Hi,
Here's a casual observation from another "ignorant" user:
Whenever we have new technologies, it seems we apply them to EVERYTHING and shake out where they work better, where they work worse, than the existing ones.
Same w/ "new" materials. Just for one example, after the fall of the Soviet empire, titanium became relatively cheap (compared to before, not compared to other materials) and we started seeing it in seemingly everything! There were apps where it made sense, where others I think it was simply marketing hype. As a backpacker, I saw Ti pots and pans (mighta made sense, at least for the yuppie crowd willing to spend $100 to save a half ounce of weight), forks and spoons (uh, maybe that's stretching it?), and even some batteries that claimed to use the material (come on, now!)
Seems most of those apps that made sense still use Ti, where the others have faded away. Maybe I just quit looking? We see the same thing happen w/ different metals, plastics (polymers?), finishes, etc.
Now we have MIM parts. I really don't know much about the history of that process, but what little I've read indicates TREMENDOUS improvements have been had in a relatively short time. When I first looked it up, the consensus was it was a good technology for small, very precise, "finished" parts, but didn't lend itself to larger ones as it wasn't "strong" enough.
Yet it appears the automotive industry has made that idea obsolete. If one can make con rods and cams of the stuff, the process is obviously gaining in strength. Is it up to forged parts? Probably not, may never be. But, to remember a lesson a manufacturing type buddy constantly reminds me of, is it "good enough" to do the job it's asked to? Apparently so...
We've just got to find where the technology IS "good enough." And where it's not (like Pinecone tells us about the H&R hammers!) Kinda makes us guinea pigs when we buy "new" items, like it or not?
But I won't whine too loudly. After all, I shoot Rugers! And remember fondly the arguments around 1964 when Winchester did away w/ a lot of previously forged and machined parts in favor of castings... which Ruger had already been using quite successfully for perhaps a decade?
Everybody wanted to bemoan the loss of the "better" technology, but nobody wanted to pay for it! Can't have your cake and eat it, too, eh?
Maybe if we shooters weren't such cheapskates, we COULD still have forged and machined guns at less than stratospheric custom prices. But if we want Wal-Mart prices, well... something's gonna give. Companies exist to make money. If we're too cheap to buy the more expensive products, they're forced to cut somewhere, now, aren't they?
Rick C