This is not true. The additive manufacturing world is 20 years old, getting very large, and includes many different technologies.
The very cheap machines that are coming out for home use print plastic, yes. But step up a grade in quality and price, and you can buy machines that can print in metal, ceramics, sand, glass, and even wood. I don't see anything in a gun that someone could not make on a current metal printer, except maybe the spring.
Vince,
Thank you!
And it’d be pretty tough to regulate springs...
Bull!
Show me a printed barrel that can stand 50,000 CUP pressure on a sintered metal printer. You can't. It would fly apart after 1 shot.
Actually, I'd think the barrel is the choke point, manufacturing technology wise, which is why the morons chose not to make that the regulated part. D'oh! (from their POV) While yes, you can print metal, I'd think printed metal would tend to be weaker in ultimate tensile strength as well as more brittle than normal wrought stock. Printing WOULD make rifling a barrel a lot easier, though, if you can find an appropriate feedstock to print with. Right now, rifling is difficult, relative to the other tasks in gunmaking. Certainly for a small one man shop.
Please throw me a link to a machine that will print in metal suitable for a gun that will not self destruct on the first shot.
It seems that 3d metal printing a 100x more expensive than conventional manufacture. 30 years from now who knows?
“I don’t see anything in a gun that someone could not make on a current metal printer, except maybe the spring.”
Springs are cheap though, and pretty impossible to regulate. The real problem is the barrel. You might be able to print a metal barrel with the correct geometry, but it won’t be strong enough to use in an actual weapon. It may last a while, but eventually, that part will fail.
This is why I think that trying to manufacture an ordinary firearm with current printing technology is the wrong track. Instead, they should focus on a design that can function reliably for a short time, say a few hundred rounds, while being cheap enough to throw away after that. Just use it until it starts wearing out, then print a new one.