So I bought a Norinco NDM-86 Dragunov chambered in 7.62x51 back in 2010. It's one of my favorite rifles that I own, my only real complaint has been the lack of magazine options available. There is one currently selling on Gunbroker for $300.
Being an engineering major and having spent the last few years 3d printing, I decided it was finally time to fix this issue. As a result I have my first completed prototype .308 Dragunov magazine. It uses the spring from a 10rd Magpul .308 magazine, but all other parts are printed in PLA+ currently. It holds ten rounds, seats perfectly in the receiver and feeds amazingly by hand. I also made sure to include a LRBHO function as many of the magazine conversions for this gun almost never have this feature.
Currently the only issues I can see is some minor bulging at around 0.8mm over the normal width when fully loaded, but it doesn't seem to effect loading and unloading the magazine from the rifle in any real significant way. A full mag will not drop free, but an empty mag has no issues falling free on its own. Something to work on in future iterations, but not a deal breaker ATM.
So far it works flawlessly cycling by hand so I will be taking it out within the next week to see how it does on the range before I clean up the lines, add some ribs to the external geometry and make this thing look pretty. Overall I spent around 20 bucks on the magpul magazine I stole the spring from, and around 5 bucks in PLA+ for a total savings of $275.
Being an engineering major and having spent the last few years 3d printing, I decided it was finally time to fix this issue. As a result I have my first completed prototype .308 Dragunov magazine. It uses the spring from a 10rd Magpul .308 magazine, but all other parts are printed in PLA+ currently. It holds ten rounds, seats perfectly in the receiver and feeds amazingly by hand. I also made sure to include a LRBHO function as many of the magazine conversions for this gun almost never have this feature.
Currently the only issues I can see is some minor bulging at around 0.8mm over the normal width when fully loaded, but it doesn't seem to effect loading and unloading the magazine from the rifle in any real significant way. A full mag will not drop free, but an empty mag has no issues falling free on its own. Something to work on in future iterations, but not a deal breaker ATM.
So far it works flawlessly cycling by hand so I will be taking it out within the next week to see how it does on the range before I clean up the lines, add some ribs to the external geometry and make this thing look pretty. Overall I spent around 20 bucks on the magpul magazine I stole the spring from, and around 5 bucks in PLA+ for a total savings of $275.
