Increasing cycle rate

[jimbullet]

Hi

Not sure where to post this question but here goes:

I've got an an STI Edge 40 for IPSC standard and pretty much off the box.

After several level 2 matches, I have noticed that I am able to squeeze trigger for the next shots at very close targets faster than the gun could complete the cycle - In short, no bang and have to reset trigger and squeeze again.

My question is, will changing some parts make the pistol cycle faster at warp speed?

So far it is out of the box with the exception of having an FLGR with an ISMI 12.5 lbs on it. Ammo I use has a PF of 180.

If changing some parts would make it more better, can any of you suggest which ones?

I thought whether changing to an EGW sear and D Koenig low mass hammer will improve lock time. But surely that alone will not make it better.

[yoshidaex]

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=22967

Unless you can squeeze off a 0.05 sec split time, I would say its trigger freeze.

[superdude]

A stronger recoil spring will return the slide faster.

Yoshidaex is correct that you have to be pretty speedy to outrun a 1911 slide. A 45 will cycle in ~70 milliseconds (ms) with a 10 lb spring, and ~50 ms with a 16 lb spring.

Lock time refers to the time when the sear releases the hammer until the firing pin ignites the primer. It does not have anything to do with cycle time.

[MikeRush]

I would have to agree with yoshidaex and superdude about the mechanical cycling of the gun likely occurring faster than your trigger finger can pull. I met trigger freeze the first time at my first Area match. Both times thought I had a malfunction and racked the slide. The only way to know for sure is to set up some close targets and run a timer. See what your splits are like in a quantifiable fashion. There are several superhumans who can outrun shotgun triggers, but those guns generally take over .1 seconds to cycle.

That said I once described to a friend how I felt I was outrunning my Glock 24 (you really could feel that thing cycle with 180s). He told me that I most certainly was not. Upon further experimentation and examination I found that while I had the sensation I was outrunning the gun it actually was my perception and feeling playing tricks on me. I wouldn't go up in recoil spring weight in your case, I would lower mainspring weight to 17 lbs or so and get some cuts made in the slide to lighten it up (firing pin stop radius has an effect on feel of the gun during cycling as well). I know that when I shoot a gun with a light slide it "feels" ready to fire again faster, but that has more to do with the felt recoil impulse and when I see the sights drop down again. YMMV, but working on freeing yourself of tension as you shoot and overcoming trigger freeze will likely be lower hanging fruit on the path to lightning splits and stage times.

[ParaGunner]

Trigger freeze.

[wes777]

I have felt the same way several times, and most of those were in matches. Sorted it out when I realized that what I thought was fully cycling the trigger was just my perception that it was happening. What was actually going on was I was releasing some pressure off of the trigger, and perhaps it was moving forward slightly, but it was not resetting. I fixed this by taking down the reset. In my comp guns now, if I let up just a little pressure off of the trigger, it resets, and then I am free to try and pull off the amazing splits we are talking about. Best split that I have seen from my open gun is .16, and that was in a match at a target about 5 feet away.

The mechanics alone involved in getting splits lower than that are staggering to me. splitting that fast also requires the gun be timed to your reloads. If you are running a stock gun, best bet is that it is not tuned to that load. The tuning is required to get the sights back in time to have a sight picture. If you are just hosing (like my .16 last week) then it is really not telling you anything, and therefore not worth much.

[jimbullet]

I appreciate all your inputs.

I havent really thought about that (trigger freeze) as I could almost with certainty that I had released pressure on the trigger and restarting my squeeze for the next shot. I'll give this a bit of experiment next Im on the range.

On one note, I got a 1.08 sec on a double trouble stage as my fastest without any hitch earlier this year.

Maybe so it could just be the way I have not released enough pressure during a recent level 2 IPSC match.

WES777, I am curious how did you get to reduce the trigger reset?

Edited August 10, 2013 by jimbullet

[wes777]

A stronger recoil spring will return the slide faster.

Yoshidaex is correct that you have to be pretty speedy to outrun a 1911 slide. A 45 will cycle in ~70 milliseconds (ms) with a 10 lb spring, and ~50 ms with a 16 lb spring.

Lock time refers to the time when the sear releases the hammer until the firing pin ignites the primer. It does not have anything to do with cycle time.

I like your chart, there is one problem with it. You address only the return of the slide. With a stronger recoil spring, you will also have to deal with the slide movement to the rear.

I am not saying that you are wrong, just that the recoil spring affects all aspects of cycling, not just the return of the slide to battery.

Stronger recoil spring= Slower: unlocking, velocity rearward, and ejecting

You will move the gun back into battery faster, at the cost of more velocity. This forward velocity will cause the muzzle to dip past the point of the sights resetting. All springs will do this, it is physics at its most basic. However, there will be more dip with a stronger spring, thus negating the affect you are suggesting it would create. In theory one would be able to pull the trigger again sooner, however the muzzle will, most likely, not be in the correct position to give the desired hit.

