*Click to expand images
Results
Incolite 9 - Despite being just 5” long, the Incolite 9 did the best and had effectively zero muzzle flash. The use of Inconel seems to be advantageous here as there was no sparking either.
Mojave (Long) - Some sparking on the first shot, but none on subsequent shots.
Mojave (Short) - Bright sparking on first shot; some flash and sparking on later shots. Considering the material and small size, this isn't particularly surprising.
Rico 309 - Small amount of sparking on all shots. Great performance overall.
Vent 2 - Fairly bright sparking on all shots. I still have issues with this suppressor perpetually shedding titanium flakes, so this is about what I expected. In the video you can even see a little bit of burning titanium that comes out the ejection port and lingers for a bit.
Universe 36 (solid end cap) - Bright sparking on first shot, decreased consistently with later shots. Considering this is an Inconel suppressor, the sparking is surprising. I suspect the Vent 2 (which was shot before this) left some titanium in the barrel/upper which caused the bright sparking.
Observations and Notes
Muzzle flash is affected by host, environment, ammo selection, and other factors. Changing any of these will give different results.
In general, controlling flash appears to be significantly easier for pistol cartridges than rifle rounds. This makes sense considering the differences in powder volume and type.
With a couple of these, we weren’t able to get the full 10 shots in because the action didn’t cycle all the way. I need to swap from a standard power Tubb spring to a lightweight.
For the most part we were seeing sparking from the titanium suppressors rather than a traditional “muzzle flash”. The Mojave in short config was an exception and had a noticeable amount of propellant flash on some shots.
The flash from the chamber is interesting to watch. It happened with all of the suppressors to some extent regardless of backpressure or material. We didn’t capture this for the Mojave though since it was the first one and we didn’t have the camera positioned to view that far to the side, but we observed the same thing.
I’m once again impressed by the Incolite and disappointed by the Vent 2 (which is somehow over twice the cost).
Hope you found this interesting. We plan on using this setup for more flash testing of rifle cans.
Have a great rest of your weekend!
- Nathan Comstock
