No proffesional machinist here. I did grow up around multiple machine shops. My grandfather was machinist/toolmaker and had many patents including the machine that does tri fold paper pamphlets (paper is very abrasive to tooling).
Maybe its a poor design relitive to bobro and larue, but there is slop in adm mounts. The levers and the button have wiggle room.
Put all 3 side by side, and it doesnt take a rocket surgeon to see which is better designed/made.
I do have his bridgeports and some of his horizontal lathes he left to me collecting dust in storage. Shame those machines are collecting dust.
The first lathe I bought for my home shop was from a trade school in Virginia; at that time they had not had a machine shop class in 10 years.
Depressing.
The only think I see that might improve the RTZ of an ADM mount is relying on a recoil lug rather than the clamp screw shafts to locate fore and aft; the surfaces on an ADM mount that locate on the top and bottom 45 degree face of the rail are flat, defect free, and plenty strong.
Mine RTZ very well, but I may pay more attention when I reinstall than most.
The vertically split (2 piece) scope tube clamps have strong and weak points;
PITA to remove and replace a scope
The scope will not be in the same plane when you re-mount it
The same feature makes the mount less expensive to manufacture (reflected in the price) and inexpensive to adapt to a new scope tube diameter, also.
The cam action clamps on Larue mounts are a terrible design if one plans to actually QD IMHO; they wipe on the bottom of one for the rail facets and repeated removal and installation will remove the finish and wear the rail.
They may feel more positive and precise than the ADM but I guarantee the ADM clamps with as much or more force over a greater area.
Bobro was wise to use heavy spring tension for the clamping mechanism; self adjusting and applies an identical clamping force repeatedly over a wide variation of rail widths.
I bought the ADMs (I have 2) because at the time no one else had a cantilever 20 MOA 30mm mount, except for Aadland, which I would have bought instead had I know they existed. You might think "yeah, but, the Aadland mounts are not QD".
That's right, they are not.
I don't actually understand the fascination with QD.
Let's see, if my main optic goes bad, I want to be able to remove it quickly to use the BUIS.
Well, if the optic fails, who gives a f*ck if the broken optic will return to zero?
Joe