Introducing Battle Arms' Ambidextrous Safety Selector

Here it is gentlemen, after more than a year of development, testing and refinement, the Battle Arms Development Ambidextrous Safety Selector Switch. This is the first of the line in the series we bring to market. In development is the BAD-Combat Ambi Safety Selector Switch (BAD-CASS), and the M16 BAD-CASS, where the left side lever and the selector axis are machined as one piece.



A: Selector Axis
B. Standard lever
C: Thin lever
D: Short lever
E: Mounting screws (Torx)
F: Torx wrench

A little background before we get to more pictures.

The ambidextrous safety selectors out there are mostly symmetrical, if you're a right handed shooter, the right lever gets in the way, if you're a left handed shooter, the left side gets in the way.

KAC had done something pretty neat, the lower right tip is scalloped to reduce the protrusion for right handed shooters, but it still ignores the left handed shooters.

Battle Arms Development Ambidextrous Safety Selector Switch is user configurable. The levers on both sides are detachable, the unit ships with three levers:

Standard: about the same thickness and length as USGI lever
Thin: same length, but half the thickness as USGI lever
Short: same thickness, but less than half the length of USGI lever

We have put a tremendous amount of thoughts into the lever designs.
Instead of the pyramid profile of the USGI lever, our levers surface is 90 degrees to the receiver, with broad and angled serrations to give them a sure and positive purchase. When you first put your thumb on it and flick it, the difference is very perceptible.

**The standard lever is about the same thickness and length as the USGI lever, with more positive purchase and traction.
**The thin lever is almost completely out of the way of the trigger finger when it's extended, out of the trigger guard.
**The short lever isn't out of the way of the extended trigger finger completely (there's no way to make it short enough and still usable). The upside of a short lever is that due to its abbreviated length and resultant shorter radius, the short lever is quicker to flick.
**Groove inside the pocket of levers, as well as the tip that points to Safe or Fire, designed to be filled with paint for easy identification of lever position.

The keywords are "USER CONFIGURABLE" We do not like the one size fits all notion, because often, it doesn't. In tests and evaluations, some testers like the thin, some like the short. We provide all three levers in the kit.

Even the screw (to secure the levers to the selector axis) came under scrutiny. We chose Torx screw to prevent cam-out and stripping of screw head. The screws themselves are larger than found on any other ambi selector. This combination means users can safely apply the torque necessary to tighten the screw, AND back it out later, after the thread locker had set in. An Allen head screw head would easily strip in this circumstance.

Every curve and serration has a purpose, we didn’t waste any money on looks. That it looks beautiful is somewhat accidental . The manganese phosphate finish somewhat masks its beauty, the unfinished parts look like jewelry from all the fine machining that went into them.


SPECS
•Precision Machined from 12L14 Solid Bar Stock & Round Stock Steel
•Heat Treated to Rockwell Hardness of 48-52
•Manganese Phosphate Finish in Matte Black & Oil Treated
•Aggressive Diagonal Grooves on Levers for Positive Grip
•Single Parallel Fluting on Face of Lever Provides Additional Grip & also Saves Weight
•(2) Indicator "V-Grooves" at Tip of Pivot & at Face of Lever - can be filled with high visibility paint for easy identification
•100% Made in USA
•Patent Pending

Some pictures
How the levers started life


Levers in the white


Levers in the white, and the configuration with short lever on left, standard lever on right


On a host AR15



The possible configurations (a few of these configs are possible with two sets of BAD Ambi Safety Selector Switches, e.g. both sides thin, both sides short, as the standard kit ships with one of each: standard, short, and thin)


Exploded view:



Our website is still being updated, for now the the page pertaining to this new product is on our shopping page

Our announcement in the industry forum here

That's a Very nice looking and Very functional product guys! You guys did an excellent job and the quality looks very good. If everything goes as planned we will be carrying these!

Ordered. To replace my LMT. I was going to get a Troy Industries unit, but they've been dicking the dog. I see some added benefits for going with yours. I'm considering having the center piece coated in NP3.

Thank you gents! The order has been packaged and will go out tomorrow

Re: Troy's unit, a little side story.

My partner George happened by their booth at the SHOT Show and saw theirs, he just about had a heart attack, since theirs looks very similar to ours, and their ambi mag release is a near carbon copy of our design (sat on the back burner because we were never happy with it, well Troy can live with its shortcomings I guess) We've been developing our ambi selector since early last year, and only a handful of people that signed NDAs had seen drawings of it.

