Full Transcript for Baffled 005 - Why Not TI? A little on the NFA and a lot on material science.

we can hit on it for our national guidelines and what that means for New Mexico and what it means for buying from us. So speaker-0: Yeah, so pretty much probably everybody who's listening to a podcast from a suppressor company or is in the fi shoots or anything has heard something about what's going on with the with suppressors in the NFA and there's everything from the NFA is dead to you still have to register. and so the reality is like as it usually is, somewhere in between. So What what happened was is there was a a court order placed by a district a northern district federal judge out of Texas and that was a court case through Silencer Shop and a handful of other plaintiffs which including GOA which shout out to those entities and GOA especially I think they're really moving the needle in the two A realm and we're all pretty pretty happy about that and really taking that kind of taking that initiative and and actually doing something and and and take things that are it's actually having some real effects as we're seeing why we're even having this discussion. So what happened was is in January with the the bill that was passed essentially last October and took effect in January took the two hundred dollar tax stamp for NFA items down to zero dollars. And so in the initial NFA if so Congress when they initially voted on the on the NFA in the nineteen thirties, the premise as to why there had to be a registrar for NFA items, so National Firearms Act is what NFA stands for, was that it was to monitor the tax. So their power to register suppressors, machine guns, SBRs, SBSs, was all predicated around the fact that they had a tax and that they were that they needed to identify whether or not and and and actually register whether or not people were paying their taxes. So that's where that came from. So in January when Congress passed that bill and allowed that tax on SBRs, SBSs, so short short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, and suppressors to go to zero dollars, that kind of opened up and there was some murmuring, I mean, pretty much while that was happening, there was some murmuring that okay well now that it's zero dollars they have no authority to actually register these firearms and so that that's at a gist that's kind of what the case was about and that's the that's what the ruling that the judge put in place is is as long as the the tax is at zero dollars you you can't require people to register it so this this hearing ended up The final judgment got placed I think October or August eighth of this year of twenty twenty six, and then the the DOJ, the Department of Justice, is essentially who is kind of the authority on it. And then of course the ATF falls under them, had sixty days to file an injunction against it or file an appeal. they did not and therefore this became a permanent ruling. again, there's always things that can happen and there's a lot of people that are like, well this could happen, that could happen. They could change it to some as soon as they add a tax back to those items. speaker-1: I think it's also important to note that yes, the judgment was held in effect, but like any ruling from a Supreme Court, it only applied to the plaintiffs, which is where there was some gray area. speaker-0: Right. And so this was not a Supreme Court, this is a federal district. speaker-1: Right, federal district. I've yeah, I said that. speaker-0: And so yeah, absolutely. that that's what the initial ruling was, right? So during that time period from August eighth to October eighth, that sixty day day time period It was very questionable because the way the ruling read, it only applied to the plaintiffs and honestly the easiest way to become a plaintiff, which was kudos to GOA again, was to buy GOA membership. and so there was that. And so there was kind of a little bit, but on in October, I believe it was October twelfth or October thirteenth, the ATF came out and announced that no, we are applying this across the board. we will not be we will not be a requiring the registration of suppressors, SBRs, or SBSs any longer and they are allowing the voluntary registration. So you can so as a manufacturer we file a form two. as an individual you would file a form one and that's that is essentially the the notice of manufacturer that that item is being that that I that item was created and it goes into the registrar with a serial number. So they are still allowing the voluntary they're still allowing that to be registered voluntarily. The reason for that is because there are a handful of states that still require the NFA process in order to transfer a suppressor to an individual. So they still require a Form 2 or a Form 1, and they still require a Form 3 to transfer to a non licensed individual, aka U. And they require Form 3 to transfer to a dealer to dealer. So they're still they still have the registrar, and that's actually not a bad thing because there are states that if they didn't allow that, I mean there would be even more questions about how. you get to get it by a suppressor. I know like off the top of my head, North Carolina, Colorado, Alaska, which is kind of weird, right? North Dakota, those are a few of the ones that still require, and that comes down just to a state legislation, so a state law that allows them to do that. or or requires them to have that registration in place. So states that did not have a state law and were just relying on the federal law, all of those pretty much went to just transferring a suppressor on a forty-four seventy three. Now the ATF form 4473 is the form that require that allows us to transfer any serialized items. So a rifle, now a suppressor, a short barrel rifle or short barrel shotgun, all of those can be transferred on a 4473 and what that allows us to do is do a regular background check, a NYX background check. So I mean the easiest way to explain this and think about this is buying a suppressor is exactly like buying a rifle

