Woah... LMT & KAC quality/accuracy/performance

Forgetful Coyote · Sunday at 6:48 AM

Well... I'll just leave this here. I completely understand this in no way used any sort of scientific method, or any method at all for that matter..? No mention of ammo used, etc...
Im kinda wondering if this was some sort of skit/troll job..,??

But then I read the comment from "vinlandwerwolf"(4th comment down at time I posted this), that claims to have worked at both.? Every YouTube comment is obviously 100% true right?

This has to be a troll right?
I mean- the USSS, 1SFOD-D/CAG, now the Royal Marines....and countless other badass sons 'a bitches use and/or have used KAC, both their small frames and large. Same goes for LMT!!

Sooo..
Parody? Or no?

FWIW- the German on here loves his 110K1, and runs it hard. I trust his word far more than this Garand Thumb dickrider in the vid!

JustSendit · Sunday at 7:48 AM

I watched some of that video, I skipped around it’s possible I missed any actual quantifiable testing.

I think there’s a much more objective method to determine grading for these rifles. If LMT and KAC are interested I’ll be standing by. But that video is click bait junk, in my opinion.

papershredder · Sunday at 9:43 AM

The video is entertainment, nothing more. They're just there to show off the cool rifles they bought with all those likes they receive. Their complaining is just to get the viewers riled up for clicks/comments. Remember, with youtube, it's not the videos but the viewers that are the product.

With mass produced equipment, you can't go by sample size of 1. Way too many variables. That youtube comment can be pretty much disregarded. I copied his comment below, but the dude sounds like a disgruntled employee. Manufacturing in the US as a whole is suffering due to regulations, offshoring jobs/lack of investing by the business class, inflation/rising costs... all that leads to stagnant wages for the labor. So nobody wants to work factory jobs anymore and people are taking their talents elsewhere. If it wasn't for the contracts, KAC and LMT probably wouldn't be in business today. The reality is LMT, KAC probably can't afford to pay their employees more than what they currently are. Both companies have been short handed on help for a while. If you go to LMT's website, they've had "NOW HIRING, APPLY HERE" at the top of their homepage for more than a year now. KAC is not in any better position either. Their career page has had 30+ openings for more than a year as well.

vinlandwerwolf
1 month ago
I owned a Kac and worked at LMT. I'd choose neither tbh. My Kac was inaccurate like you saw and LMT is assembled by crack heads from the Quad Cities. The tightness between the upper and lower on LMTs is from "speed bumps" left on the upper that are hand filed and treated with aluminum black... I saw, on multiple occasions, rifles fail accuracy testing and had rounds deleted from the electronic target and then more rounds were fired to make it look like it passed. The LMT 2 stage trigger was copied from Rock River Arms and they have to pay royalties on them. Idk how they got away with copying the Kac rear drum sight that looks like the one on the FG42 but my old shift lead was there when they cut open the Kac rear sight to reverse engineer it. The barrel bushing in the uppers used to not get seated correctly so out of a box of 25 uppers you could only use like 5 of them to assemble a rifle and had to send the rest back for rework. We called the place "Let's Machine it Twice". That's why they're so damn expensive, you're paying for all the rework time that they should've figured out years ago but they only pay people like $15 an hour to assemble $3000+ rifles so no one that actually gives a shit stays there. Sorry, I hate that place, and everyone else that I know that's worked there hates it too.

BCP · Sunday at 9:44 AM

Just clickbait, maybe the suppressor test, it's obvious one is quieter than the other

BCP · Sunday at 9:50 AM

papershredder said:
The video is entertainment, nothing more. They're just there to show off the cool rifles they bought with all those likes they receive. Their complaining is just to get the viewers riled up for clicks/comments. Remember, with youtube, it's not the videos but the viewers that are the product.

With mass produced equipment, you can't go by sample size of 1. Way too many variables. That youtube comment can be pretty much disregarded. I copied his comment below, but the dude sounds like a disgruntled employee. Manufacturing in the US as a whole is suffering due to regulations, offshoring jobs/lack of investing by the business class, inflation/rising costs... all that leads to stagnant wages for the labor. So nobody wants to work factory jobs anymore and people are taking their talents elsewhere. If it wasn't for the contracts, KAC and LMT probably wouldn't be in business today. The reality is LMT, KAC probably can't afford to pay their employees more than what they currently are. Both companies have been short handed on help for a while. If you go to LMT's website, they've had "NOW HIRING, APPLY HERE" at the top of their homepage for more than a year now. KAC is not in any better position either. Their career page has had 30+ openings for more than a year as well.