Of course immediately we thought of leaks and such, but we're pretty sure it's just a matter of parallel development. The 90 degree lever surface already exists, nothing new there. Our approach is different, in that we WANT our customers to decide what works best for them by providing options. Appearances can be deceiving, we've all had thought a certain configuration would be great until we tried all possible combination, only to arrive at something very different.

We realize there'll be a lever left unused, but we can't decide for our customers and leave them with limited options. Later we'll offer the option of any combination of two levers (two stubby, two standard, etc.) and the saving that goes along with it

More pics, these levers are bead blasted, but otherwise unfinished. Please note these are from the prototyping stage, the protrusion on the right has been eliminated. The host weapon is an Armalite AR10.

Thin lever


Thumb riding on short lever


Short lever in Fire position

Cool.

BA!! Now theres something else I need to pick up for my new build... thanks, thanks a lot!!! I like the angled cuts on the edge of the switches, instead of the lines on the top like norrmal. Looks like a fine piece of machinery!

Admit it, you only did this so you could sell a product titled BAD ASSS.

Looks pretty ingenious.

Good design. Nice update to a proven concept.

It happens to make up the words bad ass, it's purely a coincidence

Our products all have the BAD (Battle Arms Development) prefix. For the M1A/M14 products, they are BAD-Tx to pay homage to the T20, T25, T44 that eventually became the M14. For our AR15 platform products, the names are in BAD-xxx format, for instance, BAD-BSM for the bracket and screw kit for Matech BUIS.

Damn. I had pretty much settled on RRA Star selectors and this has to come along.

One thing I like about the Star is how I can "flick" the selector from Safe to Fire without shifting hand position. Does the side texturing allow the same with the BAD-CASS?

Once you have it installed on your lower, it is my belief you will instantly forget about the cost It feels different, in a good way. If you have an existing symmetrical ambidextrous selector handy, you can put them side by side and compare. The BAD-Ambi Safely Selector Switch, with either the short or thin lever, simply beats the heck out of the standard USGI lever

Just ordered one. I've been thinking of trying an ambi switch but I wasn't impressed with what is out there.

I had to do some soul searching on this after a recent carbine class. I'm trying to configure most of my rifles the same and can't afford to change them all. But I do want to try this.

Wow! Kudos to you guys. This is a major development in ambi selectors. I tried an ambi selector once and it left a large gap on one side. I've been turned off from them because of it, but yours appears to be very well made. I will be ordering one very soon.

The star, or knob on the RRA reminds me of the selector on an FN FAL, good idea but not sure about it being on the other side. I don't have an RRA selector so I have no basis for comparison there, but between the USGI and our Standard lever, our standard lever has an edge on purchase, when the finger is on top or on the side of the lever, and especially when the finger slips a little and pushes on the tip of the lever to rotate it.

What we have learned time and again, and I think you guys will find this true as well, is that looks can be very deceiving. There's something in the USGI lever profile that could give the finger the slip when the finger tries to use its tip to rotate it, I do not have such problems with our standard lever.

By no means am I disparaging the USGI lever, truth be told, one of the possible ways we were looking at was actually using the standard USGI lever on either the left or right side, but we decided we could improve on it so went our own route.

The USGI lever's tip has lot less surface than our standard lever (looks like it has about the same surface area at the tip as our THIN lever lol), so this explains why it tends to give the finger the slip,,,


I have no problem rotating the USGI levers without shifting my grip, I believe the profile of our standard lever just makes it even easier

Lookin' good!

No, scratch that.

Lookin' really good!

Much better.

Methinks I'll be cancelling my Troy preorder.

-Ed

Redbone,
We had dealt with the gap issue for a long time (one of the AR10 pictures has such a gap). What it comes down to is mostly the thickness of the receiver. The milspec thickness is .880 +.015 -.002, or .878 to .895. We based our selector axis off one of my Colt SP1s, which is 0.898 and on the thick side. We took measurement from more than a dozen receivers, even within the same company, there are variations.

Colts are usually on the thicker side, Bushmaster Armalite, DPMS, LMT and KAC are all pretty well within specs. POF and another billet lowers are notably thicker, at 0.905 and 0.911, while Olympic Arms are notably thinner than specs.

There's NO way to make a safety selector and have it fit flush with all brands of receivers, as mentioned, even within the same manufacturer there's slight changes.