or a pistol or any other firearm that you've ever bought before. that that's kind of what it comes down to in those states that don't have their own regulation on top of that. Yeah. speaker-1: That pretty much says it. I think this has been huge. we've seen an uptick in sales and and I mean a ton of walk-in purchases because it it doesn't require them going to get fingerprinting and it's been pretty great. speaker-0: Yeah, and there was a lot of hesitancy 'cause people don't want so there's there's always questions, right? And and when you get We're Americans, we like to be free. So we don't like things that are registered to us, especially firearms, that that so the NFA truly was a registration. There was a serial number that was associated with your name and they had the database there. Have the database. They have that information. whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, we're not really gonna discuss that. when you have a rifle Let's say a rifle or just a a sidearm like a pistol, there is not a national registry that registers your serial number of your pistol to you. that data can be found and it is tracked through the all the dealers, all the way from the manufacturer to the dealer. However they really have no way to trace it forward, they can trace it backwards. And so if a firearm is used in a i in a crime or something and they get the firearm and they have the serial number and let's say it's a Glock. So they're gonna call up Glock. The ATF's gonna call up Glock and Glock is gonna say, Okay, I sold that to this distributor and then they'll call up that distributor and that distributor's gonna say, Okay, we sold that to this Joe's Joe's shop in Texas and then they call up that guy. And so they trace it back that way, right? And so there's no okay, serial number X went to this guy. So that's the big difference in in in suppressors, is they were truly registered, now they no longer are. And so that opens up a lot of people being more interested in binum, not only not only because they don't have to go get fingerprints and a picture and all of that stuff, but it's just not registered directly anymore. And it's not that, I mean, we're all law-abiding citizens. citizens here and we're trying to do the best we can and and I believe that's true in vast majority of the two A industry and so we're not trying to commit crimes with it or become criminals with any of this stuff. It's just that we typically tend to be like less government oversight and that's what this comes down to. Yeah. speaker-1: And and equalizing the the government oversight regardless of what the what the firearm is. speaker-0: And the argument has always been with suppressors is, well, a suppressor is not a firearm, for one. There is no way to get a projectile like if all you had was a suppressor, I mean you could throw it at somebody, but there's no projectile coming out of it. There's no way to Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. Run out of bolts. speaker-0: I mean we do have one that we're that I that we've been testing that me and Tim were talking about making it into a baton. Could kinda double his bulk. So yeah, a suppressor is just I mean it's it's it's absolutely by definition, right now under current guidelines, a firearm. all of us know that it is not a firearm in any in any practical sense, right? And it's really a safety device, which comes down to like our whole premise of how we've approached the suppressor technology and like trying to get to a safer shooting experience in in many regards. And so I think one of the things that we can do, and this is just speaking for the industry as a whole, is go out and buy suppressors because the reason for that is right now, even if they try to change the legislation, there is laws that associate common use items, right? And so once you get enough items out there, they can no longer say that this is a specialty thing. this is a common use. There's literally millions of them out there. There's a lot of them out there. And so go buy a suppressor just because not It not only for that reason obviously but they are just it changes your shooting experience drastically. Like in ways if you've never shot suppressed, get a suppressor, shoot it, go get a buddy, shoot his and then you'll go buy one. just because it it just changes the shooting experience so drastically from just that shockwave, that recoil, and I've said it a thousand times, but if you're shooting with young shooters or you're shooting with new shooters, it is an absolute game. changer in teaching them how to shoot. speaker-1: And we'd like to shift the narrative away from this is a firearm and this is this this specific piece of equipment is dangerous to this specific piece of equipment is safety gear. Yeah. And and the more people that use it and understand that and are buying them that can that will shift the narrative. speaker-0: Right. And then just educating educating peop honestly educating our politicians. They if th if anybody needs it, they need it desperately in a lot of regards. But this is one where they're they just they have no idea what they are. a lot of them aren't around shooters, a lot of them are not shooters and they're hearing just kind of just this anti gun stuff and so I mean educate regardless of whether you I mean New Mexico unfortunately, we is a very blue state politically. However, we are very rural and it's like every other state we're we're more conservative everywhere else outside of the cities. But the way that we change this and the way that we keep this momentum up is I think continue to support organizations like GOA who are doing good things and actually moving the needle. And also call your congressmen and call your legislatures and talk to them and and just regardless of what side of the fence they are on, a lot of them you may or may not get through, but just just talk to them and let them know and try to educate them as much as possible. And I think in all things, the

