[MadMax]

AI did not do all of the assembly.

Manchovie gun repair was contracted to assemble the PTWs under the supervision of AI. While Manchovie is a mechanically sound airsmith, he did need some assistance with electrical matters. All of the 3rnd burst options were done by me as well as electrical and bb feeding toubleshooting.

We were unfortunately quite disappointed with the low plug and playability of these kits. We experienced an over 40% failure rate in the SCKs despite ESD measures. Luckily most of them were effectively troubleshot leaving only one electronics set defunct. Mechanical issues were most common in Gen3 kits.

Electrical issues were traced to bad solder traces, or defective optical sensors. The most common mechanical problem was that the mag catch held the magazine too high in the mag well.

While it is common practice in the military to slap a mag in to assure that the catch has engaged, this training is not prevalent amongst airsofters (myself included). The over tight mag catch occasionally dropped magazines. Decisively stuffing a mag in would reliably engage the catch, but the catches held the mag windows so high that feeding issues arose in nearly every PTW (bb chop). The high engagement caused a slight misalignment which affected the reliability of bb feeding.

Light removal of material from the area directly over the engagement surface alleviated this issue consistently. Heavy removal of material at the beveled lead in on the catch greatly reduced the force required to push past the catch. Modified catches were comparatively luxurious in rapid mag changes and the reduction in bb chopping was a critical improvement.

A catestrophic failure occured with one Gen3 PTW early in it's life cranking a M110 cyl'. Despite careful assembly, the piston rack somehow pushed forward out of the piston. At some point, the upwards pointing section broke off and siezed the gearbox. When this occured, the mechbox abruptly stopped making no severe sounds. Pulling the trigger caused two small "tic" sounds spaced by about a second. The user tried firing a couple times and handed the gun to me for diagnosis. On the second or third trigger pull, it dawned on me that the box was seized and that pulling the trigger more was a really bad idea. QD takedown immediately showed that the piston assembly had failed. Still the gun would function on full auto with a replacement cylinder assembly. Semi auto for some reason turned into 5rnd burst. It became apparent that the optical gate was damaged and that the motor was timing out instead of being shut off by the opto electronics. If no gate signal is detected, the motor is shut off after an arbitrary time delay by the control cct. This PTW was repaired by replacing the optical assembly with an optical gate scavenged from an EL-001 which had a kaput processor. Sadly the fuse did not protect the EL-001. In fact it had only partially melted but continued to conduct.

I'm particularly happy with the 3rnd burst improvement I worked out. I sourced a tiny switch from the DigiKey catalogue which was temporarily tape sealed for wave soldering and assembly purposes. It was soldered to the appropriate terminals and glued directly to the EL-001 unit between boards alongside the 4 conductor cross connector. After the glue cured, the seal was removed to access the switch tab.

Including the 3rnd option in this way saved us from routing a wire around the gearbox to be possibly chomped by the receiver on closure. It saved hiding a switch in the limited space too.