Since this is far from my field of expertise and know literally nothing about it, why would a 3D printer not printing firearms parts unite those groups?

Someone gonna get raped lol

Have you seen what happens when people try to regulate computers and tech?

It creates nerd rage, which is one of the worst kinds of rage in today's world.

That's pretty much the way everything is going ,but I have a feeling that when it comes to weapons the power that be (firearms industry and BATF) are going to make it hard. Just think what could be created if you just had the means ,hell if the plastics were strong enough ,90% of Magpuls designs could be printed.

Gah... not here, but I remember being made fun of for saying this was coming in other forums just a few years ago.

One random thought, from a statist perspective, the U.S. really screwed the pooch by declaring the receiver to be "the firearm", whereas most European countries define "the firearm" as the barrel. Can't say I'm not happy about that.

Producing rifled barrels are the one thing that's beyond most individuals, and it also really limits your home build designs, because the NFA rules on smooth bores make the use of seamless high-quality tubing illegal save for shotguns or AOW's.

And unless some real breakthroughs in ceramics or metals for 3-D printers come out soon, barrels will probably be the last hurdle for the technology.

Maybe the best test case for this technology would be a shotgun then...

Rent a printer and throw a build party !  

I'll have a seamless CavArms lower !

No big deal, just design around a current AR barrel, there are literally hundreds to choose from.

I don't see the legal difference between throwing a piece of billet alum into a CNC machine and making yourself a lower, versus throwing a plastic roll into your MakerBot and making yourself a plastic lower.

Your state may vary but it would be fine here.

Yes, no big deal from a practical standpoint... today.

However, there's two parallel points of discussion in this thread. 1. The technical issues of materials and design for making a functional fireram that uses the raw polymer feedstock or whatever material the printer uses. And 2., the "what now bitches?" factor that this technology puts in the face of gun control advocates and the .gov in general.

It's probably a given that the sheer utility of solid/matter printers means that the genie will never be put back into the bottle. And the nature of computing technology and the Internet seems to put the balance of power into the hands of the people for the most part (so far...) as well.

What we're also discussing, in a roundabout way, is possible strategies the .gov could use to try and restrict or prevent 3D printer guns from circulating or being easily created by individuals. And restricting the components, like barrels, that the machines can't make at all yet, and perhaps won't be able to well into the future, might be such a possible outcome.


And as to those pointing out that "Meh CNC machining is cheaper right now..." that may be true, but CNC machining has existed for a few decades now, but the technology is still rather complex, and requires specialized training to do it well. You have to still precisely mount the billet material, and most all machines I've seen don't have very user-intuitive interfaces. And AFAIK, even the fanciest three-axis machines often have to have the work removed, and re-oriented for a few different steps on something like an AR lower. I suppose machines that can manipulate and re-position their own billets of metal, or partially finished work, or simply reach it from almost all sides exist, but I bet they're WAY more expensive to own and operate than the CNC machines others here are citing...

"CNC Operator" is still a rather skilled trade. And in the long run, a CNC machine's logistical tail is longer and more expensive in the long run, the coolant, the various tool heads, or bits etc. which are often expensive...

3D printers, the hobbyist ones aside, are very expensive now, but in the long run, the technology is poised for much greater commoditization and "one click" operation by unskilled individuals. And it can produce things like internal voids that no amount of machining can produce either.

They can't charge everyone.  And they wouldn't even have something to charge most of them with.

250,000 people print a semi AR lower.  No serial - why?  It's a legal homemade rifle.  They're not required to put one on there, even by federal law.

Now what?  There are a quarter of a MILLION unserialed, paperless, completely uncontrolled and practically untraceable AR lowers floating around the US.  That sound you just heard was every pair of boxers in Washington DC having a brick shat into it at the speed of light.  There are now a quarter of a million AR lowers that the ATF has no paper trail on and no possible way to control.  They, as a bureau, are suddenly and irreversibly irrelevant.