more we're educated, regardless of the topic, the better decisions that these people can make. And I mean it's up to us as people in the industry and as users of these products and and shoot to do that. I mean it is we can't sit around and whine about it if we're if we're not doing anything about it and and talking to our our legislation our legislators. Yeah. speaker-1: No, I agree completely. So w a couple we're gonna hit on the next topic now, now that we've hit all the political stuff. a couple episodes ago we we made some waves. There was actually some pretty good responses to our What's Your D B man? Which I think was episode three, two, three? I don't know. but we talked about the the lack of overall guidelines for hearing safety within the suppressor industry and why we think that should be handled differently and and we might have made some friends, we might have made some enemies, but we're gonna do it again today and hit on some things that that annoy us. I know it's a conversation you and I have a lot, that a lot of stuff gets put out and the more money you have to spend in marketing, the more you can influence a buyer's perspective. And one thing that we see over and over and over again and we get asked at every single show and kind of no matter who we talk to, like we talked to someone not even in the suppressor industry yesterday that brought this up, why aren't you making a titanium can? Everybody else is printing titanium cans. And why the metal matters? And I know we could you specifically could way nerd out on this. So I'm gonna I'm gonna drive this conversation a little bit and let's start with nerd speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: out on it. I okay, but let's let speaker-0: I think we need to hear in the comments a pro nerd versus not speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: vote. Maybe we need to create a vote here. speaker-1: How nerdy do you Matt to get? Yeah, how nerdy do we get? I guess it depends. Are you listening to this so that you can enjoy the conversation or are you listening to this so that you can go to sleep? speaker-0: It doesn't matter. It's more that I enjoy the conversation or that's really what what matters. speaker-1: It's really just all about you, honey. It is. Okay. So I don't know the answers to these. I'm asking them purely out of morbid fascination, but also because I think it will help everyone to understand our our process here. no. Okay. speaker-0: So before we get started, I wanna say a couple things about like objective, subjective data and what that kind of means. And okay. We speaker-1: Throw some qualifiers out there. speaker-0: didn't lose anything there, anybody. But so Subjective data is how it feels to you. So how it sounds to you, how it looks to you, that's very subjective, right? And so that means like, for example, this suppressor here, you might think it looks awesome. I do, but you might not think it does. And that's a subjective opinion. And there is no there actually is some things that there's

no real objective like there's no objective metric. Right. And so so the look of this is one of those, right? Some people might like it, some people might not, but there is no yeah, that is absolutely. So it's almost like you might say like artwork is that way, very much subjective, right? And then there are objective things that that are just absolutely laws of physics that and there's ways to measure those things and I don't care what you think, what ch how you feel about it, these are facts of nature in life. And so that is an objective fact. And so what we've since the initial get-go of designing suppressors and trying to validate them, we've been grappling with that, with that objective versus subjective th metric in all of these things. And at the end of speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: the day though. This is a hearing device that impacts you the human ear. And so we may give you a whole bunch of metrics and all and and a whole bunch of information, but at the end of the day, it honestly is somewhat subjective. Because does it sound good to you? Does it sound good to the human ear? and and that's kind of that that's a reality of it. However, what we have been what we on our approach is, okay, we understand that and we're what we're doing is okay, how do we validate it scientifically so that way we actually have a the scientific method or I mean the engineering method behind how do we actually make things good that sound subjective that sub sound good subjectively to you, to the shooter, but we have way to qualify that and say and and and rapidly innovate. So that's what drives that and that so that's the the balancing act, right? And so ultimately it's it's four people. And so it it doesn't honestly at some level it doesn't matter what the numbers say objectively, what matters is what how you feel about it subjectively. And I think that in terms of acoustics, we have done a good job of finding those objective metrics that correlate and translate very well to the subjective metrics, which is you might argue tone, and And just yeah, that was a quiet can, right? Those are subjective comments. so I just wanted to kind of preference that with or preface that with our discussion here, because what we're gonna get into today is a little bit more about material selection in suppressors. And the additive process, specifically laser powder bed fusion, which is the 3D printing or additive manufacturing process that most, if not all, of the suppressors that are out there on the market are are being printed with. And so we use laser powderbed fusion here. And like I said, there there may be a few suppressors out there on the market that are using a slightly different technology, but none that I know of. So There's there's a few few things and there's a there's a lot of things to re talk about in terms of w why you would select a specific material for for any application when it comes to an engineering material. and then there's also on top of that there's the caveat of like billet or rot material versus 3D printed or additive material. So we are in the three D printing suppressor market. that's what we do. And so we print using laser powder bed fusion. And that's a specific tech type of 3D printing. And what that the way that process works is you use metal powder that's the alloy of whatever it is you're printing. So if it's for example titanium, a very common titanium alloy is titanium tie six four. and so you would have alloys you would have powder that is that alloy. