Anyone know?

Soon as there are contract overruns, &/or large quantities sent to the Nat'l Guard?

One for sale on the EE now.

He's mighty proud of it; nice pics, too.

Only one I've seen available. Proud? Yeah, a little.

But he's got one.

Not really worth the premium that they would command.

While I do like them, a lot...

If they sold for $20/ea, and I could get Brownells tan follower or g3 pmags for $10, I'd take the latter two all day.

For the same price, they're worth it over tan followers.

I could have a few, too, with a phone call; but, that's not the point.

Or, maybe it is, kind of... 

Yeah, why would you want the same old POS GI magazine, just in a different color? The Pmag and just about every other polymer magazine on the market is better than the GI. There's a reason the Marine Corps is switching to the gen M3 Pmag.

The tan follower usgi mags have been flawless in my experience. Of course, with any metal mag, if you dick up the feed lips they I'll begin to fail. That's the biggest PRO to plastic mags that I see.

The epm does seem to perform better, in the sense that it feeds smoother. Both mags will work 100% until they get broken. They can take some abuse.

Like I said, if money isn't an issue, I'll take the epm over tans.

The usmc is not "switching", they just aren't buying any more metal mags. They are also being purchased by unit funds. If you're a typical marine, you won't be issued pmags for probably 5+ years. Operators can always do what they want anyway.

The EPM does not perform better. It is so problematic that they're not allowed for operational use in the Marine Corps, only training. And the USMC is switching. The gen M3 window Pmag is now the standard issue in the Marine Corps. The NSN for the tan and green follower magazines is discontinued and replaced with the Pmag NSN. Pmags will be the only magazine purchased going forward. Of course you're right that it will take a while for Pmags to actually replace GI magazines in units; any new equipment takes a while to make its way through the whole fleet, and obviously some units (grunts) have more need for them than others (POGs).

Just me, but I don't care what the Marines do; I'll stick with the Army.

Last maradmin I saw had it going off unit funds. Thusly, not happening for most. Why waste unit funds when they can still get hqmc to pay for it?

Noone has yet to be able to explain to me what's wrong with them. I think this is because there isn't anything wrong, the bean counters finally made a good choice.

Can you link me to something that says more than "had failures"? Of course it had failures, everything WILL fail at some point.

I personally watched approximately 5k rounds go down range today through those mags, and not a single stoppage from them. In fact, I only saw 2 stoppages today. One was a green follower had a double feed, and an idiot had his hand over the ejection port.

We got a batch of them in this week, and I grabbed two to test out. They are all Center Industries like the one on the EE. The date stamp on one is 12/15 - I hadn't realized they started producing them that long ago (I'd been away from the line for a while). The paint or Ceracote or whatever is applied both inside and out, and it's a bit ugly - sort of glopped on - around the tabs at the base, which seems to be causing it to flake off. Doesn't matter in terms of function, just an observation from seeing these for the first time. I'm going to load one up and compare how the rounds are presented in relation to an older mag. Might also see how it looks with a traditional spring and Magpul follower...

Nothing wrong except they don't have a fan club here and none of the manufacturers here sell them.  What you saw today was "real world" what you often get here is "fantasy world".  The only advantage these mags have over standard tan follower magazines is the feed angle which causes less wear with m855A1 which probably no one here has access to.

I'm not sure how it works in the Marine Corps, but in the Army, it's all unit funds. There are different ways of ordering equipment / parts / supplies, such as going through the supply system (GCSS-Army) to order items by NSN, or using a government purchase card (credit card) to purchase items directly from a vendor, with certain restrictions. It all comes out of your unit budget though. There's no magical way that Big Army buys ten thousand magazines and sends them to you for free. They will buy a large batch of equipment that is sent to a central depot, and then funds are deducted from your unit budget as you place orders for them through GCSS-A. An Army unit can buy PMAGs with a purchase card, for example, but they'll end up being more expensive than if we could order them with the NSN that the Marine Corps is using. Either way though, they're coming out of our unit funds.

Kurt, that's exactly my point. Pretty sure I'm the only one that has an actual real world review of them. Not that I'm the only one that HAS, just the one that will talk about it. I agree that they are nothing different, but that presentation angle, I can feel it's much smoother cycling. Smooth is going to be much more reliable. Maybe turn a .5% failure rate into a .3% in the real world.

Maybe there's something different in the supply chains. I'm not supply, I don't order shit, I got work to do. What my unit will probably do is buy mags in 10 years once the epm/tan are worn out. Most of the greens we had were stamped 05.

