Good morning, yesterday was the first chance I had to go to the range with my new PSA AR15 rifle. I am an Army veteran so I have experience shooting the AR15/M16 platform, and basic assembly/maintenance. I experienced a lot of heat from the rifle after less than 200 round. The hand guard was very warm but more concerning was that the mag well was HOT, not burn your hand hot but too hot to use a magwell grip style for shooting. I was shooting at slowish rate, I was zeroing the rifle and controlled aimed shots, no double/triple taps, so 200 rounds over about 30 minutes. If it was just the hand guard I would have just thought I needed a heat sheild for the handguard, but the temperature of the magwell bothers me. So I wanted to reach out to more experienced person(s) and find out if this is part of the break in period, a gas block issue, or just part of the difference between civilian and military rifles. I really do appreciate any and all insight into my concern. Thank you. Lloyd

My 1st inclination is to say, Don't hold by the magwell, grip out closer to the muzzle on rail or hand-guard, but its your rifle. You shoot it how ever is comfortable to you.

Now I'm actually interested in seeing why your setup gets so hot?  I have a number of ARs (most I have put together) from 8" to 18" most in 5.56, some in .300 Blk and none of them do this...

I do have a pair of Maadi AKs 7.62x39 that at least one of them seems to do this. NO idea why.

What ammo are you shooting?

I have a billet headdown rifle i bought years ago . The front of the magwell gets warm on it . It has a big steel barrel nut on it , i always assumed the barrel nut was acting as a heat sink and transferring heat to the magwell

Using mag well grip style was not my first choice. I was looking for an alternative grip solution once the handguard started getting too warm. My normal grip is a C clamp grip. It is a 556 barrel and I am shooting federal arms black pack 223 rem 55 grain ammo.

A buddy of mine thinks it is part of the break in process and was shocked when I said I shot 200 rounds on the first outing... He thought I should have shot 10ish rounds and then did a cleaning, rinse and repeat 3 to 5 times....  I thought he was crazy it's an AR not a match grade precision rifle.

Your right ive never bothered breaking a Ar barrel in unless the company im buying from reccomends it which ive never seen. My dad on the other hand does that shit with all his rifles 10 shots then clean . Ive never noticed any difference in accuracy.  Now his precision bolt gun set ups will put one round on top of another so it may help in the precision world.  Id just invest in a decent pair of gloves or get a heat wrap for your handguard

PSA uppers are usually over gassed for reliability.
The ammo type may contribute to the heat especially if its steel cased. ARs get hot after extended use.

Thanks for the input all. Sounds like it's a normal amount of heat for the rounds output in 30ish minutes.

It’s absolutely normal, dont worry about it. But i would shoot 20-30 rds and let it cool a bit

Bingo!

Plastic handguards with heat shields inside protected you from the heat while in the .mil.  Your PSA most likely has a free floated vented handguard made of Al.  You will feel the heat from the barrel MUCH faster with a FF than an old school M4/A2 handguard.

I just put on a nomex flight glove and keep shooting.  It will even smoke if you use it in a carbine class or shoot it like it was designed to be used.

200 rounds in 30 minutes is about a round every 6 seconds. That doesn't take into account mag changes, so your rate of fire is actually more than that. So the heat you're getting is normal.

As far as "breaking in a barrel"; what you do by: shoot, clean, shoot, clean, is not breaking in the barrel, it's polishing the throat and smoothing out the reamer marks. This basically does two things. It lessens the amount of copper in the bore, which means your barrel will be accurate longer. It also makes cleaning easier, since there is less copper in the bore. Watch the below linked video, where the guys from Bartlein Barrels talk about barrel break in.

https://youtu.be/rW6SF-jlbkg

Here's another break in article from Lilja.

http://riflebarrels.com/support/centerfire-maintenance/

Here's what Ballistic Advantage says about barrel break in.

"No matter how polished the finish is inside the chamber of a barrel, tooling marks in the throat will always be across the direction of projectile travel. When a bullet is fired, copper dust that is dissolved in the expanding hot gasses, travels through the bore and then condenses on the bore and the rifling. To the untrained eye, fouling appears to be caused by the bore due to the projectile travel but in fact it is the cross sectional feed lines in the throat that cause fouling. Now, with this understanding we see that barrel break in is really a smoothing effect about the throat."

http://ballisticadvantage.com/blog/ballistic-advantage-barrel-break-in-procedure/

Buy some  mechanix gloves, soldiers use them for a reason.

M193 uses ball powders and maximum safe powder charges. NATO pressures are going to produce more heat. Nothing can be done besides gloves, forward grip wraps or rail covers.