Before continuing, I would like to answer two thoughts that are often mentioned in the comments.
The first one is about too strong a spring in PYa or GSh stores. Usually, with this unkind, and sometimes insulting word, they mention the designers, through whose fault it is allegedly necessary to equip the store with cartridges with increased effort.
The fact is that the force of the supply spring is calculated based on the mass of the cartridges, their lifting height and the shutter speed, taking into account the necessary safety margin. For weapon systems, the factor of this reserve cannot be less than two. This is the same characteristic as the recoil speed of the bolt carrier or the required accuracy when firing. This condition is established and controlled by the customer. He needs the store, which was equipped a month ago and which all this time has been absorbing the dust and sand of African samums, to work reliably at the right time and save someone's life. I perfectly understand the problems of the "athletes" who have to deal with the equipment of the shops in the shooting range much more often than the soldiers in the trenches. But these questions are not for a specific designer, but for those who are now determining industrial policy in our question.
This video contains answers to questions about both a strong spring and a store with a rebuild:
A second great thought arises somewhere at the intersection of Dunning-Kruger syndrome and a cognitive bias called "what am I doing wrong?"
“… I fired 100,500 rounds from Glock, Chezeta and Ridge, and never…” Dear, according to the quantum theory of debris in its Copenhagen interpretation, dust and dirt are collected where there is no movement. Look under the sofa, make sure. If it’s still not clear, I’ll explain.
You shoot in a shooting gallery with ventilation or in the forest during daylight hours and calm, dry and snowless weather with a comfortable ambient temperature. You remove the cartridges from the sterile factory packaging with your hands clean, like those of the Chekists. Having passed through the interior of the store, they will collect the dust that will have time to cram into it at a time when it is not in the case. And the more you shoot, the cleaner the store will be. Now read the first part of the article again, and if you still do not understand what it is about, I will explain it again. It examines how a store operates in a dirty environment and what it looks like in terms of geometry. If your pocket allows you, during your life you will spend no more than 100,500 cartridges in sterile conditions, while the designer should, ideally, take care of complete reliability under any climatic and operating conditions specified by the customer. The shooter from this video will never write that he shot 100,500 and never encountered the problem that was mentioned in the first part of this article. At 9:30, what I wrote about happens. The cartridge from the magazine is fed with a delay, as a result of the jamming of the magazine:
The Kurkovy USM has an advantage over the striker trigger, since with equal reduced masses it has a larger reserve of kinetic energy. Therefore, for our customer, and when I say “customer”, I always mean only the military, there has never been a problem of choosing which trigger should be used in weapons.
A separate question about the fuse. Rather, about the fashion for its absence. The additional button on the trigger, by misunderstanding, but rather intentionally, called an automatic safety device, does not have any safety functions.
From the point of view of biomechanics, it makes no difference whether you press the usual trigger or equipped with an additional key. One movement of the index finger in one direction.
In self-cocking revolvers and pistols, the absence of a safety guard against an accidental shot - unintentional pressing of the trigger, is compensated by its large stroke and cocking force, since all the energy of pressing with a finger is spent on compressing the mainspring. The same principle is applied to "automatic" fuses such as GSH-18 or Glock. But in these samples, the mainspring is not compressed, but its pre-cocking and with less effort than with self-cocking. That is, the principle "guarantee against accidental pressing - greater effort" in this case does not work. As a result, lower limb shots appear in inexperienced shooters who have not fully mastered the mantra - "the finger falls on the trigger only immediately before the shot":
And not only limbs:
And not only their own:
An FBI officer came to the dance with a pistol. They can do it. Did a somersault, the gun fell out. When I was picking it up from the floor, there was a shot. The bullet hit the visitor in the leg. Do you know what the bosses said? The officer was obliged to unload the pistol before doing somersaults on the dances. With regard to this case, he was obliged to take out the store, distort the bolt, pick up the dropped cartridge from the floor, drive it into the store, insert the store into the pistol, and only after that do gymnastics. The guy was punished.
And this is an example of a work injury. During work - inspection of the premises, the policeman holds a pistol in his hand. A surprise attack by a dog and an involuntary shot - a bullet in a colleague:
The "Boa" designer sent all these troubles away and made a classic trigger circuit with a fuse and a magazine without rebuilding, thanks to which he passed all the tests without any problems, but in order to at least stand out with something, he made an automatic release from the slide delay. Although at one time this focus did not take place in terms of the safety of handling weapons.
