3D printed gun

The evening news report on this story was typical OTT nonsense. Why buy an $8,000 dollar printer to make a gun when all I need is a 3 pound hammer and an inattentive cop to hit over the head.

GreyGhost said:

The evening news report on this story was typical OTT nonsense. Why buy an $8,000 dollar printer to make a gun when all I need is a 3 pound hammer and an inattentive cop to hit over the head.

I just want a 3D printer so I can finally pirate a house.

Clonehunter said:

I think my High School has one of these printers though... And by that anyone of those kids could be a maniac... They could make a plstic gun... OH SHIT QUICK BAN 3D PRINTERS! But wait no, it's the High School that has the weapon builder... Ban High Schools! But a kid made it! BAN CHILDREN!

Let alone that High Schools have Chemistry Labs... and you can make explosives and/or poisons with Chemistry! Ban Chemistry! Science must be practiced only by a state-controlled elite! See what peasants did with Black Powder 500 years ago!

Americans aren't far off that. In Texas you need permission to buy lab-quality glassware.

Maybe they'll monitor how much plastic filament you can buy. This way they can impede you from making mass quantities of plastic guns for the black market; much like they limit how much a non-commercial farmer can buy fertilizer.

The only real good use I can see with this is making Airsoft guns, maybe they can wind up being cheaper to buy if they're made this way but I don't know really.

Technician said:

What, do you like in a cave? Are your tools made from wood and bone? Everything is made from plastic and metal these days, especially plastic.

Objects I have interacted with today:

-Bed w/ frame, mattress, cover and sheets
-Clock radio
-Cell phone, answering machine and cordless phones
-Clothing, towels, bags, asst. fabric items
-Shoes
-Dressers, tables, chairs, couches, misc. large furniture
-Soap and cleaning products, various
-Toothbrushes, other hygiene tools
-Vacuum, broom, dustpan
-Washer, dryer
-Interior fixtures (door knobs, plastic light switches/switch plates, faucets)
-Toilets, sinks, shower
-Toilet paper, tissues
-Trash receptacles, littler trash receptacles, plastic bags
-Refrigerators, cupboards, various kitchen appliances and cookware, plastic ladle, spatula
-Plastic food containers
-Variously packaged food products
-Ceramic plates, glassware, metal cutlery
-Spiral-bound paper notebooks and binders
-Laptop and desktop computers, asst. accessories
-Various packaged medications, transparent dosage cups
-Attends absorbent briefs (don't ask)
-Televisions, remote controls
-Various locks, various keys
-2002 Toyota Echo sedan (forest green)
-Wallets, money
-mp3 player, headphones

Underlined items are those that could conceivably be printed while still having the material properties, functionality and appearance that we take for granted today. I could also be wrong about a few of these - 3D printed plastics might not make non-toxic, heat-resistant cooking tools, and 3D metal printers might not be able to produce "polished" cutlery.

You could argue that a few other objects on this list have printable components, and that occasionally it could be cheaper to have one of these printed rather than machined or shipped due to availability, shipping or licensing issues, but having the part is only half the battle and an average consumer would still need to hire professional involvement to fix their Dell or their Maytag in either case. The average Joe will never own a 3D printer and I'll be surprised if even a "Kinko's" style 3D print shop could survive. These things are a fabrication/invention tool, and the people who do that kind of thing already have access to a company/university/"hacker space" with the printer that they need.

The day that 3D printers have actual consumer applications is the day you can print a working smartphone, and for less money than just buying one from Foxconn.

No printed/layer deposition/sintering process can rival moulded/lathed objects made from a monolithic block of any material in terms of surface finish, strength etc.

TBQH, I'm quite surprised that a "printed" barrel can withstand even a single shot from a .22 round (which is what's portrayed in that BBC article, if you watch the gun's case cloesely). If you consider THAT firearm dangerous, then what about this?



BTW, check out what kind of weaponry can be found out there, usually at flea markets or novelty shops for single-digit prices.

As for "3D printing being the future of manufacturing", that's bullshit. It's pretty much like debating that DVD-R and CD-R can replac pressed DVDs and CDs and the respective plants, or that a bunch of dubbing boomboxes could replace industrial tape duplication facilities.

3D printing is good only for producing, well, 3D mockups of objects, not to replace actual industrial-scale manufacturing or even proper small scale manufacturing by e.g. CNC lathes.

Technician said:

I just want a 3D printer so I can finally pirate a house.

I can get you a good deal on bio-degradable plastic. ;-)

Maes said:

As for "3D printing being the future of manufacturing", that's bullshit. It's pretty much like debating that DVD-R and CD-R can replac pressed DVDs and CDs and the respective plants, or that a bunch of dubbing boomboxes could replace industrial tape duplication facilities.

/B]

So you mean... completely replaced? ;-)

The fact that they can 3D print a gun is far less concerning than the fact that it's possible to 3D print a completely plastic gun that won't be picked up by metal detectors.

Mr. T said:

So you mean... completely replaced? ;-)

In all of the above cases (CD/DVD/tape duplication, CNC machining, 3D printing etc.) there have always been several possible answers, depending on where one stands:

• "Happy-go-lucky"/"Joe Sixpack" response: "Whoahhhh!!!! This NEW and ENHANCED technology X will TOTALLY replace process Y! Now you can do Y at home using only X! (where X and Y are processes intended to produce almost the same result, but with different costs/scales in mind, typically in a consumer vs professional scenario).
  
• Large/Medium Scale Industrialist: "Y is the way to go in the industry, X is for amateur/consumer use only"
  
• Small Scale Professional: depends. For rapid prototyping or small batches I'd choose X, but for any larger job I'd go with Y".
  

