Some Lo-Point Love

I have a confession to make.  This might cost me some followers, but here goes.  I like Hi-Points.  There, I said it.  I especially like 3D printed Lo-Points because they're dirt cheap to put together from a Hi-Point parts kit.  I have a whopping $50 in this gun(and $20 of that was the magazine, and $10 was shipping).  Also, in a bit of irony, of all the 3D printed pistols I've made, this one has the nicest trigger by far.

I decided to dress up my Lo-Point a bit, because I can.  It is purely a cosmetic dress-up piece for an already printed frame. My frame is a Freeman1337 V2, it may fit original Hi-Point frames too, but I can't confirm since I don't have one to test. It fits my frame with my C9 parts kit, but YMMV. The inside of the "barrel" is sized for 3/4" copper plumbing tube(available at any hardware store). It may be fine without the copper tube installed, but the muzzle blast will probably erode the plastic fairly quickly. You may need to file the magwell to get drop free mags. The handguard piece gets glued to the bottom of the magwell and the nose piece attaches to the Pic rail on the frame with 6-32 screws so that the nose is still removable(I've heard rumors of people who actually clean their Hi-Points and it needs to be removable to get the slide off the frame).

Files are available for download here:  https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5264553

SCR-ish update

It's funny how fast time gets away from you.  It's been almost two years since I stared my 3D printed SCR style bolt action AR project.  It seemed like I was always waiting for something and time kept creeping by.  In that time I've had a lot of people asking me for the files but I didn't have them ready yet.  None of the people that I gave the files to for beta testing followed through.  I also wasn't super happy with how the safety detent worked, so I wanted to do some more work on it.  I had enough parts to put together a 2nd one of my own, but didn't have the motivation. 

I've also been shopping around for another 22lr to plink with lately.  Then I saw Bear Creek's Black Friday ad advertising their new dedicated 22lr upper.  The lightbulb went off and I bought one.  My SCR style rifle was designed to be a bolt action because there was no room for an AR recoil system, and I wasn't super keen on replicating the real SCR's setup on a 3D printed receiver.  But, 22lr ARs don't need the stock recoil system, it's self contained in the upper.  So, I printed out the receiver and buttstock parts, and pinned on my brand new Bear Creek 22lr upper.  I've gotta say, this thing is great and a lot of fun to shoot.  The bolt/barrel setup is proprietary to Bear Creek, but the mags are CMMG and RTB compatible so mags are easy to get.  The optic is a $30 Amazon red/green dot because I love cheap optics on cheap guns.  I don't have a whole lot of rounds through it yet, and so far it's functioned flawlessly.  I hope to actually get the files posted on Weapons Guild by New Years.

PSG-Done

It happened again, I fell off the face of the internet.  Life, work, and whatnot.  Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program.

I actually finished the my PSG-1 clone, the PSG-None(because there are no actual PSG-1 parts on it), back in April.  I took the pictures, and then left them to stare at me from my desktop for the next 8 months.  To recap, this is an Apex CETME C kit and barrel on an RTG G3 receiver flat bent on the 3D printed jig I designed, PSG-1 style reinforcement rails made by me, with 3D printed PSG-1 style furniture designed and 3D printed by me.  This is a low dollar build and I've had good results with cheap optics before, so the scope is a $35 CV Life from Amazon with a 3D Printed TPU eye bellows.  I also converted a G3 UB training bolt to use with the DAG blue plastic training ammo(see details a few posts ago).  Without wasting any more words here's how it turned out(clamp on bi-pod just for pictures):

Years ago, I 3D printed a costume prop PSG-1 for a friend.  It wasn't overly accurate, but at the time I didn't really know any better.  Just for kicks here's a picture of the original print I did along with my actual rifle.

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.

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: