Quote:
Originally Posted by Erich
Talk to an engineer: on a well-made spring, it's the compressing and uncompressing that wears. Constant compression is not going to wear the spring. You'll wear your mags out faster doing what you do than just letting them sit. Seriously, talk to an engineer.
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Actually, you're both right, or you're both wrong, depending on how the spring is designed and the material it's made from.
If the material will creep under stress (as most materials do), then leaving the spring compressed over a long time will shorten it. If you look at a used recoil spring for a 1911, it will be shorter than a new spring. If the spring is properly designed, there will still be enough length and force to operate properly. Use cheap materials or bad design, then leaving your mags loaded will cause functioning problems.
Even with proper steel, it's strength deteriorates by about half as it is cyclically loaded and unloaded up to about a million cycles. If you design for the million cycle yield strength, no problem. Likewise, if you don't cycle it much, still no problem.
The practical answer is to use quality magazines, and you probably won't have any problems no matter what you do. If you want to be a bit more conservative, don't cycle the mags more than necessary.
And, yes, I are a mechanical injuneer, with one of those Piled Higher and Deeper thingies.
Buck