Beware of Aguila Ammo

It was in battery. I work on the range with a subject matter expert, that was the first thing he suggested. On reviewing the video he confirmed it was in battery. Blot was locked all the way in position.

 

I have not pulled out the calipers yet, but there is a noticeable bulge in the middle of the case.

 

Where did the hacksaw cut come from?

 

So the failure split happened up near the top of the crack towards the neck end and propagated back towards the primer end and the hot gases of combustion flow back towards the primer end along the ever expanding crack to escape. The hot gages follow the path of least resistance and that is back towards the less supported primer end. They melted the brass of the case as is evident in the pics. The case was probably damaged before firing. It almost looks like it could have been a reloaded case. It is possible they tried to “save” a substandard load and the factory and reloaded it there. Not usually done in us plants but I could see it being done in mexico. This happens with cases when they are damaged. There could have been a problem with the case material itself (not the ammo company’s fault) or a problem in the forming operation of the case itself that caused the weakened area. Show a pic of the neck area showing the heat discoloration area where they locally anneal the case neck to facilitate the crimping of the neck around the bullet. If they had an issue with the anneal and annealed too far down in the area of the split maybe they weakened the case. Diagnosing material failure with a few pics over the internet is particularly difficult. If it was my case I would cut it up and put it in my scanning electron microscope at work to see for sure.

if you send images of the damaged mag and any possible rifle damage to the company they will usually

 

FWIW, I've only tried Aguila in 9mm, in my Glock 17. A pistol that has easily digested every other ammo I have put through it, without fail.
Aguila, on the other hand, kept giving me FTE and FTF errors. Since it happened at the range, and I had a box of other brand ammo on hand, I emptied out the magazine, and filled it with that. Without error, it ran through the magazine.....so I know it wasn't my pistol that was messing up.
I keep that Aguila 9mm in a separate ammo box. Figured if the SHTF, I could trade it for something.