The same ambi selector that fits flush on a Bushmaster, LMT, and KAC will almost be too tight for a POF. With a standard, non-ambi selector, this isn't an issue. If you haven't noticed, the axis usually sticks out a little on the right side, while some don't. This can be a problem for ambi selectors, too much protrusion on either side, it won't be as low profile as can be, and the lever will pinch your finger when you rotate the lever from Safe to Fire while its extended in the "finger outside the trigger guard" position (this is actually somewhat unavoidable, we just try to minimize the pinching).


Yes we did do our homework

Thanks Ed, ours is out now, who know when Troy will release theirs. If you are a left handed shooter, remember the Troy selector is right hand biased. Ours is blind to that aspect

That pretty frickin slick... I like the shape of the them....

Duffy, great to see that y'all have gotten this product to market providing another option for AR folks. From our offline conversations, y'all have been working on this project quite a while, and clearly have put alot of thought into the product.

As you know, I run ambi selectors on all of my AR's despite being right-handed, although for different reasons than most. Trying one out sometime just for grins would be nice if y'all happen to have a "spare" laying around, but it would seem to be most beneficial for my atypical application with two of the "B-type" levers.

It would be very surprising if the feedback from the community is not most favorable.

As a rule I don't like the exposed screws on ambi-selectors, which is why I replaced all of my LMTs with RRA units. I did just order one of these to try because I really like the stubby lever for the off side.

Just ordered one myself

They look well thought out. I'm not particularly happy with any of the other ambi's out on the market so these look interesting to me.

Just a couple questions...

Will you ever sell the levers individually?

and

Is it possible to do these with a 45 degree throw instead of 90 degrees? Just curious about this as I've never seen a 45 AR selector and would like to try one.

I'll review it when it gets here very soon. Henderson to Bullshit City Az shouldn't take long. I pitched the idea of a 45 degree Semi throw a while back, but it was shot down because of the receiver markings. A 45 degree throw would alleviate the opposite side lever protruding into the trigger fingers space. It would also be easier to move from Fire back to Safe.

I handled the Troy Industries offering at SHOT 2010 this year and had planned to go that route when released. I generally use a LMT ambidextrous unit on my go to rifle. It's short comings have been well documented. Mainly trigger obstruction from the trigger finger. Little to no texture to help move from Fire back to Safe.

For the price point, this is on par with the Troy Industries offering. There are absolute differences though that make this a better deal.

The only conceivable negative I can determine is the increase in parts over a stock lever. The features outweigh this minor note. Even if one lever shakes free, it appears the detent would retain the unit and allow for it to be operated from the other side.

Thank you all for your kind words

In development is the Combat Ambidextrous Selector (CASS), it is a two piece design (left lever and selector axis machined as one unit, plus a detachable right lever), it's for folks that prefer a lever that's permanently attached without a screw. This eliminates some configurations possible with detachable levers on both sides, we're doing it for the police/mil customers, and those that know what they want and do not need both sides detachable

The M16 version will only come in CASS, the semil CASS initially will have the left lever permanently attached, later there may be a version with the RIGHT lever permanently attached.

We will sell levers individually, the levers actually do fit some of the existing ambi selectors out there but not the LMT that has an offset screw hole on the lever. HOWEVER, due to the use of a beefier and stronger screw on our ambi selector, if one mates our lever to a MIM ambi selector, our screws won't work, neither will the screw that came with the MIM selector.

We really tried to make the levers backward compatible, in the end, it meant we'd have to use the same weak screws as found on the MIM selectors, and we chose to use the stronger screws with Torx head instead of making such a big compromise.

We have plans to make additional levers and even selector axis for customers that already own our ambi selectors that want to make use of the extra lever. For the next couple of months though, we'd like to get them to the world for folks to try out and get their feedback

Re: 45 degrees, we had discussed it in earnest many times, it can be done, there are couple of things that didn't encourage us:

1. Training, most people are familiar with the 90 degree throw
2. Lack of markings on the receiver, this can be a liability issue

We don't wanna get sued

At first I thought this was just an other gimic.

About 5 seconds after I closed the page, my brain kicked in and thought about the thin lever.

As being a lefty and having a standard ambi saftey, when I operate the lever with my left thumb the left side lever always hits the web of my hand. Now I think this is a great idea, as I had always thought of thinning down the lever or shorting it's length.

Great idea guys, it is not often I jump on the band wagon on a new item so soon.

Matt

Thanks
As stated earlier, the only way to know which configuration works best for you is to install it on your weapon and try different levers on both sides. Two of the left handed shooters have the standard lever on the left, and the short lever on the right, which is what I figured a RIGHT HANDED user would do, but they both like it that way, it's a personal preference.