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: or Incon L seven eighteen. So we print our stuff in IncNL seven eighteen. When So that's the alloy. And so Inconal and then the number behind it is the specific alloy. And what that means is you've got an alloy is something that's made up of a several different elements. So you've got iron, nickel, chromium, and some molly in there. So you've got a bunch of different elements that create these alloys. And so like the difference between a stainless steel, so like stainless steel three four or an Inconel, the biggest difference is Inconel has a lot more nickel in it. And so there's this class of alloys which can be referred to as a nickel superalloy, and that is alloys that were developed with a high nickel content which gives them high temperature resilience. So speaker-1: All right, so w we get asked all the time. And it comes up regularly. I s we were at a show in August and a guy literally picked up our suppressors and set it back down and was like, This would be really cool when you print it in titanium. And and I mean we there's always gonna be people with their their subjective versus objective. And we are coming from the manufacturing realm in a very objective way. We want this to be heirloom quality, we want it to have we're all about the quality. I mean we talk about that a lot. We want this to be a quality item. So why when we were you I I almost said we, I had nothing to do with it. When you decided to start everything to do with that. When you decided to start this process. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Did titanium ever come in to the equation? I mean speaker-0: Yeah, you think about it a little bit. So I took the approach the classic engineering approach that I've used to design lots of different things, is okay, what's the application? What are the environmental factors that are going to go into this? everything from from temperature to corrosion to forces that are gonna be on it and start to think about okay well what what alloys are gonna lend themselves to well to this and then what's the application, right? Do we need it super light? Do we need it do we care about weight at all? And and when you think about a suppressor, it's like, okay, it's in a very high temperature environment. It's in a very corrosive environment. It's in a very high pressure environment. And we want it to be as light as possible. And so just speaker-1: we're speaker-0: measured on our suppressors at has high a bulk

like a bulk material temperature as high as about four hundred and fifty C and so that's close to a thousand F. and so very, very hot. And that's like that was on the outside shell of the suppressor. The inside was obviously hotter than that and there were portions of the suppressor that were were hotter than that, right? modeling stuff we've seen higher temperatures and and that's obviously you know that there's higher temperatures in there just from the process, but very high. And so the temperature so so then you start to kind of backtrack, okay, here's here's the materials that might fit into this category. And obviously, I mean the the obvious ones are what's available. Okay, well nickel alloys are available in Canal 718, Hasteloy or 625. There's lots of stainless steels that are available, three sixteen, three four, seventeen four, all very good materials. there's titanium alloys that are available, the main one being TIE-64. And so I think that you see you see suppressors printed in all three of those categories. You see nickel alloys, so either seven eighteen, six two five, or hastelloy. Typically there there may be a few other ones there. and then you see like seventeen four or three four. suppressors, stainless steel suppressors. I think there's fewer of those because it's just not cost effective to print a stainless steel suppressor. And then you see titanium suppressors. And Not just so one of the things that that I want to caveat and make sure that people understand is that the laser powder bed fusion creates incredibly good material, whether it be titanium or or any alloy, with the right parameters and the right designs, like this process creates engineering grade, aerospace grade materials. And so that being said, there are certain things that have to happen to get to those mechanical properties that you may want out of that material. For that application. And some alloys are easier to get that to than other. And I mean, specifically, for this application for a suppressor, Inkanel is far superior. 