Speedbird_666

Um..ok... Meanwhile - In other news: Now printing it 'properly' at 100% infill, with a channel for a 5mm steel rod to be glued within it. Each half will take 14 hours to print and the whole thing will be 3D printed (two sides and the butt pad as a separate print) with the stock 'fixed' in position. I'll be hitting it with filler primer and sanding it to smooth out the layer lines, then spray it with matte black paint. If anyone has any ideas on how to try replicate that 'moulded plastic roughness' surface finish that you get on polymer bodied guns, it would be much appreciated. They look very cool. I'll be interested to hear how they perform.

Pics or it didn't happen...😁

Land Warrior have got them in stock now. 440 notes. Not cheap.

The Taliban have released a promo for their 'Badri 313' Special Forces Squadron. Interesting use of a FAST mag pouch... I can't help but feel that our involvement in the Middle East has been a colossal waste of time, money, and most importantly, British lives. Whilst the UK dodged the Vietnam bullet, we jumps squarely into Iraq and Afghanistan behind the Americans, and for what? The world is no safer now than 9/11/2001. It could be argued that the opposite is true. I just hope that foreign policy moving forward avoids these kind of 'occupational' wars and trying to instill westerns values into societies that, quite frankly, don't want it.

One theory I heard (seriously) is that the ANA has been extensively trained in American/British tactics and equipment - notably heavy use of air cover and helicopters, especially for insertions and casualty evacuation. When Biden ordered the pull-out, he pulled all US contractor support for the aircraft with immediate effect, grounding many of them almost instantly. It was realised pretty quickly by the ANA that they were not capable of running a ground campaign without air support as per the US TTPs. It could be BS, but it sounds like a plausible factor that contributed to the ANA thinking 'fuck that', dropping their gear and running for the hills.

A quick and nasty print to test fitment - 0.30 layer height (accidentally left the upper and lower skin thickness at 0.12 which also doesn't help) and a very low infill leaving a rough finish. Fitment was damned near perfect - just needed the hinge holes opening up a little and a relief hole drilled for the gearbox screw that protrudes a little. Test print was done in two halves then glued - I'm considering creating a channel for a bent steel rod to be sandwiched between the halves for reinforcement before epoxying them together. The final print would be done at 100% infill with a much smaller layer height (around 0.12mm) to smooth things out. Haven't worked out the rear (sliding) bit yet - probably an aluminium tube and 3D printed bushing and stock pad. I'll probably not bother with a sprung button mechanism, rather glue the metal button in place and have it non-folding. Real Steel: Yes, it's ugly. But I like it. Very popular with French and German Police forces - they also use them on MP5s and I've never seen one on an Airsoft gun.

Not speedsoft....honestly! I've been modelling a real steel B&T Visor/Gas Mask Stock for a G36 using pictures as a reference. Not sure if I'll actually make this one (although it's dimensionally accurate to TM spec guns), but it's been fun to model nonetheless. RS references:

I can't help myself... Ended up with three unique designs for ICS, G&G and Specna Edge guns: Really comfortable with a mask on. I know they look wank, but they are so practical. Much like Crocs or Bum bags.

If you don't have much luck finding a replacement part, I could take a crack at knocking something up in CAD that could be 3D printed?

I must have at least 5 different brands of M100 springs knocking around my spares box. Not one are the same length. Fit the new spring and re-chrono. I'm sure it'll be fine. As it's ASG Ultimate, there's a good chance it was OEM'd by Lonex, and their stuff is decent.

Same boat really. Not had any desire to play this year. Tinkering, buying and making (since buying a 3D printer), yes. Hauling my fat arse over to an Airsoft site...nope. It's my two boys (16 and 13) that make me go, and it's fine when I get there and actually play TBH, but I'm the one who preps all their kit, fills their mags, charges their batteries, sets their guns up etc. so it's a triple whammy of ball ache for me when I get to site.

I heard the Makarov was shit, but their other offerings are supposed to be reasonable performers from what I heard? At least you can get parts easy enough from Fire-Support. They have their own (TM compatible) Hi-Capa coming out soon that doesn't look too bad at all.

