Has modern-day reliance on relatively few firearm actions (pretty

I think we're at the same point that they were at in the late 18th/early 19th century with the best flintlocks they could make and nothing had changed for a while, we've refined the existing designs to their best and we lack the technology and perhaps the imagination to produce anything much better outside of fringe prototypes of dubious real world value. We're waiting for the invention of the percussion cap, or in our case whatever it is that takes us to the next level. It has to be something both extreme enough to prompt advancement but also stable and reliable enough to be put into mass production, become widespread and fit into the kind of use we want to make of it.

>>32992784
I want an enfield action that is as strong as a mauser or arisaka action

>>32992784
>stifled ingenuity and creativity?
No. Infringements have done that.

>Or is it simply the end result of convergent evolution in firearms design?
Maybe. It's prolly just a result of good enough being good enough.

>Is this really for the better?
Probably.
>Shouldn't we be encouraging innovation in firearms technology instead of sticking with what we know?
Yes. But the market doesn't support it very well.

>Pic related, a great firearm that scared away potential buyers simply because it was very strange and different
The spread of home CNC will massively change the availability of meme guns over the next 50 years.
You won't have to worry about parts availability, third party support, etc if you don't pick a meme caliber/cartidge.


Just wait, eventually Johny will ask for a pedersen in 5.56 for his birthday, and you'll spend an hour or two preping before you start making it. And it will have the advantages of modern metallurgy, and will have an AR barrel.

>>32993315
>Just wait, eventually Johny will ask for a pedersen in 5.56 for his birthday, and you'll spend an hour or two preping before you start making it.

I'm not sure you quite have an idea of just how much work goes into machining anything.

>>32993350
>I'm not sure you quite have an idea of just how much work goes into machining anything.
I am. But gcode only needs to be made once, and just pretend that 5 axis will become more prevalent.

>>32992784
>>32992937

I want to say firearms incorperating electronics. I'm well aware of the biases and reasoning against them but assuming that conventional small arms are still relied on primarily I don't see a problem with their development and use.

>>32992784
I think a big part of it is how restrictive the laws have gotten. Back then amateur gunsmiths didn't have to worry about the ATF.

I think the next big advancements will be mass produced electronically fired guns with caseless ammo.
Small solar panel to power the battery, pulling trigger complete circuit and fires round. Round in its entirety leave barrel. Maybe even find a way to make it recoiless.

>>32992784
>Or is it simply the end result of convergent evolution in firearms design?
This one.

Why would anybody make a wacky blow-forward or toggle lock pistol when blowback and tilting barrel are already known working designs that are cheap to make? Why would anybody make a long recoil rifle when gas piston/impingement is cheaper and more accurate?

>>32993478
>I want to say firearms incorperating electronics.
I can't think of a single thing that electronics could do to displace current mechanical technology in the market.

Rail/coil guns are sci-fi technology. Chemical propellant is simply better for the end user. It works with few apparent downsides. You'd need to clean a coil gun less often (if at all) but railguns have barrel erosion issues that can't be avoided. Not without exotic materials anyway, which would put them at an unavoidable market disadvantage compared to traditional firearms.

Electronic ignition of chemical rounds doesn't seem to have any purpose. Caseless ammo has few apparent benefits but too many engineering challenges.

I think future developments will be mostly in optics with computer overlays. Why not scale down an artillery firing solution computer and put it into the scope of a rifle? A few people have made prototypes of that sort of thing, and I think it will only become more popular. One group has even made such a computer that pulls the trigger for you at the right moment. That's a potential application of electronic ignition I suppose. More likely, the firearms underneath the optics will remain mechanical without significant deviation from what's on the market today.

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>>32993315
>pedersen in 5.56

>>32994415
Could the emergence of CNC make small production runs of guns dependent on complex machined parts, like toggle locks, economically feasible again?

>>32992784
But roller-delayed blowback...

I wish more firearms would adopt that. That is the action of the future

>>32994570
Lever delayed blowback is cool too. Are there any advantages of roller delayed over lever delayed?

