Quoted:
Glock owners are becoming more and more like 1911 owners it seems.
Not necessarily. Myself, while I'm not overjoyed with the MIM parts, I also accept that, in today's market, it's the price of doing business. As well, there is MIM and then there is MIM. Well-made MIM parts don't have a reputation for breakage, that I know of anyway. Shoddy or cheap MIM parts do have a reputation for breakage. When you start to talk about MIM parts, look at S&W. Yes, they have had some trouble with MIM over the years, but overall, their MIM parts work well and hold up well. I have one of the early M649 Bodyguard snubbies chambered for .357 but with no lock. I didn't even know the innards were MIM till much later. It has a few thousand rounds through it (mostly .38+P) and the innards show no unreasonable wear. They are good MIM parts and I'd trust (and have trusted, when I carried it regularly) my life to the M649.
My problem comes when parts that were designed to be made one way (like forging or investment casting) get changed over to MIM solely for cost savings. We'll take the 1911 that you mentioned. The internals of the 1911 were designed to be forged, machined parts. As a result, some of them, like the edge of the sear that interacts with the hammer, are small, fine tolerance parts. With forging and machining, the parts are hard and durable enough to work well and be durable. With MIM parts, I have read (but never experienced, since I don't own any newer 1911s with MIM parts) that the sear CAN (not will, but CAN) chip, flake or whatever on the fine edge that interacts with the hammer. Doesn't seem to be a good application for MIM to me.
Likewise, with Glock pistols, there is some trouble with the MIM parts, the extractor to be specific, although the real problem causing the "erratic ejection" issue may be with the dimensions in the slide. I have read reports (but, again, haven't experienced it myself) that the new MIM extractors have had some problems with premature wear on the extractor claw, specifically with the claw wearing very fast (like within 1000 rds or so, to the point that extraction issues start occurring) or chipping. You simply NEVER heard of this when the extractors were machined castings, unless you were abusing the gun by dropping a round directly into the chamber with the slide open, then dropping the slide, causing the extractor to cam over the rim of the case instead of the rim slipping up under the extractor claw as it was designed to do. I HAVE seem some chipped extractors from this over the years, but as I said, that's considered abuse, not normal use. Therefore, to me, extractors seem like a poor place for MIM. Like the 1911 sear, you have a relatively small area, subjected to extreme force, which seems like a bad place for MIM. The problem may be with shoddy MIM parts and not the MIM process itself. I don't work for Glock, so I don't know. I do know that I have a new 3rd Gen G19 that has had the "erratic ejection" issue and I know that I check the extractor every time I clean it for excessive wear or chipping, since it is a MIM part. I have read that S&W uses MIM for the extractors on their M&P line and I don't hear much about them causing problems, so the problem seems to be shoddy MIM, not the process itself. Likewise, aside from Glock advising to use snap caps in newer guns with MIM firing pins now to avoid breaking off the tip of the firing pin, I haven't heard of any real problems with the MIM firing pins, so I suppose that also goes back to good MIM versus shoddy MIM. I guess we'll just see how it works out in the end.
Bub75