Thread: Muzzle Brake Testing

I designed and built my own machine for testing recoil energy pulse/impulse/thrust, but this was about 3 1/2 years ago. It worked out really well to measure the recoil energy of a rifle firing various cartridges, and it is what I used to test changes or improvements when i went through about 20+ prototypes when i developed my own line of original (novel) design muzzle brakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8dztGWyW2E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsOQWA3-NLY

Have you built something similar to this now Greg? If you can get the friction as low to zero as possible the system works really well.

I looked at using load cells to measure peak force 4 years ago, but the load cells available at the time had very poor response time - great for measuring static loads (or static/constant forces), but very poor at accurately measuring pulse or impulse or spike forces.

I also felt that simply measuring force 'spike' or peak as a means of reference, or for trying to determine the true 'magnitude' of the recoil effect (or thrust) was not really accurate, or could be open to statistical misinterpretation.

I discovered alot of things about muzzle brake design that had obviously been overlooked for the decades that muzzle brakes have been around, and some of these features are in all of my proprietary designs. Hence i went to the trouble over registering/patenting my designs so that a few years down the track no-one could rip my designs, and then turn around and say that i was just copying them ! Or make copies in China and then flood the market here, which would really burn me, especially after investing big $$ in CNC machines to be able to make and sell then at a reasonable price. Not to mention all the R&D time, thousands of dollars worth of ammo, etc. etc.