Just saw the specs and video of Griffin's new Alpha take-apart rifle can.
They claim that 17-4 has longer life than Inconel, and twice as strong as Stellite. Umm...really!?
Finding that a little hard to believe. But they did shoot it on a belt-fed.

http://www.griffinarmament.com/Recce-7- ... aalpha.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQD1jU7O9Vw

Intresting, they are Magnum rated, Full Auto rated, Short Barrel rated. Lifetime Guarantee, but I don't think it covers normal ware and tare.

Really intrested in what the professionals think.

From a Griffin Armament post on ARFCOM....

Our current heat treated 17-4 baffles are approximately twice as strong as stellite, and are lighter per unit of volume, so stellite is exponentially heavier for equal system strength. There are some really horrible options in the stainless alloy family, but 17-4 is a super alloy compared to 300 series stainless steels. Manufacturers almost universally use 17-4 for muzzle devices including brakes. Muzzle devices are the most abused part of the suppressor system. This should tell you something about 17-4 and it's worthiness as a material.

Not my attempt to say stellite is a bad material to use, both of these materials are good materials when compared to the formerly market leading 300 series stainless alloys. Just hoping to help people to understand that the upper echelon materials in the suppressor industry are comparably good with each possessing unique merits. We feel we are using the superior material. We chose 17-4 because we believe it to be the best material option on the market.

This is to some extent a philosophical engineering argument. I feel people have to have a very good understanding of what it is the suppressor needs in order to be equipped to answer that. The questions will be, "what is more important- safety or wear resistance, weight, or performance." We chose safety, lightweight, and high performance. We want our products to have the highest safety factor possible within their product category.

Nice explination. I think there are very different expectations from civilians vs military and the endurance bar for us is much lower.

That criteria, lower MSRP and a good warranty to make happy the very few who may wear one out sounds like a good market approach, at least in theory.

Most all modern cans use 17-4 for baffles/cores across the board... rimfires, pistols, and rifles.

So what makes Griffin's 17-4 so special as to be better than Inconel and Stellite?

I'm not sure I read better than Stellite. I saw lighter than.......If I'm not mistaken, Stellite is an industry term and it's a different type of stainless alloy. I could be wrong, but that's my impression.

ETA....Yes they do say twice as strong. Not sure how they quantified that statement.

"Years of internal testing has found 17-4 stainless steel to provide longer service life than 718 Inconel, the prior market leading alloy. 17-4 stainless is also twice as strong as cast Stelite 6."

That's their direct quote. I understand there's different alloys for all these materials. But it still sounds a bit misleading. Is Stellite 6 even the common alloy used in cans?

What I get out of it is different materials and each exel in some area, but neither is best at everything.

I don't think they are daring anyone to a torture test. Good enough and lighter has some merit in my book. I have a Saker 7.62 that I'm happy with it, but for what I use it for is it overly tough? Probably.

They're just trying to market their cans. But I'm not sure about "twice as strong" either. If this is true they must be talking about at a certain temperature because what I see on the net is that Stellite has a tensile strength of around 173,000 psi and 17-4 (in Condition H900) is 190 to 200,000 psi. Again, not sure what their parameters are.

I do own two Griffin cans that I bought because they seemed to be good performers with a simple mounting system in a lightweight package that I felt like I could afford. Interstingly, the only reasons I went with my first Griffin can over a Stellite can (Specwar) were length and weight...

3 of my 4 cans are GA, although I haven't shot any of them yet. Didn't plan on being a fan boy but I liked Revo 45 over Octane for the indexing/K config/coating. Got a 3-lug for 9mm SBR build and when I decided a 9mm can was due Revo 9 was logical pick. The tiny QD 3-lug on the rimfire Checkmate was just so dam cute.

If not for them I would have probably been all Silencerco. Mask and Obsidian wasn't out yet. My other can is Saker 7.62 and I got it to last a lifetime.

