La Llama XV esta completa

I'm done with my little Llama XV 22lr.  After test firing, I cleaned the frame and painted it.  I tried something new with the paint, and I'm not really happy with how it turned out, but it will do for now.  I tried to replicate the nickel plating on the metal as best I could.  I use Rustolium Chrome spray paint and topped it with a matte clear.  It looks ok, but it didn't seem to stick to the print well and it chips super easy.  Next time I'll try a base coat of SEM Color Coat under the top coats because that stuff sticks to prints great.  The entire frame as well as the grip panels are 3D printed and here's how it turned out.  It's easy to forget just how small the Llama XV is when you see it alone in pics, so I included my partially printed full size 1911-ish in some of the pics for scale.

Llamas spit.

I finally got my 3D printed Llama frame to were I'm satisfied with it.  It took 11 tries to get it right.  On a normal 1911, I'd have printed a few, got it close, then fit the parts to the frame like you would with any new frame.  That wasn't an option here though because Llama parts are hard to come by and I can't afford to screw anything up so I basically had to fit the frame to the parts.  

I had a heck of a time with magazines too.  Llama mags are expensive, and I'm not positive that they would work because the Llama grip angle is slightly different from the standard 1911 frame my print is based off of.  I tried to make a printed one...and mags are hard...  I ended up using a Browning 1911-22 mag.  The Browning 1911-22 is a similar size to the Llama, but uses the standard 1911 grip angle.  I had to add a little clearance for the slide stop, and file out the mag catch slot a little to get it to lock it, but otherwise it works great!

It actually works...and I didn't lose any fingers!  I put about 30 rounds through it before tearing it all down for inspection.  I had some trouble with light strikes, about 1/4 of the rounds needed a second smack of the hammer to go off.  New mainsprings are completely unavailable, so I'll take it out and do some measuring to find a replacement.  Because of limited space and unavailable parts, the ejector is part of the printed frame.  Though I don't have many rounds through it, the ejector doesn't show any signs of damage from the shells hitting it.

Llama XV progress

I'm now on V3 of my baby Llama frame.  Every iteration of this thing gets several changes and at this point my Solidworks feature tree is just a mess.  With V3, everything fits and the action hand cycles and resets like it should.  The problem now is that the safeties don't work.  It wouldn't be that big a deal, but the way it is now the thumb safety can slide up into the notch on the slide, locking the slide closed while still being able to fire.  If this happened, I think the force of the slide would blow the safeties off the back of the frame, and my hand would have a really bad day.  So back to the virtual drawing board to try to get the safeties to work.  Here's how it looks so far with everything assembled, standard 1911 magazine included for size reference:

Baby on board! A Llama XV miniture 1911 clone

I saw one of these at a gun show years ago, and didn't buy it because the guy wanted $450 for it, but I always thought it was really neat.  They haven't gone down in price since then either.  Then I found a frameless parts kit on Every Gun Part, and when they had their Cyber Monday 50% off  sale I didn't hesitate, and picked it up for $100.

It's a Llama XV, a Spanish copy of the 1911 in 22LR, but unlike most 1911-22's that are still full size, this one is scaled down considerably.  It's not just shorter like a Commander or Officer frame gun, the whole thing is uniformly scaled down in all directions.  All the internal frame parts look exactly like 1911 parts, but smaller.  Since it's a 22LR blowback pistol, the plan is to 3D print the frame for it.  Since it's a fixed barrel most of the recoil stress will be on the slide stop pin and barrel seat area and I think a printed part will be strong enough to handle it.  I took the CAD files I already have for 1911 frames, and scaled them down accordingly.  The Llama isn't a directly scaled copy, so there is going to be a lot of adjusting and reprinting to get everything to fit(particularly all the pin hole locations).  This is going to be a fill in when I don't have anything else going on project, so I don't know when it'll be done.

I spent a day measuring and adjusting my frame CAD file to be close, then test printed a frame to see how things fit.  It still needs a lot of tweaking to get everything to fit and work like it should.  When you look at it, it doesn't seem that small, but when you put it next to a full size 1911, you can see how tiny it really is.  It makes a standard 1911 look huge: