Done / Completed The Expanse - MCRN pistol - machined aluminium conversion kit

so, everything was prepared last night, prototype went well after spending the whole day on that template and first part. This morning, i proceeded to wanting to make it very slightly smaller to get a fine black line around the part when assembling it and almost destroyed my template and missed 3 plates. So I had to repare the template, do more tests and then produce the rest of the parts this afternoon again. I still need to cut an additional plate again and machine it as well.
nothing goes easy with this project!
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Hey guys,
I don't have many photos because today was a bit hectic, thunderstorm, training the puppy with the car and stuff like this, but I'm almost there,
the extra V2 part is almost done, I'm really turning into a human CNC with this project, this one needs 45° cuts, but then a straight cut all along the part at the same depth, and to get a clean finish and not do it in several passes, I did the 45° cut at the bottom, then turned both cranks at the same time, to move straight away from the first cut, fun stuff!
other than this is printing the last part to attach the butt plate to the magazine, file is ready but I couldn't print because of the thunderstorm, hopefully tomorrow, it might take a few tries though.
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Hey guys, here is one more update before the end!
we are so close :)

first, removing material inside the extra V2 parts so they can fit on the pistols, those are almost done, one more to finish, a bit more adjusting at the top, the hole at the front and done :)
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then,
I have the first test print for the magazine butt plate, it's almost good, I'll modify the file and print again tomorrow :)
I had milled the part on my first pistol, but, it was a bit too thin for the actual plate, and, i can't ask you guys to do the same with yours! so I need to provide something that works right away.
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and with the plate on top. first thing, i got the thikness exactly right, so that's good, only thing is the holes are not at the proper place, it was hard to estimate where the new part was going to sit exactly into the opening, so this has to be adjusted, basically this and the part is slightly tight, but we are amost good :)
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ah yeah, last thing, I'm going to try and finish this by the end of the week, however, it is a busy week with life! a lot of animal things to take care off in the next two days and a family event on friday, so, what I'm going to do, is try to finish those, but without too much pressure, and I'll be contacting you for payment this week end, that way, i dont say tomorrow or thursday because i can't promise anything :)
but, you can expect a message this week end and call this done finally :)
cheers all, thank you for sticking with me :)
 
Matthieu, the work you have done is top drawer and the best I have seen! The wait is definitely worth it and I thank you for producing these, especially in the low numbers that most would have passed on because of that very reason. You have done these because of a love of the subject matter and not for profit. I say not for profit because the amount of work put into these would have commanded a MUCH higher asking price if anyone had gone to a Machinist to produce outside of the hobby IMHO.

Looking forward to getting my set!!

Evan
 
Thank you Evan :)
I definitely went way over time budget for that project, it's been crazy!

a few more pics before the end :)
I turned down a couple screws for the front of the extra V2 part:
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second print for the maganize plate is better but not perfect yet, I'll launch the final prints tommorow if I can. I managed to make it work by not pushing the part completely on the magazine though, just the holes that need to be moved a bit again, but the proof of concept works :)
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The run is done :) :) :)

I have been crazy too busy today and am not there tomorrow like explained last time, so I'll be back with photos, explainations and pms during the week end.
cheers all!
 
Hi there,
here are a few photos of the finished kits installed on my own pistols. I hope you like them. I pretty exited by the finished V2, it's a very cool version too and I think the two people that signed up for it too will be happy with them too :)

Now that I have finished and counted the production time, I wanted to thank again Evan for his message above and let you know, that yeah, this is all correct and I only did that project because I was excited doing it and making happy a few people that could not find someone else doing this. It has been a crazy difficult project, it was absolutely silly to start such a difficult project with only 5 people subscribed! One of 5 has not been online since october and is not getting back to me, so that's that. And finally, yeah, i counted all my time on this project, on top of the fact that I have been working on and off when I was feeling ok since october and that it was only supposed to take a month time, I had a 12h budget per kit and let me tell you, I have actually spent 13h40mins on the V1 and more than 15h on the V2! so I have pretty much exploded my budget on all fronts! but I'm really happy that this is finished and I really hope that you guys will like the parts :)
please keep in mind those are crazy difficult and no one in their right mind would have normally accepted to do those on manually opperated machines, none are perfect, I want to say, just like the originals, I have reproduced the machining idiocyncracies as much as possible, and have made small mistakes sometimes too, but that was part of the process, so I hope you guys will like the result :)

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Please be aware the pistols in the series are not functional, howewer here:
- The V1 comes with one screw to attach the part in place of the back sight and the front can be glued at the same time or double sided taped. I drilled my pistol for an extra screw in the front but can't offer that for yours obviously. The V1 are fonctional as is if you want, you are only removing the back sight to install the new part and the slide will work the same it did before.
- For the V2 however, slight different story, you get the one screw in the back, and the slide will work, BUT, we need to instal that extra part on the bottom and that locks the slide in place. The muzzle flash supressor part is attached to the top barrel of the pistol by default, that top barrel goes back a few mm when the slide goes back and when attaching my extra part, the part butts against the lower body of the pistol and will prevent the slide from moving back. On my pistol, I spent an extra 2hours figuring that out, modified the pistol to attach the flash hidder to the lower barrel that is fixed, machined an extra part and attached all that together and it now stays functional, but I can definitely not do that for yours as again, the pistol would need to be modified and i can't do it for you.

I'll be writing a tutorial later to show the little bit there is to show about how to attach everything.

