Benelli Belgium by BLIKICrio System
Superior shooting performance thanks to uniform barrel vibration and expansion during firing; broader, more even and more uniform hot patterns.
Benelli is the first firearms manufacturer to apply industrial cryogenic treatments to small arms barrels and chokes in order to enhance ballistic performance. Until now, the cost and complexity of cryogenic treatments have limited applications to high-tech industries like aerospace, surgical instruments and other specialist sectors.
The first element of the Crio System is the Crio barrel. Cryogenically treated steel expands very little under the effects of heat and pressure. This allows Crio barrels to vibrate and expand uniformly on firing. As the graphic shows, the pattern obtained using a Crio barrel is broader, better distributed and more uniform, and pattern centres do not shift as the number of rounds fired increases, all to the benefit of accurate shooting. Cryogenic treatment also extends barrel life by improving resistance to wear and attack by combustion residues.
The Crio System has also been successfully applied to the choke. Crio chokes are elongated in shape with a particularly gentle and gradual taper to the barrel bore (1). These characteristics have been specially developed to avoid clustering and to reduce shot deformation. It is a well-known fact of aerodynamics that a perfectly spherical ball will move faster and in a straighter line than a flattened or deformed one.
Benelli’s Crio System gives shot patterns that are considerably denser and better distributed towards the centre and at the edges. These photographs of shot in flight, taken by Benelli’s own Research and Development department using special equipment, compare the results obtained from a Crio barrel and Crio choke (2) with those obtained from a standard barrel and choke.