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Posted: 4/18/2026 10:08:20 PM EDT
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Finally after years of waiting for my Practical Solutions M10 22LR conversion kit. Got a chance to shoot it today and it rocks!! Makes me giggle with every trigger squeeze. I'm not sure I'll be running any other upper on it for a while! 
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| I love shooting .22lr in machineguns and have conversions for M-16 (Ciener, Lakeside Razorback & LM7), AC 556, Uzi, Browning 1919 and hopefully soon for the Mac-11A1. My semi American 180 ripped in full auto when the 07/02 SOT made a sear for it and want to get a sear for the STG-44/22 and GSG MP5 someday. |
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They are tons of fun. I was shooting both my Norrell 10/22 and my Tippmann M4-22 (with a Lightning Link) earlier today with the Black Dog 50rd drums. I always thought the MacFadden Lightning loader was the best loader ever invented but that Tippmann M4-22 mag loader is a piece of mechanical artwork in comparison. I want to rig up a little electric motor on the Tippmann loader and I think I could have load a full mag in like 2 or 3 seconds. |
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Originally Posted By jbntex: They are tons of fun. I was shooting both my Norrell 10/22 and my Tippmann M4-22 (with a Lightning Link) earlier today with the Black Dog 50rd drums. I always thought the MacFadden Lightning loader was the best loader ever invented but that Tippmann M4-22 mag loader is a piece of mechanical artwork in comparison. I want to rig up a little electric motor on the Tippmann loader and I think I could have load a full mag in like 2 or 3 seconds. Tell me about this Tippmann/ lightning link combo ! I have the link , was not aware there was a 22 that worked with it @jbntex |
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Originally Posted By bondo: Tell me about this Tippmann/ lightning link combo ! I have the link , was not aware there was a 22 that worked with it @jbntex I had been eyeing the Tippmann M4-22 platform for years as a RLL host because the design mimics that of a standard AR15 where the bolt group recoils into the receiver extension (aka buffer tube). This afforded the opportunity for a traditional RLL to work as all of the other 22lr AR conversions I am aware the bolt group is fully contained inside the upper receiver group so there is nothing reciprocating past the upper receiver rear takedown lug to trip the RLL paddle. For many years (if you are a FFL/SOT) Tippmann sold a "full auto" conversion kit for the M4-22 as well and there were many videos online of post-sample M4-22s running full auto which also gave the platform promise. The big downside to the M4-22 was that Tippmann slightly changed the dimension of the upper and lower from standard AR15/M16 spec. So a standard AR upper won't go on a M4-22 lower and a M4-22 upper won't go on a standard AR15 lower. I could never figure out if the FCG layout was the same and it was never worth the risk to me to buy an M4-22 just to figure out what all they changed dimensionally and if I could make one of my RLLs work as I also own a Norrell 10/22 and a couple M16 registered receivers with a CMMG conversion upper (full of bore buddy parts) that all ran great. Fast forward to ~18 months ago and Tippmann released what they called the M4-22 "conversion" upper that drops onto a standard AR15 lower. This got me thinking about the M4-22 platform again and around the same time a friend of mine was considering selling his transferable Norrell 10/22 to another local friend to help fund an AUG sear/hammerpack which left him without a transferable 22lr host. He had a RLL but no M16 registered receiver so we historically messed around with that custom RLL paddle that was posted about years ago that was supposed to work with a CMMG 22LR conversion kit and it was just never very reliable. So the confluence of events of this friend's sale of his Norrell 10/22 and M4-22 conversion upper release finally prompted us to buy a couple of the Tippmann M4-22 conversion uppers and see if we could make a go of it with a RLL. The good news is that the pair of M4-22 conversion upper based hosts I built (one for myself and one for my friend) both run like a champ with our RLLs. The downside is that it is far..far..away...from a plug and play arrangement with a RLL. Off the top of my head the major changes: 1. Mill the bolt group to trip the link 2. Mill the rear lug area of the upper to standard AR spec. 3. Delrin insert pinned into the rear of the bolt that contains tungsten anti-bounce weights. 4. Custom receiver extension spacer to make up for the reduced bolt travel. 5. Custom AR15 buffer to also help mitigate bolt bounce. 6. Custom flatwire recoil spring 7. There is also a small leaf spring added to the underside of the upper receiver rear lug so that the RLL always stays in the exact same front up/rear down position in the lower. That way the RLL always has the best mechanical advantage when pulling on the top area of the full auto disco and can't be hit by the anti-bounce insert in the carrier when it comes forward. The leaf spring allows the RLL to still tilt down when the disco spur on the hammer touches it upon the hammer recocking vs. just flexing the link if it was a solid wedge piece vs. a spring. 8. For select fire (only my host is select fire by buddies is safe/auto) you have to make a custom FCG so that the right side (former burst) now (full auto) disco is cammed back and out of the way in semi-auto so the hammer upon recoil doesn't have to compress two disco springs to engage two discos. Technically optional steps: - I also cut my units 16" barrel down to 12" and re-threaded it. - Custom fabricated LRBHO so the bolt locks back on the last round. (the Tippmann M4-22 OEM LRBHO version doesn't work in a standard AR lower) - If you want the blackdog drums to work you have to mill a custom delrin feed ramp and epoxy it to the drum tower to replicate the feed ramp on the Tippmann M4-22 mags. - I also run mine with a custom low backpressure 22LR suppressor I built. Basically its a scaled down 22LR Shaw Armament MK9/Gemtech MK9K/GSL Phoenix design so it doesn't speed up the ROF and create more bolt bounce than the existing bolt bounce mitigation can handle. The suppressor was made for my Norrell 10/22 but it works great on all things full auto 22LR to keep the ROF from materially speeding up and the fouling into the receiver down. With anything 22LR you only have so much energy to work with. There is a recoil spring, a hammer spring, and disco spring(s) that that little 22lr cartridge has to work against to operate. You also always have bolt bounce issues with 22LR so you need reciprocating mass in the carrier and/or a buffer to counteract that bolt bounce and keep the action closed when the