When deciding to put a red dot on a handgun, the two most common ways to get this done are to either send off your slide to get milled for the red dot or buy an aftermarket slide that is already machined to accept your optic. Most milling companies take between four and twelve weeks to machine a slide and mail it back to the customer. I am not always the most patient person so I opted to try and aftermarket slide for this project. Zev technologies has been around for a long time and have a good reputation so I decided to try their slide. So far they offer slides for some Glock and Sig Sauer 9mm handguns. Also, they are only offering optic cuts for Holosun and Trijicon red dots at this time. Both of those brands are very common and have good reputations for being durable. They are now located in the same town as the training company, Firearms Academy of Seattle in Centralia, Washington. The finish on the slide looks very nice. Their machining seems to be held to a high standard from my experience with this slide. When I went to put the red dot onto the slide, I had to push down on the red dot with just a little bit of force to get it to pop into place. This is very exciting because having the slide hold the optic so tight will take a lot of the pressure off of the screws from holding the optic in place while the slide is being thrown back and forth during the firing cycle. I have been using this slide for the past four months or so and have not run into any problems with it. I would definitely recommend this for those that don't want to wait for their slide to be machined. Also, some of the early factory sig slides would come with lightening cuts on the inside of the slide which would keep the milling companies from milling it for a red dot. If you are curious what this looks like C&H Precision has some great pictures on their website of what it looks like. You can compare your slide to these photos to see if it is a slide that they are able to machine or not.
Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and have a great weekend!