What could the ATF possibly do when upwards of 50% of the households in the US have the capability to literally print a firearm or the components for a firearm whenever they feel like it, when the ATF has no feasibly way to hobble the machines?  They'd be powerless.  They would be facing complete irrelevance, complete obsolescence almost instantly.  There would be literally nothing they could possibly do to license, oversee, regulate, or control the majority of firearms production, and without that power, they have no way to regulate firearms transfers.

This is how we destroy that corrupt festering pustule of incompetence once and for all.  We make them powerless, pointless, and outdated, and then we quietly erase 95% of their existence during budget negotiations.

LOTS of misunderstanding, falsehoods and myths in this thread. Too much to detail out.



SLS and SLR technology is A LONG WAY from competing with manufacturing any quantities of usable goods.



They work well for rapid prototyping for a CONCEPT model. They BARELY work. They're FAR from accurate, especially depending on the configuration. The sintered metal machines make MIM parts look like forged, unless you're talking about the very cutting edge machines that are dialed down to very fine resolution which makes for a VERY expensive part and it's still just sintered powder. When heat treated they can do all kinds of funky things, depending on configuation of part.



These machines already run on solid models. These models can be converted to pretty much any file format you wish to use. Most require a post processor to convert to G-code that CNC machines can digest. Some of the machines (most of the ones refered to as "3d printers") use a different technology in that they use a stream of molten plastic, layed up in a grid or along the lines of a thin wall. It makes a porous part and tends to warp if anything approaching solid is printed out.



Cool tech? Yep.

Verging on the Star Trek replicator? Not for a long long time.

Gotta start somewhere and this is worth persuing? You bet.

This hasn't been linked yet, AFAIK. This is the current most practical application for this technology.

Snowflakes in Hell: Printed Mag Project (WIP)
Printed AR Mags

It was in Shotgun News in July 2006.

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Hold up, I haven't been reading every post. Let's be clear here ,I want to use off the shelf barrels, bolts with a little CNC machining. If y'all are suggesting we print entire guns ,it's gonna be awhile. I'm with ridgerunner on this ,these prints might work for stocks and if we are lucky a lower in the next couple years.

Open source design doesn't equal ,print everything

Open soure puts design and manufacture closer to the enduser and they become involved and are part of the process.

Like Germany. I can buy lowers here (expensive, but no paperwork necessary). I might as well get a 3D printer and print me some, legally.

I agree that the BATF should be stopped. But, I don't think you understand how hard it is to end a federal agency.
They are already incapable of stopping the current illegal arms trade. However, this has not stopped them from receiving funding.
They have committed multiple felonies in the Gunwalker scandal but this hasn't stopped them from receiving funding.

They can't charge everyone.  And they wouldn't even have something to charge most of them with.
Most people are law abiding citizens. If you tell them something is a crime they won't do it.
Most people are mechanically and technically incompetent. This will stop them from making their own firearm.
What remains is substantially less than everyone. Those people can and will be charged.

Don't expect this to be the magic bullet that ends the ATF.
For example: In WWI, balloons were an important technical defensive measure. The U.S.A. had a great advantage of helium. Our balloons wouldn't burn. In order to secure our advantage after the war, Congress created the Federal Helium Reserve. The use of balloons has pretty much ended but the helium reserve continued on. It found new service areas in the cold war and the space race. This is what will happen to the BATF. In fact, it has already happened. When prohibition ended, the BATF returned to the tax enforcement and 8 years later created the the firearms portion of its charter. It will continue to exist as an enforcement arm of the IRS.
If you want to end the ATF, don't expect technology to help. Consistent political action is the only sure method.

You could rent a CNC machine today, and do the same thing...

as RealFastV6 mentioned above, there really isn't any practical difference between having a 3D printer and a small CNC machine.

I'm familiar with the Gunwalker scandal, I've been involved heavily in the thread tracking it.  What I think you're failing to take into account is just how drastically decentralized design and manufacturing of complex goods and parts will change the landscape of power between the citizenry and bureaus whose power lies in regulating physical objects.

