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Well it came out pretty well , I will reprint it in PET-G when it arrives and might go down to .1 layer thickness , the underside is a lot better than the draft versions but there is still some bad areas at the bottom layer of the holes where its printing the wall of the hole onto support material , that might be better if printed on the side with the down side that the holes might not be very round .

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I never thought to extend the holes down to bed level , that's a neat trick and easy to trim off ,thanks , I think I'll add that to the design before printing in PETG , stupidly I ordered white PETG so its no good for a replica part .

I do have a quick question , I'm using a Bowden tube that goes all the way into the hot end , I understand there's a temp limit of 250° C because of the tubing , I was looking at all metal hot ends and I had a thought , if I turned a piece of steel on my Lath that fitted between the nozzle and the Bowden union inside the heatsink so that the Bowden tube only went in a few mm then butted up on the steel tube I make then the steel tube goes to the hot end , would that work ? As long as I make the steel tube a snug fit and crown the end so the filament enters nicely then I can't see a difference between my idea and an all metal hot end or am I missing something ?

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OK I'll think about a new hot end at a later date , the PETG I have has a recommended temp range of 220 to 250 so its safe anyway , thanks again .

I had a frustrating , instructive and eventually productive day yesterday , after getting correct Z height ( I had to raise it a bit as you found ), speed , retraction and finally retraction speed dialed in I got a couple of good prints done .
I really had to slow the first layer down ! And at first the stringing was dreadful to the point that it was pulling the first layer off , I had to double my retraction from 5 to 10 and halve the retraction speed , I found 245 °C nozzle temp and 85°C bed was what I needed , I also found my bed thermister is out , a displayed 85 is actually just under 80 and that explains a lot , I always found I needed a hotter bed that most people and now I know why .
I printed up two of the longer rear trailing arms for my modified 834b and fitted them , I'm going to have to redesign them as there's too much twist , I'm going to give them a try as is to test their overall strength , I know I'll probably need FRP reinforcements in the end but I'm going to try to add some extra ribs first, after all in the old days we couldn't just redesign and print a new set we ,had to modify what we had , now we have a choice .

I finished off building an enclosure this morning, I got lucky, my daughter not so much ,she naught a cheap plastic green house to try and grow some veg in but our garden has an almost constant cross wind at the best of times, two days after she put it up we had strong winds that knocked that flimsy green house flat ! We did replace it I'm not a monster but I did salvage the poles clear plastic sheeting and enough connectors to make an enclosure with a nice zip door

It's far from perfectly sealed, it was a walk in green house that got cut down and the clear plastic is just cable tied in place not even taped, its good enough, another big plus is the dust and dog hair will be kept out more, we have 4 dogs and right now 3 of them are molting off their winter coats, 2 of them are Border Collies and if you know about dogs then you know they can re carpet a wood floor house when they molt!.

Designed and printed some shock mounts for my Bruiser clone , i used your tip on extending a hole down to the bed to get a clean print , there was an odd affect though , i started by making the tube down to the deck with a .2 mm wall thickness but when i sliced it it was not included ? i had to up the wall thickness to .4 mm to make it print , I'm guessing it was below the min wall thickness so it didn't print . I printed them in PETG , I've still only got white so I'll reprint them in black when it arrives .

More stuff , I've been busy , redesigned a more rigid extended trailing arm for the Dogfighter and printed them in PETG as well as a top deck, you asked about the bottom of the top deck where the support was removed so there's a picture of that as well , its mostly tightly bonded with a few loose bits on the bottom layer around the edges , and finally I had a little play with a Groot model from Thingiverse , firstly a white one then a red one and finally a 12% wood PLA version , I also printed a wooden crate , again a Thingiverse download of a credit card holder but i down sized it to 60% and that will go in the bed of my Bruiser clone . The wood filament had a little stringing but on the crate it actually looks really wood grain , you can also use normal wood stains on it and that's what I've on both the Groot and the crate.

As suggested I tried printing the Dogfighter top deck on its side in PETG but with the layers in that plane it took very little effort to snap off the member that braces the top of the servo saver , maybe I was printing too cool at 140°C or the layer height of 0.12 mm was too thin but the print was hard and brittle , the finish was better from the top but on the supported sides had the same loose look and more visibly on the sides of the chain guard than having the support just underneath , its a pity as the top surface was far nicer with just fine linear lines rather than cross hatched finish of the horisontal print .

Grrrr been fighting Fusion 360 half the day , I've been trying to model up a Stock for a custom Airsoft gun , a MK1 Bren Gun , its a conversion of another gun a ZB 26 , its all odd angles , nothing parallel or right angled and curves and very precise shaped cavity's everywhere , I think I'm nearly there and have a draft quality print ( 6.25 hours ) nearly done now , I just hope it all fits up well enough , then its on to a very long print in wood filament , the test print is being printed vertically with minimal support but I'll have to print it horizontal on edge for a final print so it follows a wood like grain , probably will need a raft and a ton of support but I need any poorly finished parts downward out of sight , tempted to do the raft on plain white PLA and change the filament for the stock .....

My little 9.5 hour print was successful , i still need to tweak it a little but the next one will be in wood filament .
the support came of fairly well but there was tons of it and a raft .







the quality of the surface is poor but its only two layers and very low infill , in its final form I'm thinking five or six layers and a higher infill , I'm pleased with the layering/grain effect .

I finished all the test prints and have a finished design for the stock so i went ahead and printed a wood filament version and it failed about 15 hours into a 17 hour print due to a blocked nozzle , I'm printing a second one now but I'm not sure i have enough filament left so fingers crossed , I've ordered more wood filament and a 0.5 nozzle that hopefully will not block up .
I'm pleased with the partial print though , it look very nice . Dan look away now as your going to hate the supports and raft i had to use , i needed the layering to be on a plane like wood grain and any imperfections to be on the bottom so i had to print it in the orientation .




the red part is a piece that connects the sling mount plates so it can have a functional sling mount , the stock has to be hollow to fit a battery for the airsoft gun .