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Broken Glass


tomjerry1

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Have a problem with breaking the glass in red dot sight, anything particular to lookout for while mounting? Pistol is using a plate, I have looked for any damage to the plate, pistol mount, and the optics, nothing stands out. I am using the correct screws, and they are torqued correctly. Gun is 9mm, 147 gr loads shooting 132 PF, soft shooting. 

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What pistol?  What dot?

 

Most of the breaks I've seen have been due to non-shooting abuse-- bagged upside down and dropped, something hits them in the bag, knocked into something in the holster, etc, but some ejected brass can hit and some dots are known for losing glass.

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My wife recently had a detonation and the first clue she had, was while watching the dot lift, the lens departed the Romeo 3 XL! She is still picking bits of tungsten out of her face. Doubled charged "factory" round. 

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Wow, hopefully she's okay. My pistol is a 9mm Prodigy, shots really well. This is not the first dot to break on it, 1st was a Burris FF4, blew the glass out, and the second was a Vortex Viper, cracked the glass. Both did not make it through the first mag, all my scopes are taken care of and not mistreated. I'm not going to be a big of Limited Optics if I have to continually return broken scopes, been shooting open for years and other than replace batteries, no problems.

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Ive never broken the glass, but did have the glass eject frome the aluminum

frame. The glass and frame had dents and scratches from the brass hitting it.

Company replaced it and have never had an issue since. Adjusted the ejector

so brass did not hit dot. 

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So based on price alone, I know the Fast Fire and Vortex are lower end scopes. My buddy used to have a Fast Fire on his CZ and always had to have a spare while one was being replaced. Once he switched to a Leupold DPP he had no more issues. Another buddy had his Fast Fire replaced twice and he changed over to a Trijicon SRO and no more problems. 
 

My only suggestion would be to purchase a more expensive dot and hope for the best! Hope this helps. 

 

 

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Other forums blame the loaded chamber indicator (LCI) in the Prodigy barrel.  They mention using this company to weld and blend the LCI to eliminate the hole completely.

 

https://dscgunworks.com/products/weld-blend-loaded-chamber-indicator?pr_prod_strat=use_description&pr_rec_id=c0e02989e&pr_rec_pid=8039831470310&pr_ref_pid=7760508551398&pr_seq=uniform

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Interesting, I didn't think of that. I haven't heard anything from others having this issue and would hope that Springfield would have discovered this during development.  Food for thought!

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I'm leaning towards the pistol, this is the second optic? I checked all the mounting, plate, and sight, all torqued and lock tite. Tampa-XD45, what other sites could I go to to read more on this. I looked at the DSC Gunworks site, no mention as to the reasons or benefits to welding up the chamber indicator. Have other pistols, not 1911, that have the similar notch in the barrel, and no issues.

 

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Does it look like you’re getting blowback on the cases? Is that what everyone is suggesting that there’s blast back breaking the glass? I would think you’d feel that if that’s the case. 

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I can only assume that's what is being suggested? I really don't want to run down the rabbit hole chasing a non-existing problem. The options are to change optics, expensive, with hopes the same dose not happen.

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I have the 4.25" Prodigy also and have had no problem with backblast whatsover. Not even an indication of it. I did have a glass come loose on a Vortex Viper on the pistol, but that was due to a manufacturing defect. I've been running a Holosun 407 recently with no problems at all.

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10 hours ago, tomjerry1 said:

I'm leaning towards the pistol, this is the second optic? I checked all the mounting, plate, and sight, all torqued and lock tite. Tampa-XD45, what other sites could I go to to read more on this. I looked at the DSC Gunworks site, no mention as to the reasons or benefits to welding up the chamber indicator. Have other pistols, not 1911, that have the similar notch in the barrel, and no issues.

 

Here's one site to review:  https://www.thearmorylife.com/forum/threads/prodigy-5in-w-hex-dragonfly.14389/

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Armory Life is Springfield's house organ, but if that blast was really a thing, you'd thin people would get blasted in the face shooting without a dot or in any kind of retention situation.

 

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I was shooting slide mounted dots in open near 20 years ago. The work was done by Beven Grams. In addition to the slide machining, he had developed a ruggedization method for the Docter sight. The stock sights would not last and neither did the FastFire. (There weren't many options back then)He would pretty much disassemble the sight, remove the adhesive meniscus from the lens and re-glue with a stronger epoxy. Internal electrical connections were re-worked eliminating strain points and the parts that could be potted were (RTV, I think). He also opened up the light sensor hole to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. No dumb things like battery doors, switches and other moving parts. The things were rock solid and would last for many 10K's of rounds. There were a couple guys I know that were still shooting them until recently. 

 

But even with all this, the failure mode for the dots was the glass. Things started happening at the joint of the lens and the lens would crack or in one case that I know of, fell out. Besides the results of physical shock, there is also a coefficient of expansion difference in the frame and lens material that works on the joint. 

 

In short, a slide mounted dot is on the consumable list. Plan accordingly.

sight_close_big.JPG

TheTwinsRightSide_B.jpg

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many moons ago.... we popped a windshield out of an S10 because it wasnt on the lift correctly, or correctly for an S10.. 
Rather than buy another optic, maybe try another plate... Holes slightly off or not perfectly square to sight could be flexing the sights.  The Burris and Vortex use the same footprint... I forsee a scenario you get an SRO,, which will require changing, plates I believe.. problem goes away, and the cheap sights get blamed...  Small sample size but I havent had issues with my vortex and that includes being mounted on a 45 acp pin gun

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Not a Prodigy but watch the Excelon video in this ad. The gun is wet and around the 25 second mark you can definitely see a blast coming out of the chamber area. A fair amount right back onto the optic. It may not be any debris but possibly a shock causing the problem. 
https://www.springfield-armory.com/echelon-series-handguns/echelon-handguns/

Edited by Farmer
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  • 4 weeks later...

Interesting video. Definetely a preasure release there. Hard to tell if it

is directed at or in front of optics glass. I could see this maybe a problem.

My issue was with ejected brass hitting both the aluminum frame and glass.

It left noticeable dents in the aluminum and scratches and dings in the glass.

The brass was being ejected straight up and the returning slide/optic was 

making contact with it. it would knock the brass forward/downrange. After

adjusting the ejector to throw the brass to the side, problem went away. But

not before the seal holding glass failed causing glass to be ejected as well. 

warranty came in handy here.  Good luck

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