The ATF's power over the population stems from three powers that are built one on top of the other:
1.  Tight control over the creation (and importation) of firearms into the commerce pool
2.  Tight control and monitoring over the movement of firearms from fabrication to retail and most movement between owners past that point.
3.  Pervasive monitoring that allows violations to be found rapidly and prosecuted aggressively as a chilling effect against more widespread disobedience

Without control and surveillance over the creation of firearms, they cannot effectively monitor and control the movement of firearms.  Without the power to control and monitor the movement of firearms, they lose the power to rapidly and aggressively prosecute a portion for the purpose of scaring the majority into compliance.  By licensing all manufacturers but homebuilders and tightly controlling the importation of foreign firearms, they build the tools to monitor and then they use that information to create widespread fear so that they only have to engage and prosecute a small fraction.  They have to use intimidation against the majority by selective enforcement because their regulatory field is simply too vast for full saturation enforcement.  But licensing and controlling the manufacture of firearms on the scale that is necessary for their system to work is only feasible when the majority of manufacturing is centralized and therefore easily controllable.

It costs millions in labor, expertise, tools, and materials to create even a modest number of firearms in a precision environment.  That leads to heavy centralization and allows the ATF's system to work because they can easily control centralized sources.

Their method completely collapses when the capability to easily, rapidly, and precisely fabricate modern firearms is suddenly sitting on the kitchen table of even 25% of the country.  There is no centralization to control.  Their model of control and enforcement, which entirely depends on a tightly controlled and surveiled centralized production pool to allow widespread control through selected public intimidation, totally breaks down.  Without mass surveillance of production, they can't control distribution and use targeted intimidation to control the other 90% of their regulatory field.  They no longer have the means that allows them to precisely target intimidation efforts to maintain widespread compliance.

Their only option would be to try and re-centralize firearm production by attempting to hobble the technology, and that is impossible without extraordinarily invasive and oppressive measures that would be immediately pushed back.  The fabrication technology is too abstract and too divorced from the specific purpose of the objects it creates for that to work.  

The machine doesn't know whether it's creating the components for a full-auto fire control group or precision parts for the guts of a '68 Corvette, or valve regulator pieces for a medical ventilator, or parts for an oil derrick.  All it knows is the temperatures, materials, paths, and speeds the software sends it.

The software doesn't know.  All it knows are splines, vertexes, NURBs patches, booleans, dimensions, and other abstract geometry.  You can use the exact same software that you use to design and fabricate gun parts to make 3D models for a video game, a Hollywood blockbuster, architecture, scientific research, and a whole slew of things.  I use it for a living.  The various software packages that fall under that umbrella are amazing pieces of technology that are literally blank space in 3D with the capability to mathematically create and depict any rational shape and even irrational ones.  They're way too non-specialized for any anti-gun-fabrication control to work without meeting huge backlash from hundreds of disparate fields.

You can't force everyone that uses that software or that hardware to get a permit of an FFL.  Millions upon millions of people (not an exaggeration) getting inconvenienced, who had absolutely nothing to do with firearms, would shut you down for the galling imposition.

You can't even feasibly write a software trap to tell when somebody is using that software or hardware to make a "gun" part.  There is no feasible way for a watchdog system to tell when the hardware or software is fabricating firearms parts versus parts for something else because the problem is just too abstract.  How can you tell?  It's like trying to write a piece of software that is somehow supposed to tell when somebody is ordering a screwdriver online to stab somebody with it, instead of to work on their car or fix their TV.  You could write a program that would try, but it would either miss everything and be worthless or throw so many false positives that ten million people ordering screwdrivers for other reasons would shut you down in an instant.

ATF would be out of options.  They don't have the resources or the power to monitor and enforce against 25% (or more) of the population on an individual scale.  Their regulatory model would be in a shambles because the foundation layer of control over centralized production would be gone.  They can go full retard and completely throw the appearance of Constitutionality to the wind by trying to require 100% registration and sales tracking, but that will not fly because even that would be completely unenforceable without a full-blown surveillance state.

ATF is built on intimidation because they can't possibly enforce at an individual level.  Destroy the necessary centralization that grants them the tools to intimidate, and they are paper tigers.

