3-D printer ping
Cody: The fastest object printer in the West!
This is a technology still in its infancy.
The entire world will be changed by this tech. Today it is crude 3-D printing. Soon it will be an order of magnitude more advanced and will become a desktop assembler.
Small assemblers in the home will create tools, food, utensils, electronic devices, clothing, shoes..etc
Large assemblers will create cars, planes, bicycles..etc
Enormous mobile assemblers will create houses.
Biological assemblers will create hearts, kidneys, hands, feet, fingers, skin...etc
It’s coming... it will change the world.
Its advance is exponential..NOT linear.
from what i’ve seen, the materials don’t look like they’d be able to handle the pressures created by firing a cartridge. might be a one shot zip-gun at best.
“3-D printing” is just a fancy way of making plastic objects using computer-controlled methods.
For making parts of guns, it might be possible to make the plastic parts this way. However, parts such as the chamber and barrel better be out of metal — and those parts can be made in a small, traditional machine shop. A lathe and a milling machine would do all that is necessary except perhaps the rifling, but the latter was accomplished long ago with simple hand tools.
A cross-bow is rather easy to make with ordinary hand tools.
In summary, all the talk of 3-D printing does not really add much to the story of guns. That might change if someone made a 3-D printer for metal objects, but then you are near to a computer-operated milling machine.
“3-D printing” is just a fancy way of making plastic objects using computer-controlled methods.
For making parts of guns, it might be possible to make the plastic parts this way. However, parts such as the chamber and barrel better be out of metal — and those parts can be made in a small, traditional machine shop. A lathe and a milling machine would do all that is necessary except perhaps the rifling, but the latter was accomplished long ago with simple hand tools.
A cross-bow is rather easy to make with ordinary hand tools.
In summary, all the talk of 3-D printing does not really add much to the story of guns. That might change if someone made a 3-D printer for metal objects, but then you are near to a computer-operated milling machine.
Yes, the genie is out of the bottle. The ability of small groups and individuals to wield greater force than ever before will change the world. It will probably mean the death of the large nation state, as we see small bands of people defeating, or at least undermining, the former world powers such as the Soviet Union and the US. We could see old forms of government return, such as the nation state.
We may be in for chaotic times. This was predicted to a certain extent in the book, The Sovereign Individual by Davidson and Rees-Mogg.
The wet dream of every democrat and many republicans - As stated repetedly by their leaders - a nation where only the police and military are armed.
As technology evolves, the public will gain access to new kinds of information gathering and distribution systems. For example, if there was a real time public database of every government vehicle, and where it was located so you could see them overlaid on a google map, then the ability of any government to do much of anything against the interests of the public would be minimal. Obviously such a collection and publication of data would undermine some of the legitimate functions of the government, so few citizens today would or should support such efforts. But the technology to do so is here today, and won't go away.
Similarly, real time video uploads and images from phones record many events as they occur, as do private security cameras. Within a few years real time information about just about everything will be readily available, and many platforms will exist to publish that information widely.
That technology will have far wider implications than 3D printing.
I’m of the opinion that the most practical use of this technology would be the casting of the metal parts via the lost wax casting process. The printer could print the metal parts is wax to be cast and the non-metal parts could be printed directly.
And, from 'their' perspective, what's the down-side of this?
FUBO. FMCDH and in a pile of spent brass...