The Tenko Adapter Function Vs. What Has Already Been Brought To Market

[A&S Conversions]

There has been some questions as to the function of the Tenko adapter compared to the operating systems that have come to market. The Tenko adapter functions with standard AR-15/M16 uppers. Sam of Practical Solutions has posted video of the Tenko running a new unaltered CMMG AR-15/M16 .22lr kit. We have also run AR-15/M16 standard uppers in multiple calibers including an original Shrike belt fed system. 9mm in both original design Colt blowback and CMMG rotary delayed have all been run with the Tenko adapter. We also have run 7.62x39, 300 BLK OUT, 6.5 Grendel and various lengths of 5.56X45 uppers with the Tenko. All have run great.

Because we have applied for a patent of our mechanism, on the advice of our development and production team, we are not going to describe how our mechanism operates. I get that this is frustrating for the community, but not anymore frustrating than not being able to talk about it for me. I really appreciate that those here in the community that have signed NDAs have had the same difficulty in not discussing the Tenko mechanism. Thank you guys.

As previously posted, our mechanism requires the removal of the semiautomatic trip of the M10. An Eliminator sear pin is included with the Tenko adapter. The removal of the semiautomatic trip is required so our mechanism can not be used with the open bolt semiautomatic pistols. Therefore the burst mechanism of the the "theredneckengineer" will not work with the Tenko adapter system. I am sorry that I can not disclose any more details of our mechanism. Hopefully we will get the determination we need to start selling units. This has been a long journey. Hopefully sales will be starting soon.

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.

 

[Gaujo]

So much cool kit coming along these days. We all have our fingers crossed that you can come to market asap and appreciate the new product you have developed.

 

[Deerhurst]

I'm super stoked to hopefully eventually get my mitts on both your setup and the UltiMac. We will understand exactly how it works once it's out in the wild. We all know that we will all take it apart to see what's inside as soon as it arrives. Until then, it's a mystery!


I wish the best for Mr.Lage with his Max10/15, you and your Tenko and to redneckengineer with his UltiMac. I hope they will soon come to market.

 

[A&S Conversions]

Before any units ship, we will be posting videos as to how to initially set up the Tenko adapter kit for use with a M10 RR. I would never buy a firearm accessory that I didn't understand how it was supposed to work and how to install it. So I would not expect anyone on the list at Practical Solutions to pay for a Tenko adapter without knowing what they were buying. To be honest I am really looking forward to the day that I can post how simple and easy it will be to go from the factory configuration to the Tenko adapter and back, once the adapter is adjusted to your M10. The Tenko adapter can be adjusted to another M10 RR, but that will take about the same amount of time with the tools provided as the initial set up of the original M10. After the initial set up, which the tools to do so will be included in the basic adapter kit, no tools will be required to go from factory configuration to Tenko and back to factory configuration. Hopefully I'll be able to post that video soon.

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.

 

[cjsoccer3]

Sounds great! I plan to buy both a Tenko and an Ultimac.

 

[ccosby]

Interesting, I was wondering how you were going to get around it working on a semi auto open bolt gun.

 

[YourCoWorker]

You should not be concerned about discussing how the conversion works. Patents are the mechanism in which you describe everything about the invention so that you can claim rights to it. The purpose of patents is to teach exactly what the invention is and make claims. Patents that are not issued yet, and all the correspondence between the inventor and patent office is public record, even before the patent issues. It's critical that you identify prior art, and how your invention is novel. If you have already filed, and the USPTO has worked thru all the prior art they found, you should feel free to talk about it.

 

[Esox]

You should not be concerned about discussing how the conversion works. Patents are the mechanism in which you describe everything about the invention so that you can claim rights to it. The purpose of patents is to teach exactly what the invention is and make claims. Patents that are not issued yet, and all the correspondence between the inventor and patent office is public record, even before the patent issues. It's critical that you identify prior art, and how your invention is novel. If you have already filed, and the USPTO has worked thru all the prior art they found, you should feel free to talk about it.

