Making the VG1-5 strengthening plates

In this post we are going to take you through the steps necessary to make the strengthening plates for the side of the VG1-5 receiver. In the first couple of rifles that we made we bent the plates on my finger brake.

This was not a plan for doing over 200 of them. The time necessary to measure and mark each one and then eye ball the bends and fit to the receiver would have been enormous. To do this in an efficient manor that insured that they were all the same and would fit correctly a press tool had to be made. This are a couple of solid model pictures to get an idea of what it should look like.

Once design in solid works and programed in mastercam this is what the final product looked like.

And taken apart to show the inside of the press tool.

In this last photo you can see where the laser cut blank set.

This last two photos show the angle that we pressed to. These photo’s were taken after all the pressings have been completed. The press tool was made out of 1018 steel and the wear from pressing 210 pieces was non-existence. If we were going to press thousands upon thousands of them we would have gone to heat treated steel.

Now on to the actual making of parts. This is what we received from the laser cutting people.

The parts were cut and cleaned from them. A slightly better look at them.

Now a quick video of pressing them.

The final part after they were all pressed.

Every one of them exactly the same and ready to install on the receiver. Just for an idea of the time to accomplish this part.  It took 2 days to design and build the press tool and about an hour to do the pressings. If we would have stayed with the old procedure it would have taken days to accomplish and the repeatability and accuracy would not have been there.