>>32994458
>Could the emergence of CNC make small production runs of guns dependent on complex machined parts, like toggle locks, economically feasible again?
Probably not from a business standpoint. We've had commercial/industrial cnc for over 70 years.
But it will make meme/complex/intricate/custom designs feasible for private individuals.

The majority of the cost of a firearm comes in the form of labor, transport, regulatory burden, and overhead. An individual's costs would be limited to materials, time, and tooling.

>>32993315
Theres more to making a safe firearm than just machining, remember, most of these guns wont be aluminum like your average drill press made 80% lower, steel requires certain heat treating that most individuals would be incabable of from home. Also coding isnt all that goes into machining parts, you need proper fixtures as many parts cant just be made in a vice

>>32994398
>Rail/coil guns are sci-fi technology.
For now. There are working examples today, they're simply huge, costly, and unwieldy. Just 20 years ago, railguns and the like were firmly fictional. It's just a mater of time until someone makes a breakthrough that makes the tech more affordable and available.

The next steps in weapon evolution are going to be taken from fiction. I forsee working energy weapons in the next 100 years.

>>32995091
>you need proper fixtures as many parts cant just be made in a vice
5 axis.

>>32995327
They can be made, but they'll still be sci-fi tech. I find it very difficult to believe that we'll see batteries or even super-capacitors exceed the energy density of modern smokeless powder.

I think we'll see energy weapons within a few decades, but they'll be direct energy weapons. Lasers. The Chinese already made a man portable laser system designed to permanently blind. Such systems have been banned but I'm sure they're still secretly developing such tech. Reagan's Star Wars will probably come back too. Lethal man-portable lasers are probably still a ways off though (how would that actually work though? There is no hydrostatic shock with a laser burning a whole straight through you, and such a wound probably wouldn't bleed fast enough to disable...)

>>32995091
There could be new designs specifically meant to be easy to CNC and overbuilt to overcome hardening issues.
>>32995362
Also this, but that's more expensive. You can retrofit an old 3-axis mill into a CNC mill pretty easily, making 3 axis CNC quite cheap since there are a lot of 3-axis mills already out there.

>>32995410
>no hydrostatic shock with a laser burning a whole straight through you
Yeah I'm sure having all the tissues around the wound flash boiled from the massive amount of energy the body absorbed as a hole was burnt through it wouldn't cause the victim any issues.

>>32995498
The specific heat of water is so high, I'm honestly not sure it would.

>>32995410
>I find it very difficult to believe that we'll see batteries or even super-capacitors exceed the energy density of modern smokeless powder.
The key is to only store enough electrical energy for like 2-5 shots, and be continuously generating power.
Pure electric vehicles are shit, and pure electric weapons are shit for the same reason.

A generator and gas weighs less than and takes up less volume than an equivalent amount of energy stored in batteries.

>>32995715
>and be continuously generating power.
How? What sort of fuel/power plant would you be using that would weigh less than 30 rounds worth of powder and brass?

>>32995715
Also that would doubtlessly be loud as hell, if it could even be done.
I wonder, would the ATF try to call the muffler on the exhaust a silencer?

>>32994398
>Electronic ignition of chemical rounds doesn't seem to have any purpose
Absolutely 100% disagree. Electronic triggering systems would remove the conventional sear based FCG that is the most sensitive to dirt component in a firearm. Reliability in adverse conditions would increase dramatically.

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>>32995745
I'd agree, if not for the fact that triggers on electronic consumer goods are invariably less reliable than triggers on firearms.

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>>32995777
that said, I think it'd be interesting to see an electronically fired gun that used a piezoelectric switch like a grill lighter, so you didn't need to worry about battery power.

>>32995807
But guns work perfectly fine already.

>>32994398
>I can't think of a single thing that electronics could do to displace current mechanical technology in the market.
They can provide things that mechanics can't do. Like guided bullets chasing target over the corner. Though bullets can be not bullets anymore and guns not be guns.

>>32995807
potato cannons use that kind of ignition

>>32995813
That's pretty much been my thesis throughout this thread. Piezo-ignition would be a cool novelty though. Maybe piezo-ignition with a black powder muzzleloader? Fully enclosed and water tight, and no need for primer caps. Not sure it would actually work though, might not be hot enough to ignite.

