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Gun control's about to get a whole lot harder.
3D Printed Guns
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Gun control's about to get a whole lot harder.
I brought this up in whatever thread we were comparing drug and gun smuggling in.
Its going to be interesting to see how we clamp down on 3d printers to control something like this, and how differently it will be compared to how we control how printers and scanners work in relation to certain 2D jobs and such.
The US's current approach that they own all gun layouts is obviously not going to work. p2p will make sure of that.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I'm not sure how sturdy that thing is. Nothing better than a gun which explodes in your hand.
I wouldn't trust that thing one inch. And obviously, neither did the makers - otherwise they'd have shot the gun in their hands instead of by remote.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I'm really not sure how sturdy it is either, but it works as a proof of concept. If there are any flaws in this particular instance, it'll get worked out, and you can't cling to them for safety from cheap, easily produced firearms.Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
But on that note, I can't imagine the rifling is very good if there's any at all - the thing has to be strictly close range. The accuracy is bound to suck.
The first designs for 3D printed guns came out months ago, and indeed had frequent failures. Since then, designs have gotten a lot better. I doubt they're anywhere near the safety or reliability of traditional weapons, but they are rapidly improving. I find it likely that given the relatively crappy materials most of these are printed from, they won't last very long either due to fatigue/etc. issues. But when you can print up another one on the cheap, it might not matter too much. It's almost certain that they won't have the accuracy of, say, a assault rifle, anytime soon, either.
Obviously the simple solution is to worry about ammunition (which can't be printed easily using any current or foreseen technology), and control the sale of distribution that way rather than on gun designs.
I myself wouldn't really want to fire a gun which consists of glued together particles. I mean, think about it: The working principle of a gun is a controlled explosion which has only one means of escape.
This thing has the capacity for spectacular accidents.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I don't think there's any way the government really can stop this with any level of effectiveness, short of a complete ban on 3D Printers.
Should lead to some fun in murder investigations. "Are you seriously alleging that my client killed someone with a pair of plastic coat hangers?"
Yeah, this instance is only really notable because it's the first one produced with a consumer-grade printer (though still a higher end one). The others were done with industrial-grade printers.
I'm not certain about your last statement, but that probably just boils down to differing concepts of "soon".
People already produce their own ammunition quite frequently. We're screwed in that corner too.Obviously the simple solution is to worry about ammunition (which can't be printed easily using any current or foreseen technology), and control the sale of distribution that way rather than on gun designs.
meh, they said the same about color and laserjet printers in regards to counter-fitting. Now most, if not all scanners in the US, have internal programming to not work with certain bills, and printers leave a fingerprint on everything they print.
Once 3D scanners reach a price and market saturation similar to the quality (or even throw away) color printers, the same thing will happen.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I'm actually not sure that's a very good analysis. There are tens of thousands of reloading presses out there, many of which can produce hundreds of rounds an hour, with the individual component parts for bullets being widely available in large quantities. Cracking down on these component parts might eventually cause the supply of ammunition to dry up, but that is only one part of the equation. Even assuming an effective crackdown the existing supply of bullet components, there is little reason to believe that new propellents or designs for 3D printed projectiles could not be created that would circumvent the need for conventional ammunition. Replacing primers with an electric ignition source, reinforcing the chamber in order to compensate for the increased pressures associated with the frailties of a printed cartridge, or reducing the amount of smokeless powder per round, (which would reduce muzzle velocity, but would also reduce the pressures involved) are all relatively simple workarounds that wouldn't require too much in the way of new development. It certainly seems like an engineering problem that is not without solutions.
All easily worked around. The real thing that stops counterfeiting is that bills are as much cloth as paper, and printers simply can't produce many of the features on them. There's nothing that would stop somebody with a minor amount of knowhow who actually wanted to do so from scanning bills and printing bills (that would then be easily identified as fake, even if they couldn't be traced). Given what I know of your proclivities, this should come as no surprise to you. There is absolutely nothing you can do to reliably secure electronic hardware from someone who has physical access to it.