3D printed or Inkanel is far superior to titanium in every aspect except for weight. So titanium's about half the weight of Incanel, just like the density of it. So if you took something that was exactly the same size, take this suppressor and print it out of Inconel or print it out of titanium, it's gonna be about half. so that's where it beats it is weight. And and you can't can't I mean that's just a fact. The But if you look at the material from a engineering perspective and the exposure, Inconal beats it in every other way. And if you look at where IncANAL is used across other applications, you'll find that it's used in things like jet turbine blades, where you have high temperature corrosive environments that require very low thermal creep. So you can't have a turbine blade can't expand, right? When that's when that turbine spins up, it's inside of a housing. If your blades start to expand and you contact that outer housing, that causes a catastrophic failure of your jet engine. Nobody wants that while they're flying, right? So Incanaal was designed for these types of applications. And so when I the in the design process you kind of have to weigh those things. out right it's the same as when you you've got different shooting applications. You're kind of weighing out which things do I really care about. And there's probably some shooting applications where you absolutely don't care about the resilience of the material and you're fine with your count eroding every time you shoot it, but you just absolutely care about the weight. And if that is what you care about and how you and that's what matters most to you then sure that's going to be a good material for you. That's not been our design intent and how we're w the products that we're building. As you know, we're trying to build products that are more kind of heirloom quality that literally will last forever. and so that's where we just never went down the the printing titanium suppressors I've got titanium powder in the shop. We've printed titanium where machines are capable of doing it. We can do it. it just becomes in order to get the quality that I would want out of a suppressor, the amount of pre-processing and post-processing that has to happen. is just not worth it to maintain the quality that I would want to see out of our products. And so that's one of the big challenges is additive, you have so many variables that you can have some parts that are good and some parts that are not. And so if you have a process if you have a material which titanium, if you treat it right, if you have all your processes perfect and your heat treatments are all perfect and you do very much more expensive heat treatments like hipping, you can kind of you can buy down a lot of that risk and you can make sure that okay we're getting good products. But even companies that are in that realm, aerospace and companies, they're still they still have a fairly high failure rate on the on those types of products even though they are spending and it's just because of the process itself and When these are these are incredibly high stress applications. So we're not talking we're talking rocket nozzle type stuff, where and so and and there we are effectively printing titanium for those applications in some cases, but the amount of money and time that's put into that product is something that is just not supported for a product like this. And speaker-1: On the consumer market. No. That makes sense. speaker-0: that's why again, like How can we make the best product we can and still fit into that market space and the quality is there for a price that people speaker-1: Reasonable. speaker-0: is reasonable. Because like honestly, I'm not gonna pay for I would not pay for a suppressor, the five thousand dollar suppressor, not gonna happen, right? It's like it's just not the value is not there. So, One of the main caveats is billet material versus 3D

printed material. So there's probably somebody out there saying, Well, I've had titanium cans for for years and years and years, twenty years, thirty years. And that's probably true. And but I would venture to say that those cans are probably rock. or billet cans. And so the difference between billet and and 3D printed is billet material is a uniform shape. So it's a round bar, it's a square rectangular plate. And so we can heat treat those very effectively and uniformly. So that way we get a very nice uniform microstructure. So microstructure is what affects mechanical properties. Inside of the material is all sorts of grains and the size, shape and orientation of those grains is what affects mechanical properties, things like how strong it is, how hard it is to bend, how hard it is to break, and the temperature resilience of it has somewhat to do with microstructure, but a lot to do with chemistry, which is the alloys. speaker-1: When you're talking about heat treating, you're talking about sending those microstructures into a high temperature, uniform environment and then cooling them to create a stronger microstructure? Am I getting that right? Yeah. speaker-0: And so you can do all sorts of thing with heat treating to either make a material more brittle so like it doesn't bend. or maybe you want it more ductile to where it does bend, but it's got so there's like your ductility, how hard it is to bend it, and then there's also like your tensile strength, which is how hard it when it actually will break and come apart. And so all of those numbers are affected by the microstructure, which is affected by a heat treat. And so the heat treat process for titanium printed parts, you pretty much always have to heat treat them. Because we're building the microstructure layer by layer in a printed part. That that heat that heat history that that these zones are going through is happening in real time, has the parts being built. when you take a billet material and machine it, all of that microstructure is set. So you buy a chunk of TI 64 and and it's got a certain heat treat on it, and we know exactly what that alpha and beta phase is and we know exactly what those mechanical properties are. We know what the tensile strength is, we know what the yield strength is, we know what your elongation is. And so those are that we know what that is, and when we cut it, it doesn't really change those unless you're doing something very wrong, but we're not putting enough heat into the material to actually change those mechanical properties. With 3D printing, we absolutely are. We're developing, we're melting the material into a liquid form liquid state, and it is cooling and it is creating that microstructure in real time. And so you end up with geometries in 3D printing, because we don't print solid cubes. If you're printing a cube, you should not be printing a cube. Don't print solid material, right? We