Posted on 12/25/2012 7:07:57 PM PST by grundle
Demands for stricter restrictions on gun sales are all the rage right now in light of the Connecticut elementary school massacre. However, a law student at the University of Texas says new technology will soon change the regulatory landscape dramatically, and possibly make such regulation futile.
The student, Cody Wilson, is among the leaders of Defense Distributed, home of the wiki weapon project. The goal of the collaborative, nonprofit project is simple: to create freely available plans that you can download from the Internet and produce a gun using a 3-D printer.
YouTube video at printablegun.com shows Wilson’s group test firing a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, reports KVUE, Austin’s ABC affiliate. An AR-15 was among the weapons Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook shooting.
According to Wilson, 24, the group used a 3-D printer to print a plastic lower receiver. The piece was then attached to the rest of a real gun. In a test that was unverified by any independent observers, the plastic piece broke, but not before the gun fired six live rounds.
“What I’m doing is showing people, okay, this is something that can be done right now with this technology, and we’re changing this in the software, and we’re making modifications and customizations and testing with different rounds and different guns, but what we make won’t look like a plastic AR-15,” Wilson told WVUE. “What we make will just be the gun at its most essential, something that just is a firearm practically speaking.”
The legality of printable 3-D guns is not clear. (RELATED: Democratic congressman urges renewal of plastic gun ban)
Democratic New York Rep. Steve Israel doesn’t want to take any chances, though, according to WVUE. Israel has called for the renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which is set to expire in December 2013.
As Slate notes, the Act makes it illegal to “manufacture, sell, ship, deliver” or “possess” firearms that garden-variety metal detectors or x-ray machines can’t detect. A renewed act would presumably cover guns manufactured with 3-D printed gun parts, which are plastic.
I could make some very strong aluminum parts from cat or Cummins aluminum pistons, wrist pins can be used for barrel making and connecting rods are perfect for milling trigger parts. I have a beautiful fixed blade knife made from nothing more than a welded chainsaw blade. i made my own knife thats like a bowie out of timken loader differential race, a bitch to hammer I tell you, 52100 steel I think it was.
However, as several have pointed out, 3D printing with materials suitable for high-stress gun parts or precursors like wax models, is already feasible, and may make it into the small-shop/home-shop arena in the foreseeable future.
I talked with a retired CIA neighbor a long time ago. He said You keep your guns all nice and clean and oil them often. When the SHTF, I will stab you, rape your wife and take all your guns and ammo you have been keeping for me for decades. He said that's how we did it in Central and South America. He said any police and military installation was the first thing we hit. Another bad thing for the powers that be,....we know where most of them live.
52100 steel is wonderful stuff if you can avoid corrosion. Holds a very keen edge, very strong stuff if heat treated correctly. Low Chrome content, which leads to ease of rusting if allowed to sit in the damp.
It would make a good steel for making bolts or receivers of firearms.
It was a bearing race two inches wide and about 6 inches across, it was a project at work using nothing but an oxy torch, a big chunk of steel for an anvil and a LOT of hammering, took me two weeks to get the curve out, a lot of peanut grinder work, 24 grit sander and finally belt sanding. Does require a unique three stage hardening process. Its a very hard steel to work with I found out on some knife forums and not suggested for a novice, the best first time knife steel is either good files or an older import axle leaf spring.
Please also add me to your 3-D printer ping list. Thanks!
Tip for your health:
When you’re grinding these steels, use at least a comfort mask to prevent sucking in grinding dust.
You can become allergic to metal, believe it or not. Belt grinders especially can put off copious amounts of metal dust.
Files are made from something akin to 1095 carbon steel. Nothing terribly special.
O-1 makes for good tool steel to work for knives, chisels and screwdrivers. Quench in oil, not water.
Lots of starting knifesmiths use 440C stainless, which works OK.
There’s so much metal out there as scrap that’s useful, I’m very much considering writing up a treatise for handy people on what metals work for what, where to get them and how to work them. With a half-dozen metals, most home shop people could make acceptable tools, guns, engines, whatever they want...
and making a forge and heat treatment furnace isn’t rocket science either.
Done.
That such technology might be used to make guns is just another reason Obama will use to control and censor the Internet. The Sandy Hook shootings are Obama’s “ Reichstag fire” and will be used as the pretext to end civil liberties starting with the Second Amendment.
LLS
Some would regard that as a feature, not a bug.
And if we can print out explosive devices on our home equipment, it's a whole new ball game.
Wouldn't be the first invention that people weren't sure what the utility was.
I’ve got an old wagon wheel band I’ve thought may make a decent blade.
Too soft?
Old (really old) wagon wheel bands might not be steel at all. They might be malleable iron...
Remember, mass-produced steel became common only late in the 19th century.
Would you mind answering a 1911 sight question for me?
There are 3D printer that use titanium.
http://i.materialise.com/materials/titanium
CC
Sure.
Mind you, I don’t know everything. I’ve done military and Novak sights on 1911’s. Millet match sights too. But some of the other night-sights that require different dovetails - I haven’t done those.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SP23rgq0c4
or would it be better to have someone cut the dovetail? I want trijicon and they make that tenon post.
Which like I said, would have little or no impact on the detectability issue (because there’s still metal there), which the idiot author imagines relates somehow to the topic of 3D printing. My point is that I don’t believe the two are related.
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