Justice Department allows sale of 3D printed guns - End of gun control?

[LiveLife]

I think "metal" 3D printing will revolutionize manufacturing and retail distribution.

You say mass production?

Imagine amount of products one hundred 3D printers working 24/7 can produce. Imagine immense amount of 3D printers a large group of printers can produce. I can already imagine massive 3D printing farms. What would be the production capacity of 10,000 3D printers working 24/7? Holy Moses Browning A LOT!

I believe 3D printing is the future of manufacturing that will be customer-centric without the need for warehousing and middle-man retail distribution. Instead of ordering from Amazon and getting the product delivered in 2 days (and even Amazon goes "Out of stock"), you request your files to be printed and get them as soon as they are printed (at home even if you have a 3D printer).

Imagine having access to libraries of every firearm ever produced and being able to print out every part ... Life won't just be good, life will be awesome.

 

[ATLDave]

Well, the futility of the war on drugs has been very evident for many decades, but we’re still plugging away at it. Based on that, I would say that a demonstration of futility doesn’t keep the prohibitionists from trying. They’ll just want to imprison anyone who is caught with a 3D printed gun... just like imprisoning people caught with easily made/obtained drugs.

 

[TTv2]

1. It’s a new and shiny process that sounds cool, futuristic and revolutionary. And it is.

2. Making a gun the old fashioned way requires metalworking skills, that most people simply don’t possess, and multiple tools. 3D printing, once evolved, would require one tool and little skill. This worries gun control advocates.

3.As Kano383 and TTv2 stated above, even the technology existing today makes total surveillance and control already possible, and it will only get more sophisticated. Theoretically, it’s already possible to design guns that can be remotely disabled. So the 3D gun printing will actually make guns easier to control, which should scare 2A supporters.

In the end, it’s all about legislation.

I never said that 3D printing would be what increases surveillance and gun control, that's technology as a whole that will do that. What will probably happen is if you're banned from owning a gun, when you try to download the files to print a gun part, your download will be stopped because before every download you have to use a biometric form of ID. This is where the Dark Web comes in as it won't ask for any Biometric stuff.

Spot on with legislation. Whatever Congress wants to make legal or illegal they will do. If they want to ban 3D printers, they can. Then we can have a black market for 3D printers and we can have the 3D police.

 

[Sovblocgunfan]

 

[SSN Vet]

Many people are of the opinion that all you do is push a button and the machine (whether it be a additive 3D printer or a CNC mill) and the part is magically produced.

All I can say is that I work in manufacturing and it aint that easy. In reality, the machines are as dumb as dirt and will only do exactly what you tell them to do.... hence machine crashes, broken tooling, damaged work holding fixtures and scrapped parts are not uncommon occurrences.

I've paid commercial vendors to 3D print parts on $50,000 printers for prototype projects.... and despite having excellent equipment and highly knowledgeable people running them, I've seen a lot of crap parts come off the printer and go straight to the circular file before they get their parameters dialed in.

I train the guys who both program and run five different CNCs at work and to do full 3D machining we will spend hours (days) programming and setting up the work, and still scrap the first couple parts off of the machine, with several trips back to the office to tweak the program. Add to that tool changes and multiple set ups with custom holding fixtures and your talking a LOT of time, expense and expertise.

As with many new technologies, it all sounds simple... until someone shoves a work package in your hands and says "get it done and don't screw it up".

YMMV

 

[LiveLife]

Thankfully, much of gun related components are recyclable.

As to precision and repeatability of 3D printers, we are at an infancy with "metal" 3D printing. Like other manufacturing processes that evolved, so will "metal" 3D printing. Many of us are able to "assemble" fully functioning firearms from kits and I can imagine doing the same with parts 3D printed from different "evolved" printers in the near future. Yes, there will always be a certain percentage of defect in manufacturing but I am quite certain we will work past the point where significant majority of printed parts will be within acceptable tolerances to produce sufficiently reliable firearms.

Who knows, there may even be "finishing" machines in the future for 3D printed parts to perform "hand fitting" of parts currently done by gunsmiths.

I recently had a dream one night where I was living in a near future world where every house had a 3D printer. The 3D printer was size of a large refrigerator turned sideways and suspended from the ceiling and moved up and down on top of a large table. My family in the dream had just moved into the house and we were printing everything from toasters to bicycle. The 3D printer in the dream was printing completed items that were made from different materials. I do believe such future is possible, perhaps within our lifetime.

For the foreseeable future, I doubt we will have 3D printers printing assembled items. I do see a near future where 3D printers printing various material components to form complete kits to produce functioning firearms. Of course, there will be parts like springs that may be cheaper and more feasible to produce by traditional means.

Exciting times for sure.

 

[LiveLife]

Already, evolution of "metal" 3D printing - Speed, cost and repeatability

10 hours vs 11 minutes at lower cost using "cold welding"



Stronger "Nylon" 3D printing - Nylon bike pedal is strong enough to use as soon as printed