.6 10mm idea, and I am also interested in an optic on one.
I have a lot of M&P experience, but my CORE experience is limited to a single pistol, ironically it is my long time M&P 40 that I bought the 9mm Custom Shop CORE 1.0 top half for, and this came with the apparently desirable metal plates. With a Swampfox that has the RMR footprint I have had no issues, but probably only a measly thousand rounds or so through it.
So my take on the CORE system is that it has a handful of holes in the slide so the optic is mounted into the slide, and that has to be better. But then the bosses and other location points are in the plates, and the plates are located fore and aft in the slot, something that seems like it works out OK for a metal plate but not so well with a plastic plate.
But the idea of direct milling a CORE pistol got me thinking about what all is incorporated into the plate. I have a couple friends that machine things for a living, and we were looking at the potential of milling a slide. It is obviously a simple CNC process, and one of the friends (that also has a pistol he wants to direct mill) has a CNC (in his garage, for crying out loud...), but the more we looked at it if people would do it for $125 it probably isn't worth screwing with. But in the case of the RMR, the only complicated geometry would be the two bosses that fit up into the optic, the rest of the machining looks like it could be cut with a simple manual mill. Based on that we contemplated drilling for some dowel pins, and this makes me wonder if there might be a hybrid approach of taking a CORE pistol and (at least in the case of and RMR/SRO) drilling the top of the slide of a couple of pins that would engage the optic? The plastic plate could be eliminated or drilled for the pins to pass through if it works out better cosmetically? Might this be a potential for some of the other optics? If there are competing holes in the slide for other optics my idea obviously stinks, I am not going to go take the zeroed optic off of my only CORE pistol, just brainstorming here...
For you guys that are running chip wiz plates, are you using the Chip Wiz torque specs? I mounted a 508t to a Chip Wiz plate the other day and took it out to zero today. I used blue loctite 248 (stick) and tourqued to 10 inch pounds which is what they recommend. After 200 rounds a screw had come loose. I noticed in the holosun manual that they recommend 15 inch pounds of tourque.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
GJM thanks for the response. I recall reading that about the McMaster screws and the 508T. When I went to remove the screws just now there was very little resistance while backing them out. Will remount and try again I guess. Thanks.