About the Invader PDW V2 Beta

If you're following along to this point, you know that I've been doing my best to be transparent with my process and bring you the latest news regarding the development of the Invader PDW. At this point the design has entered its final stages and I now have to enter the most difficult stage and hand over the current designs to all of you to begin testing it while I await your feedback, comments, input, criticisms, etc.

The only real design change I foresee at this point is figuring out some sort of stop to prevent the brace from ejecting from the frame entirely. I'll be working on that, but your input is also welcome as long as it doesn't require changes to the metal pieces.

I'll be putting together all the build documents this week, which will largely be composed of the regular FDMA DD17.2 instructions, with a bit extra for prepping and assembling the brace.

Throughout the design of the Invader it was my goal to replicate a certain other collapsible, braced frame. As a secondary goal, I wanted it to be as easy as possible. I reduced complexity at every step as much as I could. That said, there's still room for improvement.

So in that order I want to give you a bit of a preface so that the assembly doesn't catch you off guard or unprepared. To complete the build, you'll need a very good hobby knife, a 1/8 punch or similar, a lot of patience, and some elbow grease. As you can see from my videos, the effort is well worth it. There is a lot of support material to clean out from some very tight spaces, and overworking it may result in some unwanted "features" on your frame.

A previous iteration where I punched through the floor. This has been fixed, but does give some idea about how little space there is to work with.

I can't wait to release this to you all and I'm looking forward to seeing your builds.