"You don't bring a 3D printer to a gun fight -- yet" Topic

Jeez. You would think people have better things to do in their lives. Robert

"Welcome to the dark side of 3D printing.

The hobby is best known for creating colorful toys and trinkets, but some enthusiasts are working on design files that would allow anyone to print a working gun. These don't exist yet, but some believe it's only a matter of time.

Why would a 3D-printed gun be appealing? For one, it could potentially be cheap. You can buy a preassembled 3D printer for about $500. USD A spool of ABS plastic to print with goes for $50. USD Depending on where you shop, you can buy .38 Special ammunition for 30 cents a round. The plans will undoubted be distributed free like so many MP3s.

In fact, plans for working gun parts already exist. They can be found on a site called Thingiverse and on similar sites, alongside thousands of free plans for toys, jewelry, tools, and design equipment.

Thingiverse is a creation of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based MakerBot and its CEO, Bre Pettis. Pettis and his company have become the de facto faces of 3D printing thanks to regular appearances in mainstream and tech media talking about how 3D printers democratize manufacturing. Pettis usually demonstrates this idea with brightly colored remote-control cars, robots, and other toys made with MakerBot printers. MakerBot and Pettis don't really talk about files related to gun parts.

That doesn't mean the issue has gone unnoticed, with the intersection of 3D printing and firearms having made the news a few times this year. In June, Michael "HaveBlue" Guslick reported on his blog about successfully test-firing a homemade gun whose key component, the lower receiver, he made from ABS plastic on a '90s-era Stratasys FDM 1600 3D printer.

And in August, Forbes' Andy Greenberg wrote about a group called Defense Distributed, which has some lofty goals as mapped out in the video below. In practical terms, their immediate aim is to create a design file for what they call a Wiki Weapon, a functional, 3D-printed firearm.

The increased attention on printable guns comes as Defense Distributed is approaching a firing test, said Cody Wilson, a University of Texas graduate student and the chief spokesman for the group. Depending on the outcome of that testing, 3D-printing companies, file-hosting sites, and law enforcement and legislative groups may have to tackle a challenging set of questions regarding the manufacture and regulation of firearms, both in this country and abroad."

Read more and watch the video at,

link

This is just plain dumb. With a little bit of thought a nail and some metal tubing you can make a gun. With access to the internet you can learn how to make a bomb out of house hold products. But they try to make this out to be some kind of danger or threat????

So for $550. USDoo you can make a plastic version of a gun that might blow up in your face if you used a .22 caliber bullet in it. hahahahah

why not go spend $200. USDoo and buy a real .22 and not worry about it possibly blowing up in your face.

An ABS gun?

No thank you.

I'm much more worried about the ATF's record of giving away real guns to bad people, than this.

And you can use the same files in an automated milling machine and produce the parts in weapon grade steel or aluminium …

If somebody wants to print his own Beretta in plastic, they are welcome to it, especially if they believe that those eyes and fingers are merely superfluous organs.

I think the problem is being able to get the plastic ones on airplanes, but even that is silly since the bullets and the received still need to be made of metal.

So what we end up with is a scare-mongering puff piece…

since ABS melts at 105C or 221F I would not trust it to make any type of a gun if the ABS held up to the firing pressures the temperatures involved would deform the weapon to such an extent it would be useless after one round

Well the CIA, could save a fortune.. instead of setting up ghost companies and shipping arms across international borders to supply "freedom fighters" they could just get HP to ship them a 3d printer and a USB stick of files.. now that would help cut the US Debts.

As Iron Wolf points out, even in the UK, it still fairly easy to get your hands on a firearm is you wanted one, or to make a home made variant.

Some of the cheap metal replicas, can be easily "activated" as it were.. by anyone with a modicum of engineering skills. They won't last as long as a properly made firearm but the yob on the street doesn't know the difference.

In the general scheme of things, I doudt its a major worry yet.

It's not really about gun 'control', its about the 'fun police' getting control of as much creative capability as possible, so they can dictate who you have to buy from & how much you will pay. Way to go Rupert.

Its also what a certain, fruity, computer company is trying to do with their 'fan' computer products – you have to buy all your content from 'us', and if you try to do anything we don't like, all your personal files will disappear, because you didn't buy them from us.

Then you can get into restrictive software licences, which basically say if you ever use a product, everything you ever create belongs to them, forever.

…successfully test-firing a homemade gun whose key component, the lower receiver, he made from ABS plastic on a '90s-era Stratasys FDM 1600 3D printer.

That's hardly a gun.

Well, they are saying that the larger calibers, .38 and above may not cause as much heat or other damage to the composite materials. Also, it might be easy to make barrels and some receiver parts in metal and the rest with the 3D printing. Who is to say that composites don't get a lot more robust, say with the addition of ground up metal fragments?

As stated by others, no bigger risk than what exists out there by going to a hardware store right now. A lot less trouble just to buy a ready made legal or illegal gun anyway. I think the bigger concern is that we have an illegal gun manufacturing cottage industry. As much as the U.S. likes to claim the right to bear arms, there are quite a few regulations from the federal level that make the actual making of guns more difficult. However, if you make it for personal use, I believe the article states that you do have the right to do so in the U.S.

I saw another show where the Federal government wasn't too happy with a Montana manufacturer that made receivers and other parts for assault type weapons. Even though he wasn't making full guns, they still weren't happy.

Never mind guns – I'm gonna build an Ogre (still deciding what mark).

They're rarely are……

But think of all the bright colors and designs you can make you firearms in!

Well it does warn you in the article,

"The problem is that even the strongest 3D-printable thermoplastic currently available for the FDM process (Ultem 9085) doesn't even have half the tensile strength needed to withstand the 24,000 psi maximum allowed chamber pressure of the .22LR round as defined by SAAMI (the Sporting Arms and Manufacturer's Institute).

