HOT new replacement for brass!! Wave of the future!!

[9-toes]

So found this cruising the web. Hope they don't think I'll be buying any of this.

http://www.guns.com/ploycase-ammunit...380-11521.html

Against nature I say!

[I'll Make Mine]

The latest iteration of the aluminum/steel case non-reloadable cheap ammo. Our brass cases aren't going anywhere (except up in price, but with the price of copper, that's unavoidable).

Meanwhile -- those have metal rims/heads, have to have either Boxer or Berdan primers, and folks have been reloading plastic shotshells (not to mention paper hulls) for a long, long time. Someone will find those aren't as non-reloadable as the article writer thinks...

[starmac]

Well they are greener than brass. geesh
They do come in pink, maybe they should advertise on this site. http://www.theliberalgunclub.com/

[jmorris]

Nothing new, they have been around since the '80s. Shotshells are plastic but from my experience the poly cases do not provide sufficient neck tension for semiautos. The last ones I had were .223 and worked ok in a Contender, if they weren't free I would have called them a waist of money.

[williamwaco]

Pioneers get arrows in their backs.

I will wait and see.

[TNsailorman]

The military looked into poly cased ammo years ago and I haven't heard of them issueing any as yet. Must be a reason for that.

[evan price]

They did this in 223 a while back, they worked, but when the chamber gets hot the case gets soft and you lose neck tension and accuracy goes to poo, or it jams or sets back in an autoloader.
They had 38 spl in plastic cases too, I had one or two. Same problem.

Then there was the USAC ammo which used heeled bullets and a plier-type reloader. Failed.

I have friends in the plastics industry who were actively working on polymer cased ammo for the military. One of the criteria is it had to actively decompose in sunlight so they didn't need to police up the ranges as well. Obviously only good for training or practice.

[I'll Make Mine]

They did this in 223 a while back, they worked, but when the chamber gets hot the case gets soft and you lose neck tension and accuracy goes to poo, or it jams or sets back in an autoloader.

This is all dependent on the polymer used. ABS and polycarbonate soften at elevated temperatures; nylon holds up a good bit higher (they used to sell nylon utensils for use in non-stick cookware, though most of that market has gone to polymer alloys and melamine now); aramid (generic for Kevlar) can stand up to chamber temps close to cook-off range without softening (but has other problems, else we'd all be shooting Kevlar ammo by now). Aramid reinforced phenolic would probably take anything aluminum cases would, though there could be issues with cracking under excessive mechanical force (i.e. the case might have to be made thicker, reducing ballistic performance, to take very rough handling or full-auto loading stresses) -- and that material wouldn't require resizing after firing; it would either return to original dimensions, or it would crack/break/shatter. Deprime, reprime, charge powder and seat a bullet, and ready to shoot again, and about half the case weight of aluminum.

Few if any of these will decompose in sunlight; there'd be empty cases on/in the ground in a combat zone longer than is now the case with brass, never mind steel case military ammo that rusts away in a few years. Add the "green" requirements, and plastic ammo that shoots well and stands up to conditions like hot chambers becomes a pretty difficult task.

[novalty]

These two comments got me:

From article:

The polymer can be recycled, so there's that angle as well.

Response from PolyCase Ammunition to question about rim separation:

1) The patent pending design of the case virtually ensures that the metal extraction rim will not separate from the remainder of the case. In fact, it is because of this characteristic that we do not consider PolyCase ammunition to be recyclable.

[zomby woof]

Bought these years ago.

[gandydancer]

anybody remember the Dardick pistol mfg 1949--1950 & the Tround? the round was made of polymer 38 cal tround.

[Awsar]

i got some .38 spl with the plastic case they were odd so i got a few --but ill stick to brass thks

[MtGun44]

Bought and shot 100 rds of the .223 poly and brass cases like in the pic above. Dismal accuracy,
but may have nothing to do with the cases, may be garbage bullets. Whatever, I'd never
buy it again - but the cases worked fine.

Bill

[warf73]

I was all for something new until I read this.

The polymer cases can't be reloaded, so there's no worry about who might have reloaded the ammunition, or how many times the brass has been reused. The polymer can be recycled, so there's that angle as well.

This very well could be the angle the anit gun people could use, scary thought.

[1Shirt]

At the least it is interesting!
1Shirt!

[nicholst55]

The Lightweight Small Arms Technology (LSAT) Light Machine Gun and rifle both use a polymer case (there's also a caseless ammo version). It's not a bottleneck design, though, it's a cylinder that 'telescopes' over the bullet. While it will probably be some time before this technology becomes mainstream, it **is** coming - whether we like it or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSAT_light_machine_gun

[pmer]

Attachment 54869

The black powder guys have been on this for a while.

[I'll Make Mine]

The black powder guys have been on this for a while.

Yep, they were making combustible paper cartridges around 160 years ago, and non-combustibles a lot longer back than that -- I've read reports that paper cartridges go back to the first military units armed with "handgonnes", in the 15th century. If we didn't need the cartridge to obturate in modern firearms, I suspect we'd have combustible polymer cartridges (aka guncotton cases) that would act like caseless, except less prone to break down into propellant dust from handling.

[Chicken Thief]

Yep, they were making combustible paper cartridges around 160 years ago, and non-combustibles a lot longer back than that -- I've read reports that paper cartridges go back to the first military units armed with "handgonnes", in the 15th century. If we didn't need the cartridge to obturate in modern firearms, I suspect we'd have combustible polymer cartridges (aka guncotton cases) that would act like caseless, except less prone to break down into propellant dust from handling.

Then you would miss the "gasket" effect of the brass, and suffer blow back as the old ones had.

[I'll Make Mine]

Then you would miss the "gasket" effect of the brass, and suffer blow back as the old ones had.

Hence my qualification:

If we didn't need the cartridge to obturate in modern firearms

I do note that most military guns bigger than around four inch bore use component loading, aka loose ammunition, rather than fixed ammunition -- howitzers and naval rifles. They avoid blowby at the breech somehow; seems to me I recall the sixteen inch naval rifles from WWII having something built into the breech that seals under pressure like our cartridges do -- but it's part of the gun, not part of the ammunition.