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130 points bentocorp | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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JCharante ◴[] No.42171882[source]
This seems.. simple?
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netbioserror ◴[] No.42172814[source]
While it's an odd example for this place, I can bring up self-loading firearms (semi-automatic or automatic in today's terms) as a demonstration. Modern self-loading firearms are VASTLY simpler than the early attempts a century ago. They're an excellent example of engineering evolving under economic pressures.

Late 19th and early 20th century attempts at self-loading firearms were often ridiculous in their concepts; huge component counts, lots of tiny mechanisms, strange attempts at extracting recoil and gas energy, everything under the sun. The mechanisms engineers were crafting in literal garage workshops are stunning in their variety and staggering in their watch-like complexity. Some were genuine works of art.

Then the M1 Garand, the SVT-40, and afterwards the AK (under the economic pressures of WW2) demonstrated how much room there was to simplify and give various components double duties. Now, most modern automatic weapons derive from those designs, and the improvements since have been in the materials engineering: Stronger, lighter, thinner, and generally reducing the amount of steel to the minimum necessary.

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1. aidenn0 ◴[] No.42173717[source]
Off topic, but it seems like self-loading pistols took a weird detour; at least for cartridges too powerful for blowback operation. There are all sorts of weird delayed-blowback systems that were popular between WW2 and 1980-ish, and now 9mm and larger seems to almost exclusively use a 1911-style short-recoil system.
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2. netbioserror ◴[] No.42173996[source]
It's simple, reliable, and quite necessary. Pistol chamberings feature heavy bullets in straight-walled, short cases. Blowback bolts are always extremely heavy to compensate for those attributes. Beretta and FN are famous for resisting Browning short-recoil for alternatives like rotating barrels and locking blocks. But they pay for those tradeoffs: Heat buildup, wider slides/frames, extra complexity, and more. Browning short recoil is the best of all worlds. Replacing rotating links with simple cam cuts sealed the deal.
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3. aidenn0 ◴[] No.42175883[source]
I actually think the gas-delayed blowback in the HK P7 hits "simple and reliable" as well, but it has the huge downside of putting very hot gasses very close to where you handle the gun.