^This is correct. The purpose of the patent is to protect your intellectual property (IP). If you have the patent applied for, you are covered. That being said, it is not smart to disclose any more details than what is in the publicly available patent application or patent. Don't make it any easier for someone to take your idea, make a 'good enough' small change, and infringe on your market. Sadly, the cost of legal fees to protect a patent makes patenting things for some small/niche markets a poor return on investment. Some technologies are covered by a mixture of patent and proprietary IP as the smartest blend.

I often see people on the interwebs promulgating misinformation regarding the term 'proprietary'. This is especially prominent about proprietary parts and/or designs, such as "you can't make one like that, its proprietary". Wrong! If it is not covered under an active patent, you can copy it exactly, market it (under a different trademark), sell it, whatever you want. It is entirely up to the owner of the IP to protect their proprietary IP. This is why most physical parts are covered under a patent and formulations, software, manufacturing processes, etc. (i.e., things that are not easy to duplicate) are NOT patented, but simply kept a secret...or in fancy lawyer language, kept proprietary.

If it is possible to keep something a secret, it is highly preferred to keep it proprietary. The formulation for Coca-Cola is kept proprietary. If it had been patented, there would have been exact Coke knock-offs years ago.

 

[A&S Conversions]

It is my understanding that no matter how airtight the patent is, the patent is only as good as the legal defense that you can afford. Without coming to market, I would not have the funds for such a defense. The accessory market for the Mac style family of RRs is very small. Several hundred units would saturate the current market. As I recall in the thread of Lage Max-11/15 serial numbers, it was something less than 400 units. I don't remember the exact #. So I would not need to worry about reproducing my mechanism by Remington or Smith and Wesson.

My thought is that if I wait until I am ready to come to to market with this adapter such that I can saturate the market relatively quickly, then I would have the resources to defend our patent. But if we laid out how very simple our adapter is, another entity would have a head start toward bringing our patented mechanism to market. So our plan is to come to market with the details of how our system works when we have product to sell. There is no benefit to anyone by releasing the details of our mechanism to the public before we can sell the product. And doing so could potentially create competition that would require us to defend our patent in court. If we were only going to do one adaptation using a mechanism based on the AR-15/M16, we might not bother with a patent. We feel that what we are doing could be done adapting other firearm mechanisms to the Mac style family of RRs. But I can't bring all of this to market all at once. So we need to patent the concept but not divulge what we are doing until we soon have the funds to defend our patent.

I would love nothing better than to post how simple it is to go from factory configuration to Tenko adapter configuration and back. Maybe I am paranoid, but I have had several RKIs including our engineer tell me that there is only down side to releasing the details of our product now. I truly am sorry that I can't. I think that with our adapter a M10 RR owner would have the same basic function as a M16 RR. So most any upper that will function on a M16 RR will function on our adapter without modification to the upper, but will require the removal of the M10 semiautomatic trip. We hope that someday soon, we will bring our product to market. It is not the patent we are concerned about, it is the defense of the patent is what we are concerned about.

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.

 

[john-g]

Is your Tenko adapter only for Mac 10's? Are you gonna be able to make adapters for 11's and baby macs?

 

[A&S Conversions]

Our first adapter is for the M10. We have the second ideation of the adapter for the M11/NINE designed but are waiting for cash flow to start development. We are still waiting for a determination that would allow us to sell the aluminium version of the Tenko 10-16 adapter. Without that cash flow, we need to conserve our resources, as we have no idea how long it would be until we get to market.

At this time we have no intention of developing a Tenko adapter for the M11/M11A1. There is not enough room to use our current mechanism in the M11/M11A1 size receiver. With so few of the .380 guns in the registry, I don't think that we would get enough sales to justify the cost of reworking the mechanism to fit the smallest Mac style RR. It would require moving to recoil mechanism into an AR stock and drilling a hole in the back of the receiver. It is not that it could not be done, but whether we would actually be able to make a profit after engineering and development costs. Tina at Practical Solutions, our exclusive retailer, has been keeping the lists. There are about 150 on the list for the M11/NINE. There are 25 for the .380 gun. Of course nothing is cast in stone, but as my best friend says, "If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense".

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.

