Equipment to commercially produce .22lr ammuntion

[DanTheFarmer]

Labor costs probably don't account for much for this product. The process is very automated with little human input.

You guys are really stressing my memory banks but thinking back to my Army Ammo Ordnance Officer Basic Course I think we saw a small arms (yes, it was centerfire, but the ideas should carry over) production line that had no humans on the line and just one monitor/controller station in a safely remote location. There would of course need to be humans supporting the production line but you get the idea; lots of capital costs/low operations costs.

Anyone with experience is asked to correct me but that's what I remember from the 1980's.

Dan

 

[Sam1911]

Labor costs probably don't account for much for this product. The process is very automated with little human input.

For CENTERIFRE, that is true. For rimfire, not so.

There was a great video on this a while back, but now it is unavailable.

There's a lot of human hand involvement in the priming process.

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

I think in the production of ammo the costs of EPA regulations and insurance costs (both liability and loss) would be the cost drivers behind the equipment and utilities. The air filtration required for both lead and gunpowder particulate removal would be tremendous. People only consider labor costs but usually American labor can out produce any third world factory worker, but the regulations and insurance costs here price manufacturing out of the market.

 

[TRX]

Frost's "Ammunition Making" book, mentioned earlier, has a *lot* about .22LR manufacture, including drawings of the die sets, rounds-per-hour for each step of the process, chemistry of powder and primers, etc. The descriptions were of CCI's plant in the Philippines. As I recall, the equipment was almost exclusively standard stamping presses, mostly old and rickety when they were installed in the plant to start with.

 

[Dr. Sandman]

I say go for it! Maybe you can compete with the big boys.

 

[Reloadron]

In the subconscious mind of most shooters, the .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle rimfire cartridges form part of the bedrock of shooting sports. Their ubiquitous availability, affordable price, consistent quality and wide product range are taken for granted. Few shooters stop to consider the many difficulties inherent in the design and manufacture of these cartridges.

If you set out to design a self-contained cartridge that is difficult to make and suffers from numerous design shortcomings, it would be the humble .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle (.22 rimfire).

American Rifleman The Impossible .22 Rimfire.

Pretty good informative writeup about the little 22 rimfire. Not long ago there was a pretty good and informative little video running around by CCI Speer where they went through the factory and showed in detail all of the steps and machinery used to produce 22 rimfire ammunition. Now every link to that video reads the video does not exist. Beats me what became of it as I watched it a month ago or so.

This is one of the old links that no longer will get you the video from OutdoorHub.

No clue why that video is gone. Anyway, if someone with the ways and means wanted to manufacture 22 rimfire by all means do the due diligence homework and go for it.

Ron

 

[Sam1911]

Yeah, that's the video I was trying to post, but it's dead.

It did show the priming process in detail.

 

[itsa pain]

Regardless of the responses on here, I hope it works out for you. We are too much at the mercy of too few manufacturers (nothing against them). The more small manufacturers the better. I say small because CCI alone pumps out 4 million rounds of .22 daily. At least they did before the panic, not sure what their current production is at.

probably 500 a day

 

[itsa pain]

I was talking about the ammo shortage with my boss yesterday and he had no idea about the shortage because he rarely shoots anymore. He asked me to look into what it takes to produce .22lr and see if it would be a viable option to invest in. Does anyone know where somebody could order the equipment needed to produce .22lr?

Please don't post about all the the other costs and licenses, etc that are required. I understand all of that. I just need to figure out the equipment cost at this point. This is not some crazy pipe dream. I am going to run a full business model for my boss. If it has a negative NPV I won't even show him the report. If it has a highly positive NPV I will give him the numbers and let him decide.

Tell your boss to find out about setting up a factory in China where they do not seem to have all these problems that we have or seem to invent. They are burying us production wise because they just do it. If it happened within a few months they would be cranking out billions of 22. Norinco would be doing it now if not banned by our govt with a wink and a nod and with some contributions from US gun and ammo makers

 

[rodregier]

The priming of .22LR is the most difficult/mystical part of the whole process. It's also potentially the most dangerous, since the compounds are only "safe" to manipulate when wet. A good process would have an isolated/explosion-handling design for the priming stage with no humans required to be present when it is running.

To a first-order approximation priming for .22LR is what makes or breaks the attendant product for reliable function. Most of the accuracy breakthrus in .22LR are related to how good a process is used for priming. Russian as well has (American) Federal Cartridge's .22LR Olympic-grade products were foremost improvements on how the priming compounds were deployed in the case. I believe one of the tricks they used was a centre dimple in the botton of the case to help encouage the priming compound to stay in the rim, where it will do some good.