print complex geometries, thin walls, we print lots of cavities. So the added tip technology is really in a space where if it has to do with flow, it works. So whether it be gas flow, liquid flow, even electric electricity flow. if it has to do with flow, this technology lends itself very well to it because we can create cavities, we can create geometries and complex shapes in s internally that just work very well for flow out. speaker-1: And that's not available to us in traditional machining. speaker-0: Yeah, you just can't get in there. you can't get inside to create those features. And so, sure you could do it through weldments and all these different things. And so like rocket nozzles are a really popular example where you might have a brazed rocket nozzle and so they actually have all the cooling channels going through the nozzle to cool it. and that could be thousands of parts. by the time you assemble this, well you can actually print that in one part. And so you have all of this internal conformal cooling and the complex sweeping geometries and it's one part. And so that's that's a huge advantage, right? And the same thing is applicable to suppressors. So a traditional baffle stack suppressor is gonna be billet material that they pry turned, so it's lathe lathe operations and they create all of these baffles, then they stack them all together and they weld them together. And they l so you might have a suppressor like this which is 3D printed and it's one single part and to make a traditional one it might have been I don't know twenty parts or showever many baffles they had in there right so it lends itself incredibly well to kind of consolidating that but again like we are making the microstructure in real time. speaker-1: When you're making a microstructure in real time and you don't have the accessibility to heat treat it uniformly because you have thin walls versus thick walls and and you're running into those issues and I don't I'm not quite sure what the question is. I've been thinking through it as I ask, but is there you called it hip, right? So there is options out there scientifically to stabilize titanium for high temp environments. speaker-0: Not really. So the chemistry and the material, so titanium starts to fall off a cliff at about six hundred C. So below six hundred C it's it's good. Okay. Above six hundred C it starts to fall off the cliff and you just I mean it's a chemistry thing. No matter what heat treatment you have on it, it's gonna start to deteriorate. And so like I told you a while ago, we've measured temperatures as high as four hundred and fifty C on the exterior of the suppressor. Yeah. Therefore it it's you're you're getting temperatures higher than 600 C on the interior of the suppressor. We know that to be a fact from modeling and then also through testing. Every time I'm sure you guys who have some titans have noticed that they're a little bit sparky. Well the sparks coming out of there is actually molten titanium material. And so you're not baffle striking

it's just the temperature and the pressure of the gas is literally stripping material off the inside of your can and eroding it. That's just because the t the material is not capable of withstanding those temperatures over long periods of time. So eventually you're gonna erode it and just like we've seen cans where the entire interior of the can's completely eroded out. speaker-1: And this is not just an applications. I know we have talked briefly about like AR platforms where you're firing a ton of rounds and that's where you were measuring these high types. Ton of rounds are going through this all at once. You're getting it as hot as possible to see what kind of damage you're doing to the can. Is there an argument there for bolt gun applications where titanium is being used and we're not eroding those cans as quickly? Or is allowing those rests between shots and the cooling, how is that affecting the integrity of the can or is it affecting the integrity of the can? speaker-0: So there's yeah, so on a bolt gun where you have a much slower firing sequence is gonna the a titanium can is gonna last longer. and that's where you see I I could see some merit in that argument. Well, like I've got my hunting rifle that I shoot ten rounds a year through and all I care about is weight. Okay. Okay, sure. The problem with that still though is you are going to erode it. And most hunting cartridges are large magnum cartridges with high high temperature, high pressure muzzle. And then you also see this trend towards going to shorter barrels. Well, I own a 300 wind mag with a 20-inch barrel because now I'm putting a suppressor on it. I want to keep the whole thing short, makes sense. okay, great. Well now you just increase that muzzle pressure. So for example, like a 6-5 PR. C with a 20, I believe it is a 24-inch barrel that we ran some numbers on, is running around 18,000 psi at the muzzle. It's a lot of pressure, right? And so yeah, you have that trade-off where okay, I'm not on an AR, I'm not doing a lot of shooting, and But you're going to a much larger cartridge with a lot more pressure behind it. And so you're still gonna see erosion from that. And that is why you see sparks coming out of your suppressor. That is the erosion coming out. If you shoot them at night, you can really see it. If you're shooting them in the day, sometimes you can see it. the big the big thing there though is okay, what's your application and do you care about that or not? Obviously we care about that and that's not something that we're willing to tolerate. And so that's why we've designed everything around ink nil and they are you can get around so the so the one downside like we talked about is weight. So titanium beats inkanel in the weight category by double all day long. speaker-1: What's your answer to that? speaker-0: Well, it's by di it's designing structures and doing the analysis to Make it thin where we can and lightweight and beef it up where we need to to