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To have and to hold
It’s the piece of equipment that you’re most likely to rely on to save your life, but how is it put together? Cpl Andrew Hetherington goes to the factory to find the answers.
Edition 1174, September 6, 2007 |
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Taking aim: Armed with his Steyr, Pte Nicholas Reed provides support in a simulated attack during a training exercise at Camp Terendak in Iraq.
Photo by LS Phillip Cullinan |
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YOU have touched every part of her, broken her down and dismantled her. Maybe even slept with her. You know her intimately and yet most of her past remains a mystery.
The F88 Austeyr is every soldier’s best friend and protector. Most soldiers know how to operate it, but know little of how it is constructed and built.
The first 500 of the Army’s Steyrs were built at the Lithgow small arms factory in 1988 by ADI.
Since then more than 76,800 have been produced for the ADF at the factory, now operated by Thales.
Trevor Pearce, engineering manager at Thales Land Ordnance Lithgow facility, said not all of the F88’s six modules are made at the factory.
“The plastics for the butt, magazines and hammer mechanism are made by a company in New Zealand,” he said. “We then buy in the raw materials for the barrel, bolt, gun lock, the receiver and site tube, which we machine and manufacture here.”
The metal components go through various manufacturing processes on a number of different machines to shape and turn them into a finished weapon.
“We predominately either mill components on a machining centre, or turn them on a turning centre, which is either on a twin or single spindle machine,” he said.
“After this, they are heat treated and subjected to what is called supplementary operations.”
This includes metal finishing techniques such as anodising, phosphating and hard-chrome painting.
“We have to do all of this on-site because under government legislation we cannot send those tasks to an outside contractor for security reasons,” Mr Pearce said.
“This is a unique capability we have here. If we were just a small machine shop where we did just machining we wouldn’t have the other capabilities, we would just subcontract them out. But because our core business is to be a small-arms factory, we can’t subcontract out those elements.”
Once all of the individual parts are created they all end up in a sub-assembly area, where they are built into barrel, gun lock, receiver and magazine assemblies.
“All of the different components are put together in this area and built up into a finished weapon. At this stage we then do a confirmatory firing on site,” Mr Pearce said.
“Every weapon that is delivered to the ADF is fired for proof. In this process we fire an oiled round and a dry round through the weapon.
“Why we place an oiled round through the weapon is because it provides lateral stresses on the gun lock and bolt to try to separate the bolt and the bush barrel locking and the dry round produces hoop stresses to try and push the barrel apart,.
“Every proof round is a very special round, they are one third over pressure on a standard F1 cartridge and they have a very soft case.”
The case is soft because after it has been fired Thales staff examine it under a magnifying glass to look for any marks.
“These marks would indicate if we have damaged the chamber,” Mr Pearce said.
“In the 25 years I have been here, I have never seen a proof failure in any of the weapons. The main reason for that is because we have such a large infrastructure and have technical people here to ensure when the product gets to the indoor range for sub-assembly the weapon has already been checked and conforms to all of the necessary measurements.”
The weapons are also fired for function and accuracy before they leave the factory.
Mr Pearce said the factory recorded the group size of each weapon when it was test fired.
“When somebody in a unit says ‘my weapon won’t group properly or won’t hit the target’ I can say they are wrong.
Every weapon has to pass a grouping, MPI requirement for velocity, amount of displacement and recoil,” he said.
“The person who builds up the weapon here, walks the weapon through and does the test fire. In addition to this, the Thales small-arms fleet manager and a technical adviser from DMO visit from Melbourne once a month, and we let them inspect a selection of finished weapons to specific inspection criteria.”
No one actually knows what the average life of a Steyr is, however, Mr Pearce said at the small-arms test centre, attached to Thales’ ammunition plant at Benalla, there were F88s that had fired more than 25,000 rounds.
“When you have a weapon that is worth around $2000 and it has fired about $10,000-$15,000 worth of ammunition, that is not a bad life out of a rifle,” he said.
Now you know how and where the F88 is created. Next time you dismantle your personal weapon you will have an appreciation of the work that goes in to creating it. |
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