I doubt very seriously a printed gun barrel could withstand the pressure of a fired round.
Better have some good safety glasses.
Must be using some very heavy bonded printing paper...lol..
I can see this technology being using for fabricating all sorts of things, not just making guns, using CNC machinery.
Must be using some very heavy bonded printing paper...lol..
I can see this technology being used for fabricating all sorts of things, not just making guns, using CNC machinery.
The article goes on to say the guy printed an AR reciever - and then used it in a gun he built to fire 200 rounds.
Good luck with printing springs and screw threads. Some things need particular material characteristics where a thermoset plastic just won't do. It would be better if you could build your model with dental wax and then use the "lost wax" casting process to produce metal parts for things like receivers, frames and slides. It would be easier to make a barrel from steel round stock or tubing for a shotgun. It would be more costly then hand tools but a small lathe/mill would go a long way toward the necessary precision.
There are even CNC machining centers available for around $7000. Yes that's expensive but I'd bet most hobby fanatics spend more then that on their secret pleasures. Add a table top computer with a solid cad program and a post processor to output P code to drive the CNC and you can forget about the 6"x6"x6" 3-D printer and go direct from drawing to metal part for about $10,000.
I was the system manager for our engineering department CAD/CAM system for almost 15 years and got involved with "instant prototyping" for the last five years. We used Pro-E for modeling. Most of our stuff was made from castings and so the "prototype" was usually the pattern work for producing the finished casting. You just drew the part to required dimension then dialed in the shrink factor for the material and any draft, add the core prints, the program then finished the model and output the P code.
Regards,
GtG