Originally Posted by
Stickman
I would agree, I don't know of any company that does 100% in house. That being said, there are still standards that need to be kept. I was sent a link to TOS where a guy worked for DPMS and commented they had at one time supplied parts to almost everyone including BCM. Now, the less than intelligent groups will take that info and say BCM=DPMS. That is simply not true, not only was the comment made that it was in the past, but there was no mention of what parts. DPMS made LPKs which were very heavily used in the industry, and I would be stunned if the majority of companies hadn't used at least some of those LPK components at some point. I think we all know that BCM was not satisfied with the level of quality they were getting, and moved to get their own castings created. You can tell if you have real BCM pieces as they are all clearly marked
I'll tell a quick story here without violating any NDAs about being in an AR15 manufacturers shop, and everything was in boxes. The individual pieces like triggers, safety, discos, springs etc came in large boxes filled with thousands of parts all oily and ready for use. Each box held a large bag so the oil wouldn't leak out, and each held a large amount of the same parts. The assemblers would take a part, drop it in, and if it doesn't fit or feel right, they would just toss it back and grab another one. Tolerance stacking wasn't an issue, and neither was QC, because they had a massive amount of pieces to grab, and one would almost always work if the first didn't.
The above company did the same thing with receivers (upper and lower), but each receiver was vetted first by a person who did a QC check for putting, machine marks, anodizing etc. This was done on a white background with very good lighting to show off any flaws. If the receiver failed visual QC, it was put in a reject box. The items which failed visual or functional QC were tallied up at a certain point, and were returned to the vendor to get credit towards the next purchase. If the QC level hit a certain point, this manufacturer would cease dealing with that supplier. The items made in house went through the same QC checks (plus the ones done during mfg), with the end goal of having a quality weapon at the end.
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