75B Life Expectancy

[eastman]

That's been my experience with mim but any time I bring it up all I hear is how good mim parts are.

They actually are. MIM is no different than any other metallurgical process. It got much better over time as it's development was better refined and perfected. Early welding, heat treating, plating, investment casting, were never perfect, or even good when they first came out. These processes develop over years of time invested in perfecting them. MIM is no different. Many times these processes are rushed into production before they are ready. Much like the M-16 rifle was in the early days of the Vietnam War. The result is unintended failure that gives the entire process or product a bad name, that unfortunately takes years to get rid of.

Today's MIM firearm components have been refined and perfected to be as good, or in some cases even better than expensive, time consuming machined components. Many parts in semi auto pistols are subjected to a lot of stress and shock every time they are fired. Over time this shock will fatigue the strongest of metallic components. I'm willing to bet if CZ introduced machined slide stops, in reality they wouldn't last any longer than a modern MIM slide stop would. The problem with MIM today isn't the quality level of the parts. It's getting people to realize just how far the process has evolved, compared to when it was first introduced.

BMW uses MIM parts in their cars (transmission at the very least)

[exit plan]

That's what I'm talking about. I personally observed 3 mim part breakage this qualification alone on 3 different guns from one of the largest manufactures.
Over and over again I see these mim parts break but always the apologists come out of the wood work.