Posted on 01/09/2013 5:37:11 PM PST by marktwain
Unlike printing guns, which doesn't work, printing ammunition magazines doesn't face any practical problems. Of course, people could always make the magazines using simple tools in any machine shop (after all they are just metal boxes with a spring), but my guess is that these 3D printers will capture attention in a way that the old machine shops didn't. This article is from Metro News:
After the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Aurora, the U.S. government is preparing to introduce stricter guidelines on gun ownership. But supporters of the second amendment could get around them by printing their own firearms at home. The technology is still developing but 2012 saw the first shots fired from guns with printed parts. ‘Gun hacking’ is a growth community in online forums and has become serious business. “I have five people now making AK-47 magazines – they’re incredibly easy to reproduce”, Cody Wilson, CEO of the Defense Distributed company in Texas, told Metro. A firm believer in the right to bear arms, Wilson is deliberately producing parts for assault weapons likely to be banned by new controls. “(U.S. Vice-President) Joe Biden’s group are using the assumption that if you control the channel you control the product – but that is not the case any more”, says Wilson. His company have made open-source code for over 30 gun parts available online, and claims they have been receiving thousands of downloads a day. . . .
As Peter K, the person who sent me the link to this information, noted these printing machines are everywhere: "my brother in law owns a couple of these type of machines for his jewelry business. you can make just about anything with them."
It’s been tried. Meh. Not as good as you’d hope in small bore weapons.
Rifled slugs out of a shotgun... there’s real success under 100 yards to be had here, and you need only have a mold into which you cast lead. Lead is easy to obtain. Making a smooth-bore barrel for a shotgun is also easy.
Absolutely freakin’ none, especially when there’s loads of Americans equipped with hydraulic presses which can be used to press halves of magazines from sheet steel or aluminum... which we then glue or weld together with a TIG rig.
Add some coiled music wire, mold a follower from aluminum of pot metal, and you’re done. Wha-la. Magazine in a garage shop - by the dozens if you want them.
All you need to do is make the fixtures and dies onto which you put the sheet metal for bending in a press.
I hadn’t been paying attention to DIY drones until the last couple of weeks.
Now I’m utterly blown away by the level of development in the DIY drone arena. These are absolutely a game-changer in so many ways.
Can you define this process a little better?
Exactly what would you ‘print’ on what?
An inactive freeper, “John in Orinda,” has been doing aerial photography of public events and such for over 10 years with his remote controlled aircraft.
Using a process similar to inkjet printing, one can spray droplets of plastic to form 3d physical objects. Hence the term “3D printing”.
The consequences of this fast growing technology amount to the modern equivalent of Gutenberg’s invention of movable type printing. It will, without hyperbole, change the world. ...and the firearms industry for starters.
I saw a film many years ago, of Norwegians during WWII, making sub machine guns using hand dies and sheet metal.
Yep.
It’s not difficult.
And anyone can easily buy a “H frame” press for their garage or shop. They’re not all that difficult to make, either, if you have some welding skills.
A 25 ton H press would make one magazine at a time pretty nicely.
I think the 20 round AR mags would be easier to make than the 30’s, owing to the lack of the curve in the mag. It’s just straight with a bevel on the bottom. No big deal.
Illegal, however, in the United States if there is any commercial use of the recordings. The FAA has recently made this very clear via stop and desist letters.
From a hobbyist point of view, the real-time video and other sensor data obtained from remote controlled FPV models (FPV = First Person View) is most impressive. Payload is several kilograms.
He hires out to Bay Area cities all the time. They don’t seem to think its Illegal.
I do topographic surveys by aerial photogrammatry; so do scores of others, daily. It’s very commercial, and advertised in the yellow pages.
Where do you think Google gets their data?
Is Google Map illegal? (LOL!)
I would imagine that you would need at least a two stage die for the stamping of magazines. You would also need a cutting stamp. So there would be the need for three dies. It is the making of the dies that would be complex. I would not want to go with rivets - but spot welding would work.
Just thinking out loud
It’s a big topic in the industry and hobby community right now. It doesn’t take much of a Google search to turn up relevant articles and the recent FAA memorandum.
Google maps gets data from manned airborne flights, satellites and quite possibly, unmanned drones in the future. They are/will be all licensed by the FAA for those purposes.
It’s kind of funny to watch the slightly used high-end multicopter video platforms turn up one after another in the hobby classified. Well, it seemed like a good idea to make money at the time. They can be flown, and video captured within usual FAA rules (400 ft altitude, etc.), but not used commercially.
>>I don’t reccomend it unless you have a degree in chemical engineering.
Actually a degree in chemical engineering would guarantee that you blow yourself up. You would need good lab practices to safely handle the chemicals and that comes from experience as a chemist and not as an engineer.
But, people with the necessary lab experience do exist and since primers are the choke point in the ammunition manufacturing supply chain, it would be good if someone outside of the government-monitored industry found a safe way to manufacture them. After all, percussion caps aren’t some modern thing that can only be made in a billion-dollar factory. They made them in the mid 1800’s in factories that are a lot more primitive than most people’s workshops today.
But primers, and their components are normally manufactured by carefully controlled automated processes, requiring an engineer to design them, by law.
You're right. I hadn't thought of that. Looks like there are lots of opportunities for some creative design in 3D printed guns.
>>But primers, and their components are normally manufactured by carefully controlled automated processes, requiring an engineer to design them, by law.
What did we do before we had 20,000 pages of laws?!?
We enjoyed life?
(and we have more like 20 trillion pages by now)
We could print trillion dollar coins and ship them to treasury and save the country! /s
This is a great discussion of the revolution in small mfging. going on right now. Take a listen or read the transcript.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/12/chris_anderson_2.html
Very cool! Thanks!
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