PMR-30 Status Update - New Barrels - 1:11 twist and Ammo Recommendation

Description

PMR-30 Ammo Recommendations Update 07-11-2011 - We've had a lot of questions come in regarding possible new ammunition recommendations in response to the updated barrel design. The overall list of recommended ammunition hasn't really changed, however there is something we feel is worth noting.

After extensive testing with various ammunition we have concluded that all remaining key-holing issues have been isolated to one particular brand and weight of ammunition. Unfortunately this seems to be the most common and available ammunition: CCI Maxi-Mag 40gr.

The 30gr and 50gr varieties of CCI shoot flawlessly, as do other brands of 30gr., 40gr., and 50gr. ammunition. For some reason, though, it seems that the 40gr. CCI Maxi-Mag in particular still has sporadic key-holing. At this point in time we have deemed it ammunition specific and recommend trying a different grain or brand of ammunition if your PMR-30 is still continuing to key-hole with an updated barrel.

This in no way means that all of your CCI Maxi-Mag 40gr. will key-hole; it just means we have experienced occasional key-holing with that particular ammunition and feel we should make everyone aware of it in the event you experience the same thing we have.

We'll be sure to keep you updated if we find out anything more!

As it stands, continue to steer clear of non-USA manufactured .22WMR rounds as they have a higher risk of case-rupturing due to inferior quality.

PMR-30 Status Update V - 05-23-2011 - The new barrels are finished and we've resumed normal PMR-30 shipments. The new twist rate of the barrels has eliminated the potential for key-holing. It ended up coming out to a 1:11 twist.

IMPORTANT: If your PMR-30 is experiencing key-holing (the bullet tumbles end over end rather than spiraling), please notify us via phone: 321-631-0068 (use the Accessory Sales option), or contact our Office Manager via email: [email protected] to arrange for a replacement barrel to be sent out to you. There is no charge and we do not require the original barrel. When emailing, please provide your name, mailing address, and serial number for verification.

The easiest way to see if your barrel is affected is to shoot at paper targets and see if the bullets are hitting the paper sideways. You should be able to see quite clearly if the bullet is hitting abnormally. If the holes look normal then your barrel is unaffected. It is up to the shooter to follow safe shooting practices during this process. Use eye and ear protection at all times and do not point the firearm at anything you do not intend to shoot.

PMR-30 Status Update IV - 05-10-2011 - As time has progressed, so has the PMR-30. Since the start of the year the PMR-30 has been shipping in full quantities to all of our distributors on a rotating basis (to make it fair for all distributors). Recently we have been made aware of a potential issue that we feel our customers should definitely be made aware of.

We are in the middle of a re-design to our barrel due to key-holing concerns. For those unfamiliar with key-holing, basically it is when the bullet tumbles end over end rather than travelling stable with a solid spiral. It seems as though the 1:16 twist ratio of our barrels isn't quite preventing these issues from occurring. We are currently testing new twist ratios for the PMR-30 so that these issues no longer occur (1:9 and 1:12).

There has also been a cosmetic change to the barrel: we have removed the fluting on the barrel. The initial fluted design was for weight reduction, however it was time-consuming to produce. We have created a new design that matches the weight and decreases production time significantly. It will look like a more traditional pistol.

IMPORTANT: For customers who DO own a PMR-30 and are experiencing key-holing, you may send your barrel in to be replaced by the newly redesigned versions once they are available. When they are available, a status update will be made so that our customers know that they can go ahead and send their barrel in for replacement. Shipping costs will be reimbursed, of course. Once the new design is tested and implemented, we will post all necessary information for sending back your defective barrel for replacement.

As of today: 5/10/2011, we are halting shipments on the PMR-30 to reduce the number of potential key-holing pistols that go out. We estimate a 2-week period until shipments are resumed. We sincerely apologize to everyone who is affected by this. We hope that our customers understand that we are trying hard to make sure that the best possible product goes out.

UPDATE 1/14/11 - Hello again from Kel-Tec! We felt it necessary to give another status update on the PMR-30 for those who have been waiting very patiently. As you probably have read from our previous statements, the PMR-30 has had some speed bumps to hitting full production. We finally had gotten everything up and running in full at the beginning of December, which unfortunately happened to lead right into our annual two week Holiday break. During this break (from December 17-January 2), the factory is completely shut down so that all employees can spend time with their families. This also means no shipments are sent, no mail received, no repairs received, no emails received, no phone calls received, no web-store orders processed or shipped, etc. until our return.

Since our return on January 3 we have continued to produce the PMR-30, although there was a bit of set-up time when we first came back since the machines had been completely shut down for 2 weeks. As it stands, the PMR-30 is shipping consistently and we expect it to ship regularly from now on. We still have a very large back-order to work through so it will still be a little bit before they start to become readily available and easy to find.

