32 Replies to “I’m sure they’ll mark the printers”

  2. Would it surprise anyone here to know that many of the ‘priceless’ objects you see on display in museums are in fact 3-D replicas?
    Ask the Smithsonian…

  4. Very impressive! Now,if someone can ship one of these printers to the Horn, they can print up ham sandwiches and solve the hunger problem!
    UNICEF will be obsolete within weeks!

  6. This technology has been around for a long time. Even 10 years ago we were looking at these machines for work. They were cheap even then. $300-$500 for a hobby machine. It didn’t have the resolution for our work, but was plenty fine for making a rough reciever.

  7. This is an amazing example of technology doing an end-run around the state to break government power. Yuo can win the politics, we’ll win the war.

  8. Can you say “Printer Registry..”?
    Think of all the nice union dues that would generate!
    Woohoo! I think we have a winner here for ze eNzeePee voter bloc

  9. Twit is for gun control on too powerful guns?
    Wanna play I bet you he thinks a BB gun is too powerful?You lose. Another leftard.

  10. This author is an idiot.
    Stereolithography has been around for a long time, and there is now the capability to “print” metal powders that can be sintered into something pretty solid. It does not, however, have the ability to produce things like barrels ready-to-fire that would have a chamber capable of withstanding the pressure of modern rounds.
    (you can try it, I won’t… lemme know how it works out for you.)
    A starch print-out as a master for a lost wax casting? Then we’re talking. Still….. Anyone who is familiar with modern CNC machining and receivers likely already has the program for milling a high quality solid version.
    What concerns me is his opening statements that he is in favor of us not having guns that are too powerful? Sorry, but any gun is just powerful enough.

  11. “This technology has been around for a long time. Even 10 years ago we were looking at these machines for work. They were cheap even then. $300-$500 for a hobby machine”
    For the plastics stuff yeah, but the metal ones for decent sintering and the design nous to create object that will shrink to the right size after sintering, that’s still pretty rare combination.
    I agree though, for creating mold objects for lovely lost wax style castings – fabulous.
    Except for the high pressure/very close tolerance bits and the springs and magazine, we’re “this” close to having a dedicated hobbyist get a program, print off the gun bits, do a little bit of final machining (home CNC with a canned program anyone; feed in the printed bits and some bar stock?) and assemble. Not quite there, but some of the “bleeding edge” technology is scary good.
    Magazines and springs are a little tougher, if you want something reliable.
    That being said, you COULD print off a very exact looking plastic replica to scare the daylight out of people.

  12. Need a new motor in your Chevy pickup! Hmmm. 350 cu. in, four barrel Quadrajet, auto tranny.
    Just hit “print.”
    Voila!

  13. 3D printers are very cool, but you don’t need one. If you have access to some very basic sheet metal tools, a torch and a Bridgeport mill, you can make a Sten gun. Like, in an afternoon or two. If you have access to a welder and a long-bed metal lathe you can make a really -good- Sten gun, rifled barrel and everything. See the Feather AT9 to get the basic idea. Hillbilly blacksmiths in Pakistan make close replicas of AK47s with less. And by close replica I mean the parts will fit on a real AK.
    In Nepal they make the kukri with nothing but a charcoal fire, a hammer and a goofy little anvil stuck into a log. You could make one in the driveway in an afternoon with a bit of practice.
    Gun control is and always has been about controlling the masses, it has -nothing- to do with stopping crime or making people safe.
    The author of the piece has that anti-gun boilerplate at the beginning to COVER HIS BUTT with the Ivory Tower types he has to deal with every day as a science writer. He may or may not be anti-gun in Real Life(tm), but if he doesn’t say so in the piece the gun-graboids will be after him like zombies after brains.
    This is going to be the thing that breaks China by the way. 3D printing and easy access to stuff like injection molding, metal casting, CNC machining will make the custom one-off part easy and cheap. Big smokestack mass production is going to get hit the way mass printing just got hit by the Internet. May just take a wee bit longer.

  14. I’m gonna get me one of those and see how many loonies I can make in an hour, a week, around the clock??! :>))

  15. Someone will use the 3D printer to make parts for 3D printers,
    so even if the government comes and takes away the 3D printers it will be too late.
    3D printers will live on the black market.
    moral of the story.
    Inanimate objects do not commit crimes, people do.
    Why Liberals do not understand this boggles the mind…

  16. Technical discussion apart, the author is really shortsighted. If a future technology will reduce the value of material things down to marginal level, then what criminals will be robbing people of ? Fresh strawberries?

  17. “Did you know that when the Japanese conquered Okinawa they banned all knives? It simple spurred the Okinawans to invent some of the deadliest forms of hand-to-hand combat known to man. Some day politicians will learn that legislating against things is useless.” ~ Larry Hama, G.I. Joe #6

  18. Canadian Friend, they already do make such printers. They’re called RepRap, and they’ve been available for a while and gone through several design iterations already. There’s also Makerbot. People have also been making their own CNC machines pretty regularly (check out Hackaday). We are right at the beginning of a revolution in both subtractive manufacturing and additive manufacturing for prototyping and widely-distributed mass production.