Decentralized production capability in enough homes in America makes it impossible to regulate the produced physical goods.  I would guess we're maybe about 10 years out from consumer-grade machines that can print high-strength polymers, ferrous alloys, and various aluminum alloys from raw stock.  When that happens, the world is going to change.  Intellectual property rights, commerce law, trademark law, patent law, a huge range of manufacturing regulations, all are going to be thrown into upheaval as the entire system they're built around changes in the blink of an eye.  It's going to be an awesome, wild ride.

Good post over all, but I think you are off on your timeline. It will be decades before the technology advances to a point where all, or most components are made with a printer.

The part that will be the hardest to produce(IMHO) will be the barrel. I did some searching and found this., but as far as I know, this never went anywhere. I also did a little research into polymers used in firearms. I haven't made much progress on this front, but anyone else wants to, here is what glock frames are made out of.

When it gets more durable materials, and is partnered with a 3d scanner (not everyone knows how to use CAD, or wants to), it won't be household, but it will be more common than now. That, combined with a small mill, will probably be enough to create the situation you above.

See, that's the thing - you can download a design file off the web, hit "print", and ding, gun parts.  You don't have to even know how the technology works beyond how to feed the printer hardware the proper material.

Rapid prototyping is advancing in huge leaps and bounds and projects like RepRap are putting polymer printing within reach of hobbyists right now.  I seriously doubt it's going to take decades for selective-laser sintering and other metallic layer-printing technologies to reach a point where they're available in a limited consumer form and the publicity of their usefulness has spread enough that they see significant adoption.  Why go buy a $75 dollar part for your vintage car when you can download the blueprints from Mustangs.com, load a steel powder cartridge (which you can make lots of other stuff with as well), and hit print, for vastly less?

Look at the rise and proliferation of cell phones over the last 15 years.  In 1996, they were big, clunky, simplistic monsters.  Now we're carrying around touch-screen superphones that are more powerful than some home desktop systems from just 10 years ago.  Now think how much more useful a home fabrication system would be to most people.  The appeal of printing new for cheap instead of ordering or buying is going to be huge.  These things are going to be friggin' everywhere, and the demand will drive development that much faster.  Combining a heat-treating system with a printer that has metal fabrication capability would give people the ability to cheaply print a huge range of things they currently have to buy at retail markup.

Lots of people are going to buy these things just to try and save money with them, if for no other reason.

The question I have is what limits are there to what you can build for personal use? I've seen pistol, rifle, shotgun. How about building your own MG or grenade launcher? As long as it is for personal use, can you build an RPG? This may sound way out there, but what are the limits? Do you have to, by law, show and tell to .gov? This is all new to me. I wandered into here from survival forum.

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Pretty much all European countries regulate the barrel, bolt and upper.

*NOTE, NOT A LAWYER*

As I understand it, if it's NFA, you have to fill out paperwork (I'm not familiar with the process, I'm in NY).

I'm gonna need a really big printer.

Nice of them to include wear parts in that.    How easy is it to replace barrels under that system?

To replace a barrel I have to buy a barrel that's registered to me. The old barrel is turned over to the authorities for destruction.

It's not unusual to have multiple registered barrels for a single weapon. For example a Glock 22 with a extra .357SIG barrel.

It's all pretty much silliness.  Yeah, try firing an RPG made out of low-melting-point plastic.  Let me know how that works for ya.  Emoticon related.  And GD thinks that Glocks blow up. . . .

Try "printing" a 1911 slide out of ABS plastic, or better yet the booster from a M1919A4.  Don't even bother trying with the M1919A4 receiver;  even the steel ones blow up if they aren't heat-treated properly.  Sintered metal powder?  Yeah, right.