Yeh, just as things were getting spicy. Ah well, I'm sure there will be another argument about barrel length and accuracy at some point soon on here...🤣

Airsoftology covered this gun in a fair bit of detail on YouTube. It is OEM'd by Modify. Looks pretty nice from a build quality perspective.

The 2.0s have only been on the (UK) market for the last month or two so it's still early days. Supposedly Specna changed the gearbox OEM at some point during the V1 production run (for the better - allegedly). I know there's a lot of V1 users that say their gun was great out of the box. Mine, and many others were not. QC has been a persistent issue with Specna since the Edge series was released, but reports indicate that this has been ameliorated to a large degree. The 2.0s come with the Gate Aster unit and some minor internal component tweaks, and on paper represent stonkingly good value for money, especially when compared to older, more established manufacturers (looking at you G&G). But circling back around to your original question, the M4s in the respective Edge Series (V1 and 2.0) are the same internally, but with different rails, trademarks and colour options. Basically, if you are set on an Edge, pick the one that you like the look of the most.

Hate to break it to you, but you are not guaranteed no fogging even with high end Paintball masks. I run with a paintball mask now playing airsoft, and have also owned many sets from various manufacturers during my paintballing days. Whilst you are less likely to get fogging issues, on a hot, humid day fogging and condensation can still happen - especially when you are sweating. I came up with a fan system for my goggles in the end to suck in cooler ambient air to displace the hot humid air within the goggles.

Yeh - I know right? Whilst I'm pleased with this little project from a technical and learning perspective, I've realised pretty quickly that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should... 🤪 Rest assured all stock parts have now been re-fitted. That really does look like a very cool project - how did you go about printing the shell? It looks almost like SLS?

Shall we mention Edge v1 and v2.0? 😉

Ok, last of the Speedsoft content - moving on to other projects now. Made a hand guard using 40mm PVC pipe that acts as a sleeve over the stock outer barrel. Barrel nut epoxied to one end, and a cap that is a tight interference fit on the outer barrel epoxied to the other. Very solid given the soft plastic of the pipe, no flex or wobble. Perfectly usable I reckon, assuming you don't plan to use it as a club and wrap it around a tree. I call it - the fleshlight....😉 (Note - no guns were harmed in the making of this project, all bits will be reverted back to stock shortly.)

Stick the nub on the wrench in the hole on the barrel nut and rotate: Yes - if you read the text above too quickly you come up with a very different sentence....😜 Alternative methods (for bodging it and probably inflicting some kind of damage): - Vice grips - Stick the nut in a bench vice and rotate the receiver - A drill bit of identical size to the hole, into the hole, and try twisting it off by hand

I reckon a standard armorers wrench would do it.

Indeed Herr Hamster. My overall (long term) aim is to produce the most minimal viable gun that will work around a V2 gearbox. That will mean a receiver of my own design, but I'm not skilled enough to model such a thing yet...however these smaller projects have helped immeasurably. It's unlikely that I would ever rock up at a field with such a setup myself though, because that would just look stupid - fat middle aged guy thinking he's a speedsofter? Nah. However my middle son (13) loves playing airsoft, but has no real interest in realistic guns/RIFs (he sees the hobby almost as big-kids extension of Nerf), so he has no problems with rolling with such a gun if it's light and easy to shoot.

Yep, Fusion 360 models the threads. I send to model to Cura, which in turn slices it and creates the GCode for the printer.

Modeled in Fusion 360 (M32x1.5) and printed them - they needed to be scaled up by 2.5% to account for slight inaccuracies in the 3d Printing process. So I needed to remove the proprietary barrel nut for the stock G&G front end - so had to design/print a tool to do it: I knocked up a 'proper' barrel nut to check barrel fitting - y'know I think speedsofters have got the right idea when it comes to ergonomics, this thing feels super light, balanced and point-able: (I know, I know, haters gonna hate - this is an exercise in curiosity more than anything else) I intend to make a whole front-end using a ~40mm Carbon tube epoxied onto a 3D printed barrel nut, a printed outer barrel stub at the receiver end, a printed barrel stabiliser cap at the front, with the inner barrel free-floating in between.