Printing weapons
2012-07-26 00:41:07.850625+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
2012-07-26 00:41:07.850625+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
[ related topics: Graphics ]
comments in descending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2012-07-27 11:30:16.317131+00 by: DaveP
The other important bit about this is that a 3D printer can do this today. Due to the funky definitions of what is a gun, for an AR-15-style rifle, only the lower receiver is the "gun" (i.e. the restricted part), and that's what they made. All the other parts needed to make a full AR-15 rifle can be bought without restriction.
#Comment Re: made: 2012-07-26 15:09:54.86461+00 by: Dan Lyke
I think the promise of 3d printing has been over-sold a bit, but building a gun in a home machine shop requires some knowledge of how to use the tools, some expertise. The 3d printing notion is that at some point in the probably not terribly distant future you'd just send the CAD file you downloaded off the 'net over that direction.
And it's easy to think that the current state of 3d printing makes this unlikely without, say, the ability to rebore and rifle the barrel, but if we look back to dot matrix printers, and what modern printing has become, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that we'll be able to sinter steel into a form that's smooth enough and detailed enough to form things like rifling grooves.
#Comment Re: made: 2012-07-26 14:48:55.614142+00 by: meuon [edit history]
People have been doing that with home machine shops for years. Bolt actions are pretty easy, even with a crude manual cheap mill and lathe. A decent CNC machine can do amazing things with metal or plastic. This just changes the way certain parts are made, especially those that can be made in plastic. I've seen custom homemade "glock" and beretta replica's, and of course, one off, small batch 1911 style pistol are all over the place.