Posted on 08/14/2018 10:00:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At the South Philadelphia high-tech makers’ space NextFab, creators of all types work on projects using laser cutters, robots, and a room full of 3D printers.
Walt Barger, who manages the printing operations there, is standing between two printers the size of refrigerators, noting both their power and price tag.
“It’s an older printer, but it’s still a $40,000 machine,” he said, pointing to one. “And the one next to it, the ProJet, is a $100,000 machine.”
Lately, Barger has been extra vigilant about the kinds of things people are hoping to create here.
“Our staff is always monitoring. If we see anything that even looks like a gun, we’re going to stop the person,” he said.
Barger hasn’t had to do that yet, but he says the company makes its policy clear to new users: don’t even try.
“If you’re going to 3D print any parts of a gun, since people are coming in here and using our equipment to print, we then have a liability,” he said.
People who work in the 3D printing industry in Philadelphia and around the country are taking action against 3D-printed guns.
This comes after attorneys general in Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued to stop one website from sharing 3D gun blueprints. That prompted a federal judge to block those blueprints from being accessed online.
Even though thousands downloaded them before the court stepped in, experts say that shouldn’t cause widespread public safety concerns.
Barger and many others who work in the 3D printing believe the threat is being overblown.
Printing out a fully functional 3D gun is not a simple feat. It could require a $10,000 printer. Technical chops are necessary — not to mention hours and hours of trial and error.
For those hoping for the day when making a homemade gun takes hitting the play button on a desktop printer, Max Lobovsky has some news to share.
“It’s far enough away from now that we’d have a low-cost device that can produce a fully functional firearm. I don’t think anyone is particularly close,” he said.
And he would know. Lobovksy is the CEO of Formlabs, a $1 billion 3D printing company out of Massachusetts.
“I mean, I think we’re at least 10 to 15 years away,” he said.
Still, some 3D printing companies are already on the defensive.
Major 3D printing company Sculpteo has banned firearm printing.
“We are forbidding firearm printing for ethical reasons,” reads a statement on the website of the France-based company, which also has a branch in San Francisco. “We don’t support firearms and weapons manufacturing.”
And Materialise, a publicly-traded 3D printing manufacturer and software developer, has launched a feature to block the production of guns, according to a company spokesman.
“The analogy that I think is really useful here is efforts that have been taken to prevent counterfeiting,” said Chelsea Parsons, a gun policy expert at the Center for American Progress.
Adobe Photoshop has tried to clamp down on people using the software to generate fake money. Likewise, Parsons says it makes sense that 3D printing businesses are trying to get ahead of the issue.
“To say, your technology is being used for a purpose you certainly didn’t intend. That purposes poses risks to our communities,” she said.
Even though the risk isn’t immediate, gun-control advocates like Parsons say to airlines, courthouses, and other places with tight security, the idea of a plastic gun slipping through a metal detector is a real fear.
And if a 3D-printed gun got in the wrong hands and someone used it carry out violence, there could be an avalanche of lawsuits brought against makers of 3D printing machines.
“If I were a 3D printing manufacturer, I would certainly be thinking about this. Quite a bit,” said Tom Baker, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in liability and insurance issues.
Lawmakers in Washington are also thinking about this. Two bills have been introduced in the Senate hoping to make it harder for people to use printers to create fully functional guns.
Lobovsky of the 3D printing firm FormLabs said in the event of a 3D gun tragedy, he doesn’t think technology companies should be to blame.
“We shouldn’t be responsible for that any more than a company that makes knives is responsible for someone who commits a crime with a knife,” Lobovsky said.
If such an event ever happens and a civil lawsuit is lodged against a 3D printing company, law professor Baker says the issue of who took proper safeguards will be important in court.
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a fertilizer company was sued for negligence for not taking enough steps to stop its product from being an explosive ingredient. The suit wasn’t successful, but Baker says a case against a 3D printing company might have a better chance.
“And so the question — and this would be a jury type question — is were there reasonable steps that could’ve been taken and weren’t taken?”
While Parsons admits that given what it takes to make a 3D gun, compared to how easily available illegal guns are on the black market, homemade weapons are not likely to become the dominant weapon for criminals any time soon. But she said with time and innovation, at-home 3D gun production will only get easier, a prospect that should be putting policymakers and technology companies on high alert.
