I'm reading more and more about ammo with polymer casings being tested and used by certain government alphabet soup agencies. Let's hear from people with experience with it. Is it available to the general public? Any problems with it?

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Bill

Supposedly Polycase® makes such ammo, but all I've ever personally seen is ordinary brass cases with composite polymer/copper bullets in them such as their ARX Inceptor ammo.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

My simple answer… JUST SAY NO !!!!

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Respectfully
JoeDice

That idea goes back to the 1980's.
They bellied up pretty quickly....





The cases were thicker than brass and required proprietary bullets.

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"I also cook."

Polymer cased ammo is seen as a way of reducing cost and weight for the military. The main body of the case is polymer and is bonded to a metal case head to provide obturation. I suspect it has not caught on as the expected savings have not been realized, possibly because the military have not jumped on it. Big money from military sales would help in refining the process to make it cost effective.

The concept has caused many metals investors and reloaders to bite chunks out of their furniture.

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Release the Kraken

I have shot the above mentioned 38spl. It shot and functioned fine. I had an uncle that bought a case of polymer cased 7.62x39 with plastic bullets. We had to temporally plug the gas ports on the AK47's and SKS's for them to function. Accuracy was ho hum at 25ft and nonexistent past that.

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Dave
Regulators mount up!

I recall that 980's stuff. It fell out of favor VERY quickly. We shot a little of it, but just out of curiosity.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I had and have fired some USAC plastic cased .38 ammo. Its main selling point was that it could be easily reloaded with a simple and cheap tool. No dies required. Except it required a special bullet design available only from USAC that snapped into the plastic case. So you had no choice of bullets. Not a terrible idea for a shooter with modest needs, but it did not catch on. I think it may have been available in the 1970s but I don't remember for sure. It may have been available in calibers other than .38, but I do not remember seeing any. I may still have a few rounds in my collection.

I’ve seen and shot a little bit of this stuff: https://www.tvammo.com.
It has a lot to recommend it - lighter weight, accuracy was superb in my rifles, less heat transfer. The problem is cost. At $70/20 for 308 Win. they just aren’t going to sell a lot of it and so you don’t see it on store shelves. If I only fired a box or two of cartridges per year I might be tempted to use this stuff exclusively. It’s actually pretty impressive technology.

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Everybody could shoot

It's plastic! It's gotta be good!
Right?

Why do I see this as another way for idiots to trash our shooting ranges?

Oh, but I so want 3d printable ammo to go with my 3d printable guns.

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Just Say No - To Social Media

I seem to recall some full polymer shotgun cases years ago.

THANK YOU.........You have the guts to say plastic.....Thank You!!!!!

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S&W Accumulator

Those were made by Activ Industries. I shot up a few cases of those back in the '80's-'90's. I believe they had a steel insert.

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"I also cook."

ACTIV made full PLASTIC shotgun shells for a long time.......Head was internally reinforced with a steel washer......I still reload and shoot some of their hulls...............ALL shotgun hull body's today are plastic.

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S&W Accumulator

I shot and reloaded ACTIV hulls when I shot trap regularly, they reloaded with no issues. There was a steel insert in the base for holding the primer. Issue I had with them is the plastic rim would get chewed up by the extractor after numerous firing cycles. When I fired them in my 870 they would sometimes slip past the retainer in the magazine tube due to the chewed up rim and pop out of the tube. They would end up inside the receiver and jam up the works. Sometimes I would have to pull out the FCG to get them out if I couldn't get them to go back into the magazine tube. I got tired of dealing with the jam's and quit using them, I gave them all to a guy I worked with.

There were several shotgun shell brands with all-plastic bodies. Wanda was one, they were made in Houston. Herter's was also selling their house brand shells and cases back in the 1970s. I think theirs were European, maybe Spanish. In the later 1980s my Trap and Skeet club got a good deal on Activ shells and bought a large inventory of them for sales to the members. Nothing wrong with them. I probably still have some fired cases from that time.They reloaded OK.

wont last long or well in sustained fire..

somehow i see recollections of of the springfield trapdoor rifle, of how the cheeeaply made and low quality brass cartridges would swell up and stick inside the chamber after a few casings..

I remember lots of hate of vietnam veterans on this damned thing called athe m-16 because the cases liked to break off in the chamber or just stick in them.

I dont see that polymer **** being functional in something like the

mini gun

I remember these. OK in break open guns if reloaded but not so much for autoloaders. There is a reason they went away.

I had some totally clear blue Wanda plastic shells......Each time I shot one the case would split down the side.......They were a once & done shotshell.

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S&W Accumulator

I don't know what plastic was used in the Wanda shells, but it was transparent. It was fairly hard and not flexible, unlike plastic shells made by Federal, Winchester, etc. I imagine they were probably somewhat brittle and probably could crack easily upon firing. I have several boxes of Wanda shells in my collection but I have never fired any.

A properly engineered thermoset polymer would not suffer any heat issues in sustained fire.

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Release the Kraken

Yes, elements of the DoD have been talking about polymer cased ammo and caseless ammo (different, but related) for a number of years. If you can find the NDIA Armaments conference slide decks (unclassified, but not necessarily easy to find), it'll have some info. As mentioned above, the intent is to make lighter and cheaper rounds. The NGSW was supposed to use a LSAT (light weight small arms technology) ammo, it started as a classless telescoped round eventually morphing into a brass/steel cased 6.8mm high pressure round. In a parallel effort another branch was looking at polymer cased .50 BMG ammo. Marine Systems command actually did a you tube video on it:

IIRC the Dardick fired a "tround", a triangular shaped cartridge holder, not sure if it was a just a holder or an actual case. I had the Speer plastic cases and bullets years ago, they just used a primer to propel a plastic bullet.

There were both loaded cartridges and holders for conventional cartridges. They were made of plastic, ABS I think. And then there was the Gyrojet which needed no cartridge case, at least not in the conventional sense. There were also trounds made for non-firearms uses such as rock drilling. Somewhere I have some of the latter, but I have not seen them for many years.