We use all 17-4ss in all of our suppressors from rimfire to all out full auto rated magnum cans. To be honest I personally think Inconel and Stellite are more of a marketing thing than anything else. Design has more to do with longevity than the material being used when it comes to 17-4 vs Inconel vs Stellite. Inconel and Stellite are a little more abrasion resistant and maintain strength better over 1300deg f. Each of the three materials have their goods and bads. 625 Inconel is used more than 718 Inconel in suppressors and is more abrasion resistant. What it comes down to is I pretty much agree with Griffin, we give a lifetime warranty on all our suppressors against baffle erosion and they are all 17-4. I have ran our suppressors as hard as I can on our full auto 10.5" M4 without melting the gun down and I cant hurt the suppressors, after 5000rds of full torture here is our 17-4 blast baffle, still looks great to me.

rimshaker wrote: So what makes Griffin's 17-4 so special as to be better than Inconel and Stellite?

because they said so, thats why. maybe their 17-4 uses a special treatment process that makes it better? if its a concern then why not buy one and run it through some abuse exercises to see how well it holds up?

I do know that the GA Recce 7 passed the UCIW 6.8 torture test.

Seen here on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX0Vpa1ETHk

Toetagger wrote:I do know that the GA Recce 7 passed the UCIW 6.8 torture test.

Seen here on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX0Vpa1ETHk

wow, impressive. so there you have it, real proof, its the best.

I'd shy away from saying "best" although "impressive" is warranted for sure. Unless other suppressors of the same design made from the other materials failed it's a tie. And truly a supprrssor needs to be designed around it's material, so not even then. What is the benchmark for a win, minimal loss of performance or not blowing up? Those other materials excel at abrasion resistance at high temperature if my very basic understanding is correct.

I don't think GA is saying better at everything, but saying at least as good for our intentions. I think they are just battling the perception some have that using 17-4 automatically makes it an inferior product.

CanOfWhooppass wrote:I'd shy away from saying "best" although "impressive" is warranted for sure.

wait a sec, they said it was the best can there is, they said so. i guess it takes lots of metrics to be able to rank how good a can is, dbSPL being one of the majors, perhaps impact on groupings, and maybe service life. dunno, but they said their can is the best.

silencer_kid wrote:

CanOfWhooppass wrote:I'd shy away from saying "best" although "impressive" is warranted for sure.

wait a sec, they said it was the best can there is, they said so... dunno, but they said their can is the best.

Best for Mnfr and best for civilian user aren't the same. I have a '98 Chevy Lumina that's the very best I have. And if someone will buy it for $35,000, then that's the very best price. Best for me.

Another post from GA on the ARFCOM thread I cited earlier....

17-4 has a melting point ~125-150F higher than Stellite (this is often an indicator of strength to temperature), it also is twice as strong (heat treated 17-4 to Stellite 6). Erosive wear is a mechanism of failure in baffles over the long term, but the more serious mechanism for failure is yielding of the material. When the pressure and temperature allow the yield strength of the material to be met, product failure is immediate and the failure is catastrophic in that yield is irreversible and changing geometry is usually the least desirable and also most dangerous thing to have happen to a silencer.

Obviously neither material is commonly failing, but this is a failure mechanism that can be reached under abusive use so it isn't pointless to consider this quality.

718 inconel is a material that was and is used because it possesses a high degree of form-ability making it compatible with stamping, coupled with relatively good wear resistance and relatively high strength (compared to 300 series stainless steels) . It is about 25% weaker than stellite 6, and about 1/3 the strength of heat treated 17-4. It has lower rockwell hardness (about 20 points lower) than stellite and 17-4 and that isn't great for wear resistance but the wear resistant properties of inconel make up for most of that to the extent that I would say 718 has better wear resistance than would be expected from looking at the material properties.

Obviously we're talking baffles, and that disregards tube body construction materials. All of the 718 inconel baffled and some of the stellite baffled products have 316SS tubes. Some of them have 17-4 blast chambers and 316SS tubes. Our cans have billet 17-4 tubes. That is an incredible leg up, in that that means taking a material 2-3 times the strength of inconel 718 and making the housing of it. In marketing companies have generally referred to 316SS tubed silencers as "All inconel" because the baffling is inconel. That is the same as saying, ~25% the strength of 17-4, because the silencer is only as strong as its weakest component.

I'm not suggesting a silencer has to be 100% 17-4 to function or to make a customer happy. But I would be lieing to say that I'm not more confident, and happier because the silencer is 100% 17-4SS.

There are many ways to see silencer design. Some products cater to a market where people want them to be as light as possible around a given use parameter set. Another way of looking at it is to say, ideal silencers would be as strong as the barrel they are attached to. Geometrically this is challenging in that barrels are typically several times thicker in wall thickness than silencers of competitive weight. In order to even come close to that inside the tolerable weight parameters of market products today, the material cannot be too strong. It's strength to weight ratio cannot be too high.