Been reading on here and still trying to decide if I want to try and do a form 1 build, or just buy a suppressor.
One thing I seem a lot on here is clipping the baffles, but I have not been able to find any details as the why?
What is the purpose of clipping the baffles, what function does it serve. Is it required?
And lastly, if required, how does one know how big/deep to make them? Is there a ratio to caliber/hole size?

In. I'm curious too.

The theory behind clipping:

The high velocity gases impinge on the cone asymmetrically causing turbulence. This slows them down and keeps them in the can longer. The net benefit being increased suppression.

Don’t clip the blast baffle.

I haven’t found any hard and fast rules for clipping. I’ve wiped out half the diameter with a square endmill on 60 degree cones on 30 cal cans and used a 1/4” ball endmill on 45 cal cans. I basically copied the baffles from a Rugged Obsidian.

High pressure gas will draft the bullet through symmetrical openings and pop in the air past the front cap. This slug of high pressure gas gets “looser” the longer the suppressor and when there is more time for expansion.  So longer builds, or subsonic can do ok un-clipped.  But in all cases clipping creates a pressure gradient and cross jetting that scrubs away more of that high pressure slug of gas off the bore line.  Also drops a little weight.  Without clipping the volume of the suppressor is used less efficiently since the core-slug of gas drafting the bullet barely interacts with that volume. Clipping also allows for more generous baffle bores.  Too tight a bore on a unclipped cone can have worse effects on bullet stability and accuracy than a generous bore with a clip.  Clipping can lower tone, as can a generous front space. Clipping also promotes flow up to the front cap and help equalize pressure in the can. This all happens in milliseconds.

Most suppressor designs clip all the baffles but you can test performance incrementally and stop clipping leaving first and last unclipped, particularly with higher baffle counts.

Since this is up. How much does clipping mess with POI on something like a 22lr can?

From what I've read if you're going to clip each baffle you should double clip and have them be directly across from one another to not mess with POI?

On that same note I've also read that one clip will perform better than a double clip in decibel reduction and you should just sight in your gun to each suppressor to avoid POI shift and achieve maximum noise reduction.

Everything about form 1 cans makes sense to me except for clipping. If I'm chasing decibel reduction I want the most effective clip for that.

My pilot brain tells me it spoils the air causing it to expand rapidly and asymmetrically.  I can’t tell a difference in my 22 cans with & without clipped baffles.

The tone of my 30cal can changed when I clipped my baffles.

It causes turbulent flow to slow escaping gas.

This is accurate.

Summarized simply, clipping (or scoops, as it were with K baffles) creates a cross jet that disrupts laminar flow and further delays the escape of gasses, giving more time to cool an contract and thus lowering the uncorking pressure.





To minimize POI shift, you want your clips aligned, whether symmetric or asymmetric.  This will also improve SPL reduction vs random orientation, sometimes by quite a bit.  That said, it made little difference in my testing with crescent cuts, which I found to be universally inferior to radiused clips for SPL reduction.  Simple to make and non-critical with alignment, but didn't perform as well as single or double radius except in .22 rifles (and even monocores or flat baffles do OK with .22 rifles, ergo they're not good indicators of design efficiency).

In my testing, I found single clips to work better with high velocity rounds, double to generally work better with rimfire & pistol.  This apples to conical baffles; radial cones like single clips better IME.

K baffles are more unique, and sometimes alternating scoop orientations work better than aligned, sometimes not.  But one really should not be attempting K baffles until they have a good understanding of suppressors.  Even then, I spent a lot of time refining K designs and never got them to perform better than conicals.  At best, they were about equal with subsonic loads, always worse with supersonic.  Even very well developed K baffles a la AAC cans have never performed better than the relatively simple double radius clipped conical baffles I've replaced them with on many occasions.

A lot of the big guys on the form1 forum say clip blast baffle . What's the theory?

Clip the blast baffle.

The theory behind not clipping blast baffle (as well as theories of a tighter BB bore) it is that it will not allow gasses to escape the blast chamber around/beside the bullet.  This would seem logical intuitively, but when you actually look at the mechanics of supersonic gasses propelling a bullet, it doesn't work that way.  The bullet itself is already driving a great deal of the gas off centerline, nothing is really escaping past the bullet.  It's the laminar flow which follows the bullet you want to disrupt, and that's what clipping does by creating the cross jet using the conical plume of gasses that are trying to get past the bullet but being diverted on the baffle face.

I might have to try that. It’s been a few years since I’ve built one and perused the Form 1 board. Back then the consensus was not to clip the blast baffle.

What is the difference between "crescent cuts" and "radiused clips"?

Regarding .22LR, did double clips "work better" as in better SPL reduction?  My understanding was that double clips are used to reduce POI shift, but didn't reduce SPL much, if at all with 22LR.

What is a "front space"?

Lots of good info, but being a suppressor noob, a good bit of the terminology is going over my head.

But from what I am gathering, the "clips" are basically creating turbulence, which helps slow down the gas and help the can perform better and help reduce the noise?

Can you make a "clip" too large or small?  How do you know what size is right, what is too small, and what is too big?

By front space I mean a larger chamber between the last baffle and the front cap exit hole. At least double the preceding baffle spacing. On longer tubes this can be looked at as shifting the stack to the rear slightly.  A good example is Dead Air’s front brake cap.  Even though that is ported, to the ear at least it has a more pleasing tone.

This may help?

Silencer Student clipping video

With unclipped baffles, you can get more laminar flow that negates the effects of your baffles. The turbulence created by the clip throws the gas to the side, into the face of the baffles, slowing down the gas.

Most of what I said has already been said, but knowing that laminar flow can and will happen inside your unclipped can really helps to see why its bad