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Development lab: Universal foregrip extender Once the Mini foregrip extenders were released, I heard many players mention that they were interested in installing one on their Empire Axe even though its foregrip is already shifted forward compared to Minis. It should be noted that the Mini foregrip extender will place the foregrip further forward compared to the Axe position, but it certainly seems players are looking for the ability to extend Axe foregrips too.
To this end, I immeditely begun working on the next iteration of extenders, which are intended to adapt onto either a Mini or Axe. These will pave the way for future variations of extenders too.
Prototype "universal" extender installed on a test marker. This is very similar to the current production version.
The overall design and layout follows the same goals as the original Mini-only extender, with the obvious added characteristic of attaching to the trigger guard dovetail. The Mini-only foregrip extenders attach to the two transfer plate screw holes near the front of the body, but those screw holes have been moved to a different location on Axes. Therefore the only option was to reverse-engineer the stock parts even further and create a male-to-female adapter. The shape of the new bottom mount section is more defined but it has been sculpted to leave as much room as possible for fingers.
The biggest complaint I've heard about the extenders are actually from players that don't own a Mini: some people believe the shape of the extenders clashes with the stock milling. Well, some of this can be improved by adding additional details, but there are some limitations that need to be explained. Mainly, the current machining process doesn't involve any milling onto the "side" of the extender (only the topside and underside, and the front/back for the bottom component). Despite this, we were able to add some small but noticeable tweaks to a few spots on the new Universal extenders. Firstly, the top-facing area located under the barrel has been fluffed with additional milling. Also, the bottom area near the transfer plate has some new cuts made to help drift everything together. I think everyone will be pleased with this one even more than the last.
Foregrip extender bottom sections in the middle of their machining process.
Some players have asked about "upgrading" from the Mini version to the Universal version. Honestly I don't think this will be an issue since the extenders perform the same task, except that the newer one fits onto more than one marker. If you're looking for an extender to adapt on your marker and don't already have one, the Universal extender is what you'll want. But if you already have one, you're already set.
At the time of this writing the Universal extenders are in production and will be available soon.
Production Upon completing the parts they are now available for purchase! Check the product pages for official information and pictures.
Being as this was the first time we've ran production on these parts, we had to make many changes to the process from one feature to another. Notably, the fit on the female dovetail needed to be modified for a better fit after we had already completed the dovetail operation, which presented a problem because we never anticipated the need to "repair" the dovetails (this required some customized fixtures to hold the curved parts steady in the CNC). Also, the dovetail modification had to be even more precise than the dovetail was meant to be cut in the first place. It meant that once the repair cut was made, if it was either too loose OR too tight then the workpiece would be scrapped. You can take metal off but not put it back on.
When all was said and done we had about a half dozen scrapped parts, but they will make nice demos for picture taking. It's all in a days work in a precision manufacturing operation.
