I was too impatient to wait for the replacement parts from Arcol/Laszlo, so i ended up buying an e-bay hotend from a local reprapper.
It does have a week point (PTFE is a load-bearing component, so it's bound to fail at some point, event though there's a beefy heatsink acting as a barrier right beneath it), but has been working so far. And it's of a lower power than Arcol, so i had to do a lot of experimentation to figure out a way to cool the prints without cooling the hotend too much (if i direct a 50mm fan anywhere near the hotend, it can't keep up and starts cooling down to 100 deg C). I've insulated the side facing the fan with some ceramic (alumina, actually) cloth-tape-thing from Ultimachine.
Anyways, printed this today while i was working:
An even smaller one i've printed before that one, with translucent yellow/green filament turned out much better (without support, sans the tail).
But i ran out of that filament and accidentally splashed that print with acetone while cleaning the heatbed.
This was printed with a PLA sample i got from 2printbeta with an order. It's much much more stringy and the supports (at least slic3r's) are nearly impossible to separate from the object. I've actually cracked the legs on the lion while cleaning support and had to glue them back. Not sure why it's so stringy, especially considering it was printed at 175 deg C (which in itself means nothing, because i think my temps are off by 5 deg C or so, but i *normally* print at 185).
I'm out of that sample too, i think i'll try and calibrate for the black PLA next, then give printing out a set of herringbone gears a go...