How far are we from quality $299.99 AR15s?
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frankenstein406
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With ar10s being the new craze I say we are close, now I guess it would just depend on your definition of quality.
MachIVshooter
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I'll say it again: It ain't gonna happen with decent quality parts unless a maker/builder liquidates, which will make it a limited time "blow out" sale.
That would be the cost of a single small scale machine, and doesn't even take into consideration consumables, maintenance, electricity usage and operator wages. It would seem that you're not far removed from those folks who have no concept of manufacturing overhead and feel they should only have to pay for cost of materials for a finished prduct. Let me try to explain using an example:
A good friend of mine runs a plastic injection molding business. He got an order to make 15,000 lotion containers, which he is selling to the lotion company at $0.52/ea. Each one has about $0.10 worth of plastic in it. Boy, he must really be screwing the lotion company, huh? I mean, 520% profit! Wow! Unless, of course, 1/3 of the product line has defects or flashing that make them unsaleable, meaning they get put in the grinder to (maybe) be used for something else that can have similar composition and color. So now these things are costing him $0.15/ea in materials alone. Now, he had to incorporate the mold into that cost, too. $600 for two hunks of 7075-T6, a full day of CAD/CAM design and tweaking, a couple hours of that thing being roughed out on an $80,000 Fadal 4020 VMC, then another 1-1/2, 2 days of hand polishing. So there's 3 days and a spendy hunk of metal that become part of that $7,800 total bid. His $160,000 8 ounce injection molding machine can punch out about 12 containers per minute from the 4 cavity mold, so long as nothing jams up or gets stuck. So at that rate, he can produce a maximum of 7,680 containers in an 8 hour non-stop day. Of course, the reality of the situation is that between stoppages and unacceptable product, he winds up putting in a 12 hour day to produce about 3,000 containers. So that would be 5 full 12 hour days to meet the contract. Each and every one of the containers also has to have flashing hand-trimmed, which is another 6 or 7 12 hour days. Then they have to be invoiced, packed and shipped.
So, finally, after about 3 weeks, the order is filled. Costs are:
Materials: $2,850
Electricity: ~$200
3 weeks facility rent: $1,200
Machine lease payment: $500/mo, so ~$375 for 3 weeks.
That leaves him just $3,175 to do machine maintenance and pay himself for close to 200 hours. Would be less if he didn't own that Fadal VMC outright.
Think he can afford to sell those things for any less?
Even if their net profit were $50/rifle, that'd be 2,600 units just to cover initial equipment investment. Probably another 500 units to cover tooling costs. A high speed 5 axis VMC with ATC could finish one upper and lower forging in about 10 minutes, not counting the time it takes the technician to swap out the pieces. So, one machine would take 2-1/2 to 3 months to produce those 3,100 receivers if it were running 12 hours per day with zero stoppages. Then there's maintenance. Does it seem trivial now?
See above. I don't know what you think their per unit profit is after all expenses are paid, but I'm betting your assumed figure is considerably higher than the actual number.
Care to clarify?
Kynoch
member
You simply don't know that, "period."
Kynoch
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The "quality" issue is a red herring... So is the "mil-spec" issue.
It's nothing more than a tacit admission that these prices are going to be realized (save for outside political/emotion matters that effect all guns), but an excuse needs to be made for that realization given that I paid $XXXX.XX for my own AR.
Grunt
Member
For a $300 AR, I would say that my definition of "quality" would be a rifle that might fire and/or might hit something but I wouldn't bet money on that. Right now we have quality AR15s. We might one day have $300 (present day dollar prices) AR15s. However, you aren't going to get an AR15 that is quality AND at a $300 price tag.
Wisco
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The original question was about how far from a quality $299.99 AR we are.
How is discussing quality a detractor?
Sure, you win. There will be a $300 AR. It'll be nothing anyone who knows better would buy after comparing it to the current $600 rifles. It'll be absolutely laughable when put next to a mil-spec or high-end AR.
