UTMC

http://news.yahoo.com/you-don-t-bring-a ... --yet.html


Guns, from your computer!!! Available to anyone!!! all you need is a 3-d printer.

You can make a receiver like Guslick's out of plastic because it houses only the basic mechanical parts of a firearm -- the trigger mechanism, the magazine, and other components. It's the barrel of a gun and/or the firing chamber, both of which you attach to the receiver, that must be strong enough to contain the heat and explosive pressure that comes from firing a round. A project like that of Defense Distributed and its Wiki Weapon poses a much harder challenge, as Guslick explains on his site (links added where appropriate):

Well, this was only a question of time. Pretty foreseeable, really. There are 3D printers out there that work with steel and titanium, good enough to make tools and the like with, so I wouldn't put some gone components past 'em.

As long as barrels are a problem though, I think there is little to worry about. If barrels weren't a problem, folk would be making submachine guns aplenty, the HEAP gun wasn't the first idea. Heck, the Polish resist ance made Sten guns in basements during the war and I recall some clever book where the author described how to make a t working submachine gun from pipe fittings, using hydraulic tubes as an un-rifled barrel. That stuff is old, so not much of a threat.
Except some clever folk might work out how to make the parts to turn a semi-automatic version of an assault weapon into a full auto version. After which it may only be a question of time until someone works out how to 3D print the tools to rifle a barrel with. In which case Mr. Rock's proposed bullet control would become a useful idea.

Come to think of it - 3D printed shotguns shouldn't be a graet problem at all, really. As soon as metal-working 3D printers become more widespread, I'm sure we'll hear from some about the desperate need to control this technology so to death that average people no longer get access to it, hence ruining the potentially bright future where we can all make stuff we want.

Ima 3d print a big bone and beat the other monkeys with it.

Um, I didn't read the article but additive manufacturing, even for small low-grade plastics, requires a machine starting at ~2K.

I read the old 'turn a Zippo lighter into a gun' pamphlet way back when. I recall it basically being a leaf spring with a crude firing pin and some lead melted around a pipe barrel.

You can get an ABS-plastic 3D printer for a few hundred bucks. Soon enough, additive manufacturing (I don't like that term, it's additive fabrication, isn't it?) with metal will soon enough spread far enough that you can walk into a machine shop and get fabricated whatever you can blueprint. Depending on the component's shape, whether anyone can recognize they'd go into a gun, or the respectability of whoever runs that shop, you could surely walk out with gun parts. Heck, it might be a main reason for some people to apply to work in a place like that.

I don't know about that Zippo gun, but the one I was thinking of was pretty similar to the Sten. It's really a million times simpler than any semi-auto firearm, in WW2 the Brits found it cheaper to make than any handgun. Little wonder it would attract the interest of anyone trying to improvise a gun.

Sounds like the Welrod pistol. Which raises the point that people have been able to make effective firearms (submachineguns even) with basic machine tools since st least WW2. Also, in the US it would probably be a lot easier to just buy one isn't a gun show instead of building your own.

E: Autocorrect has gone completely insane. I'm leaving it in, but isn't=at.

DerGolgo wrote:... Except some clever folk might work out how to make the parts to turn a semi-automatic version of an assault weapon into a full auto version.....

easily done to a SKS or AK-47, can be done in an adverage garage. The SKS just needs a matchbook spring. Thats why full auto SKS's were common in the Det.

Let me know when someone can print a designer virus

Small arms will soon be the least of our worries.

/RM

happycommuter wrote:Um, I didn't read the article but additive manufacturing, even for small low-grade plastics, requires a machine starting at ~2K.

Apparently the guy crowdsourced enough funding to get a lease on a printer, but the printer company (this particular one) decided that they didn't want to wade into the gray waters with him and cancelled the lease.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/3d-gun-blocked/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


I get the impression that the guy is more interested in the end result- a gun in his hand that he doesn't have to interact with the existing regulatory and retail channels to own- than he is in the mechanics or design of either firearms or 3d printers.

With my own personal bias-goggles on, what I see going on here is not 'advancing technology' but 'evading regulation'.

Oh no!

Next, someone is going to start 3D printing dildos and then we're all fucked.

In an attempt to pry my bias-goggles off I headed over to the guy's website to check it out and read the faq.

http://defensedistributed.com/faqs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

WikiWep is about challenging gun control and regulation. Economic or reliability advantages vs. traditional guns or gun production aren’t even at issue. We look to inspire and defend those who live (and are threatened to live) under politically oppressive regimes. Firearm Rights are Human Rights.

