Help me decide / educate me on buffers.

[okie]

Don't confuse "engineer" with "inventor" or "designer".

If you have a good head for 3-dimensional thinking and spacial modeling you can come up with some pretty good and quite intricate designs, that makes you a designer.

But, if you can calculate the bending stress in that little leaf spring, and redesign it so it doesn't fatigue and break after 500 cycles, you might be an engineer.

I don't know where your experience with engineering comes from but when I went through the only class I repeated from high school was first year calculus, and there where only four one-semester classes that were unrelated to engineering. You are close in that only about four or five semesters were "actual engineering classes" like statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, engineering design, etc, but the rest of it was maths.

Then there is the fact that University doesn't now, nor has it ever, produced "engineers". University provides future engineers with the tools, the maths, the physics, the understanding of dynamics, etc., they will need to make themselves engineers.

That's kind of my point. I get the feeling there's a very wide range of competence with your run of the mill mechanical engineer, and some on the lower end of that scale might be borderline helpless. Idk, I'm just guessing. I just see a lot of stuff done by engineers where my intuition alone can find major flaws.

[okie]

You should read some patents . . .

I've definitely seen some asinine patents, but this would be the first I've heard of where they literally patented a way to make something no longer do the thing for which it was designed.

What I do find confusing though is that nobody has created a competing system without the spring, because that would not only escape their patent, but it would do everything the A5 system claims to do.

[Disciple]

What I do find confusing though is that nobody has created a competing system without the spring, because that would not only escape their patent, but it would do everything the A5 system claims to do.

See this: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread...no-bias-spring

I hope lysander will reply to my post above however as I still see a conceptual value to the bias spring.

[17K]

I've definitely seen some asinine patents, but this would be the first I've heard of where they literally patented a way to make something no longer do the thing for which it was designed.

What I do find confusing though is that nobody has created a competing system without the spring, because that would not only escape their patent, but it would do everything the A5 system claims to do.

A standard spring and an H2 does what the A5 claims to do. Always has.

[1168]

I've definitely seen some asinine patents, but this would be the first I've heard of where they literally patented a way to make something no longer do the thing for which it was designed.

What I do find confusing though is that nobody has created a competing system without the spring, because that would not only escape their patent, but it would do everything the A5 system claims to do.

Heavybuffers makes an A5 length buffer that has a rubber doodad instead of the spring. As 17k said, an H2 simply works. And it doesn’t require tools to install.

[pinzgauer]

Bull crap.

If the ammo remains the same and the weight of the firearm is nearly the same - The one with the spring back there is not going to feel as harsh as a solid stock.

Kids that actually shoot AR's are laughing at you just like I am now.

You're skipping some things like the height of the recoil impulse above the contact point. AR is a straight stock design, classic bolt-action as the force axis two to four inches above the contact point of the stock.

[pinzgauer]

I mean two years of the four are just repeating high school, smoking a bunch of weed, and attending mandatory life skills classes. So only two years of actual engineering stuff, spending like maybe six hours a week actually in engineering related courses. I feel like you could probably read engineering for dummies over a long weekend and know about as much as they do.

Much ignoranance showing there...

1) every engineering degree I know of starts with taking a couple of engineering 101 classes plus physics your first freshman semester. Then the next semester builds upon the first classes, and so forth.

2) most of the engineering curriculum requires a matching expertise in physics. Which for nearly every engineering degree is at least three semesters. And of course advanced math which you need for the advanced physics and in many cases the advanced engineering stuff. Depending on the program sometime you can defer the later physics but the first physics is pretty much a requirement to understand much of what you're dealing with.

You can dis fresh engineering graduates all you want, and a few may have zero practical experience. (Or be stereotypical nerds) but that would be a very broad generalization.

Likewise, nearly every modern engineering program requires practical experience in the form of senior projects or things of this nature. And the smart engineering students co-op or work summer jobs in the industry.

So no, reading engineering for dummies or learning ohm's law is not going to make you an engineer.

As an example... EEs normally know ohm's law prior to starting school. But in your first semester you will master it all the other operating principles like Norton's law, thevenan equivalent, etc. It's largely the framework that you have to have to understand every other bit of electrical engineering.

And if you don't know those principles you will fail in your second semester classes as they assume mastery of what you learned in your first semester.

That's said, it is very unlikely that a newly graduated engineer is the one designing the stuff that you were complaining about. It's probably an engineer with years of experience.

[markm]

University provides future engineers with the tools, the maths, the physics, the understanding of dynamics, etc., they will need to make themselves engineers.

I saw this example on The Family Feud the other night....

Some black woman was giving her quick bio to Steve, the host, as she was the leader of the family competing. She explained that she was an electrical engineer (I think), and that she quit because she sucked.. and in her words was "messing up a lot of cars".

I thought this is EXACTLY the problem with American Mediocrity in design and manufacturing. Companies will now put a blithering idiot in a critical position because 1. the color of her skin and her gender, and 2. because some crappy "college" degreed her dumb ass because of her Color and Gender.

This is one of the reasons why America hasn't produced a decent automobile in over 50 years. Shit.. there's a Ford recall on my news feed every fukking week.

[HKGuns]

A standard spring and an H2 does what the A5 claims to do. Always has.

I'd say that goes against conventional wisdom on this site, as well as mine and thousands of other's experiences. If it did nothing, BCM wouldn't have pushed it since inception and wouldn't have developed their own version.

But you do you and I'll do me.........

[One More Time]

I was under the impression that the A5 action wasn't fixing anything.
All it did was give rifle action guns a collapsing stock and still retain the A2 spring and a rifle weight buffer.

Pretty much the same thing as using an A2 lower on a carbine upper.

I only have mid and rifle gas systems and prefer a rifle action for those and a collapsing stock so went with the A5 with an A5H2