Seems the myth about steel cast parts being substandard won't die. Casting technology has come a long way from the 1950's, and the 1970's (my I-J has mostly cast parts) to what is being produced today. Jim hit he nail on the head, it's the heat treat process that can make or break a cast part. The chemical make up of cast 4140 or 8620 is the same as the wrought version, except the amounts of Silicon, and Aluminum are slightly increased to improve flow during the investment casting process. Heat treatment is still an art, batch heating and quenching processes, and equipment vary, depth of hardening etc, so simply meeting a MIL-SPEC by reverse engineering a USGI part sometimes doesn't work.

As far as this New Inland, a warped receiver is due to the H/T process. No excuse for this one getting out of the factory door. This is an example of the customer inspecting the quality into a product, not the way it should be. This kind or corporate mentality for Quality Assurance almost put GM out of business in the 70's & 80's, and led to the rise of Honda, as their quality was deemed superior. An extreme example, but these guys at the New Inland, (and others like ROCX-OLA not the real ROCK-OLA) have a dream to produce a replica of a classic firearm, and need to make a (slim?) profit to do so. The only way to do this is to make it with mostly cast parts, a minimum of finish machining for economy of production. Ok if done well, but this is not the case for this particular M1icon carbine.

Lets bring the topic back into focus, are there others out there that have had experiences with the New Inland?