Now think about that steel mag issue when you multiply by the 10, 20, 30,000+ units we were buying at a time.
when we were still using the surplus steel mags entirely, we had an employee who's job was to run mags through external go and no go gauges to see if they were even going to fit a magwell, and then disassemble them and run internal gauges, and then pass along the good ones (40-70% roughly) to be cleaned, blasted, degreased, parkerized, re-cleaned, reassembled, and then re-guaged and bagged for either storage or shipment.
FAL mags don't fit all FALs, let alone the much longer magwell on the LAR-8. 20rd FAL mags have been made in at least 40 countries over the past fifty+ years, and some are still being stamped out on the original tooling, which is just plain worn out. Square corners are round, filed edges aren't. Ribs are no longer in the right places. Annealing isn't done properly on feed lips or the flange on the bottom for the floor plate. Most of those hit the "surplus" market rather than being junked like they should be
The best mags that we have found (most are inch pattern rather than metric), by and large, are Belgian, British, Australian, Canadian, Brazilian (Imbel), South African, and Israeli. The worst (again, playing the averages) are Chinese (how and when they got into making them I may never know), and sub-Saharan African (except South Africa). The recent South Korean mags have been a crap shoot, but mostly poor.
I've had my LAR-8 for several years, and went through approximately 80-100 mags to end up with the metric 20s and inch pattern 30s that I currently use. I also have some of out poly 20rd and smaller mags.
The poly mag gave us control over the size and shape of the mag and the ability to provide an overall better product. The mold is being upgraded now, so it should be a little "prettier" (for those who are into that) shortly.
We have been in contact with the folks making the Moses mag, but haven't gotten our hands on one yet to play with.
Steve/RRA