Navigation:
Tech index -> Custom Work -> Invert Mini integrated drop forward

This was my first accessory for the Invert Mini. Aroudn the time the marker was released in 2006 I was working on some frame-routed air supply designs of my own, so when the Mini was released I was of course interested to see how its manufacturer chose to do things. But there was a catch with the design: it constrained people into using a "no drop" setup. Of course by this time drop forwards in general had lost much of their popularity in favor of no-drop setups, but I still like the idea of giving people the option if they indeed want to use a drop.

The difficulty with an Invert Mini drop forward is that the air channel has to be routed internally, from the bottom regulator up to the top air chamber connection. I've seen a few homemade drops on the internet that used external hoses, but I wanted a true integrated drop instead of a hosed version to keep with the Mini's hoseless nature.

My first halfway-decent functional design looked like this:

...which eventually evolved into this:

The above CAD model is ultimately the version I ended up producing, which has accurate features to fit the Mini's reg and dovetail hardware. Once prototyped, this is how it looks on an actual marker:

I recorded this video to vocalize pretty much everything you just read :)

Production; Availability:
After posting that video I started receiving daily requests for the drop forwards so I created an initial batch of around 30 units in July of 2010. I ran into some problems with getting them anodized (the correct tolerances were not observed), and ended up stripping the whole batch back to their original raw/unanodized state. At this point I lost steam in the project due to the problems, and the drop forwards sat in a box for 6 months before I finally decided to finish them up. I hand-sanded down the edges so they would be presentable, then sold them "raw" so people could have them anodized to match their markers on their own. I quickly sold 10 of them to various followers of the website, but of course most people were interested in buying nice anodized ones instead of dealing with the raw parts.

In June of 2011 I begun making plans for a "new" production batch which would be anodized in black and silver. By this point I had sold around 20 total and hadn't heard a single problem or complaint. For such a simple product, it has actually been in the hands of testers since April 2010. Anyway, I finished work on the first real production batch then released them along with the other initial Nummech products. When I do another production batch I'll make sure to provide some other color options.

Navigation:
Tech index -> Custom Work -> Invert Mini integrated drop forward