The simple reason is cost. The cost to setup to make welded core silencers is pretty high once the process for a machined silencers is established or should I say, the cost is really high to add it to our current system… let me explain.
Let’s take a look at some of the factors that go into making this design change. There is the cost of adding on to the building to make room for the needed machinery to make these new silencers. We currently dont have the room we would need for a stamping press or the bridge crane needed to handle the tooling and metal to make these designs with. We would also have considerable expense in specialized tooling to go in the stamping press as each component in the design has to have a set of tools (these are called dies: form die, draw die, trim die, ect.) for it. These can be quite expensive and time consuming to make, plus they require significant maintenance to operate properly and none of this is cheap. So how these pay off are in HUGE volumes. Your margin per part is a lot lower so you need to make a lot more of them and this is why stamped designs seem to be cheaper, they are spreading the cost of manufacture over a much larger batch of parts as to where we machine our silencers from bar stock, allows us to make smaller runs, but the cost per part is higher for us. This gives us flexibility in what we make as our machines can be repurposed almost instantly, but it makes our “per part” costs higher. This is what makes mass production so desirable for everyone. It lowers the “per part” costs due to incredible volume of manufacture.
Since we do not have the three primary machines (stamping press, special welding fixture/cnc welding machine, wire EDM to cut bores) to make stamped/welded core silencers, you dont see us offering them. So if you have ever wondered why Liberty has not gotten into making stamped baffle silencers ,these are the main reasons why. Another problem with these designs is that you can not easily make design changes to the product. It requires modifying the tools when you want to add or remove a feature, this also is very expensive to have done by die makers. It is pretty common to see stamping dies with interchangeable parts to change models and such, but if you are tinkering with the design and find something that improves performance a little, it costs too much to implement it in a stamping die to where with our CNC mills and lathes, it is a simple program change and the new feature is now integrated into the very next run cycle. We are about continuous improvement here and want our users to have the best possible device available. A great example of this is our Mystic X suppressor as it has went through several revisions over the years to be better and better.
Now the next question that comes up is why dont we outsource the making of the baffles or the welding/edm work? Well, to be quite honest with you, people just dont care about quality anymore (or so it seems). We tried this several years ago and it was nothing but problems. We had to reject so many parts and be late on deliveries so many times with our silencers that we simply decided to internalize all of our manufacturing and not to use subcontractors ever again. It is just too painful to get good parts delivered on time from third party suppliers…period.
Those are the two main reasons for not jumping into the stamped/welded core designs at this point. So when you are ready for a high quality fully machined silencer for your firearm, we are here to serve you. Until next time, keep your powder dry!