I have had my RMR Glock 19 that was milled out and refinished by ATEi for over a year and a half now. At this point I have at least 5 thousand rounds through it, although i’m not really keeping count. I promised an update on this a while back and if you want the quick and dirty I am very happy.
You have a number of options when you send your slide off to Doug at ATEi. You are going to send him your RMR as he fits its exact to your slide (more on this later) and then you decide how you want the slide finished. At the time I think you had three options – he could send it back to you unfinished, refinish it in back to the Black Nitride (Melonite/Tennifer) finish, or he offered a Nickle Boron coating. Doug was super helpful though several emails on what finish to choose. He remarked that he had a lot of luck with the Nickle Boron and he had done that finish on his carry gun. For the money I think this is a steal so I went with the Nickle Boron.
Turn around at the time was about 6 weeks. Mine went a little long as there was a backorder on suppressor sights which you need to clear the RMR. The slide came back to me with excellent attention to detail. The RMR fits exact. ATEi does things a little differently in that they add two milled out posts that help index the RMR which helps hold zero when you take the RMR off to change the battery. The posts are also helpful in locking the RMR down to the slide. Check out this video of ATEi beating the crap out of this RMR slide combo.
Next thing I noticed is the nibx Nickle Boron coating. I didn’t know what to expect here and I really like the way it turned out. The coating is so thin that you pick up all the details in the slide. The finish is not shinny. The best way to describe it is it has the same glisten for lack of a better word that a factory GLOCK slide has. I also thought the color would be like an AR bolt carrier group with Nickle Boron coating. It’s not that silvery. It’s kind of a matte silverish grey.
After carrying it every day for a year and a half there has been no issues with the nibx coatings durability. It has been rock solid and has no impact on the guns reliability. The nibx has been very helpful with cleanup as carbon just wipes off for the most part. There is some holster wear but it just shines up the slide a little. The same as a standard slide with holster wear. The black anodized finish on the RMR has taken a bit of a beating from belt buckles, shell casing hitting the RMR and just knockings into things. All and all the gun as a whole has been rock solid.
I purchased the RM02 RMR with the 6.5 MOA dot. The RM02 has a light sensor that auto adjusts to the ambient light around it. For that reason it does not have manual adjustments and is always on. About three or four months in the RMR had to go back to Trijicon as the dot would go on and off while shooting – not good. In chatting with the guys over at Trijicon they just do a full electronics swap. I have not had any issues since getting my RMR back from the mother ship. Battery life on the RM02 is supposed to be 2 years. I’m not seeing that. I’m getting 8 month to a year. I don’t really care but it’s a slight pain in the ass because you have to take the full unit off the slide to change out the battery. Then you have to confirm zero. I have a buddy who has a pre milled slide and ATEi’s slide holds a much better zero with those posts I previously mentioned in the milling. His is way off when he changes his battery. Remember screw + any gun = Loctite. Continue reading