>>32995820
Agreed, if there are advances to be made in firearms it will likely be a optics or computer fusion.

>>32995820
Return of the gyrojet, but this time with guided rounds?

>>32995879
gyrojet X coilgun or gyrojet x airgun
Near speed of sound initial velocity, but rocket speeds after exiting the barrel.

>>32995905
Could a gyrojet be shot out of a regular (maybe smoothbore?) gun using a powder charge, letting the rocket take over once it's out of the barrel?

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>>32995879

>>32995933
Will dirt-cheap drone-grenades make firearms obsolete?

I think that gas delayed blowback could be a bigger thing

>>32993960
Seconded, I have three projects I have to wait on clarifications or break the law by going ahead. This is the biggest reason nobody with the talent and interest goofs around long enough to get a cool side job going. There are other hobbies That Won't get your dog shot if you show them off. I had a sheriff decide our local gunsmith collection of parts kits was illegal since he had the tooling and know how to crank out automatic weapons. It turned into a bunch of legal hassle that would have ruined him if there was another gun shop for 200 miles.

>>32995726
Not 30 rounds 210, those baby turbines will be in the ballpark for an machine gun team some day. The generator can be as heavy as a full combat load minus fuel

>>32995715

Hence why all locomotives these days use traction motors hooked directly to large generators. Fuck storing the energy, just dump it right out.

>>32996056
I'd say there's a difference between weight on your rifle and weight on your chest. I suppose you could put the powerplant on your gear instead of on the rifle... but I find it hard to believe that this could be more practical than traditional chemical ammunition.

>>32992784
>Pic related, a great firearm that scared away potential buyers simply because it was very strange and different

More like because it was expensive as fuck.

>>32996071
I don't know enough about modern diesel-electric trains to know if that's sarcasm or not. Don't they run off battery banks so that they can always run the diesel engines at whatever speed they're most efficient at, instead of throttling the engines up and down whenever they need more or less power?

>>32996094
I don't know shit about trains, but the DP vessel I do work off of is diesel-electric and there are no power banks. The bridge crew just manages how many generators they run to keep the load spread out. Depending on weather they just run the generators wide open though. A battery bank doesn't make sense in that case. I assume trains are similar.

>>32995933
what is that and where can I buy one

Only way i can think you could innovate guns without going to a completely new system like rail guns or plasma is to make a series of generic gun parts that all fit together kind of like legos, more so than what we have now giving you an almost infinite range of ammunition or design if you have the parts to assemble it.

Even then that wouldn't go over well and would only be a play thing for hard core gun lovers.

>>32994611
I don't know. All I know is that most famous example of roller-delayed blowback, the G3, is incredibly rugged and rarely jams because of the way the action is designed. I don't believe there's been as famous and good an example of lever-delayed blowback.

I don't see any reason why it couldn't be used in as good and reliable a weapon as roller-delayed has in the G3, but I don't think it ever has been in practice. Correct me if I'm wrong.

>>32997242
The FAMAS uses lever-delayed blowback. I don't know if that fits your standards for dignity and design but memes aside, it was a pretty good gun. Roller-delayed is definitely more popular though. I think the MP5 uses roller-delayed too

>>32997295
Yeah, like all HK guns are roller-delayed. The FAMAS just isn't the same, rugged to the point of you-literally-can't-make-it-not-fire that the G3 is.

I don't know if that's because of an inferior action, or just because HK overbuilds things. Ruggedness really is my first priority in a gun.

>>32997242
The Swiss used to use the SIG SG 510 which was roller delayed blowback. But they switched to SG 550, which is long stroke gas piston (dafuq?).

>>32996094
>>32996237
'Modern' Diesel-electric locomotives haven't evolved outside of emissions controls on the prime movers for maybe 50 years. Diesel-electrics do just power generators, most locos have no power storage. Some designs have a flywheel mounted in the powertrain that is used to store some mechanical energy for smoother operation.

Guns technology has pretty much peaked.

New pistols, assault rifles or whatever are all functionally the same as the ones already available.

>WOW HK IS MAKING A NEW ASSAULT RIFLE
>Oh, it's just another AR type rifle

>>32998228
Firearms have peaked mechanically. The future of firearm design is in AESTHETICS.