The job of the recoil spring is to strip the next round off of the magazine and feed it into the chamber/lock the barrel in place. It is not a device to reduce recoil or speed up timing due to the counterproductive force against the slide during the initial movement to the rear in the cycle. The weaker the grip, the greater the need for a stronger recoil spring to return the sights to their original location when the gun was fired.

For visual reference, check out this video:

[CocoBolo]

Sounds like a violation of COCO rule 3. Giving away the easy A's. The D Koenig low mass hammer is my favorite, however, if your gun is running, working 100%, that violates another rule. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

The timer is a tool we use for more than just matches. Maybe you need to measure your split times so you know where you are in the world of shooting. Recently at a match we had a stage started off with "Point Blank" blasting (24 near point blank shots) followed by a plate rack thru a port at 30 yards. After everones runs we started looking at split times in the burp section mine were .18 but the fastest shooter was .12 and that shooter had 4 mikies in the burp section, so I beat him in the stage and it was enough to allow me to beat him in the match, though I encountered premature empty mag because I was whaling on the trigger so fast some times I shot 3 instead of two, but a little Giving Away the easy A's took him out. Those while open gun splits were not enough to hold back a limited shooter with a VIP, he whoopped both of us with .20 splits, and had all A's.

Rule 1, Nevery rush the shot, take the time you need to make the hit, but only that time. Rule 2, Nothing worse than a slow miss.

[superdude]

A stronger recoil spring will return the slide faster.

Yoshidaex is correct that you have to be pretty speedy to outrun a 1911 slide. A 45 will cycle in ~70 milliseconds (ms) with a 10 lb spring, and ~50 ms with a 16 lb spring.

Lock time refers to the time when the sear releases the hammer until the firing pin ignites the primer. It does not have anything to do with cycle time.

I like your chart, there is one problem with it. You address only the return of the slide. No, the rearward movement time is there. With a stronger recoil spring, you will also have to deal with the slide movement to the rear.

I am not saying that you are wrong, just that the recoil spring affects all aspects of cycling, not just the return of the slide to battery.

Stronger recoil spring= Slower: unlocking, velocity rearward, and ejecting

You will move the gun back into battery faster, at the cost of more velocity. This forward velocity will cause the muzzle to dip past the point of the sights resetting. All springs will do this, it is physics at its most basic. However, there will be more dip with a stronger spring, thus negating the affect you are suggesting it would create. In theory one would be able to pull the trigger again sooner, however the muzzle will, most likely, not be in the correct position to give the desired hit.

The job of the recoil spring is to strip the next round off of the magazine and feed it into the chamber/lock the barrel in place. It is not a device to reduce recoil or speed up timing due to the counterproductive force against the slide during the initial movement to the rear in the cycle. The weaker the grip, the greater the need for a stronger recoil spring to return the sights to their original location when the gun was fired.

For visual reference, check out this video:

The rearward movement of the slide is included in the figure. It is labeled "rearward movement". It is the first data point. Note it is at 10 milliseconds. There was about a 1/2 millisecond difference in the rearward movement time of the different recoil spring weights. You would think that they would show a larger difference in rearward movement, but they didn't. I think the 1,000 frame per second camera speed might not be sensitive enough to capture the real difference that the different spring rates can show for rearward slide movement. For example, if the frame rate was 100,000 frames per second, I might have seen that the 10 lb spring took 95 frames to move rearward, while the 18.5 lb spring took 105 frames to move to the rear. Then the difference might have been obvious. Also, what might also be missing is the speed of rearward slide movement at different locations. With a stronger spring the slide might start to slow down a little as the stronger spring is compressed. 1,000 frames per second camera rate might not be fast enough!

Edited August 10, 2013 by superdude

[wes777]

A stronger recoil spring will return the slide faster.

Yoshidaex is correct that you have to be pretty speedy to outrun a 1911 slide. A 45 will cycle in ~70 milliseconds (ms) with a 10 lb spring, and ~50 ms with a 16 lb spring.

Lock time refers to the time when the sear releases the hammer until the firing pin ignites the primer. It does not have anything to do with cycle time.

I like your chart, there is one problem with it. You address only the return of the slide. No, the return movement time is there. With a stronger recoil spring, you will also have to deal with the slide movement to the rear.

I am not saying that you are wrong, just that the recoil spring affects all aspects of cycling, not just the return of the slide to battery.

Stronger recoil spring= Slower: unlocking, velocity rearward, and ejecting

You will move the gun back into battery faster, at the cost of more velocity. This forward velocity will cause the muzzle to dip past the point of the sights resetting. All springs will do this, it is physics at its most basic. However, there will be more dip with a stronger spring, thus negating the affect you are suggesting it would create. In theory one would be able to pull the trigger again sooner, however the muzzle will, most likely, not be in the correct position to give the desired hit.

