[Etacovda]

its gone from overly complicated to still complicated but not even (ie, the die will not be cooled evenly)... It seems like you're making this hard on yourself for the express purpose of being so (its gonna take some work to get that right on a manual mill).

I'm all for design for the fun of it, but realistically you're throwing a dart at a wall blindfolded and expecting to hit a pin prick... the difference between block designs is extremely small, hard to measure even with the 'best' measuring equipment - im going to assume you don't have access to this gear, so at the end of the day, WHATEVER you decide to do may or may not work, and you will have no way to prove it... when you're using no maths or theory to figure out your block design, and have no ACCURATE way to test blocks, it starts getting mighty 'ballpark'-ish. I assume you know this already, though.

Just to be clear, im not being a 'downer' and completely cynical here, its good fun experimenting like this (as many here have, myself included) - but if you dont have the gear to test etc, it might be an idea to start out with a few simple designs with varying dimensions, and test them in the best way you can, then test them. You can combine concepts etc then, and get an idea of what the best way to go is.

Do you have any test gear? how are you going to evaluate your final design?

Remember, an extremely simple cross milled block with the correct dimensions will perform very close to the complicated block you're making now - channel widths, height, restriction, base thickness etc on well designed blocks are not happy coincidences, they're made like they are for a reason, so someone designing and making a block using maths can make something extremely simple that may well wop the pants off what you're making now...

Once again, this isnt an insult etc, I just want to know the direction you're heading in. These changes you're making can make or break a design - one simple change can gain 0.5 degrees, but done incorrectly (channel width, depth, dimensions, relations, WHATEVER) can just as easily lose 0.5 degrees... its swings and roundabouts, without numbers or prototypes, these changes may or may not help, and when your design is as complicated as it is, using a manual mill, perhaps designing from a different perspective might save some headaches.