I looked PHA up. Color Fab offers some at a fairly reasonable price, but limited colors. It seems an interesting choice for printing. I do like the heat resistance of >120C. The printing temp range is low and pretty narrow and needs hair spray. I wonder if it’s comparable with PEI print sheets.
But it still has a price hard time competing with the $11US per kilo of PLA brands like eSun.
There are firearms related .stl’s that can be found, but they are accessories rather than the actual parts that make a firearm function. But there are forums that do discuss and build 3D printed firearms that can be found with some searching.
I’ve done a couple of designs, shims for a Winchester SX4 shotgun to fit several guns to their owners for target shooting and hunting. And an easy loader for my P365XL. That 12 round double stack single feed clown car of a magazine is hard to load without it. But I haven’t bothered to publish either design and I have never wanted to either.
Congtrats! you just made a pipe bomb! And one that isn’t as good as a steel pipe You do understand that PVC pipe would not be able to contain the pressure of even the most anemic cartridge don’t you? Even a 1" schedule 80 PVC can only contain up to 520PSI @ 73F. Modern Cartridges easily generate 12,500PSI for a light shotgun target load of birdshot.
It’s part of a joint for the handle of an electric snowblower I have. It’s a cool looking part for sure, but it was easy to recreate as a model to print.
But after breaking the original injection molded glass re-enforced nylon and 3 other home printed parts, I redesigned the joint to be a single piece solid part. So while I can’t fold the handle down for storage, it no longer breaks.
Or if you can scrounge up a guitar string, you can simply make your own coil spring from scratch.
All work done in FreeCad.
My favorite personally reverse engineered part
And a favorite design I use every day a holder for my loose tea strainer to catch draining water
This is kind of what I know from my experience. I have an A1 Mini with AMS lite and my trusty 5 year old Prusa Mk3s running Klipper. Not exactly the same, but close.
Mechanically, the linear rails vs the linear rods are more rigid and lead better overall printer rigidity than the more flexible linear rods. Is it enough to matter? With input shaping easily available on both printers, not really. But, those rails will require a bit more maintenance than the rods. My mini regularly prompts for cleaning and re-lubricating every so many hours of run time. Is it hard? Nope, but it IS something Bambu really recommends. The linear rod bearings are supposed to be greased before installation, (whether Soval does this or not is a question. Prusa didn’t bother with my kit), And because the rod bearings have wiper seals to keep the dust out and the grease in, a quick wipe with a clean dry paper towel is all that’s needed. No exterior lubrication required.
The AMS Lite is kind of nice, it keeps 4 spools of filament ready to go. And I keep 4 different colors ready or a spool to run out and then take advantage of being able to easily swap to another spool mid print and keep printing. I have done just enough multi-color prints to say I know how. Mostly just signage though. And it’s very wasteful as a rule. The RFID tags identification and setup isn’t worth the extra cost I need to pay vs the “generic” filaments I buy. I am not so unskilled or lazy to set up my own profiles quickly and easily. And the few spools of Bambu filament I have used has demonstrated it’s no better than any of the small handful cheaper brands I normally use. This is a YMMV situation. The Soval does not offer a builtin solution for the AMS, but some few more universal 3rd party units are now starting to come on the market.
Another “this may or may not matter to you” is that Bambu runs on legacy Marlin and the Soval runs on Klipper. Adding things to Bambu’s version of Marlin while doable, is a pain in the butt. Not much information is available on their version. For example, I wanted to turn off the input shaping at the start of every print. It’s noisy and not needed for every print. It took me a couple of weeks to find and learn to edit the intro macro to achieve my goal. Klipper is far, far easier to edit and make changes in. And you can access things like Obico for Klipper to monitor prints for spaghetti detection-- which Bambu cannot do. You can also more easily ignore a region if a plate full of models has one model fail at some point. Bambu requires the Handy app and you need to be logged into Bambu to use it I think. Studio offers no such functionality on the desktop.
The TL;DR: Your choice depends on what YOU want from your printer. It’s a YMMV all the way down. I do not regret my purchase of the Mini, but I won’t ever be buying another Bambu. But that’s just me.
And what about Qidi? Everyone misses this brand. But they offer some well priced core xy printers with features no one else does. And the ability to print high end engineering filaments right out of the box.
I have designed several 3D printed firearms related items.
I designed and printed shims for my Winchester SX4 shotgun, (Winchester claimed they couldn’t design them and make them work), and I uploaded the .stls for the set so other shooters could make their guns fit better so they could hit targets better.
I also designed a 3D printed EZLoader for a SIG P365 pistol. Those 12 round double stack single feed magazines are nearly impossible to load without one. And I felt the commercial ones that cost $40 or more were too expensive. So I designed something simpler and cheaper you can make at home for yourself.
These designs came about because I discussed problems with other shooters on several different shooting forums. Does that make me a criminal? While neither of my designs are anything like a Glock switch, no one knows just how far the law could be stretched if wanted. And one thing everyone knows is just how ignorant police are about laws. Not to mention just how impossible it would be for the state of New York to police the entire internet in search of such files and discussions. They can’t even stop you from downloading a pirated copy of your favorite video game. This proposed law is more feel good theater than anything that can be considered effective.
And if what I could do with my 3D printer scares people, just imagine what I can do with my metal lathe, mill, and welders…