The job of the recoil spring is to strip the next round off of the magazine and feed it into the chamber/lock the barrel in place. It is not a device to reduce recoil or speed up timing due to the counterproductive force against the slide during the initial movement to the rear in the cycle. The weaker the grip, the greater the need for a stronger recoil spring to return the sights to their original location when the gun was fired.

For visual reference, check out this video:

The rearward movement of the slide is included in the figure. It is labeled "rearward movement". It is the first data point. Note it is at 10 milliseconds. There was about a 1/2 millisecond difference in the rearward movement time of the different recoil spring weights. You would think that they would show a larger difference in rearward movement, but they didn't. I think the 1,000 frame per second camera speed might not be sensitive enough to capture the real difference that the different spring rates can show for rearward slide movement. For example, if the frame rate was 100,000 frames per second, I might have seen that the 10 lb spring took 95 frames to move rearward, while the 18.5 lb spring took 105 frames to move to the rear. Then the difference might have been obvious. Also, what might also be missing is the speed of rearward slide movement at different locations. With a stronger spring the slide might start to slow down a little as the stronger spring is compressed. 1,000 frames per second camera rate might not be fast enough!

You are correct. I incorrectly assumed (and i have been up to long) that rearward movement was not encompassing all of the steps I listed, since the forward portion steps were more detailed.

[outerlimits]

+10 on trigger freeze.

Now, there are a few tricks smiths use to speed up the cycling. Unlocking is one of them. Re shaping the firing pin stop helps. Have even had a lug removed from the barrel back in the day.

[superdude]

You are correct. I incorrectly assumed (and i have been up to long) that rearward movement was not encompassing all of the steps I listed, since the forward portion steps were more detailed.

I looked at the video you recommended, and counted frames for rearward slide movement and came up with these numbers:

18 lb spring = 8 frames.

14 lb spring = 7 frames.

7 lb spring = 8 frames.

We need faster cameras!!

Stronger recoil springs also change the ejection pattern (weak = far, strong = close) so we know they're working to retard the rearward movement, but I think we simply need a faster frame rate from our slow-motion cameras to see the difference.

[wes777]

You are correct. I incorrectly assumed (and i have been up to long) that rearward movement was not encompassing all of the steps I listed, since the forward portion steps were more detailed.

I looked at the video you recommended, and counted frames for rearward slide movement and came up with these numbers:

18 lb spring = 8 frames.

14 lb spring = 7 frames.

7 lb spring = 8 frames.

We need faster cameras!!

Stronger recoil springs also change the ejection pattern (weak = far, strong = close) so we know they're working to retard the rearward movement, but I think we simply need a faster frame rate from our slow-motion cameras to see the difference.

I think that we should not get lost in determining which is faster. Any of the springs normally used will be faster than we will ever be. The video shows the importance of matching springs to loads. The spring which returns the sights to the same spot is the one we want to use. I have a drill that simplifies picking a recoil spring. Once i decide on a load, and have about 4k on hand. I run the drill with 4 or 5 springs and settle on one.

[Chuckie45]

Wes777,

What's your drill?

[wes777]

Wes777,

What's your drill?

Setup two targets, one at 5 yards and one at 7 yards. (distance doesn't really matter as long as you can index on the second target and hose two rounds in it, preferably without aiming). Take into account that distance will increase the effects/spread the group out.

I can generally hose As or Cs at ten yards, that is how I picked the approximate ranges for the targets when I shoot this drill.

OK

I prefer working with a method, larger to smaller in this case. For limited or below, I would start in the 14 lb range and work down. For Open, maybe start at 10. I know that I prefer lower than eight though.

Starting with an excellent grip on the gun (grip the snot out of it), in both hands, at start signal engage T1(5yards) with 1 to 2 rounds, index on T2 (7 yards) and fire two rounds AS FAST AS YOU CAN PULL THE TRIGGER. That last bit is in caps because this is not about aiming. The goal is to get the sights back to the same position so you can follow up as quickly as possible.

Measure the distance between hits on the second target, they should be vertically separated, but not much left or right (correct grip and reshoot).

Install next lower spring, repeat.

Install next lower spring, repeat.

..... you get the idea.

Theory being that the spring which gives you the closest hits as fast as you can pull the trigger, is the one that will give you sight picture recovery the fastest. 2nd advantage is that when you start hosing on a close stage, if your index is good, you will achieve more A's.

I am pretty sure that this is how I got my A card in L-10, although I think that my match performance backs up my classification.

PS: the preferable spring will change with different loads, grip strength, and how you shoot/pull the trigger. By no means is this the key that will unlock the M/GM door. Thus my rather lackluster rating in two divisions.