So today I set to the range to test fire the Glock 44 magazine that I 3D printed. This resulted in testing the basic functions such as last round hold open, rapid fire, mag after mag of firing. This testing did not include drop testing, rough and heavy abuse to find failure points as the magazine was made out of Generic PLA filament. Which is weaker, low heat resistance and extremely soft for a magazine. Upon inserting the magazine there was no play within the mag well and it had a flush fit with only a 1.4 mm gap from the frame to the baseplate. This is half the gap of the factory magazine which does move around in the magazine well. I shot 300+ rounds out of the magazine with two failures. The very first failure was me loading too many rounds in the magazine which made the spring fold( idiot me), the second was from a bad round. There was no double feeds, failure to feeds, hang ups, slow extraction or slow feeding issues present. I expected for the magazine to fail due to the material. But after speed loading 5 mags in a row and shooting as fast as I can the top of the magazine was warm to the touch but did not soften or deform. This is a best case scenario as all other prints with the stronger material will result in better performing magazines. I am currently sourcing the springs as these are extremely expensive for the initial prototypes. The cost will become cheaper in the future with larger orders. But as of now its looking like I will need to raise upwards of $5,000.00 + to have an American
company tool up for the building and initial order of the springs. I don't want to use an overseas supplier but their initial prices are extremely low. To the tune of $350 for the first 60 magazine springs in three different lengths. This magazine functioned off the factory 10 round magazine spring. The dilemma that I face now is if the cost of the spring manufacturing setup is too great then I will only be able to sell the shell and the consumer will have to canablize their factory magazine to use mine. This is not what I want and personally not what I do myself. So the first initial batches will ship out for testing by the 30th of this month for those who are willing to participate. These individuals will receive two magazines with the final designs in the end. For information regarding those I will have details posted and initial participants will be able to message me and request prior to launch of that listing on my website. This link will provide the youtube video that I have released and the videos below are from the range which are meant for my customers who follow me and are helping me drive this product to market. I am waiting for those videos to download but I will have them posted in a few hours from now.