Also bear in mind the work being done to make von Neumann 3D printers. If those get out into the wild, government contol of printers promptly becomes impossible, short of giving them the same legal status as cocaine or RPGs.
Yeah, when we wanted to copy some money for the purposes of filming (wouldn't feel anything like normal money, but that wasn't a problem) it only worked in black & white, and printed a blank page when it was set to colour. I don't know how easy that is to circumvent, though, and with guns you could slightly alter the design until it's no longer blocked while money has a very specific design. I have seen printed fake dollar bills with different heads or text on them. I think such a prevention would be an arms race that's impossible to win, as long as the designers are determined to circumvent that internal programming. Plus you can't make people update their printers to block newer designs that are blocked after the printer was bought.
With fingerprint, do you mean that every printer is slightly different and a print can therefore be matched to one printer? Because that's only useful if you have the weapon, and the printer, after the fact.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Exactly - the real problem with counterfeiting money with scanners & printers is one of fidelity, and we're not trying to pass printed guns off as the original traditionally manufactured thing here.
print jobs include the printer serial number and time of the print job.
3D printers are still very primitive, and I think once they go mainstream, mass produced ones will be able to do the job in a cheaper, finer, or some other "better" way. So the niche market will still remain niche, while the mainstream models will be controlled by only a few main bodies and thus easier to control.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
How long do people think will it be until the plastics are of sufficient quality they can handle more bullets/fire them at a longer range?
I would be curious to see what the targets look like, so far I've just seen videos of these being fired.
Also, don't plastic guns make anyone think of In the Line of Fire?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tff_EEQt79s
I actually suspect they may be keeping their hands out of it to avoid identification. But you are probably correct.
The guy who filmed it has his name in the related article, and it also says:
Still, Joe’s cheap homemade gun isn’t without its bugs. Over the course of its test firing, Joe and Guslick say it misfired several times, and some of its screws and its firing pin had to be replaced. After each firing, the ammo cartridges expanded enough that they had to be pounded out with a hammer.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
You do realize that there plenty of different 3D printing technologies out there, and that most hardly involve glue. The plastic is probably just as good as other plastic materials (e.g. injection molding, etc.) though I couldn't find details on which manufacturing method they used with a 2 second Google (edit: looks like they used FDM, which is simple and most definitely doesn't used glue; the gun is essentially Lego plastic melted together). I'm pretty sure that with a couple years of tweaking you'll get decent quality, cheap handguns that are printable. Furthermore, in time SLS will get cheap enough that people can print metals, which is likely to result in far higher durability and reliability than plastic models. The technology will get there.
I find it weird you're so appalled by plastic in guns; excluding a few specific parts, many high-end assault rifles are mostly made of various composites. Yes, I get that the barrel/etc. are still metal, but the rest of the gun does experience not-inconsiderable stresses. Hell, we make high-performance fighter aircraft out of (mostly) plastic. Appropriately designed composites need not be inferior materials for many applications.
I was thinking in the next few years.
Not generally from scratch; they buy parts (notably powder and primers) and assemble them. At some point, you can restrict the industrial production/sale of the limiting factor, since these materials aren't printable. The metal casing is much more challenging to control.People already produce their own ammunition quite frequently. We're screwed in that corner too.
Enoch, I really can't think of any reasonable (or safe) way to print powder or other propellant; even if you could, you'd still need to procure the propellant. I'm not worried about the mechanics - metal printing and other solutions can make bullet casings that work at least okay (probably not up to the standards of a high-end rifle, but good enough for most handguns), likely within a few years, though it will take quite a bit longer before it's even remotely cost-effective. But gunpowder? Restrict sale of propellants and you've found the real limiting factor. It doesn't have a lot of dual uses, and people aren't likely to try to find their own saltpeter and such.
Propellants are certainly the hardest individual component to manufacture, true. However, it is also one of the most widely owned, and available. People will be able to make their own bullets for many, many years into the foreseeable future with the stock currently in private hands.