We apologize for the wait some customers have had to endure, it certainly isn't intentional. We gain no benefit from not shipping products, although some distributors and dealers have seemed to have found ways to benefit from this. As an added note, Kel-Tec does not engage in price gouging on any level. All products shipped to distributors are sold at a flat rate that reflects the original MSRP. That being said, we have no control over distributors or dealers in regards to their prices (I know the inflated prices have frustrated many looking to purchase), all we can provide is a suggested retail. They rest is up to the discretion of the distributors and dealers selling them, and the customers purchasing them.

http://www.keltecweapons.com/news/pmr-30-status-update-iii...

UPDATE 1/3/11 - Here is a video released by Kel-Tec on how to properly clean the gun and load magazines. Additional pictures added.

UPDATE 11/05/10 - From Kel-Tec's official webiste - We've gotten a lot of emails and questions wondering just what is going on with production on the PMR-30. We said we would be at full production by now, yet no one can seem to find them!
Well the answer is that we definitely have hit full production on the PMR-30. We can make enough parts for 500/week to ship consistently. There was a bit of a snag in the last couple of weeks that caused shipments to be less than this full production number.
We don’t heat treat everything in-house. To heat treat on that large of a scale effectively requires equipment we don’t have, so we send them out to a local supplier. We had received a large batch of our barrels back from heat treatment only to realize that they were not heat treated properly. We will absolutely not ship firearms with a glaring issue like this, so we held off on sending them until they were corrected. We realized that it would cause some animosity towards us, but we’d rather have that than a firearm that could have serious flaws.
During the second trip back for heat treatment there was yet another snag of which we were not made immediately aware. Apparently our heat treatment supplier’s machine had gone down, causing them to outsource the work to another local facility. They did not inform us of this. So we were waiting and waiting to receive barrels, which normally are a 1-week turn-around; 1-week came and passed and still no barrels. Finally we got them back and were then informed of the fact they needed to be sent to another heat treatment facility.
This was about a 2.5week lull of not getting very many barrels. Some of the barrels we received were heat treated properly, so we shipped what we could while waiting for our supplier to get back up and running. This was in the 130-150 range.
Their problem has since been corrected and now we’re getting back on track with our normal production schedule. We have 1000s of PMR-30s waiting to ship that have no barrels. We have about 300 completed pistols shipping this week, and have about 450 barrels out to heat treatment that we will receive next week. After that things should continue to ship at the normal 500/week rate that we expected to have been shipping by this point.
We understand everyone’s frustration and sincerely apologize for the wait you’ve had to endure for this pistol.

UPDATE 10/22/10
Kel-Tec apologizes and explains PMR-30 delay -
There has been a lot of discussion on just what the heck the hold up is on the PMR-30. We have made a few statements on our Facebook page, but obviously that only addresses a small minority of our customers.

The PMR-30 was originally debuted at the 2010 SHOT in January of 2010. At that time we had several working prototypes, all of which were machined by hand one at a time. At SHOT we estimated a Q2 release on the PMR-30. This estimate was based on a variety of factors: lead time on material, tooling, operator's learning the parts, and post importantly the time it would take to translate the prototype design into full production programs. We honestly felt that Q2 would be a fairly easy target.

Sadly, we underestimated the time it would take for us to get the production programming in place to run the PMR-30 at 500/week. Two months before our slated release, we saw that we most likely wouldn't get this pistol into full production by then. This is when we had to make an executive decision. We could either push back the release date until October/November, which we felt would anger and frustrate quite a lot of customers, or we could scramble and release the PMR-30 to the public in Q2 at limited production and just ship as many as we could until production finally got everything settled.

Obviously we chose the latter. This turned out to also spurn a lot of negativity as we certainly looked like liars for not getting the PMR-30 out on time, and also created a lot of frustration as PMR-30s were being shipped in small quantities, some of which showed up on places like gunbroker.com. This made it seem like the PMR-30 was available and at the same time impossible to get, which I suppose isn't too far from the truth.

We take completely responsibility for the PMR-30 not being as available as we wanted it to be, but it was either let a few people get them, or let no one get them. We are still evaluating whether or not we made the right choice.

Since that July release, we've slowly increased production from about 25/week to 150-250/week. It is still not at the quantities we need them to be, but that will come with time. In an ideal world we would have set the release at the end of October/early November and all of the production work going on would be done behind closed doors so to speak. We are reaping what we sowed, but are confident in our PMR-30 and production is confident we will be seeing full production numbers by that late October/early November time frame. We're already half-way there!

It should also be noted that the limited production is in no way related to any functional problems with the firearm and more based on efficient CNC programming to machine enough parts to create 500 PMR-30s every week in addition to the rest of our product line. It's a kind of balancing act.

We sincerely apologize for everyone who has been patient with us so far. We definitely understand the frustration and experience it just as much. We gain no benefit from keeping our customers from getting our products, so rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to get these great pistols to you!

All future product releases will reflect what we've learned through the PMR-30 release.

UPDATE 10/21/10 - Users are reporting PMR-30 Handguns with serial numbers in high five hundreds and six hundreds. Kel-Tec has released several more batches of PMR-30's.

UPDATE 9/25/20 - Preorders are not available any more. That just confirms our suspicions that Kel-Tec is having production issues. They did address everyone via Facebook claiming that next spring the PMR-30 will be widely available.