 

[Deerhurst]

So, speaking of the aluminum vs printed. What is the strength of the printed one like? Is it durable? Is it readable to sell the plastic one at a pro-rated cost and when the aluminum is approved charge the difference for an upgrade kit? Charge for labor + parts if someone doesn't want to do the upgrade themselves?

I've had good luck with printed materials and plastics of all sorts. I've just never used them in a FA application, usually industrial.



As far as patents, sounds like a catch 22.


I'm stoked for it to come on the market! Come on ATF! Approve all the things!

 

[A&S Conversions]

The 3D printed version that has been approved was fitted to the only M10 receiver I owned at the time. We built into the aluminum design, adjustments such that the adapter will fit 95% of all M10 RRs in the registry. Those adjustments are not built into the approve 3D printed design. So I would need to pay my engineer to custom fit each 3D printed version to each lower, send those specs to the printer, and then test the custom fitted one to the M10 receiver it was designed for. What a nightmare that would be. That would cost as much or more than the aluminum version to produce. So include an aluminum version on top of that? That would cost me money for each dual unit than we would get paid.

The original 3D nylon version that was approved has has over 5,000 rds of use. Most all of that was with 5.56X45. Most of that testing I used five uppers. I would run four 30 rd mags or one Beta C/100 rd Surefire mag. Change uppers and run another four 30 rd mags or Beta C/100 rd Surefire mag. With five uppers, by the time I got back to the first upper it was cool again. The front lug on the upper would get to around 150-170 degrees after the four mags or Beta C/Surefire mag. I tested a back to back Surefire 100 rd mag dumps using my DIAS in a standard aluminum AR lower receiver. The front lug temperature got up to 275 degrees as I recall. The melting point of the Nylon material used in the original 3D prototype was 360 degrees. I don't know at what temperature the 3D nylon would start to soften, so I never put more than four 30 rd or a 100 rd mag through an upper on the 3D printed version.

So we would either need to send the original design of 3D printed version which would need custom fitting or wait for a determination that says we can sell the aluminum version we submitted over 20 months ago. It is not like we can send another version. That would start the approval part, all over again. Yes a patent is a "catch 22". If you have a patent, you need to pay lawyers to enforce it. You have to have money to do that. What if the Tech Branch stops doing determinations, and just sues you if they think your product breaks the law? I don't own my own CNC machine. So I give details and someone else uses our mechanism to convert another firearm mechanism. They develop it and come to market when we do. What can we do? By the time we have the funds to defend the patent, they have saturated the market for that conversion, closed up their business entity, and are gone. That is a long shot. By the same token, I never imagined that we would still be waiting 20 months after we originally submitted the aluminum version. Thank you for the interest in our product, kind words, and your moral support. We will get there for sure.

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions, L.L.C.

 

[Deerhurst]

I would expect the nylon to become soft around 300 or so. The coldest I've printed nylon was 230C or about 440F. I've also done annealing processes on printed nylon. It does make it turn yellow but I have seen some really awesome results. Really tough stuff. Havnt tested it's high temp strength though. I've used other materials for that though that's been for specific and delecate processes at work.

I never imaged the mac would have so much dimensional variance. I've played with Russian stamped guns that were pretty loose but that's where my stamped gun experience stops.

IMHO, 20months is far too long to wait for a reply back. Wonder if you have a representative that can bump them or something.

 

[A&S Conversions]

Not only is the tolerances of each manufacturer big, but there are eight different Manufacturers that made M10 receivers commercially. So an upper within tolerance of one manufacturer might not fit or function on another manufacturer's lower. The first couple of Manufacturers were trying to sell their M10 to the U.S. Government as a low cost second echelon weapon for troops like cooks and truck drivers. The Government did have some interest due to size, being able to be carried like a handgun in a holster but being fired from the shoulder. Just like the original Thompson design, the cyclic rate was too fast to be effective at any real distance. A simple part change brought the original Thompson design cyclic rate down. A major design change would be required to bring the cyclic rate down for a M10. With such a design change (increase mass of the bolt and/or the length of travel for the bolt) would diminish the compact size/ease of carry. I have to admit that I have no idea whether the tungsten alloy that the CF(W) bolts are made from existed at that time, but would have raised production costs very significantly if such a tungsten alloy existed then. So the U.S. Government never really purchased any real quantities from these early Manufacturers. Those Manufacturers went under. It was not until SWD, the last quantity Manufacturer before the machinegun ban of '86, that the quantity manufacturer specifically marketed the Mac style family of RRs to the collector market. SWD did so mostly with the stretched version of the .380 gun, the M11/NINE, just before the ban ended production for the general public. I would think that the major reason that so many M11/NINEs were produced was because the M11/NINE version was cheaper to manufacture and used a very common pistol caliber.