That vinlanderwolf quote is hilarous but it's not surprising either

A lot of perceived quality has to do with the price and not actual quality or performance

There's a certain factory in my area that makes aircraft parts and their CNC crew is one guy who runs around mashing the buttons on 25 machines over and over while a dozen people work upstairs in marketing and management, probably a Boeing subcontractor

papershredder · Sunday at 11:16 AM

BCP said:
That vinlanderwolf quote is hilarous but it's not surprising either

A lot of perceived quality has to do with the price and not actual quality or performance

There's a certain factory in my area that makes aircraft parts and their CNC crew is one guy who runs around mashing the buttons on 25 machines over and over while a dozen people work upstairs in marketing and management, probably a Boeing subcontractor

Sounds like that management team is in for a rude awakening when that one guy gets burnt out with working like a dog. While it is a current trend in mfg to reduce labor costs by having employees do the jobs of 2 or more people, quality almost always suffers as a result. If it's not quality that suffers, then it will be quantity. There is always a trade off and most of the time quality gets sacrificed before quantity because the effects of sacrificing quantity are immediately felt while sacrificing quality is felt slowly over time.

In the instances of KAC and LMT, name recognition with quality came before their prices increased. Prices increased with demand. Demand increased so much that both companies had to move to different facilities, and they've been struggling to catch up ever since.

What most people (including factory wage slaves like vinlanderwolf) don't care to think about or understand is, expanding production means expanding every other area from management to engineering to logistics, QC, and marketing. Most of the price comes from the expenses required to keep production going and products moving while keeping up with the competition. Both the firearms and contract production machining industries are among the most competitive industries currently in existence.

Leicafan1990 · Sunday at 2:20 PM

papershredder said:
The video is entertainment, nothing more. They're just there to show off the cool rifles they bought with all those likes they receive. Their complaining is just to get the viewers riled up for clicks/comments. Remember, with youtube, it's not the videos but the viewers that are the product.

With mass produced equipment, you can't go by sample size of 1. Way too many variables. That youtube comment can be pretty much disregarded. I copied his comment below, but the dude sounds like a disgruntled employee. Manufacturing in the US as a whole is suffering due to regulations, offshoring jobs/lack of investing by the business class, inflation/rising costs... all that leads to stagnant wages for the labor. So nobody wants to work factory jobs anymore and people are taking their talents elsewhere. If it wasn't for the contracts, KAC and LMT probably wouldn't be in business today. The reality is LMT, KAC probably can't afford to pay their employees more than what they currently are. Both companies have been short handed on help for a while. If you go to LMT's website, they've had "NOW HIRING, APPLY HERE" at the top of their homepage for more than a year now. KAC is not in any better position either. Their career page has had 30+ openings for more than a year as well.

Then KAC and LMT need to go back to basics and figure out how to deliver the quality people are paying for. I’ve seen so much garbage go out of LMT in the last few years that I wouldn’t touch their stuff with a 10ft pole. Their QC is absolute crap. They can complain all they want about this factor or that factor that is causing the production issues but at the end of the day, they are cutting corners and it’s hurting their reputation. If they need to reduce output to tighten the QC then so be it. If they need to pay their workers more to get people who actually care, then so be it. If they can only deliver high quality for their big military contracts, then stop selling to civilians. You shouldn’t have to buy 3 LMT BCG’s to get one that has a property installed gas key. If you are going to charge premium prices, then you need to deliver a premium product.

Radian and JP somehow figured it out. They consistently deliver the quality level people expect for that price. I honestly think it’s just greed and laziness. LMT and KAC make their money on big government contracts and they don’t really care that much about civilian sales. They pay crap wages to maximize profit and they skate by on their reputations and the patents they have.

papershredder · Sunday at 10:39 PM

First question is are they delivering top quality on their contracted work or just good enough? I've met a few grunts who were not impressed with some of the KAC stuff they encountered in the sand boxes. Colt and FN would be better examples than JP and Radian. It's been long established that Colt and FN just settle for good enough. JP and Radian cater specifically to the civilian market. Do you know what happens when contract schedules aren't met? The business gets sued for breech of contract. JP and Radian do not have that dagger hanging over their heads, nor are they handling the volume that LMT and KAC are.