actually instead of just having okay we're just gonna brute force this thing and so we're able to make a relatively light in canal can. so we've got like these cans, which for their size and shape are are pretty light being all in canal. we've got our new Levix can coming out, which is a composite-based can, but it's an Inconel can, Inconel core, and that can. Can weighs eleven ounces. speaker-1: And that answers a few questions, that Levix. answers a few like, yeah, we have people going to some shorter barrels, they don't like the over barrel of the hush, but they want the the lightweight of the hush, but they like the the science behind the quad tacks and the tetras and that levix is what was born out of that, right? speaker-0: Yeah, so it's to fit it's using it the same technology that's in the Quad Tac and Tetra, but it's just in a lightweight form and so we took we stripped the shell off of it and we put on a composite shell, made it just as just as lightweight as we could while still maintaining structural integrity. So that what it comes down to is is what you're willing to trade off really. in my mind in the way I think. I don't want something that potentially is gonna erode and break and over time and especially if I'm in the backcountry on a hunt. You know? So like that's the most popular argument that I've heard is well lightweight backcountry hunting. Great. I agree with that. But if I am ten miles into the wilderness speaker-1: Yeah, companies. speaker-0: to work. I don't want a failure back there. No. And so I'd rather have the peace of mind and carry three more ounces of Of of a materi of a material that I know works. Yeah. Right. And and that's why like that's why we're talking about this because there is there's a lot of misconceptions about titanium and about ink now and about all these different materials and about three D printing in general. And so what we're trying to do here is hopefully answer a few questions for you guys and I'd encourage you guys if you have more questions or if you have any thoughts about what we're talking about. So comment and let us know what you're thinking. We'd be more than happy to discuss it some more and specifics about whatever questions you have. But The materials are good materials, so don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that 3D printed titanium is total trash and you can never use it anywhere. It's actually a good material. However, it is not well suited at all, in my opinion. and with my knowledge of engineering and materials and the additive process, it is not well suited at all for a suppressor. And so, yeah, there's other people doing it, but I would say let's really look at the information. information and the people that have them and that are using them. And I think that you will start to see that they are light. They do work, but there is some structural issues with them and if you're willing to accept those structural issues and trade offs for your application, great. But I just want I just

would like people to understand that and and kind of know what they're getting into because what I see out there is just kind of somewhat it's a lot of marketing, right? Yeah. And people know titanium. They've heard of titanium. I mean, how many of you guys have heard of titanium versus IncNil? Yeah. Right? And so and they know, well titanium's used in in airplanes and rocket ships. So it So it's and that's true. but it's used for aerospace structures primarily. Any place that has high temperature exposure You're not going to see titanium used unless it's very, very specialized alloys or very, very specialized use cases because it's it's more, it's a very lightweight, very strong material for what it is. It's its strength to rate ratio is very high, but it's not well suited for high temperature corrosive environments. Once you start getting up to that higher temperature, you start to lose a lot of strength and you start to lose a lot of your corrosion resistance that you have in titanium, versus on the flip side, these nickel superalloys i.e. nkin L718, you actually they're designed to maintain that corrosive resistance at high temperatures, low creep. So you also have an issue. So you're asking, well, if you're shooting and you you're taking time between it You also have a thermal fatigue issue. And so it's the same as when you grab a wire and bend it back and forth until it breaks. That's fatigue. But if you do that thermally, you're you're heating the material up and titanium moves a lot thermally. It's actually even one of the issues when you're machining it. If you get it hot at all, it moves. And so you have to you have to mitigate that while you're machining it, and it's just known to do that. So a couple issues with that in the suppressor. As you heat it up, it's gonna move, which could mean peo point of impact shifts, and then it's also fatigue. So every time it moves and comes back, moves and comes back, that is thermal fatigue. Yeah, so you're gonna start to lose structural integrity from that. speaker-1: So when you are talking about thermal creep, is titanium going to return to ex the exact same position? Do it do any metals return to that exact same position when they're heated up? speaker-0: some are worse than others to know. So n typically the chance that it comes exactly back to where it was is it's it's gonna be close but not exactly right. And titanium's gonna move even more and and so it's gonna move out and either not come right back to where it was, and so you can potentially start to see those issues. the other thing is is like You guys might s you might have a t a titanium printed can, you're like, I've never had an issue with it and it's fantastic and I love it and that's great. again, like the repeatability of the process is an issue. And you might talk to your another buddy who's like, dude, I put like twenty-five rounds through this thing and I s you could see the erosion on the baffles, which is not uncommon. that's

