Laboratory tests on hot bullet shells


A resin flooring installer was having problems with the floor coating they put down being able to withstand hot bullet shells in a local firing range. I took the opportunity to shoot a video of the simple laboratory trial I did to simulate what was going on in this situation.

What simple tests have you had to do to prove a concept?


Video Transcription:

Can Resin Flooring Withstand Hot Bullet Shells?

I'm out here in the lab today and I'm doing a bit of a different trial. The last time I actually had to heat something up and test it on a resin surface was actually hot chicken fat, and I think that's one of the most putrid smells I've ever worked with.

So, let's not do that one again.

But today, what I'm doing is we have a client that's had some problems on-site with trying to get a resin floor coating that can withstand hot shells from bullets from a firing range.

Today, we're simulating the worst-case scenario of the shell being at 150 degrees Celsius and landing on the coating in different ways, and we're going to see if it marks the coatings.

Lets see how it behaves.  

What we've done here is we've set up a couple of different areas where we can do some tests.

These are a single pack urethane that has really good performance abrasion resistance and the like. It is smooth. I do want to test it with different profiles to see if that makes a difference.

And then I've also got some epoxy beside it. I'll just grab these cartridges that have been sitting here on my heater. You can see it cycling in and out of 150 degrees Celsius.

So, lets grab a few of these. I'll take the worst case and the worst-case scenario is it's sitting flat. I'll put it on its edge and we'll try the same with epoxy.

We'll leave it on there to cool, which is how you'd expect shells to lean and then totally cool off before they get removed. So, I'll just leave it here for a few minutes and then we'll have a look at the results.

Here, we have the casings have been sitting on the urethane and the epoxy. It's sat there for a few minutes. So, they're not actually hot to touch anymore.

There're no markings underneath the urethane that I can see. There might be something there, but I see a defect next to it too. So perhaps, my placement of the shell wasn't particularly good.

On the epoxy side, there's nothing there from the shell laying down that I can see but underneath there, I can actually see that it has done something to the surface.

I don't know if these shells are the largest shells that they're going to use on this particular rifle range, but based on that, I'd probably say that this is likely to leave marks over the long term, whereas this urethane seems to have stood up well.

Even what I thought may have been a mark I don't think is, looking at that defect. What I'm going to do is just repeat a few times, choose my places where I put it so that I know that there's no defect, and just reassure that it is going to behave itself.

So, an interesting little trial there. Who would've thought you had to do heat tests on casings to see whether it marks the floor coatings?

But based on what's already taken place on this firing range, it is a problem and this is what our industry should do. We should be double checking these things before we say, "Yes, that's what you need to do."

I'm Resin Jack. As always, take care and keep smiling.