Yes, the MARADMIN listed the NSN and authorized them to be purchased with unit funds, but that's not the only way units get magazines. Basically that's saying units can buy them on their own if they don't want to wait to be supplied with them by higher. The Marine Corps at large buys them too. I can't find the link right now that says the specific problems, but it was with the EPM feeding the M855A1 into the IAR. They had all kinds of malfunctions as well as excessive wear on the feed ramps. This link shows the actual naval message authorizing their use.

Except once you read deeper into it you discover they're not, Magpul PR and flag waving aside (not that I blame them too much; "the military is buying our stuff!" is a hell of a good endorsement. But let's keep it in perspective). EPM turns the M27 IAR into a jam-fest due to overly high presentation of rounds. AR chambers don't care; apparently the M27 chamber does.

Gen 3 PMAG OTOH works just fine in the M27, so it's authorized for individual unit purchase to alleviate that problem.

Really, it's just a cascade of the military breaking something else every time they fix something. Buying PMAGs stops the cascade.

Read my above and read the actual naval message and you will see the Marine Corps is switching to the Pmag. They are the only magazine authorized for purchase going forward that can be used in combat.

You're right about the military fixing one thing while breaking two others. The Marine Corps never should have "replaced" the SAW with the IAR; what an idiotic idea. And even if they did, it should have had a proper Colt-spec magwell.

Not to digress, but the USMC really switched from the SAW to the HK?  I carried a SAW and 60 for that matter. I can't comprehend that a modified AR platform was a good replacement.

They have not, all information says they may.

Loctus is about right that the corps just buys stuff at large. We have gotten stuff delivered that no one ordered many times, because we allegedly need it. He is also correct that it is now the only mag authorized for combat, per last order I read. Most likely the corps will order a couple pallets for now, since there's not huge deployment rotations to combat zones right now. Just give them to the operators and small details going over seas. I find it humorous that 2 years ago a pmag would get you killed, but now you'll die without them.

I'll accept at face value that the m27 doesn't like the epm. We don't have m27s, and likely won't for years, unless we have to deploy as provisional infantry. We use a lot of 50s, marks, and rifles. Some 240s. The 249s are dust collectors. It appears that only grunt units have the m27, and they seem to like them as a heavy rifle, but the machine gunners concur that it will never replace a proper belt fed, quick change barrel, machine gun.

Again on the perceived advantage, they are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, for the corps anyway. We have not switched to m855a1 for general issue. I was actually shooting taiwanese (TAA headstamp) m855 this week (great ammo btw, really nice stuff for bulk ball, besides the high pressure, almost every primer was flat). Usually it's LC or WCC. The typical marine hasn't even heard of A1.

Has big army actually started using A1?

Has anyone heard if the epm will function in the 249?

Wasn't the feed lip angle supposed to mimic that of a pmag anyway, so why does it not work in the m27? I'm sure it's not and exact copy.

3acr, I do also see the poor finish. Globs, flaking, etc. I agree it's a nonissue. The paint seems to wear off quickly, but it just turns into grey like the others. So it's got a head start. I paint my mags anyway (just the exposed part, nothing goes on magwell area or inside). I don't think using a different spring/follower would change too much, as the body/feed lips are different. You probably won't be able to tell. They do use the same floor plates as legacy mags, so your ranger plates and whatnot will still fit.

I've actually talked with R0N about this and he confirmed, they are not switching to only Pmags.

It is indeed flag waving and word bending.

As to the cascade, the Marines issue is the M27 has a specific issue no other AR platform has with M855A1.

So it's really a Marine issue.

We've been using M855A1 in combat zones since at least 2011 - it was officially adopted in 2010, but I'm not sure when it first appeared in the field.  I was first issued it when I got to Afghanistan in January 2012. In training, we still use M855.


I just watched some of my guys go through a shoothouse using older magazines in their M249s with no apparent issues, so I have no reason to think that EPMs would cause problems, but I haven't seen them used yet. There was another discussion here recently in which several people pointed out that the magazine-fed failures in the SAW appear to mostly involve using blanks.


It looks like they spray on the coating, and it just drips down and pools at the bottom of the magazine, creating the kind of messy finish in that area. The only reason I might consider putting a Magpul follower in an EPM is just that the new follower bugs me with the round on the other side. I'm so used to seeing the top round on the right to confirm that the mag is full.

Comparing the EPM to an old mag, it's visually obviously that the feed lips are more angled upward to adjust the presentation of the round. I don't even need to load it I see that. It looks like the rear of the feed lips is lower, which of course makes sense to ensure the same amount of clearance at the front of the lips.

I'm wondering about the presentation angle messing with the saw. Just a thought.