hammer falls. Additional anti-bounce mass also fight against what little energy the 22LR round has. With a RLL there is also the issue of the disco pushing against the link which cams the paddle against the rear lug that exerts pressure against the bolt wanting to pry it open so you have to take steps to mitigate that as well. Over the years working on full auto 22LR guns I have a decent sense about how much spring rate and how much mass blowback 22lr can manage but it still took some decent trial and error to get it all right. I think I destroyed probably half a dozen flatwire AR recoil springs, a handful of AR buffers, and it took a couple attempts to make a function LRBHO before I got it all right. I am pretty confident I could probably build more of them without too much trouble given I know what all needs to be done now and have a functional unit to take measurements from. Unfortunately its probably not a real viable commercial product for anybody given the time involved vs. what you could probably charge for it. i.e. nobody is going to pay two grand an upper to account for the dozen-ish hours of shop time to make one by hand and there isn't enough of a market to ever do this via CNC or some other mass production option to lower the cost. If you are interested I can probably grab some pics of the upper and lower if you are mechanically inclined, have machine shop tools and want to try and build one yourself, so am happy to share what I have learned to get you started. |
| That all may be beyond my capabilities, but i wouldn't mind seeing pics if you have any. If it were just a matter of milling the bolt carrier , that wouldn't be a problem. What kind of ammo does it take to run it ? Will it work with subsonic or standard velocity ? Thanks for the write up. |
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I designed it to run CCI 40gr AR-Tactical but will also run CCI 40gr MiniMags from my experience. https://www.cci-ammunition.com/rimfire/cci/ar-tactical/6-956.html Over the years I have found that that CCI AR Tac is just about the best full auto 22lr ammo made. Other than the bullet profile is slightly different I am not 100% sure what makes AR Tac different than 40gr Minimags. I have chronoed both and its the same velocity from the same host but AR Tac just runs semi-autos a bit better and more consistent for some reason I have never really understood. The CCI AR Tac is also the only ammo I can get get to run reliably in my AM15 (American 180) AR upper. Over the years whenever I could find it on sale I would buy the CCI AR Tac in bulk and have probably close to a lifetime supply of it at this point so pretty much everything for me is standardized on that ammo. The Tippmann upper currently won't run subs unfortunately even with a traditional high backpressure suppressor. If fires them, and ejects them, but there isn't enough omphh to reset the hammer on the disco reliably so the hammer just follows the carrier home leading to a dead trigger. I do have another AR flat wire recoil spring that I plan to modify at some point to see about getting it to run subs. The mods to the flatwire springs to date have just been carefully cutting coils to a very specific length. The issue with just cutting coils is that while it reduces the overall spring rate/pressure it doesn't do so very evenly. So you end up with a gradient toward less pressure when the bolt is closed vs. when the bolt is open and the spring is compressed due to the loss of coils when you cut it. My plan is to make a fixture to hold the flatwire spring completely compressed and then load the fixture and compressed spring into in my lathe and then reduce the flatwire spring wire width/diameter. That way I can reduce the spring rate but also keep more coils so the overall compression rate stays more even over the compression stroke. My hope is that if I can keep it close to an identical spring rate pressure with the bolt closed yet cut the compression pressure rate by ~20% when the bolt is fully open and the spring is compressed I should hopefully then have enough margin to get it to run subs with a high backpressure suppressor. I can grab some pictures for you later this week. |
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Originally Posted By bondo: Yes thank you for the pics. What would you estimate the rate of fire to be ? Do you use a KNS protector on your link ? The M4-22 is consistently under 1000 rpm. From memory using the shot timer its around ~960 to ~970 rpm unsuppressed with 40gr CCI AR-Tactical. Minimag is ~40 to ~50 rpm slower but can be a bit "choppy" in terms of ROF on longer mag or drum dumps. I do use "protectors" on my Lightning Links but I don't use the KNS versions. I made my own custom protectors for my Lighting Links (I have three of them) I milled the protectors out of stainless steel barstock so the "fit" is much tighter to the Lightning Link body vs. the stamped sheet metal KNS units. |
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I can report since my original posts back in April that I have both of the uppers now running with subsonic 22lr (Fed 45gr Suppressor Ammo) when paired with a suppressor. As I mentioned in one of the posts above getting the uppers run with subs required making a jig for the flatwire recoil spring so it could go into my lathe and then be accurately be ground down to 2/3rd of the original wire diameter. This reduced wire diameter flatwire recoil spring allows more coils to be kept intact but at the same time keeping overall spring rate weight at bolt closure virtually identical to wider wire diameter with less coils, Give there are now more coils with reduced wire diameter the spring rate weight at full compression is significantly less. I have also since bought additional Tippmann M4-22 conversion upper. I plan to make another RLL compatible upper but this time make it integrally suppressed with a ported barrel so I can run bulk pack supers but have them come out subsonic. |
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I have actual magic power Any 22 caliber machine gun that I put my hand on will instantly stop running And from that point on it will spit out half a magazine at A time in the most frustrating manner imaginable You guys need to give me a $100 each or I will walk up to you at the range and Touch your MG and then you will end up selling it If you see a pennsy redneck approaching you at the range have the $100 ready or else I have decided to turn my magic power into an income stream |
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Originally Posted By sleestakwhisperer: I have actual magic power Any 22 caliber machine gun that I put my hand on will instantly stop running Hahaha, brother you and me both. A good friend loves his 22lr MGs. They will run perfectly for him, but the moment he hands them to me I get them to choke. |
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