Perhaps you’ve already heard of the G-11 and of electronically fired round. Why don’t we see more of them?
Caseless rounds ought to be cheaper if produced on the same scale. They must also be smaller and lighter.
Are there no advantages to electronically fired rounds?
Have the two concepts ever been combined?
Caseless rounds are much more fragile. No brass around them. This complicates manufacture(stamping brass is a very proven and reliable technique) as well as shipping, storage, magazine loading, feeding into the chamber. At all points they have to be treated a lot more delicately.
I’m not sure what the advantages of an electrically sensitive primer vs the impact sensitive primer would be. Reduced trigger pull and an additional method of making the gun safe? I can’t see reliability, as any decent gun will fire hundreds of rounds between misfires, nor safety… I’ve dropped dozens(hundreds if you count .22 LR) of live rounds over the years and never had one pop.
There was a Mythbusters episode where they were trying to test some McGuyver things and one required them setting off the primer of a bullet manually (e.g. hitting it with a hammer). They had a very hard time getting that to work and they were trying pretty hard.
Yeah. I got a very stern lecture as a young boy. I wanted to see what was inside a .22 LR. My tool of choice was a hammer. Still didn’t go off. 
Also…reloading. I know a lot of my friends who are into guns are all reloaders. If you went to switch to caseless cartridges you wouldn’t be able to reload, so, presumably it would cost more and you’d have less customizable options.
I believe that some of the metal storm systems use caseless and electronically fired cartridges, to answer the OPs question about putting the two together.
-XT
That doesn’t really affect military weapons, though, wheich is where the real money (and innovation) is.
Caseless ammo has two problems. First of all, the powder and wrapping - everything but the bullet - has to burn completely, with no residue whatsoever, otherwise the weapon will get full of gunk within a few dozen rounds. I don’t thing the technology is there yet. The second, and more important problem is heat. By opening up and ejecting a hot casing, the weapon gets rid of a lot of the excess heat that builds up after firing. Without that there’s a good chance that a weapon will melt (or al least become difficult to use) much quicker than with a regular weapon.
Indeed.
I guess I should add the necessary, “DON’T DO THIS AT HOME!” bit.
Hitting bullets with hammers is a Bad Idea[sup]tm[/sup]. They are pretty safe and probably won’t go off but then, they might.
Do not try at home kids!
Electrically fired guns are significantly more accurate that conventional mechanical ones - there’s no trigger lag, and minimal trigger pull. But, they are also more complicated, expensive, and less reliable, so they haven’t really caught on.
Mmm… I don’t know if these are really significant factors in overall accuracy. Even your basic machine tolerances are going to add up to more for most people’s firearms, while sharpshooters are going to experience a lot more trouble out of the human factors of physical arms, eyesight, skill variances, etc.
I read an article a few years ago where the authors compared an experimental electrically-fired pistol to a standard mechanical one, and they noted significantly improved grouping.
When my father was a little kid he had the same idea only his choice of tool was a vise and a set of locking pliers. It went off and scared the crap out of him but he was otherwise unharmed. I’ll bet he wasn’t even wearing eye protection.
Because the firing pin is only the center part on a bullet, with the metal case around it at the same level, thus all being hit at the same time, and probably not actually depressing the firing pin.
Try it by holding a nailset, or even just a nail, against the firing pin and hitting that with a hammer. You will have much more success, probably close to 100%.
You mean the primer I think. The firing pin is the part of the gun that wacks the bullet to make it fire. In the hammer scenario the hammer is acting as the firing pin.
The electrically fired weapon should have less lock time than the mechanically fired version. Lock time, as defined in this article, is the “time interval between sear release and the firing-pin striking the primer.” Very important when talking about rifles like flintlocks, not so important these days, at least for me. I doubt seriously I could tell the difference between 10 ms and 2 ms of lock time; trigger consistency and feel was much more important. Maybe it’s different if you’re a top Olympic or National Match shooter? Anyways, lower lock time, all else remaining equal, should result in greater precision, as the muzzle has less time to wobble off target before the bullet leaves. Perhaps this explains the article beowulff was mentioning?
The main factor I always read about why caseless ammo was having a hard time catching on was the problem of roundscooking off, from the heat issues Alessan mentioned. Too bad, as the G11 was certainly an interesting method for overcoming the 3 round dispersal specification in its design proposal. Is the Metal Storm concept still largely experimental, or have they started producing and selling significant examples?
Yes, and there’s no hammer-fall, which results in a small but significant muzzle dip. These effects are not important at close ranges, but when target shooting at long ranges, even a tiny angular displacement of the barrel will result in larger groups.