>>32998326
I would ask if caseless ammunition has a future, but right now it seems to be a case of too much investment for little benefit.

>>32998636
That could be said about literally every technological advancement ever
>Why invest all of this time and effort into a steam engine? A horse is basically just as strong and the steam engine provides little benefit
>Why invest all of this time and effort into a diesel engine? A steam engine works just as fine with less parts and less that can go wrong
>Why invest all of this money and time into steel hulls instead of iron? Iron works fine and just takes a little more maintenance

Every technology will, in its infancy, appear only marginally better than its predecessor. That's why you have to invest in it and take it to its near ultimate conclusion. You might hit a dead end, yeah, or you might discover the next big thing after you work out the kinks.

>>32998684
You operate a coal mine. It's a deep coal mine that quickly fills with water, making it impossible to mine unless you're constantly pumping it out. How do you power a pump? Teams of horses that you need to house and feed. The industrial application of horses is expensive. The new steam pump doesn't need stables and it's feed by the coal you're digging up so you don't need to buy feed.

The first steam engines had a clear economic advantage over previous horse technology. For a technology to succeed it needs to be better than what came before.

>>32995933
Did he send it up someone's ass on a spy mission?

>>32995952
Yes

>>32992784
It all comes down to ability to regulate gas flow, to match different powers of munition.

Recoil based systems aren't good in terms of accuracy.

Mechanically delayed blowback offers many advantages over gas-operated systems, except it cycles reliably only very specific range of munition.

Only system I think could potentially dethrone gas-operated guns would be gas-delayed blowback, but I find it hard to imagine using gas straight from chamber of rifle, even .223.

>>32992784
Modern reliance on international alliances and brass cartridges have stifled innovation. Just watch Ian's videos, most of the crazy ideas came from paper cartridges, before the standardized metallic ones. Until we build a better boolit, we've basically made the best guns that can be made.

>>32995933
It's so cute!

>>32999705
He flew it through India.

>>32995879

There was all that hooplah about airburst munitions. Which with gyrojets might be the way forward - making the bullet or projectile more than just a dumb bullet. I remember doing a real brief and simple check of some of those prototype power armors and how much weight they can carry and finding it would manage a 20mm firearm (I think the Oerlikon 20mm as an example, if in handheld format) and around 150-200 rounds.

I'm not an expert on modern warfare compared to pre-modern so I don't know the feasibility but along with the aformentioned computer/electronics tying into the firearm for increased aim and accuracy I'd wonder about upping the caliber while mitigating the recoil.

>>32996071
Full torque at 0 RPM bruh. Get those 100 boxcars goin right meow

>>32997242
roller delays wont have the lifespan though. IMO delayed blowback is still incredibly viable and there will be a better mechanism than lever or roller delaying. Right now off axis delaying like the Kriss seems promising

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>>32995807
Do piezoelectric stuff get worn down?

the next leap is propellant. When it becomes possible to push past 6000 fps without a great increase in case capacity. Gas operation will once again be matched by delayed blowback

>>33002827
I'm not sure. I've been thinking about this a bit and I've decided that the best way to do this would be to set the rifle up like a percussion cap gun with a hammer that drops when you pull the trigger. Instead of landing on a cap/nipple though, this hammer would drop on a peizo element. That way the peizo is on the outside of the gun instead of buried inside the trigger mechanism.

I'm giving serious thought to actually making one of these. I think it could be done. The problem I'm most concerned with is the erosion and/or fouling of the electrode spark gap.

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>>32992784
>Or is it simply the end result of convergent evolution in firearms design?

You know a great example is cock on close compared to cock on open bolts, and why nobody really uses cock on close anymore.

>When you look back on pre-WWI firearms, you see an amazingly huge array of actions and mechanisms that were being tested.

That was the problem about it's innovation. Most of the creators of such inventions did not own a factory or the abundance of tools and supply to produce en mass, and the price per unit on those did not help. There would be a reason why successful military would still op for bolt rifles because they were cheapest at the time.

>>33002867
underrated

>>32995807
Piezoelectrics cannot produce enough power to ignite gunpowder.