Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Forged, Cast, or Milled?

There are 3 processes for manufacturing a lower, correct?

They are forged, cast, & milled. ????

What are the pros & cons of each? I am guessing of the 3 milled is the most expensive?

What process do the major manufactures (Stag, RRA, Colt, Busmaster, etc) use?

I do not know if anyone even makes cast lowers anymore. They were thicker and more crude looking. Most are forged (DPMS, RRA, Bushy etc). I do not know who is making milled, but I am sure they are pricey.

So basically as long as it is forged it should be good to go? Correct? The rest is just brand name, eh?

Read this

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...&topic=0&Search=true#Post1683760

Sun Devil makes milled receivers for a comparable price to forged (about $125, or so). I have two, the nice thing about them is that the lines of the receiver are sharper and there are no "mould seams" visible (or whatever you call the little rough edges left on the forgings from the dies)

I also have Stag forged lowers and functionally I don't think that it makes any difference.

You might want to try " Spikes Tactical.com " they have lower receivers for around 100.00 and lots of interesting things for your AR.
Navarro

Forged receivers are put into a CNC to finish..then you have those that start out as a block of Billet and is CNC'd to a receiver(Sun Devil,Vltor,LaRue and POF)

from Wilson Combat's web site

so there is another manufacture that uses CNC machined uppers and lowers. S&W's web site does not say if they are machined, but they use the same alloy as Wilson, so I am thinking they are not forged.

Hell here I was under the impression they were all pretty well CNC machined....

Wilson you pay mightily for the name... just like you used to with Kulecks crew at FA....I bet there hair still stinks over there from HUA syndrome.

Jeff

HUA?

Heap Up A$$?

I'd love to hear why you hate those guys so much, Jeff. I've done no business with them and have no personal experience, but back in the day there was an M14 list I was on and Walt Kuleck was very helpful and while he seemed a little full of himself, you couldn't argue with the hour or so a day he seemed to devote to disseminating info... anyway, why are they so bad?

-jeff

All the methods you mention require the reciever be it upper or lower to be machined in some fashion or another to final desired dimensions. No upper or lower is useable as is straight from the casting dies or the forging dies and requires machining or milling to bring it to final design dimensions. It is then heat treated to get the durability desired. FWIW 1100, 2410, 6061 and 7075 aluminum may all be forged, cast or machined/milled. In some instances it would be desireable structurally to have a forged piece rather than a cast or billet machined piece. This instance isn't one of them from a strength standpoint. The wear resistance comes from the alloy and the heat treat with some help from the surface coating.

Well full of himself is only a start... those mods you paid for so highly... well they didn't do anything for the M14, that was all smoke and mirrors, a solid smith would do as well or better and have the same accucracy.... I've driven an M14 just a bit in competition...

Beyond that when they started to get behind the curve and into the AR platform they came on board telling folks what was and wasn't needed, when the platform had been totally worked out already, and that pinned sights were nothing, float tubes did nothing etc... while touting their guns at much more money, and saying that you could not use reloads in their guns.... lets just say at the time no one loaded 77s or 80s in factory, AND you woudl NOT win a damn thing without those or better bullets.... And low and behold after they got burned pretty bad on a couple of forums and were total asses at Perry a few years, they turned back around and lowered prices to normal, started touting pinned sights, float tubes and heavy bullets.... kinda came across as if they'd came up with all those ideas too..... maybe they'd like to compare Perry medals some day too...

Brrrr.... off my box again a bit.

Jeff

I'm afraid I reply with not enough information to be helpful, a I've forgotten what my friend, the machainist, said.

He's built an AR, has years of Machinist esperience, and knows.

The difference is not all that great, but (as I remember) some recievers are much harder than others, and these are harder to drill for extreme accuracy. Can't remember if it's forged or cast, but both are pretty hard.

For someone making a super-accurate rifle, the choice seem to go to machined recievers. At least as I remmber.

But otherwise, I don't think it matters much.

Here's what I'm talking about. These lower receivers are all forged and you can see where the forging marks are left on the receivers after finish machining.

I think you're mixing up "machined" with billet or forged. Either way, billet or forged, they're machined before they become anything usable. What Wilson does is purchase forged uppers and lowers, with some indication of the manufacturer being CMT, with their roll mark on them. Wilson isn't forging uppers or lowers and I highly doubt they are doing the final machining on them as it is much easier to spec and purchase something rather than tooling up. Very few mfg's forge their own, a few more do the final machining of purchased forgings, most purchase fully machined forgings with their roll marks in place. Uppers and lowers being hand-matched by a master riflesmith... Now that's marketing speak for "we cornered the market on pushing assembly pins".

S&W AR's are definately forged!

Right. ALL recievers are machined, CNC most likely.

The distinction here is that some are machined from bar stock basically, while others are machined from castings or forgings. Obviously, if one is starting from bar stock it will be a lot MORE machining!

I will take a forged receiver any day.

-jeff

What am I looking for, to see the forging marks?

-jeff

That quote from the Wilson site states clearly that they are using forgings. An Rost is correct, ALL of the receivers, whether they are from forgings, castings or a billet, are machined by a CNC.

The advantage of the forged receiver is that it is much stronger than a cast or billet receiver. The aluminum used in a forged receiver is formed under hundreds of tons of pressure. This pressure actually compresses the aluminum leaving it 15% heavier than the base-metal they started with. This extra weight equates to more strength. The forged aluminum is more dense, stronger and harder than cast or billet receivers.

There are only a couple of companies in the world producing forgings that all of the AR companies are CNC machining into lowers and uppers. If you are a small AR company and want something a little different in a lower or upper, you will have to machine it from a billet. (that is if what they want falls outside of the dimension of the original forging) Machining from a billet lets you add area to a receiver that would be impossible to do with a forging.

I think most will agree that the cast receiver is junk. The billet receivers will probably service most AR customers quite well. For high-use customers, the billet receivers will probably get slopy in the pin-holes well before a forged receiver would.

Do you have any data to back that up with? I know Sun Devil uses 6061 to machine there lowers. I'm not sure what Vltor or POF use's. But I cant see whey they would use a material thats going to go out of spec after some use.