The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I clocked this earlier on twitter http://www.devildogconcepts.com/hard-charger.html ~ the design of which got me thinking again about a concept I've had for a while.

How much force (in newtons, I guess) is required to push back an average AR-15 bolt carrier?

Could adequate force be generated by means of an electrically-operated piston, engineered (somehow) to fit onto and inside a picatinny rail handguard? If so, how much battery power would be required to sustain operation for, say, 1000 rounds?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?... or has the summer heat got to me? I appreciate there's not a lot of room in there for a piston mechanism but necessity is mother of invention, right?

By electrical piston do you mean a solenoid?

Yes, something like that.

Perhaps even a specially designed, custom handguard with the solenoid/piston built in. I see this as possible, mechanically, but I'm unsure of the power requirements. It would be operated by an external button much the same as that for a weapon light.

its nothing new, and I would say that its perfectly doable, seen modified forends that allow you to cock the action like a pump action

I had the same idea some time ago and was thinking about it as one of my bikes had a kliktronic, but the throw wasnt sufficient.

A linear actuator should work, I'm not sure how fast they could operate though.
Surely a mechanism to load the rifle, built into the rifle, would make it an SLR though? Unless you wanted a manually operated poison?

An electrically operated aftermarket self-unloading addon ... hmm. That definitely has legs!

a linear actuator would be too slow although it would have the required torque , a large solenoid (think stop type solenoid as fitted to large old diesel engines) could work but would be heavy especially when you take the battery into account ?

could maybe be done with a window wiper motor style arrangement but you would be unlikely to get it inside the forend?

what about an air cylinder charged by a small battery powered on board compressor?

Or even a steam piston. :lol:

What about a gas system powered by those cartridges for nailguns? They are basically .22 short blanks and come on a strip for easy feeding.

haha cool, the idea has evolved, love it, .223 straight pull facing forwards with hilti nailgun pointing backwards firing at the bolt handle, this is cool,

utube vid please :)