“As the price comes down on these printers, and as the quality of what you can create with them improves,” Parsons said, “it opens up a whole new set of folks who are going to be able to make guns at home with very little skill required.”
“Lately, Barger has been extra vigilant about the kinds of things people are hoping to create here.
“Our staff is always monitoring. If we see anything that even looks like a gun, we’re going to stop the person,” “
The drama queens act like it would be doing something illegal. And our government, which is increasingly disconnected from the constitution operates on whims and policies rather than laws. This creates that kind of fear.
Let him, it is his business, if he doesn’t want guns made on his printers in his shop, oh well. That person can go to another shop that would allow it.
Freedom, enjoy it
The 3D printing industry is loving this publicity — it makes it seem so high tech. 3D printing is about as dangerous as a PowerPoint slideshow. 99.99% of the industry is pure BS and hype.
I am thinking that thes SJW scum forgot just who is their customer base. These corporate, sellout pukes need to be enslaved and suffer until they die.
I need to know, is this guy just a virtue-signaling toady editorial?
Well I love my little 3-D printer... it is a great tool for “printing” specialty items that I either design myself or download from sites like https://www.thingiverse.com/. It actually was a Black Friday special on Amazon a couple of years ago and cost less than $200. It has proved to be one of the most useful tools in my shop.
I downloaded the files for the “Liberator” gun, but it would be just a novelty item for me and probably not worth the effort. I have a large collection of “real” firearms.
This is all a ridiculous discussion about gun making. Virtue signalling. We can just buy a gun. Besides the number of people with a $10,000 3D printer, much less a $25-100 thousand dollar one is probably in the hundreds, no more than a few thousand people.
“We are forbidding firearm printing for ethical reasons,” reads a statement on the website of the France-based company, which also has a branch in San Francisco. “We don’t support firearms and weapons manufacturing.”
&*^%#&^%#, ladies!!! We get it. Virtue signal received! Sheesh!
“...it is a great tool for “printing” specialty items that I either design myself or download...”
Firearms discussion aside, what are some cool things the average guy can do? I don’t have on yet...
Yeah we all know about private companies. I didn’t say it was illegal for the company to do that. I said it’s a bad idea to treat printing parts like it was some sort of nefarious activity.
And there is a trend afoot to treat it as some deadly and criminal activity.
If you don’t mind, I will continue to criticize those who come out with such policies.
This is just corporate CYA. 3D Systems was pressured by the govt originally to be responsible for the leased machines Cody Wilson was using for his Defense Distributed designs. That’s what started this whole furball. So now any big name company is going to be nervous as hell about what their customers are actually making with their machines.
Which is hilarious, because the genie is already out of the bottle. There are numerous 3D architectures open source, and chinese machines that can be bought or built for a fraction of the price of these expensive systems. Resolution and materials are improving every year. The 3D printed parts are not sufficient by themselves anyway to be a serviceable gun, without other parts like metal firing pins. So to me, these are no different than any other ‘assembled’ gun, which you may build from CNC machined parts or components ordered online.
The ones they don't want to talk about are carved from metal on a C&C machine with computer software that have been copied from an original to the ten thousandth of an inch. Worrying about a single shot plastic pistol is stupid. If a terrorist wanted a gun he would buy one in the "hood". If a person was dedicated to really kill someone, I don't know how you would stop him from getting some sort of weapon. These laws for felons and mental patients haven't worked so far.
What a total moron. Does he think a criminal is going to train himself to produce a single shot gun that looks like a stack of legos for holdups? Seems a whole lot easier to trade drugs for a real gun that is actually functional.
Glad this moron will keep himself busy obsessing over denying someone from using his toys if it will keep him off the streets.
“If you’re going to 3D print any parts of a gun, since people are coming in here and using our equipment to print, we then have a liability,” he said.“
Ummm, I don’t think so.
L
I doubt that these people could even tell the parts formed a gun. Just don’t name your file “Scary_Illegal_TSA-defeating_AllPlastic_AssaultWeapon_High-capacity_PumpAction_Glock_AK-47”. You could get away with “Sear_Spring”, “Slide”, “Index_Finger_Rest_Group”, or even “Receiver”.
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