Kynoch
member
The "quality" variable is a red herring for this discussion -- no matter how much you contend it is. It's noise. I suspect the actual product quality levels of Ruger American and AR-556 are very similar.
Costs is costs when comparing finished goods -- in this case a bolt action repeater and an AR platform rifle. Unless one required a super expensive manufacturing process that the other does not (which is not the case) or one rifle required capital parts (receiver, barrel, stock) that the other did not, then costs is costs.
In this context I really don't care about your example. See the forest from the trees! I care about comparing a bolt action repeater (which are already at these low pricing levels) to a similar level AR platform rifle and what they cost to produce. Do you understand that?
See above. I don't know what you think their per unit profit is after all expenses are paid, but I'm betting your assumed figure is considerably higher than the actual number.
Have you followed the pricing of guns (particularly ARs) over the past several months? Are you old enough to remember the personal computer explosion of the 1990s?
IBM did not copyright the hardware architecture and MS was free to sell MSDOS to end users. The result was an absolute EXPLOSION of competition (often by tiny local/start-up firms) and prices plummeted.
Having been reverse engineered to death, the AR platform is pretty much in the public domain. An individual or firm can buy parts on the "spot market" to assemble, test and ship completed firearms. We have seen a plethora of small makers popping-up doing just that.
Now as the demand begins to wane as competition continues to build, we see dropping prices. I believe it has only began to get bloody. The coming year will show a lot.
From an actual cost to produce and sell basis (vs. craziness caused by emotion and politics), the AR is a $349-299 firearm.
Kynoch
member
AR15 Platform Rifle
Remington 700 Rifle
The parts count of an AR15 is higher than most bolt-action rifles but the difference is hardware and not capital parts like receivers, barrels, stocks, trigger groups, etc.
Kynoch
member
Because it's a non-issue in this context.
Let's make things simpler for you. How long will it be until Ruger AR-556s (or equivalent) are sold for $349-299.99
In other words, how long until an AR platform rifle is selling for what same quality bolt-action repeaters are currently selling for?
Kynoch
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You're precisely the sort of person that would have said today's prices would NEVER be realized again if asked 18 months ago. You cannot separate cost and price. You clearly don't know the difference.
Like it or not, guns prices are once again going to be driven largely by what they cost to build and sell and not what a frenzied market will bear.
Kynoch
member
That's true too. In recent decades, outside politically-driven, emotional forces are what have set demand and thus pricing and not what guns actually cost to build and sell.
I actually think some of the above comments are from people who got stuck with $1,500+ M4s and simply cannot bring themselves to recognize that prices on ARs are dropping.
MachIVshooter
Member
The mil-spec aspect is a guarantee that Ar parts will fit your AR. So yes, it matters.
Quality isn't ignoratio elenchi, either. Be it $299 or $49, I wouldn't want an unreliable, inaccurate or downright dangerous AR. And I don't think I'm alone. Can guns be made dirt cheap? Of course. And we all know what you get. You either end up with the horrendously ugly and heavy but safe and reasonably reliable Hi Point, or you get something of the Lorcin/Jennings/Davis variety that are dangerous paper weights at best.
You're operating under the mistaken assumption that everyone cares what the current price of a product is relative to what they paid X number of months or years ago. Sure, a few folks might, knowing that they'll likely never recoup their investment if they sold. The overwhelming majority of us, however, would prefer that prices be as low as possible. It's ridiculous to think that just because I spent $900 on my first AR, I'd somehow be upset that I can build the same gun for $600 today. It's equally silly to think that I'd be unhappy if I were able to do another one for $300 tomorrow.
I'd love to see $300 ARs with forged 7075 receivers and decent barrels/BCGs. I just understand that it's not gonna happen. To drive costs down significantly, manufacturing changes in two ways: Faster processes and/or reduced tool wear. That means materials that are more easily formed with less costly methods, and materials that are easier on tooling. At $300, you'll get 6061 extensions, die cast aluminum or polymer receivers, button rifled heavy profile parkerized 4140 barrels and 1045 extruded bolt carriers.