As such, yes, a 100 percent 3D-printed gun made on a RepRap could certainly go "bang," but even with a barrel of large enough diameter to keep it from exploding, there would be so much deformation in the bore that most of the available energy would be sapped by gas leakage around the projectile (to say nothing of the utter lack of accuracy). In the end, you'd have a smoking, charred crater left for a barrel bore after the single shot."

Robert

Y'all might want to look at the maximum pressures allowed for a shotgun. Those tend to run about 6000psi, IIRC, which would allow a printed firearm to survive the firing.

This is ridiculous. As Ironwolf pointed out, you can just buy a real .22 for $200. USD Or a substantially more powerful bolt action rifle for as little as $75. USD My mosin-nagant was $35. USD My No.5 enfield (Sadly sporterized…) was $100. USD

Both fire ammunition that pierces most current body armour and can compromise trauma plates with ease.

And yet, there is a fear that someone might make an ineffective plastic gun with a rapid prototype machine?

.410 perhaps? And of course why just concentrate on the US. If it were any possible how helpful would it be in countries that don't allow firearms for those who want them to make them and then use them? That is a big IF. But just wondering. Robert

I forgot to mention that there were .410 guage shotgun canes out there so perhaps its something that could be used. Robert

" I'm gonna build an Ogre "

I thought I'd start small with a 3D printed ballistic missile sub of my very own.

Anyone can make a gun with a degree of engineering skill, whether they are legal or not is another matter, as is their potential lethality to to user.

The next article with company responses,

"Which 3D-printing service will make you a gun?

After looking into the current state of 3D-printed gun-making, CNET's Rich Brown asked the various 3D-printing services about their policies toward printing firearms and firearm components.

As I explored in this post, while it's possible to print a working firearm component with a 3D printer, it's not exactly the best way to create such a component. Still, more people might experiment with the idea as 3D printers become more common. And as 3D-printing technology develops alongside that growth, so will the popularity of 3D-printing services--companies that print objects for you based on plans you submit.

I contacted each of the below vendors asking them about their policies in regard to printing guns or gun components, and whether they will print either if a customer submits a design."

link

Robert

Just as an off thought. It would make it easy to make camouflaged weapons . Robert

Hobbyist builds working assault rifle using 3D printer

It hasn't blown to pieces yet

By Neil McAllister in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Data Centre, 30th July 2012 21:07 GMT

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Hobbyists have used 3D printers to make guitars, copy house keys, and bring robot dinosaurs to life, but a firearms enthusiast who goes by the handle "Have Blue" has taken this emerging technology into a new realm by assembling a working rifle from 3D-printed parts.

Specifically, ExtremeTech reports, Have Blue used 3D CAD files to print the lower receiver part of an AR-15 class assault rifle – the style of gun the US military has called an M16. The lower receiver is sometimes referred to as the "body" of the weapon, which houses the trigger assembly, the magazine, and the safety selector.

The lower receiver of a factory-produced AR-15 is usually made of metal, typically stamped aluminum. Have Blue made his out of the standard ABS plastic used by low-end 3D printers. He then combined it with off-the-shelf, metal AR-15 parts to complete the weapon.

The next step was to actually fire it. Have Blue started by chambering the gun for .22 caliber pistol rounds, a relatively low-powered ammunition. After firing 200 rounds, he announced to an online AR-15 forum that it "runs great!"

He then re-assembled the weapon to use .223 caliber rifle ammunition and tried again. "No, it did not blow up into a bazillion tiny plastic shards and maim me for life," he said, but the combination of the homemade and off-the-shelf parts wasn't working all that well, causing the gun to jam. Try, try again.

Image of AR-15 rifle assembled from 3D-printed parts

It's 3D-printed plastic, but it works, and it has no license or serial number. (Source: Haveblue.org)

Where this all gets interesting is in the potential legal ramifications of what Have Blue has done. It is legal in most US states to purchase AR-15 style rifles, provided the purchaser is licensed, which involves a background check.

It is difficult to get around the license requirements by purchasing the gun in pieces and assembling it yourself, because at least one piece – the lower receiver – carries a serial number and must always be purchased from a federally licensed arms dealer.

Without the lower receiver, the gun can't fire, so under US law the lower receiver essentially is the gun. The other components are less closely regulated and can be purchased online or from unlicensed dealers.

But Have Blue didn't buy his lower receiver from anyone. He made it himself. Using his method, potentially anyone could assemble a completed rifle from mail-order parts without any government licensing or registration at all.
Image of AR-15 rifle lower receiver printed on a 3D printer

It may not look like much, but the gun won't fire without it. (Source: Thingiverse.com)

It's not entirely as simple as that, though. First, although Have Blue says he used between $30 USD and $50 USD worth of plastic to print the gun, 3D printers that can output items the size of the AR-15 lower receiver are still expensive. But their cost is declining.

Second, a 3D printer cannot print ammunition. But given that accused Aurora, Colorado shooter James Holmes was found to have stockpiled some 6,000 rounds of ammo that he purchased online, the prospect of individuals being able to assemble working, unlicensed weapons using 3D printing technology should give regulators in the US and abroad some pause"

link

"The next step was to actually fire it. Have Blue started by chambering the gun for .22 caliber pistol rounds, a relatively low-powered ammunition. After firing 200 rounds, he announced to an online AR-15 forum that it "runs great!"

He then re-assembled the weapon to use .223 caliber rifle ammunition and tried again. "No, it did not blow up into a bazillion tiny plastic shards and maim me for life," he said, but the combination of the homemade and off-the-shelf parts wasn't working all that well, causing the gun to jam. Try, try again."

So for him the jamming was the only problem? Robert