I haven't had the time to test yet, but one thing I wanted to mention, someone asked what best to do to paint those. I think the original are anodized, which is a bit complicated for us on this scale (I have spent a few weeks researching this and trying to buy material to do it for this project I have to admit, however, i didn't succeed in sourcing good equipment and gave up)
On a previous project of mine, the 5th element ZF1, there was a lot of parts that were yellow and blue aluminium, and it turns out they looked exactly like anodization, but were actually ink markers or ink airbrushed. I have airbrushed my own ZF-1 parts with edding marker refill blue inks and that worked buetifully, you have to be used to using an airbrush because the ink is much much more thin and fluid than any paint, so you really have to know your way around an airbrush to not make a mess, but the result can really look like anodizing. It is not a very strong finish though, so you either have to accept the weathering, or apply a clear coat after the ink.
I think this also works with tinted clear coats and might be a stronger finish by default.

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Oh man these turned out amazing!

Also, thank you for thoroughly documenting the build process. Picture taking and commenting also takes a lot of time out of ones day so us prop nerds really appreciated it.
 
thank you Griefboy! documenting builds for my customers and communicating about my work is very important to me :) I'm glad you appreciated it :)

Here are some studio photos of the finished kits and my assembled pistols :)
I'm going to send the payment emails in a moment. Cheers all!

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what's in the kits:
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Here is a small tutorial of what you'll need to do to attach the parts, there isn't much, no worries,

For the top main part, you'll see there are two channels under it to make room for the front sight and another prominent detail on the airsoft, The only thing that needs to be removed to attach the part is the back sight as it is to wide to be hidden by the new part.
First thing you need to do is pull the slide backwards, and push the slide lock to maintain it in place while you work on it.
you'll need a phillips screwdriver to remove the screw located under the slide completely in the back:
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the back sight will drop when you remove the screw, the small pieces inside are barely holding together with the small spring, be carefull not to move the pistol too much and loose them, try to work with the pistol upside down like shown on the pic to make sure you are not loosing anything.

That screw you removed will be replaced by the similar but longer phillips screw I'm including in the kit, it screws directly into the main part, you'll see a small hole under the part where it goes.
I can't do anything for you to secure the part in the front so I advice you to put double sided tape there or a good glue like E6000 for instance. The adhesive and the small screw in the back will hold the part nicelly.

There is also a 9mm aluminium tube that you can glue inside the barrel of the pistol, it can go all the way in, but it won't be a tight fit as it was hard to adjust to you guys' guns, however, a little bit of glue will hold it fine. This prevents shooting BBs though as the inner diameter is around 6mm, the BBs will get stuck there.

For the V2, you also need to attach the under barrel part, it's not very difficult either,
There is a little set screw holding the flash hidder, you can see a small hole under it, put a small 1.5mm allen key there until you manage to grab the set screw and unscrew it, it might be very tight as it's possibly they used some kind of thread lock.
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you need to remove the set screw completely, it's possible it won't fall from the hole, so if that happens, you can just pull the flash hidder and get it inside:
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put the flash hidder back in place, put the under barrel part in place fully against the lower body of the pistol, and tighten the very long screw in the empty hole under the new part, using a 2.5mm allen key. That screw will line up with the hole that was used by the set screw, tighten it fully and your part will be held tightly against the pistol and the flash hidder secured again.
Like I explained before, this prevents the slide from moving back, so the V2 pistol is not functional anymore. Just like in the series. I had to modify mine a lot to keep it functional and can't do it for you as it requires to modify the pistol itself. If you want it to be functional and have tools, I can of course answer your questions.
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I hope this helps, please ask me if you need any help, it's only 4 or 5 of you guys on this project, so I can help of course :)
cheers all!
 
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Fantastique! Payment accepted and order confirmed. These look amazing and I'm really looking forward to getting mine. It will be nice to get another half-completed project off my workbench, so I only have another 4 or so in the way! :lol: I'll take photos along the way of what I do. I have E6000 glue on hand so I will give that a try, although I wonder if it will adhere well. I think I tried some to hold my mockup piece to the slide and it worked well, but did pop off without a lot of force... Well, there will be some testing and trial-and-error I'm sure.

Thanks so much eethan for fighting through everything, even while you were sick, and completing such a daunting project!
 
Fantastique! Payment accepted and order confirmed. These look amazing and I'm really looking forward to getting mine. It will be nice to get another half-completed project off my workbench, so I only have another 4 or so in the way! :lol: I'll take photos along the way of what I do. I have E6000 glue on hand so I will give that a try, although I wonder if it will adhere well. I think I tried some to hold my mockup piece to the slide and it worked well, but did pop off without a lot of force... Well, there will be some testing and trial-and-error I'm sure.

Thanks so much eethan for fighting through everything, even while you were sick, and completing such a daunting project!
Thank you very le ch for your kind words and patience along this run :)
 
I think a couple of you guys will soon receive your packages!
I have edited the small assembly totorial with the allen key sizes.

as a recap of needed tools,
V1: small phillips screwdriver
V2: small phillips screwdriver, 1.5mm and 2.5mm allen keys
 
According to the tracking info, mine has escaped from Customs, which is always a relief even though I've had things that made me much more nervous! :lol:

I'll have to check my odd-numbered Alan keys...
 
Well well well.... Look what arrived yesterday. :cool: I think I need to replay that Gojira Olympic opening show again to get my French on... Everything looks great!
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Mostly 3D-print on top, much nicer Airsoft version below. Machined top unit is just placed there, not properly attached yet.
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Thanks eethan!!!
 
Must be Christmas! My V1 and V2 arrived today! Awesome work Matthieu! Nice to hold them and see them in person!

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Well well well.... Look what arrived yesterday. :cool: I think I need to replay that Gojira Olympic opening show again to get my French on... Everything looks great!View attachment 1921083View attachment 1921084

Mostly 3D-print on top, much nicer Airsoft version below. Machined top unit is just placed there, not properly attached yet.
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Thanks eethan!!!
oh yes! glad you received the package! for sure listen to Gogira, it never hurts! and I hope you like the parts after all the wait, thank you for your patience :)
 
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