Barrel design and structural-analysis software
Alpha Labs handles one-off engineering projects for barrelmakers and licenses WALLACE as a customized, securely hosted platform. NICHOLAS is the proprietary modeling engine behind every design. MURPHY challenges the assumptions behind it. Individual clients can commission a barrel design through the same system.
See WALLACE capabilities01 / Structural design / Traceable results
↓02 / Systems
WALLACE is the shop-facing design platform: select components, enter measured dimensions, set machine limits and design goals, compare candidate geometries, and package the result. Barrelmakers can license it as a customized, securely hosted environment built around their operation.
See WALLACE capabilitiesNICHOLAS is Alpha Labs’ proprietary modeling engine for the complete assembled barrel + component stack. It treats the assembly as one coupled system, evaluates unsuppressed and suppressed configurations independently or side by side, and retains the assumptions, evidence, and limits behind every result.
See how results are checkedWhere good answers go to get picked apart.
MURPHY is Alpha Labs’ independent research and challenge system. It replays Nicholas history, challenges models, runs controlled computational studies, and probes uncertainty and robustness. Consequential findings return as evidence packages for review—it can question production science, but it cannot quietly rewrite it.
License a customized, securely hosted platform that models the complete assembled barrel + component stack, evaluates geometry within your manufacturing constraints, compares viable designs, and preserves every input, assumption, and evidence record behind the result.
Enter maximum workpiece length, station and shoulder limits, minimum station spacing, maximum taper angle, slenderness limit, and the available work support. WALLACE rejects geometry outside those limits before optimization.
Build one study from the material, external geometry, rear support, handguard, gas system, front stack, passive component mass, and interface state. WALLACE checks the combination and clears choices that no longer fit.
WALLACE designs the barrel geometry as the tuning element within the complete assembled system rather than treating a finished barrel as something to tune afterward. It compares mass, center of gravity, stiffness, dynamic response, thermal and tolerance robustness, and geometry complexity, then returns ranked or tradeoff directions.
WALLACE identifies the measurement that is blocking the setup and accepts a shop measurement for that configuration. The measured value stays separate from the catalog record, and the software does not guess from a product name or photograph.
The current post-processor can produce 1:1 STEP, STL, and dimensioned DXF files, plus a geometry-validation report and file manifest. Export remains locked until the required inputs, constraint checks, and validation status are complete.
WALLACE records the configuration, components, objectives, evaluator versions, evidence, and results together. Runs can be checkpointed, and the archive package preserves the exact inputs needed to reproduce the study later.
This deliberately simplified geometry study illustrates one narrow WALLACE workflow: re-ranking an admissible contour set while interfaces, shop limits, and evidence stay fixed. It represents only a small fraction of the platform’s modeling, optimization, verification, and production-handoff capability.
Review direction / M7-B
Uses the M7 profile as the baseline while preserving every required interface and manufacturing rule.
03 / Method
WALLACE keeps the inputs, assumptions, calculations, and measurements behind each result in view. You can tell what is known, what is modeled, and what still needs to be proven.
“Trust us” isn’t a validation method.
Select the assembly, manufacturing limits, design constraints, and the result you want to improve.
Store boundary conditions, simplifications, uncertainty, and missing measurements with the study.
Evaluate candidates, confirm finalists at higher fidelity, and compare independent checks where they are available.
Show what is modeled, what is measured, what remains uncertain, and which test would improve the decision next.
Contact Alpha Labs
Barrelmakers can hire Alpha Labs for a one-off project or license the complete WALLACE platform. Individual clients can commission a barrel design and managed build.