Herein lies the design goal that's fulfilled: with other ambi selectors, you have precisely zero choice, you get what everyone else gets, imperfect as it is. There are some that allow you the choice of placing the lever on the left or right, we don't consider that an ambidextrous design at all.

Looks good.

I'm gonna have but 1 or 2. This website is dangerous on my wallet.
Been needing an ambi safety, just didn't know it.

The trend is toward usability regardless of dexterity, newer rifle/pistol platforms have been doing it for a while. The AR platform, being rooted in "old" technology, can still benefit from developments that make it even more usable.

That the selector points straight down in Fire (semi model) and Semi (select fire model) is a design constraint for anyone trying to come up with a safety selector that's markedly better. In the end, there's no 100% solution to this obstacle, only steps to make it more tolerable.

For to make the selector short enough so it won't get in the way of the trigger finger at all, it'd be so short it'll be but a tiny knob, and even that's not short enough when the finger is extended, and pointing up towards the magazine release, as I tend to do.

Our short lever isn't completely out of the way, but it's far more friendly than a full length and full thickness lever. And due to its abbreviated length, the throw radius is also reduced, resulting in a faster rotation.

Our thin lever is out of the way much more, but due to its reduced thickness, it has less purchase than either the standard or short lever. It is by all means usable, iIt's for folks that know they'll shoot left handed less than 5% of the time, and are willing to accept the compromise.

S = Short
L = Long
T = Thin
X = None

Left side - Right Side

S - X
S - L
S - T

L - X
L - S
L - T

T - X
T - S
T - L

X - S
X - L
X - T

I get 12 combinations.

Damn you statistics class!

If you have two sets of our ambi-selector, or get extra levers, there's even more combination.

S - S
T - T
L - L

I didn't consider X (no lever) as an option, since it'd leave a screw hole on the side without a lever, and we'll be introducing a single lever version that has no screw hole on the side soon

I like the short levers on both sides. We'll have extra levers available soon

Ya know.. I have a 3 day class coming up with Pat in Sept...........

As a lefty, I'm definitely interested.

For folks that have an idea which levers and combination will work best for them BEFORE having the full kit installed, please indulge me.

At the risk of being redundant, we designed the levers, went over everything with tons of calls and emails, butchered quite a few standard factory MIM levers, had the Solidworks 3D drawings to view every possible angle, and we were wrong about how the levers and various combination would feel until we had a working prototype installed.

Until you've tried all three, it is quite impossible to tell. We were wrong about which configuration would work best, the same realization undoubtedly is happening to every new owner that just received the kit

We don't want to take choices away, the BAD-Ambidextrous Safety Selector is partly about giving users the options to do what they deem best, not what the manufacturer imposes on them, and partly about creating something BETTER than the venerable lever found on factory ARs.

Of course we will honor requests and special orders if a customer wants any two lever combination, it'll cost less than the standard kit that comes with all three, our recommendation is to try all three, and maybe the next order, special order a kit with just one or two levers, since by then you'll know what works best for you

Some proof of concept, butchered factory MIM levers

Looks great.... I'm kicking myself because I have a JP ambi safety on the way. Oh well, I have more than one rifle, order placed!

Outstanding product! You guys really did your homework. I thought I was done fiddling with my AR after I purchased a Crosstac bayonet mount Picatinny rail. Whelp, looks like more goodies to buy!

And just like that, I got an automated email confirmation, a shipping notification, and a personal email from Roger.

So far so good!

Thank you
The parts on a rifle/pistol that interface with our hands, face and shoulder are pretty important because we use them all the time without thinking, well I guess ergonomics is the word I'm looking for

To be able to properly shoulder and hold a rifle, and in this case, have the safety on both sides of the weapon without it giving you a hard time, should be standard affair. With newer platforms, they are. Now the AR can join the ranks

I'll get back to you on the other subject as soon as possible, thank you

just arrived! Will be installing later though

Just received mine, looks really nice. I won't get a chance to install it before next week.

Please let us know how you like it

anyone not wanting their regular ambi safety i'm looking for one or more...

Received a BAD-ASS today, and the product well lives up to its acronym. The fit and finish are second to none. The biggest problem will be figuring out the MOST ergonomic configuration, since there are so many options to optimize from.

Cool

Damn, I really like this idea. Might have to order one up.

Nice. I'm gonna have to get one of these next time.

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