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i was just talking about 3d printing guns during our gun debate in school today and my whole class thought i was retarded. out of a class of 30 people and 2 teachers, nobody had heard of a 3d printer. fucking idiots
False. There have already been guns that have been printed and test fired. I believe one put through an entire clip without any misfires, problems, etc.
the fact that this is possible now actually frightens me a little bit. My high school has a 3D printer and now knowing that some one could print a gun kind of freaks me out. I know you would still need to get a firing pin and a barrel but still those are a lot easier to get then just the whole gun.
There's still the issue of cost. My college has a 10 inch x 10 inch x 10 inch 3d printer and it costs $700 to print something out of plastic. I'm assuming metal is more expensive. It's probably no cheaper than buying an illegal weapon on the street.
not ENTIRELY screen printed, all of them had 3D printed bodies or non-essential parts, not barrels or firing systems.. if i'm wrong i'd very much like to see one firing though, along with a blown-up diagram!!
I had never known they really existed until my cousin told me that his public school has three of them. Two that are old (don't know how thats possible) and one that can print really large stuff.
BTW he lives in New Canaan, CT, basically everyone who lives there has at least one parent who's an investment banker.
I'd imagine there are ideas and maybe even prototypes out there for more sturdy materials. I wonder if something stronger could be economically printed.
We have a $35,000 dollar one at my high school and we have almost completed a fun but the the administration put an end to every thing. So dump we spent months designing and programming it:( it was gonna cost $350 to print the entire thing
Yeah That kind of scares the shit out of me that anyone can print the gun, and start using it. We're talking about anyone racist people, criminals, stupid people, kids.
the engineering dept at my university has a 3D printer that i've used a decent amount this semester. It prints using a spool of ABS plastic, which costs about $10 per cubic inch. The machine is ~three years old and cost $40,000 new and is the size of a beer fridge. It takes about 8 hours i think to print off a single tray, which is about 10x12 (inches)
a gun printed off that printer, using the ABS plastic would never work. not even close. the plastic is way too brittle. those printers are used for "rapid prototyping" so they dont print with the best material in the world.
Now the newer 3D printers that print metal could and have printed off guns. I doubt any highschools would have that machinery yet though and use of that would be highly regulated pretty much anywhere. I dont think we have much risk of 3D printed guns and weapons until people privately own 3D printers that can work with metal, which wont be for a while due to the cost these machines are. If someone had tens of thousands of dollars to buy a metal printer with the intention of making guns, that would be stupid because of how long it would take to print each component off to assemble a single gun. These things are slow as shit. that being said i have never used a metal printer, and the technology is coming along incredibly fast. and i didnt watch the vice video yet either so idk.
You are mistaken. There have been 3D printed lower receivers and 3D printed magazines. After 10 or so rounds the receiver started to crack and fail. It is currently impossible to print an upper as it would melt from the heat of the barrel.
Ya,cause taking one class and waiting a month is real hard. Sorry if that was a little harsh,but if a kid wants to shoot up his school,I doubt getting a firearms license would be a big enough hassle for him to try his luck on a 3d printed gun.
Nope. I forget the company that is on the forefront of this, but the only thing they have been able to do so far is print an AR receiver (a completely useless part without a full AR to put it on to) and it cracks after about 5 shots. You simply cannot have any sort of plastic that could withstand the pressure that a bullet creates. I mean if you could really make a barrel out of plastic, why havent companies done it yet? Cause you cant.
This is a printable lower and this is significant because that is the part legally defined as the "gun". You can buy all the other parts and put it together without registering for anything. This new lower design is better than the last one and they put more than 600 rounds through it. They only quit because they ran out of ammo.
these 3D printers are printing metal dude, not plastic. fuck there are 3D printers that print living tissue being developed. in the near-ish future we could literally print off a human kidney and use it for transplant, by taking stem cells from the patient so that the implanted, printed organ will be accepted by the body. i think. i dont know much about biology, and im in mech engg so that might not make any sense.
but since I have a decent amount of knowledge on the technology, and some people in this thread seem to be a bit uninformed (not singling anyone out) i briefly explain some things.
3D plastic printers work by printing in small layers, starting at the bottom of the printer tray. it will print the first layer on whatever shapes are programmed to fit into the tray. then it will do the second layer for each, etc, moving up layer by layer until the shapes are covered end to end. it also has a spool of some filler plastic (cant say what its called) but it dissolves in sodium hydroxide, unlike the ABS. so the filler or "support" material basically fills in any cavities in the plastic shapes and supports overhanging shapes so that the printer has a surface to print on, if there is no plastic directly below it. so everything that comes off the printer is covered in support material and these chunks are put in a sodium hydroxide bath until the filler dissolves. this is tricky with cavities, because you need a way for the NaOH to get in and out of the cavity. otherwise the chunk of filler will rattle around in there.
metal printing is pretty different. basically they use layers of metal powder and melt it layer-by-layer with a laser. here:
clearly most people wont have access to this stuff for a while.
hopefully that explains things to some of you who might be curious on this relatively new technology that will definitely become prominent in the future. i dont even know if anyone will read this, but i plan on specializing in systems manufacturing in my years before graduation and i find this pretty interesting. /full nerd