  19. The flare guns in our [Air Force] survival kits were cheap crap. An enterprising airman took to making good ones on a lathe and most of us bought one. Alas the Mounties moved in and stopped production as “unlawful firearms”. I wonder what they’d do if we were busy 3D-ing the things?

  21. Holy crap guys! I just heard about these new things called ‘zip guns’. Apparently people are making one-shot pistols out of pieces of scrap pipe.
    If the government doesn’t step in and shutdown all the Ronas and Home Depots and other hardware store merchants of death, we’re going to see an epidemic of homemade guns that’ll make Somalia look tranquil.

  22. Interesting question in the comments to the article: would 3D printing be covered by freedom of the press?

  24. Only if the thieves are female, Xiat. It they’re guys, they would be stealing beer.
    Not sure what the homers would take. Probably 10 year old boys….
    And “freedom of the press“? Come on now. Surely you don’t believe that Amendment is any more sacred than the only one which enables it…

  25. Its hysterical that the same ones who obsessively clutch the long gun registry, like golum and the ‘one ring’ , never spent a minute of research on this. Its been mentioned that the hillbillies in the Swat valley in Pakistan, crank out AK’s with a foot drill and file, nobody has mentioned several internet sites showing how to build a submachine gun from hardware store parts, with home garage tools, or that the CNC codes and input data is available fore any firearm free on the net. Small blacksmith shops were jobbing out the manufacturing of Sten guns in WW2, with no special tools, and the specs are also available for download. The nutters in the anti gun community are not into gun control, its control of people what they desire.

  26. Xiat at July 30, 2012 2:43 AM
    …with an internal spring to “limit” unintended discharge that is merely the hot end of scuba divers” “bang stick”…
    robins111
    I have seen and used a counterfeit Mk 4 Lee Enfield built by simple hand tools in Peshwar, Pakistan….match quality complete with Brit proof marks….
    Greek cyriots and the Isreali Haganah cranked out reliable stens (an improvement)with regularity….
    Really..most firearms were designed and frequently built in the 19th century…not rocket science…
    Actually AK47’s are really just updated sten guns in principle…cheap and fast to manufacture…with the same results….produced by a society which failed to produce a reliable toaster…..

  27. robins111, the hillbillies live up the -sides- of the Swat valley don’t they? Otherwise they’d be valleybillies. ~:D
    Incidentally, did you know the Feather AT is available in .45ACP and .460 Roland? BANG baby! Then there’s this here:
    thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/12/18/masterpiece-arms-460-rowland/
    I mentioned the Feather because its major receiver parts are an aluminum tube and two springs running on what looks like pieces of glorified brake line. The breech and barrel mount are two steel collars brazed to the barrel with a little feed ramp cut in one of them. You could make one out of a Maglite and some JB weld in a pinch. Full auto of course.
    Mac10s and Uzi are even easier, box and pan brake for that. Bottom line, anybody with half a brain and some tools can crank these things out by the hundreds. High quality, accurate and durable, real guns.
    Want to see some serious production just add CNC lathe and mill and a plasma cutting or laser cutting robot, maybe a bending robot. All that can be had for about $20,000 or less, depending on where you get your kit and how much used/self built stuff you have.
    Meaning ONE GUY with the about same outlay that would buy you a small car could supply the whole underworld of a medium sized city with serious guns. Out of a truck. Make some serious money doing it too.
    And people wonder why gun control doesn’t work.

  28. Oh look what I just found!
    http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/07/30/gunsmithing-in-pakistan/
    Perfectly on subject, published this morning, a little tour through some Peshwar gun shops. I particularly like the picture of the old geezer hacking a gun stock out of a wooden billet with an adze. Which looks like it was made out of a car spring.
    All illegal by the way, I understand most of these guys do this strictly off the books. Doesn’t seem to slow them up much, does it?

  29. I seriously doubt the accuracy of this story. These printers reproduce X,Y,Z coordinates from a CAD file. The internal surfaces would be too complicated to reproduce, with one casting. You could reproduce a lump, with accurate external dimensions, but its internals would not be an accurate replica. Think about it, how do you start building a surface, over thin air? True castings are built around a medium, such as clay, or sand.

  30. I looked at a 3D printer, in 2003. The one feature that makes them useful, is the ability to scan an existing object, and reproduce it. As was mentioned before, it would be possible to reproduce works of art, etc. The price of a laser scanner is still in the 5 figure range. These hobby versions are only capable of producing from a coordinate file.

  32. coach said: “The internal surfaces would be too complicated to reproduce, with one casting.”
    Nope, its true. You really can produce hollow, complex parts like an AR15 lower receiver with a 3D printer.
    http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/07/27/3d-printed-ar-15/
    Does it work? Yes. Is it “good enough”? Yes. Is it as good as a proper injection molded plastic lower, or a cast-and-machined one? Not yet. Pretty soon though. Just a matter of getting the chemistry right and cheap enough.
    One day -soon- you’ll be able to print a whole gun, I expect. Except the barrel and maybe the breech block, the whole thing can be plastic.

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