Enidine Hydraulic buffer useful life

[Veracity]

Anyone know what the useful life of an Enidine Hydraulic buffer would be?

[VA_Dinger]

Does Enidine have a suggestion on this? Maybe you should check out their website or call/email them.

I've seen only one break and that was very recently. I have no idea how many rounds it had seen though.

[Bill Alexander]

Been working back and forth with the engineers at Endine for a couple of months now, looking at recoil mitigation and reliability in my 6.5 Grendel rifles. The buffers are available in two duty ratings based upon heat disipation but the internals of both are the same. Typically they are looking at +10^5 cycles for the working life.

I would be interested to hear about that unit that failed. What broke and what was the effect on the weapon.

Bill Alexander

[Heavy Metal]

I remember LWRC was complaining about several units that failed.

[Bill Alexander]

Details?

- What was the mode of failure?
- Was the failure identical in each instance or were several different failures present?
- Number of units?


I am cautious in my work with these units as I have yet to access any fleet data. Equally they meet the enviromental and durability requirements currently set for the weapon by a good margin and the company has experience with the M240 and M2 systems.

As you can appreciate I am not inclined to take engineering data from the internet without more background, so anything else about these systems that can be verified would be appreciated.

Bill Alexander

[WS6]

The US military uses them in several weapon systems. That is good enough for me.

I have a feeling that a lot of Enidines that people have seen break were some of the earlier ones that had the improperly hardened shafts. Enidine has since corrected the problem.

[Heavy Metal]

You would have to ask them for details. I am just putting that out there for what is is worth.

[Bill Alexander]

I have had a lot of my customers fielding them informally in the Beowulf rifles for several years now and so far no one has reported any failures. That is not to say they do not exist, just if they do, they have not been reported. These units are the lower rated 5.56 design so I am not concerned about heat build up.

My initial FMEA on the unit highlighted the junction between the head and the piston rod as a possible failure area, problem is that such a failure would render the weapon inoperable so I am very interested to find and verify any failures. The internal damping mechanism is not such a concern as the buffer will revert to at worst a simple mass unit with a urethane base. Seizing in the extended position would also render the unit inoperable.

As above I would like to find and verify (as far as possible) any failures

Bill Alexander