Yup, barrels are regulated like hell here

 

The generally recognized limits are State and Federal law. Federal law makes no statement on personal not intended for sale weaponry, as long as it fits in the established framework of weapon law. For Title 1 weapons, that's rifles, shotguns, pistols. Title 2 weapons fall under a different section of Federal law, and you still have to deal with all the annoying NFA paperwork. This means short rifles and shotguns, suppressors, Any Other Weapons, and maybe Destructive Devices, but I'm not sure of the last one. There is one more category of NFA Weapons - Machineguns. Even though they are regulated under the same laws and use the same forms, the ATF will not approve any personal manufacture forms for machineguns.



Then you get into State law. This is where it gets Really Weird. You still have to abide by the State laws restricting EBR configurations and anything else they decide to be anal about.



If you can find a way to get an RPG to comply with State and Federal law, well... then go for it!

Did you miss the part where we are discussing how many decades until we can print reliable components?

Mine was sort of a side line question about individuals making weapons and the legalities. Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but didn't figure the question was worth a new thread. I would look more to casting or cnc machining for near term.

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My brother's in charge of one of these at Tulane University. We've been talking off and on about producing a lower receiver. For a high resolution print, it would be about $90 for a stripped lower. But the buffer tube is a huge problem with the materials used.

With any caliber bigger than .22, the threads will wear out relatively quickly. Even a .22 will wear out from the pressure of the stock against the shoulder.

We started brainstorming about this and came up with a couple of ideas:

1. Create an integral buffer tube lower design in autocad (raises the price significantly)
2. Alter the design so that a locking, threaded aluminum insert replaces the standard threaded receiver (Still affordable, just have to have a place to get the aluminum insert)
3. Create something similar to a CavArms lower (price goes up)

Now, if it's printed on a lower resolution printer, number 3 becomes especially affordable (roughly the same price as #2 on a high resolution printer), but #2 is extra affordable on a lower resolution printer if you can get the aluminum inserts.

/randomassortmentofthoughtsinmyhead

Tl;Dr- Replace standard buffer tube threads with threaded insert, turn the lower into a multi-cal lower (not just .22).

It's fine. I think the place to get your answer is in the NFA subforum, and the "Build it yourself" subforums in the AR and AK forums. It should be very similar in terms of regulations.


Thanks for the post. What material does that printer print in?

Just a random thought...



The thread title and most of the conversation so far has been about 3d printing and 3d printers, with the assumption that the printer's output would be a (nearly) finished piece. What If...



- substitute in another output technology for the "printing"? We've already touched on CNC machines. What about other potential output device ideas? I'm not feeling creative enough to pop off with any good ones.



- make the printer output an intermediary step. Print in low cost wax and use it as the core of a lost wax casting processes? Print in a porous material and then soak in something to fill in the matrix and make it strong? (epoxy, ceramic, etc?)



Yes, the alternate output technologys might be a bit down the road, but we can start imagining them now. I really like the second idea though. Printing to wax should be fairly easy, and lost wax casting is a mature process. I have no idea what materials might be used to print a porous object or what resins/chemicals/binders might be used to add strength, but I do believe this is within the realm of current materials science.



Lets put down the box, take a step to the side, and see what other ideas we can come up with.

there are more rediculous comments to that story than your average youtube video.

Didn't watch the video 'eh?

thats a mighty big minus

I see this as being Constitutionally protected under the 1st Amendment!  



First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people  peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

With the proper laser-sintering equipment, you could print a barrel quite well.  It would need heat treatment to be ready to fire, but you could print it otherwise complete, rifling and all.  

I didn't check to see where he was from, but in a lot of countries it's the barrel that's regulated.  I was talking with a guy from Namibia and he was saying he could buy Sig pistol lowers but the barrels were serial numbered.

FUCK YEA!

and
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11669

Can someone with access to the printer print out a FG-42 in 7.62 mm Nato for me please?  I wanna be Amerikaner fallschirmjager.  I have five jumps to my credit if that counts.

And I quote:
"I would never fire a gun that used a 3D printed plastic receiver.  It's just dangerous.  That said, it won't be long before 3D printers can make more precise components out of safer materials.  It's worth addressing this before the first kid prints a couple copies of "Glock.""

Would a printed glock not be safer than a 'real' one?

Quoted from where?