As far as advancing the technology goes, there are well-funded parties with an interest in this as well.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlog/ ... 00814.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And also more humanitarian ones:

This company is using a simple kiln design to help Kenyan farmers. They have outfitted shipping containers into 'mobile factories' to get the technology where it's needed without shipping.


http://www.fastcompany.com/1805296/how- ... save-money" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How have you built a business around biochar?

In Kenya, we produce and sell a device called a rutuba kiln. In Kiswahili, "rutuba" means soil fertility. The kiln costs us $25-30 to produce and we sell it to a farmer for less than the cost of two bags of fertilizer. Most farmers in a year purchase 2-3 bags of fertilizer and that's typically the largest single purchase that they make. We make the kilns out of repurposed oil barrels in "mobile factories." In places like rural Africa, it's really hard to import and transport finished goods efficiently, so we decided to take a 20-foot shipping container and turn it into a rutuba kiln factory. We outfitted a container with advanced metal fabrication tools in the U.S. and shipped it to Kenya. That container is now our production shop, which allows us to produce kilns locally. This model is scalable. We can deliver factories anywhere in the world that a shipping container can go. We go after 1-2 acre farmers who are farming sugar cane and maize, which means they are earning, on average, $300-600 a year. But much of their production is sold by them directly in the marketplace, which means they are not just farmers but small-business people. They can purchase the kiln outright or they can pay for it over time. The farmer takes the kiln and uses the waste they are producing--things like sugar cane waste, corn cobs, leaves, and stalks--and converts the waste into biochar. Then the farmer can take apply the biochar directly to his field to make it more fertile, or take the biochar and turn it into charcoal briquettes which they can use as fuel to cook food. We find that it only takes the farmer about six months to reap the savings from the briquettes and the increased crop yield necessary to pay for the kiln.

I had a 3d printer once. I called it a Bridgeport.
(Actually it was just one small part of my 3d printer, that also included a few other equally smallish parts, non of which were really that small.)

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/staples-goes-3-d/

Mike Senese on wired.com wrote:Staples Announces In-Store 3-D Printing Service

Bitches, it's HERE!
And it's not two guys with long hair in a back-alley garage in Silicon Valley, it's motherfucking STAPLES!
Short of Wal Mart offering such services, a worldwide chain of big-box office supply stores is as motherfucking mainstream as this is gonna get before we all buy our own.
Imagine that. Joe Bob and Cletus wanna convert their smei-auto AR-15s to full auto to fight ZOG. And where is their first port of call? Staples!

Pattio wrote:In an attempt to pry my bias-goggles off I headed over to the guy's website to check it out and read the faq.

http://defensedistributed.com/faqs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

WikiWep is about challenging gun control and regulation. Economic or reliability advantages vs. traditional guns or gun production aren’t even at issue. We look to inspire and defend those who live (and are threatened to live) under politically oppressive regimes. Firearm Rights are Human Rights.

Sounds like one of those people more concerned about saving guns from humans than the other way 'round. Sad.

This story has legs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


So it’s looking like sharp-end of the government’s interest in this comes from regulated weapons-manufacture. As with all things technological, the cat is out of the bag and available through the pirate bay, but the gears are turning.

I of course have my own moral overlay to my perception of this guy and his printable gun project, and there’s no need to be coy about my opinion that he should meet his demise in a pratfall on a cactus. I find myself increasingly aware that what is really going to drive the actions on this is going to be the interests of established manufactures when their revenue stream is threatened by 3D printing. Who goes first? It’s always the drugs, the porn, the weapons that go first into new technologies and new revenue streams. Who can fight? The established interests.

This was on Bill Maher last night, and I honestly felt ashamed for the liberals present.
One lady went on explaining "who'd want that? Who'd want a gun printer?" and so on and so forth.
I think the idea of guns being "easy" to make is bad, really, but it's also not quite as bad as many make it out, and such reactions are a quite nice summary. People see a "gun printer". They don't see a socket-wrench printer, they don't see a frying pan printer, they don't see a hip-replacement printer. No, they see a gun printer. This technology is getting the gun stigma attached to it. Ensuring people don't run around making as many guns as they want is important, yes, but when you must either get a government license to use this technology or submit your blueprints for review before you can get it made, it's fucked up. This could eventually become a significant equalizer in the world of manufacturing. If your factory can make one item a thousand times on monday, and a hundred other items ten times each on tuesday, that would surely give your factory a competitive edge over the other guy who can only make the same stuff every day. When, eventually, it's not a lot less cost effective to make something in some 3D printing factory than it is to have molds and patterns made and then have it injection molded a million times in China, manufacturing in the west might become slightly more competitive again. Especially when the long tail is getting served, which mass production in China isn't quite as good at (what with a container ship still taking weeks to make the trip). But with the gun stigma, all the incremental steps that go in between for this technology would be hobbled. Fucking heck.