Second question is are their prices really premium or are they just set for the contract? There are laws on the books that specifically address price gouging and fixing when it comes to products that both the gov't and civilians purchase. They can't charge the gov't more than what they're charging civilians. So the typical way to deal with that is to set the same prices for both civilian and gov. KAC is unique in that their products trickle down to the civilian world mostly as contract over runs and agency returns with only a very small percentage of their production going out to the civilian distribution chain. The prices on KAC stuff gets jacked up by the resellers after it leaves the distributors. LMT is more direct to the customer, but their contracts do come first.

I'm not justifying sending bad products out to the customer, but there are multiple little nuances in the production machining world that most people don't see. And the higher the volume produced, the greater the chances are that mistakes and bad decisions happen. Is it greed and laziness? No company is in business for charity. Is the owners and management at LMT telling their employees to ship out parts knowing their bad? I doubt it. Do the employees at LMT not give a shit? Maybe, Maybe not? But who knows, probably a small handful that don't, but most of the employees are good workers who are just as stressed at getting inventory out the door as management is. Just like almost every other business out there.

71firebird400 · Sunday at 11:23 PM

All my KAC stuff has been great. My SR25's have been phenomenally accurate. I see a lot of folks commenting here that don't seem to have any real world experience, being influenced by a pair of kids on youtube. Sad.

sinister · Monday at 7:38 AM

Better is better. I read within the last few years that certain units have bought other brands (vice upgrade kits to legacy in-hand weapons) for turn-key fixes. This one caught my eye: https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/seekins-sp10-review/

Manufacturers with military contracts must meet specified .gov requirements like testing, fencing, video and alarm surveillance, and drug-testing. That adds to the cost of the base product not required for civilian market weapons. Another catch (by law) is the manufacturer can't sell an identical item to the open market for a price lower than the government pays.

After the contract is filled are civilians willing to pay the GI contract price?

DeathBeforeDismount · Monday at 11:06 AM

Don't listen to retards on internet.

WindstormSCR · Monday at 3:36 PM

it’s largely the fact that daddy gov has as stated very specific requirements that must be contractually met, and further that each part must have documentation showing that it was met. that means a lot more paperwork, and more hands touching each part for longer, which increases the cost.

I made a comment a while back on a PSA thread showing just how much QC time can affect unit price, and that same logic applies here too. You’re not paying for the brand, you’re paying for all of the overhead required to meet contract, and by law they have to charge you the same price for the same item.

My suggestion? if you buy from a military contract manufacturer, be as anal about defects as Uncle Sam is, if its not right and doesn’t meet TDP/Mil-Std, and wasn’t sold blem, send that shit back for replacement. You’re paying for the overhead, get what you pay for.

Forgetful Coyote · Tuesday at 8:14 PM

71firebird400 said:
All my KAC stuff has been great. My SR25's have been phenomenally accurate. I see a lot of folks commenting here that don't seem to have any real world experience, being influenced by a pair of kids on youtube. Sad.

I'll admit I don't own either KAC or LMT. But I've been lusting after a SR15 CQB Mod 1 for forever.. and literally have dreams sometimes of saving up for a SR25 APC or ACC. Id absolutely even settle for a Mk 11 clone built with one of Centurion's SR25 uppers, JP internals, LMT lower, etc ...
If the KS1 ever hits the .civ market, I'm most definitely snatching one up. Any word on that BTW? (KS1 coming to the civilian market?)
Perhaps @sinister has a point though... DEVGRU is running Noveske 10.5's now(in 5.56 and .300 Blk) vs. the 416's theyd been using forever. Stainless barrels too, interestingly enough. Apparently they'd been asking for 10.5" shorty carbines with better accuracy for a while now. That's the "word on the street" anyway....

Tex68w · 2024-11-20T11:49:45-0500

I currently have multiples from both makes, I’ve had examples from each over the last 14 years as well and I have always been very happy with the performance and fit/finish. I had one LMT lower with a issue from before their move and I had an 11.5” Mod 1 KAC upper go back for work a few years back as well and both were replaced with new items. I couldn’t ask for better CS from either shop.

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Woah... LMT & KAC quality/accuracy/performance

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