40MAX Lightning PCAR and Muzzle Tip

I was looking for solutions to improve the accuracy of my AIT Toys 40MAX Lightning blaster, and found the barrel upgrade by JC Works. But I'm lazy and didn't want to disassemble the blaster to try it. So I threw together a quick design that friction fits onto the muzzle of the Lightning inspired by Chuck Bengis' orange muzzle tip. These barrel sleeves slide in from the muzzle and come to a rest inside the barrel just after the plastic barrel next to the flywheels.

I took 3 tries to get a good fit, with the smooth barrel sleeve a bit too tight killing the dart velocity;  and the second attempt with the 3x7 deg PCAR based off the worker PCAR much too loose to get any help centering for the dart. If someone wants to keep tweaking these feel free. The smooth barrel probably needs to have 0.5-0.75mm larger inner diameter, and the transition at the inlet could probably use some work. The 7 deg PCAR just needs to have a much larger bite, which I'm achieving with the 10 deg version.

I'm currently using the 3x10 degree PCAR, although I'm sure there's plenty of room for more optimization; but I'm happy enough with this version to stop iterating on it. I also designed and included a 4x and 6x 10 deg PCAR, but those have not yet been printed or tested. I'm happy enough with the 3x10 version that I'll leave that up to someone else to dig into if they're interested.

The tip has a slot for the battery to clip in for those who like having the battery disconnected during storage/when not in use, so it's easy to keep the battery in the compartment and disconnected then just give it a push to re-connect. The square muzzle tip is compatible with the cutout at the bottom of the TPU holster 40MAX published.

For performance, I measured the muzzle velocity with 10 fresh from the box Worker 1.0g darts on SEMI with firmware V9.0.8 and the battery at 2/4 bars on the D4 speed.

I don't have a good setup to quantify accuracy, but at ~30 feet shooting at a 12"x12" target, the stock barrel hit 11/20 shots, and the 3x10 deg PCAR hit 19/20 shots. But I'm also not the most accurate with the pistol yet, so the variation in accuracy could just as easily be down to me needing to get good.

I printed on the Bambu A1 with the 0.08 layer high quality preset with 5 walls and 20% adaptive cubic infill using SUNLU PETG and did a light sanding with 240 grit sandpaper on the inside of the sleeves to smooth out the seam. For the PCAR versions I painted the seam to avoid the rifling.

I highly recommend printing these in PETG or another higher temperature filament, as the barrel gets noticeably warm from the flywheel motors.

The sleeve is a tight fit, I've found that the easiest way to remove it is to grab the sides and twist while pulling to break it loose, then it comes out easily.