I concur with your other thoughts about the coating and whatnot, except the follower. Doesn't really matter to me, as I press check the mags to tell if they're loaded. If the mag won't take the full 30, it gets checked out and if I can't see the problem I just destroy it.

For now being able to destroy mags on a whim is nice (sorry tax payers). Got 2 double feeds in a day? Hammer time!

I believe the followers are also modified. I won't know till I get mine to compare it to the tan follower.

Now I have one

Planning on testing it with my M855A1.



Only thing we have is what Magpul reps have said, and that is that the magazine only functions with M855A1 no other rounds and is prone to failures far beyond any other GI mags ever.

In for results and your opinion.

Edit: Let's see if these photos work now - sorry, I'm struggling with some changes that Google seems to have made to online albums:

I opened one up and compared it to the tan follower from a Brownells magazine (I don't have a newer Center Industries mag with the tan follower).  The only difference I can see is the notch in the front of the blue follower, maybe to reduce friction at the front?



Not having a Center Industries tan follower, I don't know if they are identical to the Brownells version, but I would assume so since they are made to government specs.

The only other difference I noticed between the two is that although the springs are identical, they are installed 180 degrees opposite each other.  You can see that they are inserted into the hole in the follower from opposite sides.  For all I know, this could just be something that happens during assembly, and there's no rhyme or reason to it.



The old green and black followers had the post with the hole offset towards the rear of the follower, so the spring could only go in from one side.  I'm guessing that they centered the post with the introduction of the tan follower to simplify that, so it may not matter what side the spring goes in anymore.

This was difficult to photograph, but here's a rough comparison of the round presentation between a Brownells mag with tan follower (top), the Center Industries EPM (center), and a Magpul M3 PMAG (bottom).  I don't have any M855A1, so I used good ol' green tip M855:



It's a little hard to see, but the round it basically horizontal in the top (Brownells) magazine, and angled slightly upward in the bottom two.  You may be able to see how the feedlips of the brown EPM are angled down towards the rear.  Ironically, when I stripped the rounds out of these magazines using an extra round, the lip of the round casing of each of the rounds in the EPM got hung up on the front edge of the magazine body.  In the other two magazines, they fed smoothly out of the magazine.

Edit: In case anyone's curious, here's the "goo" in the finish at the bottom of the magazine where the coating seems to have pooled:

Everything 3acr said I can confirm.

Never noticed, and it is odd, but yes the case mouth does seem to catch on the epm. It does catch on my tan followers just the same. Strange, you would think the presentation angle would not allow this. The same occurs with my g3 pmags, but it catches on the side, not the bottom.

Spaced saved for later. Lots of misinformation in here.

S/F

The tan followers in Okay g.i. mags had the notches in the front and rear like the blue follower.

Well?

Space saved for reply... I guess...?

Samuse, thanks for the feedback, must be either just a variation or an update that was made to the follower.

Are my photos actually showing up now?  I made several attempts to figure out the correct URLs to share them, so I hope it worked.  I'm a little frustrated with Picasa and Google - seems like it used to be much easier to share photos.

Working fine for me.

They're actually pretty good photos.

Not big Army, but WIARNG has been using 855A1 for at least a year now.  Still running tan follower mags.  Tried to order EPM mags more than a year ago, but got denied due to funding,

Angle of presentation looks similar between Pmags and the EPM.

Looking forward to testing it with my remaining M855A1s I have.

4 generations of Center Industries mags.

Why the followers on different sides? That is really odd.

IIRC, it's something to avoid patent issues with the magpul follower.

This myth was debunked by Magpul in a previous thread.

Then for colorblind guys? So they don't "start to lean" the newer mags
Like the W or B on a CAC.

You mean CAC card???

Actually no one seems to know why, but it is not because of a patent.  Actually the US government owns all the original patents anyway they would be violating their own patent.  ETS mags also have these "backwards" followers, maybe there is some good reason.

Yes, like an ATM machine or a BAR rifle

Prices seem to have gone down on the EE.

Looks like th' Nat'l Guard has been issued them. 

I have 4 on the way from a seller on the EE. I don't even have any M855A1 to shoot but I bought them for shits and gigs anyways.

They work fine with regular ball ammo as well.

I've got some listed in the EE now.

Just FYI, I'm not sure if it's a result of the brown coating on EPMs, but mine will not drop free from my KAC lower (one of the stripped lowers that people have found some issues with). Gen 2 and 3 PMAGs, Okays, and Tango Down ARCs worked fine. The EPM wouldn't budge when I hit the release. Maybe just something to be aware of if you have a lower that may be on the narrow end of spec.

Center Industries has always made an awful lot of mags that are wide and don't drop free.