the AK50 is his channel's money
That's why I can't hate, because he's not "The AK Guy" - he's a full time youtuber playing a character who's convinced he's the hybrid of FPS Russia and Nic Cage in Lord of War. And with the meme review stuff he probably captured the attention of a ton of zoomers we need on our side.
But goddamn with every update it seems he hasn't unfucked his manufacturing capabilities and needs to pay out the ass to have his one off prototypes machined somewhere else.
It's kind of disappointing to see but a ton of people, both self-taught and formally educated, are stuck in this CAD -> 3d print -> CNC machining loop. When you have to machine one off fuck huge chunks of 4140/4150 steel and you're not blessed with a company's R&D budget, iterative design gets expensive fast.
In the old days, prototypes got frankensteined. If a change was needed, they'd put the part on a manual mill (or straight up go at it with a hand file), drill, tap, then bolt a new chunk into it. It's not going to need to last more than a hundred rounds anyway. He said the v2 prototype was close to three digits in round count. So he probably spent thousands on a prototype just to shoot 90 rounds and start over again.
His shop must have at least a compressor. How come he's never thought about rigging a hammer valve like the ones used on airguns to blast the piston with air so he can mimic the semi-automatic cycle without having to finish a prototype and shoot a real 50 BMG round?
I don't think he plans to sell them, at this point it's just a meme project his autistic fanbase bullies him into continuing at this point.
I actually think he wants to finish it, but he can't manage a project to save his life and it gets in the way of sipping White Claws with his youtube buddies.