We have reached out to our Senior Senator. Her office eventually gave the same response that we got back in August of last year, the legal dept of the ATF has the determination. Between the Slidefire debacle and the multiple courts possible interpretation that an AR lower receiver was not a firearm frame or reciever has the ATF in a tail spin. My guess is the montra is "If we don't do anything, we can't be wrong". This can not last forever. The ATF needs to get the definition of firearm squared away. It would seem to me that Congress would need to, with ATF guidance, further define firearm frame or reciever. When we will get a determination that would allow us to sell the Tenko 10-16 adapter, we don't know. Right now we are able to hold on. We can't do this forever.

We have a mechanism that I have never seen before. We have high overhead. I am not, nor am I working on becoming a mechanical engineer or machinists. So I have to pay those professionals because this project is beyond my capabilities. I am just a guy that came up with a concept. I was in a place financially that I could afford to pay professionals to make my concept into reality. Of course I did that about six months too late. Now we are stuck in this quagmire waiting for the ATF to figure out what they are going to do. I do appreciate the input but until the ATF gets their act together, there isn't much more we can do that we are already doing.

Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.

 

[Fishman]

IMHO, 20months is far too long to wait for a reply back.

the ATF has no obligation to reply, quickly or at all.

 

[Deerhurst]

the ATF has no obligation to reply, quickly or at all.

The ATF has also shown they have no obligation or desire to follow any sort of rules or laws in the first place. My opinion of the ATF is about the same as my opinion of the clintons who seem operate in the same manner.

The 34 law as we all know was a knee jerk and mostly unconstitutional ruling.


Yeah, IMHO, 20 minutes is too long for an approval. Then again, I see the NICS registry as an overreach. Why do you think it's written down, saved and called in and saved?

 

[A&S Conversions]

The ATF has also shown they have no obligation or desire to follow any sort of rules or laws in the first place. My opinion of the ATF is about the same as my opinion of the clintons who seem operate in the same manner.

The 34 law as we all know was a knee jerk and mostly unconstitutional ruling.

Respectfully, I disagree. It is my understanding that prior to 1934 there was no Federal regulation of firearms. So in 1933 a convicted violent felon could walk into a Thompson stocking dealer with $250 cash, point to a 1928 Colt Thompson on the wall and walk out of the store with a brand new Thompson, some drums, mags, and 1,000 rounds of ammo. I can't speak for anyone else but IMHO convicted violent felons should not be able to own machineguns.

Yeah, IMHO, 20 minutes is too long for an approval. Then again, I see the NICS registry as an overreach. do you think it's written down, saved and called in and saved?

My understanding of the NICS background check given to me by the ATF compliance officer when we were interviewed for our Manufacturing FFL, that the information called in is strictly about the person, not what they are buying. For the Government to know what you purchased, the Government would need to start a trace with the manufacturer with the serial number. The manufacturer keeps records as to the distributor. The distributor keeps records of the retailer that receives the gun. The retailer keeps a record of who the firearm was transferred to. The NICS background check is given to the person wishing to transfer a firearm, not the firearm itself.

Scott

 

[Esox]

It is really shameful that the ATF won't give you a consultation response on the adapter and apparently have no plans to due to political cowardliness. Its too bad you can't initiate a lawsuit against them for not performing their basic function so that you can operate your business. If this was a large multi-million dollar industry, that's what they would do.

My fingers are crossed that you get an approval soon and you can reap the just rewards of your innovation.

 

[Fishman]

I can't speak for anyone else but IMHO convicted violent felons should be put in the ground

fixed that for you. Any felon in the country can get their hands on an AR15 VERY EASILY. the idea that we can keep weapons away from people is absolutely laughable.