I'll pass.
Kynoch
member
MachIVshooter
Member
Ummm........yes, it is the case. Bolt action receivers are cut out of steel round stock. AR receivers are forged out of 7075-T6 aluminum. Therefore there is a big difference between buying lengths of 4150 steel to machine into rifle receivers and buying a huge hammer forge to pound aluminum into the shape of an AR receiver. Or, conversely, there's a lot more material, tooling and time to turn a block of aluminum into a billet AR receiver than a piece of round stock into a bolt action receiver.
Be willfully obtuse if you want. It remains true that the only piece common enough between a bolt action and an AR to be produced with the same tooling is the barrel.
Also, it's not as if sub-$300 bolt actions are a recent phenomenon. I don't think there's been a time in the history of that class of firearm when such a creature didn't exist. By the time inflation pushed the higher quality rifles over that mark, their were budget models filling the gap. I paid $289 at Wally World for a synthetic & parked 700ADL back in 2002. ADL crept up into the mid-$400 range, but the 770 kept Remington in that sub-$300 group.
Having said that, would you argue that the 700 ADL was as nice as the 700 BDL? And especially, do you feel that the 770 competes with the 700 at all?
No one here is disputing that an AR-type thing in the sub-$300 range is not only possible but likely. What we're saying is that it's not going to compare favorably with the $500-$600 budget ARs.
9000 is the category. The actual certification is 9001:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000
it also doesn't really mean squat.
Willie Sutton
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Think he can afford to sell those things for any less?
QMS improvements so he doesn't get a 33% reject rate wouild be a good starting place...
Willie
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QMS improvements so he doesn't get a 33% reject rate wouild be a good starting place...
Willie
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MachIVshooter
Member
I thought the same thing, until he took me through the specs and process on this particular project. Only way is a newer, larger, more powerful machine. If he were to make 15 million of them, then it would be worth that kind of investment.
Injection molding is not a simple thing. Getting temps, pressures, flow rates, consistency, etc. all dialed in to where there are no air bubbles, thin spots, striations, excessive flashing, incomplete cavity fills and so on is not easy. In small scale production, there's going to be a lot of waste. It's just a matter of figuring out if the material waste percentage is more or less costly than the time it takes to tweak everything for a lower rejection rate. He found that scrapping 1/3 of the product was more cost effective than the amount of time it took constantly adjusting everything for a <10% rejection rate. He could have run it with a nearly zero rejection rate, but he'd spend a month instead of a week trimming flashing.
In such an already way over-crowded AR market, I'm not seeing any connection between Ruger's new product announcement & a $300 AR.
One more name among dozens of varying shapes, shades, forms, QC levels, and pricing levels.
Ruger's 1911s have not given us $200 1911s. Those didn't drive pricing down, or cause any other maker to drop that low.
I see no correlation between their ARs and such anticipated lowering of AR prices elsewhere.
Denis
One more name among dozens of varying shapes, shades, forms, QC levels, and pricing levels.
Ruger's 1911s have not given us $200 1911s. Those didn't drive pricing down, or cause any other maker to drop that low.
I see no correlation between their ARs and such anticipated lowering of AR prices elsewhere.
Denis
1KPerDay
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whazzat? Link?
chicharrones
needs more ammo
R.W.Dale
Member
If a person will look at the construction of the newest entry level bolt actions it's evident they are engineered to be as simple to make as possible.
When faithfully copying stoners design you just can't compete. Just the bolt carrier on an AR probably has more machining steps than an entire ruger American rifle.
Something AR like could probably be done for that price point
When faithfully copying stoners design you just can't compete. Just the bolt carrier on an AR probably has more machining steps than an entire ruger American rifle.
Something AR like could probably be done for that price point
BobTheTomato
Member
hmmmm......it might get sold as a box of parts to cut down on labor.
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