If you’ve been following along on my experiences with the MantisX training system you already know I’m a big fan. It’s a great tool to improve your shooting and know what you may be doing wrong. If you aren’t familiar with the MantisX you can read my last post about it HERE, or Hunter’s take on it HERE.
The system is great to dry fire practice wherever you want, and also works in live fire. Most of my live fire training is done from a holster so I wanted to be able to use the MantisX this way. Mounting it to the light rail is fine until you try holsters, as they aren’t made to fit the shape of the unit on the rail. Magazine mounts to the rescue!
Mantis provides quite a few different magazine floorplate replacements with an integrated rail for the unit to clamp to. I asked them to send me a unit for my Glock G45 and a few days later it arrived. The unit does appear to be 3D printed, but it does look of pretty good quality. The good thing is there’s almost no pressure on the part in usage so 3D printed should be fine.
I took an old KCI mag that I had in my junk bin to convert to fulltime Mantis use. The mag didn’t work anymore anyways so it was no big deal. I took the follower and spring out so I could easily rack the slide without it catching the slide stop. A quick swap of the floorplate for the Mantis unit was all that was needed.
I was in business! Now I can train the same way as my live fire sessions, from anywhere. If I wanted to use them for live fire as well I could simply swap the floorplate to a good magazine and hit the range. I did notice after the first few sessions that I the app wasn’t registering all the trigger presses. I suspected the additional slop in the magazine compared to direct firearm mounting may have been to blame. I took a look through the settings and didn’t see a sensitivity option. A quick peek into the advanced settings menu, and I was greeted with a shot sensitivity button. A simple change there and the unit was registering all my trigger presses.
Around a week later I bought a Glock 43. The small Glock’s don’t have a rail system to mount the unit direct to so magazine mounting is the best option. MantisX does offer a G43 floorplate as well, but I had already asked for the other and didn’t want to impose on them. I again raided my junk bin and came up with the components needed.
I had a spare Glock floorplate from when I upgraded a magazine with a +2 extension. I also had a polymer MLOK picatinny rail section. I simply cut the rail section down a little bit to fit the magazine’s floorplate, and then filed the underside to make it smooth. All that was left was a generous helping of superglue to meld the two pieces together. It’s not the prettiest contraption, but it has stayed together thus far.
I removed the guts from an ETS G43 magazine and swapped on my franken plate. I was now able to effectively train with my CCW gun, from the holster no less!
I’m a believer in the MantisX, and now that I can train from a holster, or train with guns that don’t have a rail I’m deeper down the rabbit hole.
Get your MantisX off Amazon here.
Get your Glock adapter here.
Get your Glock 43 adapter here.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. You will not pay any more for going through my links. I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
Great article – enjoyed it.
Thank you
Barbara Elliott