Now, granted, in some cases the limits are blurred. E.g. duplicating 100 CDs is certainly a small task, small enough to do economically by CD-R. What about 1000, though? 10000? Where do you place the limit? Similarly for 3D printing, which however, unlike CD/DVD duplication, is more like a "solution in search of a problem": it cannot compete (yet) head-to-head with metallurgical or precision moulding processes, so its application niche is, for the time being, unknown.

fraggle said:

The fact that they can 3D print a gun is far less concerning than the fact that it's possible to 3D print a completely plastic gun that won't be picked up by metal detectors.

I wouldn't be surprised if the guns show up clearly on whole body x-ray scanners, plus the firing pin and bullets are rather difficult to replace with plastic counterparts.

GreyGhost said:

I wouldn't be surprised if the guns show up clearly on whole body x-ray scanners, plus the firing pin and bullets are rather difficult to replace with plastic counterparts.

What about poisoned plastic ninja stars with blood grooves?

fraggle said:

The fact that they can 3D print a gun is far less concerning than the fact that it's possible to 3D print a completely plastic gun that won't be picked up by metal detectors.

Technically speaking, the version they made has a 6 oz block of metal in the frame specifically to set off metal detectors, but yes, somebody who was planning something bad would ignore that step. The firing pin is a metal nail, but the amount of material is not enough to set off a metal detector on its own. Somebody pointed out to me that apparently the scanners at airports use shape recognition, that's why toy guns get flagged sometimes even though they're made out of cheap pot metal and plastic.

metal detectors would still pick up the bullets though.

Naked Snake said:

Somebody pointed out to me that apparently the scanners at airports use shape recognition, that's why toy guns get flagged sometimes even though they're made out of cheap pot metal and plastic.

Not only that, but they do this since the 50s. I mean, what operator would be so stupid as to ignore an obvious gun-shaped object in someone's baggage? ;-)

The great thing about 3D printing is that you can print any shape you want.

Naked Snake said:

but yes, somebody who was planning something bad would ignore that step

If doing something "bad" involves planes, and will probably get you arrested/killed in the process, going through such great lengths to conceal a bulky, plastic gun firing a single .22 round is probably not worth the effort.

Even if you do get it on the plane, try using it: you'll probably get it shoved up your ass before you actually fire that one, weak round.

I can't possibly see a practical use of such a gun for a hijacking or anywhere else where you need the ability to intimidate multiple people from a safe distance. It might only work if your target is nigh-unapproachable due to tight security, you only get one moment of (relative) closeness during which you can fire your pea shooter right between his eyes, and don't mind getting caught immediately afterwards, aka if you're dead-set on a desperate assassination attempt and you are considered disposable. But in such conditions, a plexiglass blade might work just as well, probably better.

Maes said:

Even if you do get it on the plane, try using it: you'll probably get it shoved up your ass before you actually fire that one, weak round.

lol - or you could make a plastic gun with a convenient shape to shove up your ass, easy to get it on board then :)

However, if you want to hijack a plane using intimidation then I very much doubt pointing a plastic dildo shaped gun at somebody is going to have the effect you desire.

Still, im sure somebody will try it one day *sigh*

Maes said:

What about poisoned plastic ninja stars with blood grooves?

Nice idea, if the x-ray scanners don't detect them and you're not clumsy enough to prick a finger on one. But would they be any more effective a weapon than your typical plastic airline knife?

The US government just stepped in.

http://defcad.org/
DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls.
Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.

Thanks, Obama.

Technician said:

The US government just stepped in.

Not before everyone downloaded the blueprints.

The horse has bolted, I think.

DoomUK said:

Not before everyone downloaded the blueprints.

The horse has bolted, I think.

That's not really the point here; but we'll see if the gov actually tries to do something stupid and declares the file contraband.

3D printers will keep getting more efficient, more diverse in material types, more cost-effective, faster and of course smaller. None of this will matter for a few years-- especially since humans, by their very nature, think linearly instead of exponentially, the latter of which is often the pace of technological acceleration. In other words? It will be a problem sooner than we think, and we won't see it coming. A portable 3D printer capable of printing additional printers, all of which print out fully functioning guns and bullets, is not only physically possible, but likely, considering that breakthroughs in 3D printing are being reported regularly.

GoatLord said:

A portable 3D printer capable of printing additional printers, all of which print out fully functioning guns and bullets, is not only physically possible, but likely, considering that breakthroughs in 3D printing are being reported regularly.

By that logic, since lathes can already carve metal, which is much better as a gun material than plastic, are lathes the next generation of 3D printing?

Being able to print "bullets" (among other things) requires a 3D printer them to do quite a bit more than depositing layers of plastic, namely the ability to do on-the-fly transmutation of elements, and so synthesizing any chemical substance, rather than using up some "universal" material.

A specialized 3D printer containing "reservoirs" of brass, steel, gunpowder, lead etc. would not count, as this would be a purpose-specific machine, not a miracolous Santa Claus machine, which is what you're envisaging. IN the next couple of decades there might be some advances to the materials usable for 3D printing (maybe derived from sintered bronze or metallic powders/foams), and maybe a combination of lathes/drills/3D printing in the same devices, with the ability to use monolithic pieces of e.g. steel to carve very robust parts.

But a Santa Claus device? Not without some major advances in nuclear physics and some infinite source of energy to play with.

Some time in the future there will be threads similar to this when somebody makes a gun in the first 'Replicator'....guess 3D printers for plastic and metal items is a step in the right direction lol

Violent holodeck programs are turning our children into criminals!

That is pretty cool! It's incredible what 3D printing can do. If 3D printing does get better throughout the years, then imagine what other things we can print!

Meh. I prefer real guns made out of metal that can shoot thousands of rounds without breaking. Screw this plastic crap.