This was a proof of concept for a poor mans liberator. We already have decent quality printable guns (which is what inspired this model), and this lul gun was an attempt to take one of those designs and build it in such a way that average tech happy joe can print one out using his desktop 3D printer.
Once 3D printer hits its prime I wouldn't consider fringe designs/printers/users like this any more of a threat than someone deciding to arm themselves with a nail gun.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I question just how long that is. How big is the current private stock and the annual rate of depletion? Anyways, the point is that in principle it's the easiest way to restrict the use of the current stock of guns (and the presumably wide availability of guns in the future). It might take some time for the stricter control regime to take effect, but it will also take some time for 3D printed guns to become mainstream weapons.
Not actually true, the previous designs appear to have been inferior, even when done on more sophisticated printer. Regardless, I agree that in principle quality will improve dramatically as engineering issues are sorted out and materials/printing technologies are improved.
I'm referring to the liberator design released by defense distributed. The one that the US claimed control of shortly after it was released online.
You're saying that this lul design is superior?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
The Defense Distributed design is generally incapable of multiple shots. They do have a 3D printed receiver (NOT a full gun) which is capable of many more shots without trouble. For some discussion on the Liberator's shortcomings, see Danger Room here:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013...r-printed-gun/
I don't know if the Lulz design is actually superior, but it has been fired with 9 shots (8 on a single barrel), without apparent issue. At the very least it's comparable. The guy who made the Lulz gun speculates his ABS is better suited to the task than the ABS used in the Stratasys machine. Hard to tell without detailed analysis, of course.
So, I will or won't be able to print off a Tommy Gun in my lifetime?
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Do you have an actuarial table on hand?
No, but I'm 42 and so far disease free, but I have two kids under 10, so a stroke might be likely.
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
You'd probably need a 3D Printer that works in metal. Those are nowhere near affordable for a consumer, and it'll take a minimum of 3 years and more likely 5-10 before there are consumer versions. So, maybe a decade out before you can raid the local speakeasy?
Wraith, remember that the metal you get out of SLS is not the same as cast or stamped metal; you'll end up with a sintered PM-style material, which may or may not have the requisite properties necessary for high quality materials/gearing necessary for something like a machine gun. There's also tolerance issues - I don't know whether there's a discrepancy between the maximum tolerance allowable on such weapons and the minimum resolution attainable during SLS. It's possible they're good enough, but most 3D printers don't have very good resolution, and price dramatically increases as you try to get better resolution.
It's certainly possible that 3D printing with metals will get better, and output a wide range of material properties that match cast metal more closely, but right now that's not the case. I think it's premature to assume that we'll be able to move beyond powder metal-type materials any time in the near future.
More obviously, there's little market pressure to develop technologies for cheap 3D printing of materials with high mechanical performance needs; economies of scale mean that 3D printing is more for hobbyists, prototyping, custom jobs, and weird geometries than anything easy to mass-produce like a gun. That doesn't mean someone isn't working on it, but there isn't the same pressure to deliver for this than relentlessly reducing costs as much as possible.
old car buffs use modeling software to create 3D blueprints, that they will print out in plastic, which is then used to create a mold so the part can be cast in a metal. That's how far off useful metal printing is.
Leno went over it one night in one of his garage episodes. Doesn't Bitter do something similar with his ring designs?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Yeah, but you still have to cast. It certainly makes tooling easier, but you're still stuck having to cast metal.
You can already do 3D printing with metal that approaches the strength of steel. We have one of those things on site here, which is how I found out about the technology (just a month ago, apparently the machine is brand new). I can't remember the name of the process it uses to work, something to do with electrons, and I can't find anything on Wikipedia that sounds familiar. I'll ask the local expert next time I run in to him.
Anyways, I do fully expect the technology to continue to get better in most aspects, and consumer uses and demand to continue to scale with the quality, creating a nice feedback loop until 3D printers are advancing at a pace similar to computers. I am, of course, still guessing at the time frames here.
Please do; I'm only aware of SLS/SLA for any utility with metals. PM-style materials can certainly get relatively strong, agreed; I just think that consumer-level machines with appropriate properties are a bit in the future.
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