Did a bunch of Google-fu and read some stuff, but didn't see anything definitive.

I'm looking to get a polymer pistol and am deciding between black and FDE, but according to MagPul once you start coloring polymer it becomes less durable. Hence all the trial-and-error with MagPul in developing their recent MCT colored PMAG.

Looking at either S&W or SIG pistols, FDE or black. Was hoping that someone here might have some more definitive or clear input as to the comparative durability of black vs. FDE polymer frames by those two manufacturers, since last I checked MagPul wasn't building their frames.


Thanks in advance.

I don’t know what MCT is, but Magpul has been making magazines and many other products of other colors than black for many years now. If simply coloring the polymer makes it less durable, wouldn’t problems have shown up before now?

Medium Coyote Tan, but yeah, maybe there is something unique to that particular color we're not privy to...

I remember this topic coming up a few times, specifically relating to Glock pistols.

As far as something definitive goes, I don't think it exists.

As I recall, black is/was more durable/stronger/whatever. The addition of the color somehow made the polymer less durable - but almost from a technical standpoint only. In the real world, it made no real or practical difference.

IIRC, it all started with some Glock reps used it as their excuse why Glock discontinued the OD frames about a decade ago and it spread like wildfire from there.

I think there was even a pretty big thread here on the topic. I seem to remember a forum member or two getting banned in it.

At the end of the day, and as I recall, no one could produce (or has since) any pistol that failed simply because it was non-black plastic.

Internet rumor, that's all.

And as sigfreund pointed out, given the shear number of colored frames in circulation, if there was a real problem, it would have surfaced by now.

It's been 9 years since I've been in the battery industry, so I may not properly recall all the details. Furthermore, our plastics/polymers were different than those used in the gun industry, but I was told by the molding companies, not redically so.

We had two primary plastics molding companies in Colorado area. One of them was the primary molder for Magpul, prior to Magpul's pulling out of Colorado. I saw pallets of Magpul products next to ours at the production facility.

Almost all plastics used at these plants arrived in pea-sized resin pellets -- they were clear-ish to milky white in color. The molders added powdered dyes to the resin pellets in large heated kettles to meet our color requirements. We were told that a colorless & translucent plastic product would result in a slightly softer and slightly more pliable plastic. Whatever the powdered dyes were and however they reacted with the plastics, they made a slightly stiffer and slightly more brittle plastic. But this is all splitting hairs, as regardless of color combinations (or lack thereof) the plastics products met our requirements for vibration resistance, acid resistances, stiffness, and heat welding capabilities with other plastics. Due to this experience, I never got too excited about plastics colors again.

Whether or not this has any relevance to Magpul products and polymer gun frames -- who knows. But the people who originally molded Pmags didn't seem to have issues with various colors.

Cool. Thanks all. I remember Magpul stating they had to do some fancy chemistry to get a non-black PMAG to meet the same stress tests as their regular one, hence my question here.

It seems the real work in researching a subject is separating facts from Internet rumor.

quote:

Almost all plastics used at these plants arrived in pea-sized resin pellets -- they were clear-ish to milky white in color. The molders added powdered dyes to the resin pellets in large heated kettles to meet our color requirements. We were told that a colorless & translucent plastic product would result in a slightly softer and slightly more pliable plastic. Whatever the powdered dyes were and however they reacted with the plastics, they made a slightly stiffer and slightly more brittle plastic

I once worked for a company that did small & large injection molding. Yes, this is accurate description, but for certain applications it is a significant difference regarding temperatures & ultraviolet effects. That is probably why Magpul spends a lot of QA to get it right.