Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Machined brass. Anyone try it?

Does anyone have experience with RCC machined brass? Quality looks excellent. They say their stronger brass gives significant velocity improvement.

https://www.rccbrass.com/

Am I reading that right? ~$5/ea. for a piece of 22 Creed brass?

CNC machined brass. Anyone know if the juice is worth the squeeze?

Metallurgists tell us that drawn brass is much stronger and more durable because the grain structure is actually rearranged during the process.

From RCC's web site:

The draw process has been used for cartridge manufacturing since the 19th century and manufacturers have been able to develop this process to produce high volumes of brass cases. Draw cartridge manufactures have tested many different types of materials over the years and the best material for this process is a brass alloy with a mixture of 70% copper and 30% zinc.

When brass is annealed at 250° C there is no visible change to the bonding of the grain structure, tensile strength, and elasticity. At 300° C, there is a microscopic change to the grain structure and at 350° the work hardness becomes softer and a fine grain structure can be seen. As temperatures increase the brass becomes fully annealed at 750° C and large crystals can be seen. Temperatures above this point will cause damage to the brass and at 800°C, the brass is burned and should be scrapped.

When brass is cold-worked it hardens and done by bending, drawing, compressing, and so forth. This increases the tensile strength and decreases its elasticity. To accommodate today’s high-pressure cartridges brass must both have a high tensile strength to withstand pressure spikes and elasticity to seal the chamber from any gas blowback.

The draw process begins using a brass cup that is annealed and cleaned to remove any scale build-up that might have occurred. During the first draw, the cup is pushed through a die with a punch and extruded to lengthen the cup. It has become work-hardened and has to be annealed and washed for the second draw. Typically a cartridge will go through 4 draws before it is ready to go to the next stage. The case head will be turned, primer pockets, flash holes, headstamps, and necks are done to complete the manufacturing process. When the neck is formed the cartridge is annealed again and is then polished for shipping. During each annealing, the temperature is reduced to work harden the case for higher tensile strength and elasticity. The final annealing is to the body of the case and is at a lower temperature, so it won’t affect the case head hardness.

While the draw process is capable of mass production, it is not able to easily produce consistent case head hardness, case weight, case volume, and case concentricity. At RCC Brass™ we have taken those variables out of the manufacturing process as we have our C260 cartridge brass hammer-forged into a tight molecular grain structure with high tensile strength and 15% elasticity. We machine all our cases on CNC lathes and mills and our case weight, case volume, and our case concentricity are the best available in the industry. We don’t anneal the case head as it is hammer forged to a high tensile strength which gives us the same hardness for each case. Since we use CNC equipment to manufacture our reloading brass, case weight is nearly identical, the case volume is too, and our case concentricity is held to a 0.001”.

Since we are not held back by the limitations of a draw system, we are able to use higher strength alloys to manufacture cartridges. Our new C272 brass alloy has a much higher tensile strength and tighter molecular grain structure than C260 brass, without losing the needed elasticity. Test results have been very positive as we’ve had reports of increased in velocity and energy and lower shot deviations versus C260 drawn brass. But the test is what you can do with RCC Brass™ reloading brass products.

See, all you have to do is use RCC brass and you'll get an increase in velocity and energy. Makes AI cartridges obsolete

That's exactly what I was thinking.

it's always the guys who have zero experience or knowledge about something, talking sh it the most

So how do you know what experience or knowledge I have? Why don't you tell us all you know, I've got an extra 30 seconds or so, should be plenty of time.

Machining brass cases in any quantity would result in a mountain of swarf—even if they started with thick walled tubes, which would likely be cost prohibitive.

indulge me with your true to life tales of your personal experiences with machined brass cartridge cases made by RCC

YOUR very own experience, reloading, shooting, hunting etc, with RCC brass... .... not your uncledaddy's brothercousin who heard it from your girlfriendcousin's brotherhusband

Well, they are $5 bucks a case!

The only 'turned' brass that I have loaded and shot has been 22lr RCC and another maker, and 16ga shotshells (Paper hull dimensions)

The shotshells were used in an old damascus Bbl Cape Gun, they worked well, probably was not necessary, I just wanted 'extra' at the breech end.... shot it 'some'... cases/hulls never needed sizing....

The 22lr also 'worked'... however you really can't make much of a correlation to any other cartridge, the 22 cases were primed with a SRP, the bullets were hand cast or cast and swaged, as loaded ammo they were not as 'durable'.... you could not grab a handful and put them in your pocket, they worked at subsonic velocities, even fired/cycled through a modified 10-22, again subsonic, but I would not call that test a resounding success...

Turned brass in the high pressure realm may just be the next best thing to sliced bread, until it is known you may color me skeptical....

PS: when it comes to the turned case...... dimensionally a .001 is HUGE.... especially with primer pockets! Some things stamps and dies do very, very well....

Took me less than 10 seconds to read your reply, you've still got 20 seconds to indulge us with everything you know. Should be plenty of time.

naw you go first, share your expert opinion about all the RCC brass you have used in your guns and the game you've taken

shouldn't be any trouble for ya, you're the expert on RCC brass from all the years of experience reloading & shooting it

I gave their blurb a quick read. I pulled this excerpt:


(color added by me)

It seems to me the manufacturing process includes a cold working step to accentuate the material properties. So the cases are not simply machined out of "soft" blanks.

They also mention using an alloy different than the industry standard cartridge brass, a stronger/tougher alloy then the conventional manufacturing process can handle.

Caveat: I've never touched a piece of their brass, I'm simply reporting what I read.

Their website mentions an impact extrusion step, so they may be able to start machining with a blank whose thicknesses et cetera minimize the amount of turning required.

correct, they have brass rods in diameters appropriate for any size cartridge case to be machined, same as solid copper brass rods for bullets, that are caliber specific for less waste and ease of production

I want to try them out...I've been trying to get a hold of them for over 6 months to make me some custom headstamped brass...no replies to emails or phone calls.

I have made the primer fall out, and thus wreck the rifle brass, hundreds of times.
I have also made the case side guppie belly bulge on semi auto pistol brass, hundreds of times.

I have noticed a hierarchy in brass strength with respect to distance from the extractor groove to the primer pocket.

10mm, 25acp, 5.7x28mm.... very weak ~~50kpsi

40sw, 380. 9mm, 45acp.... weak ~~60kpsi

22-250, 243, 7x57, 30-06 Mauser case heads with large primer.... strong ~~72kpsi

7mmRM, 300WM, 338WM belted magnum.... stronger. ~~78 kpsi

223......very strong ~~82 kpsi

6mmBR, Mauser case head with small primer.... too strong for primer pocket to fail before primer pierces in work up. ~~88 kpsi


To get around this rimless case weak spot, 20 years ago both Casull and Ketchum were independently developing steel case head attached to brass bodies.

My idea, if possible, would be to make a more powerful small rifle magnum primer that could set off a large charge. CCI450 small rifle magnum primers will set off 40 gr of CFE, but not 42 gr.

Then with small rifle primer pockets, we could get more out of the same old brass:
https://www.makeitfrom.com/material-properties/Extra-Hard-H06-C26000-Brass