because like all of the process parameters that goes into making a three D printed can And if those change at all, it's you have to maintain very, very good control of your process all the way from your powder all the way through to your heat treatment. And there are absolutely ways to do that. And I'm not saying that other manufacturers are not doing that, but again, like we also print all our own stuff. We don't contract manufacture anything out, which means that we are able to maintain control. control of that process and like what we're willing to do, So sure we can have really high fidelity process control for an for a titanium printed part, but that costs money, costs time. And so that means that that's gonna make the part cost higher versus a material that we know and is much more resilient to that process and to minor changes to where we know, okay, we can do this and and still have A very, very high quality, very, very repeatable material and still meet those market demands in terms of pricing, right? So there's there's all sorts of aspects to this. I think like I talk a lot about the differences in the materials and why and this and there it they there's a lot of different things. What it comes down to is really kind of what your application is and what you're asking for out of the can. And In in our case, we're designing stuff where we're looking for just a very high quality, very repeatable product that we know when it goes out the door it's something that is gonna last. that can A, B, and C are all good products. And so that's what bothers me the most about printed titanium, especially in this market in this industry, is that the quality control to make sure that product that can A is the same as B is the same as C when it goes to those three customers, they're all reliable. And so that's a big challenge and it's a problem with 3D printed titanium cans: is that you might have A is fantastic, B is horrible, C is like maybe okay, right? And the level of scrutiny and quality control and post-process inspection and machining that's happening, that's a very difficult thing to know without CTing. So like aerospace parts, they will CT and they will hip every part speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: before it goes into a flight, into a flight test. So we're not doing that. speaker-1: No, it's too expensive. We can't produce a can and do all that. Yeah. speaker-0: I would I would so like I I could almost guarantee but maybe I'm wrong 'cause I don't know for a fact, but Find me a suppressor company, printing company that's CTing every can that's going out the door. find me one that's even CT'd a can, which we have. Bridgeline suppressors has CT'd our cans. we look for, and so we're doing that and we don't CT everyone again. so we're doing it and we're looking for we're looking at that microstructure, we're looking for defects in the material to know that like our process is good and our material is reliable. And w and again IncNal, once it's once all

of that is set up and our process is controlled, it's very easy to maintain control of it and to infer and deliver good quality products repeatable. speaker-1: Where do you where do you see the material technology going from this point? Innovation is something that you really enjoy. It's not just something that's necessary, but it's something that you like to do. So where is you wanna share where innovation is going? speaker-0: Yeah, a little bit like so we are working on some alloys that are not necessarily like we're not inventing the alloys, but we're inventing the processes for additive manufacturing for those alloys that are lightweight, so actually lighter than titanium, and high temperature resilience. And so those we're working with some university partners and other industry partners, not in the firearms industry but outside of that, to develop some of these products and materials and the not not so much developing the materials, but maybe doping them with certain chemistries, certain elements to allow us to make them more printable and to make a reliable process for printing for applications like suppressors, but lots of aerospace applications for lightweight, high temperature resilient material. And Like I said before, the additive process lends itself incredibly well to any time there's any kind of fluid flow or combustion. So rocket engines, nozzles, all of those types of applications, there's just there's a lot of space there to develop this process. And of course, like that's actually where the product we have right here sitting is stemmed from. The aerospace industry adopted this technology years and years ago and have been developing it since, and now we starting to See this come into this consumer product, which is suppressors. So same type of thing. I think that there's a lot of really cool, and that's why I really like the additive technology, is there's just so many things we can do with it. It's a relatively young technology, and there like there's still just so much development to be done. And we're we're I I like you guys to know why we do the things we do and ask the questions. Like we are more than w willing to kinda explain why we did certain things and think about the questions that you guys have and design products that are built to last, durable and are not marketed. Like we don't we we are we don't have the marketing budgets and the and to to blast out that titanium or any other product or any other material is the best in the world. we are more looking at and we're just we're solving engineering problems. speaker-1: All right. Well, I think that about wraps it up. We've been at it for a while now. Sounds like we're having a lot of fun in the shop. And it's hunting season. We've had some awesome pictures shared with us that we've shared on social media of of families out there with ridgeline equipment and getting some great kills. So keep sending We love seeing Yeah. speaker-0: Alright, until then we'll see you at the range. speaker-1: Bye.