And now a little philosophy. The overwhelming majority of Homo sapiens believe they have freedom of choice. But the consumer society, paradoxically, deprives a person of this freedom. If you can still figure it out on your own in five or seven varieties of sausage, having tried them all, then in a hundred varieties of beer there is no longer. But this is not a dead end. We have a welfare society, so the system offers "experts" who will help you navigate the right way in the endless sea of diversity. At the same time, in order to become an "expert" you do not need a specialized education, qualification of seniority, scientific degrees, or at least an industrial level. Experts are everywhere: behind the counter, on the screen, in factories and in ministries.
They will teach you to understand beer, medicines, weapons and candidates for deputy. Further - more, experts turn into advisers who, taking advantage of the complete illiteracy of their bosses, begin to promote their stupid ideas, and sometimes, by creating the appearance of vigorous activity and an innate propensity for intrigue, crowd out and take their place.
And what about our homo sapiens? Influenced by the opinion of experts, he makes a choice in the direction that they indicated to him. And at the same time, he is sincerely sure that he completely consciously made the right decision, and begins to broadcast it to his friends, talking about the ergonomics of the handle tilt, the softness of the trigger and the effect of the height of the barrel above the center of gravity on the toss when fired. In the same way, users of iPhones will find thousands of reasons why they use them and not android gadgets.
Everyone who is in the subject probably knows the tale of how the gloomy Austrian genius walked through the barracks and questioned the military people about what kind of pistol they needed. Then he wrinkled his forehead and made a miracle weapon that conquered the whole world at once.
Listen to how it was.
Once the task of scientific, technological and industrial revolutions was to meet human needs. Reasonable needs. When buyers go into debt and buy whatever they want, experts come and say that if all needs are met, then new ones need to be created. Brilliant! But it's not easy at all. Experts cannot turn homo sapiens into homo consumens.
Here professionals, bison, are already getting in on the act! They have clear knowledge and a plan for how to proceed. One of the points of this plan says - create a product that will visually differ dramatically from other similar ones and be easily identified in the crowd. But what else can be created if, it would seem, technoevolution has gone through all the possible options? And Glock's designers did it. Since the invention of the Volkswagen Beetle and the miniskirt, the history of industrial design has not seen such success.
The largest parts in the pistol are the bolt cover and the handle. With the handle it was easy, it was given an additional tilt, however, for this I had to work on the store. But the shutter is something. The designers, taking as a basis the desire for minimalism, stepped on the throat of Western weapons thought that a weapon should look scary and terrible, like a ruff from a hole. All in pimples and Picatinny spikes, intricate corners and transitions. On the contrary, the rectangular block of the Glock's breechblock casing sublimated childhood desires for weapons in the form of homemade wooden weapon toys. Ask a three-year-old to draw a pistol and he will draw a Glock. The task with recognizability was solved just brilliantly.
The lug of the bolt lock was driven into the size under the nail, the bolt delay key was reduced to indecency, and the trigger was abandoned. But what to do with the fuse? He ruined everything. I went beyond the size and did not really want to interact with the plastic frame. They removed it completely, and in order to calm down the thinking and doubting public, they called upon to honor the mantra about the finger on the trigger just before the shot.
They added manufacturability to the product, without which it makes no sense to enter the market today, even if they made it a recognizable look. We provided a service, an opportunity for the buyer to poke around in the product and change parts without using a file, which in the language of marketers is called "the ability to independently modify the gun for himself."
Further - the usual advertising brainwashing. The tale of the millionth shot, invisibility on x-ray. And it went well.
Open any marketing tutorial. Make sure. In full accordance with its canons, Glock releases a new model every year. At least for the red cap, but there must be some kind of update, which needs to be pumped up to notify the consumer.
"Errare humanum est" - said the ancients. It is human being to be mistaken, just like doing something in general. Only the one who does not do anything and does not sweat is not mistaken. That is, the deceased. Therefore, the Austrian military in 1982 asked to supply them with fuses. American too.
And the Glock immediately lost its aura.
I do not want to say that the Glock is a complete … Glock is an excellent product at a technical and engineering level, but it does not have a sufficient safety margin for use in the needs of the Ministry of Defense and the necessary safety margin for civil and police purposes. Tens of thousands of people use it, and for health (an oxymoron, of course, given the lack of a fuse). I am for a sober view of things.
An afterword is possible.
Read the beginning here.