As regards that Bill Maher show, they didn't mention specifics, but Zachary Quinto mentioned it hat "one titanium part". Couldn't find much about it on the google just now, except that the barrel in the CAD file appears to be a smoothbore, and at least one mention that it actually appears to be plastic, too.
If it is, in fact, plastic, that term "single shot pistol" would probably be over-appropriate, wouldn't it? As for the mention of titanium... probably not the barrel.
At least I don't see it in the pictures:


While I was in rehab after my hip surgery, I had a conversation about titanium and metal detectors with another patient. He was a sports-shooter, so he knew guns. He made his living as an engineer for a company that makes wheel-nuts and bolts for BMW and some major truck manufacturers. In particular, he oversees the heat-treatment of the raw metal. So he knows metals. He also had had ample chance to test out the reaction of metal detectors to his own titanium bits, and they don't notice them. I wondered whether the authorities weren't concerned with titanium guns getting smuggled aboard airplanes. Nope, they wouldn't be, because the first bullet fired through a titanium barrel would rip that barrel apart. Titanium isn't nearly ductile enough to survive the pressure and that bullet getting pressed through there, it's downright brittle. Even if the barrel was made from some ductile non-ferrous material and only lined with titanium, for the rifling, that wouldn't survive the first bullet, either. I don't know enough about guns to judge this myself, and we never studied titanium much when I was at university (engineering is steel, you only use other stuff when you have absolutely no way of using steel), all I recall is that it's modulus of elasticity was, like it's density, about halfway between aluminum and steel, but it's ridiculously hard, so brittleness does make sense. And yet, they insist on using a cordless electric screwdriver for putting the titanium screws into bone, rather than a torque wrench. That engineer and I had a good round of dumping on the quacks on that account, broken screws in bones weren't new to him, either.

I too was saddened by the alarmist tone on Bill Maher's show. I'm a big believer in the future and see home manufacture as a major part of the next(currently occurring?) technological revolution, and as much as the rebel in me says Defense Distributed is doing good work (information should be free, you know the broad position) this is press 3D printing doesn't need right now, especially when the tech already exists to print in metals, although I doubt anyone is up to the level of rifled barrels yet.

Of course, I've been toying with a design for a smooth bore 12ga pistol as an academic idea for a bit now, but my idea would require machining, and probably a Mean Chuck sized operator.

/RM

I doubt that 3-D printing will replace zip gun manufacturing at home anytime soon.

http://www.techworld.com.au/slideshow/4 ... s/?image=3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

i suspected as much. gun go boom, but the wrong way around

Did they make that one out of the wrong plastic?
I assume there is a pretty tight spec on the type to use in that plan, just winding light structural stuff we use occasionally at the job (not in a printer) is mind numbing in the vast array of types there are.

This is a flyover of the many ways the military is considering and developing this technology. While Beavis the troublemaking law student is huh-huh-ing his way to a crap unregistered handgun, the big boys are looking at supply chains, aeroplanes, medicine, shelter, and all manner of materiel.

http://armedforcesjournal.com/2013/05/13520067/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tea, Earl Gray, Hot.

Cheaper (for now) and simpler to go to an assault rifle build party, and you get a nice reliable rifle, not a bulky handgun that breaks after a few shots (for now).

3D printers are not all that exciting at the moment for mass production of plastic objects, but they seem very nice for rapid prototyping and iteration, as well as for creating small objects sort of on demand. As a fan of board games, I'm looking forward to the day I can download and print a set of rules for a new game, and then also download and print the pieces.

Sonic Rob wrote:Cheaper (for now) and simpler to go to an assault rifle build party, and you get a nice reliable rifle, not a bulky handgun that breaks after a few shots (for now).

I clicked that. Literally the second I started that video, I stopped another video player, playing something entirely unrelated. Same fucking music score as the closing credits of the other thing. At first, I thought I hadn't stopped the other player. Would really have just been slightly disorienting and amusing, had it not been for what the other player had been playing exactly, what had the same music score in it's closing credits. It was a first season episode of Fringe. That was ... disturbing and exciting, both at the same time.