Posted on 11/08/2013 7:42:32 AM PST by Joe Brower
First 3-D-Printed Metal Gun Shows Tech Maturity
Jeremy Hsu / Thu, November 07, 2013
The world's first 3-D–printed metal gun aims to prove a point about the reliability of 3-D printing technology. But its makers don't plan on revolutionizing the manufacture of firearms by making the process available in every household.
The metal pistol made by Solid Concepts, a 3-D printing service based in Austin, Texas, represents a working 3-D–printed version of the famed 1911 pistol originally designed by John Browning. Solid Concepts created almost all parts of the classic gun through direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), an industrial 3-D printing process used to make metal parts in aerospace manufacturing and for surgical implants. (The gun's springs were made separately.)
"When we decided to go ahead and make this gun, we weren't trying to figure out a cheaper, easier, better way to make a gun," said Phillip Conner, DMLS project manager, in a video. "That wasn't the point at all. What we were trying to do is dispel the commonly held notion that DMLS parts are not strong enough or accurate enough for real-world applications."
The 3-D–printed pistol proved both sturdy and accurate during mounted and handheld firing tests showcased in a video posted on 6 November. Solid Concepts says it can 3-D print unique gun parts for any "qualifying customer" in five days—a service made legally possible by the fact that the company holds a Federal Firearms License.
But the 3-D–printed weapon that Solid Concepts built can't be replicated by any DIY gunsmith attempting to do so with a 3-D printer costing less than $10,000. That's an important point that Solid Concepts emphasized at the very beginning of its blog post about its achievement.
"The industrial printer we used costs more than my college tuition (and I went to a private university) and the engineers who run our machines are top of the line; they are experts who know what they’re doing and understand 3-D Printing better than anyone in this business," said Alyssa Parkinson, a spokesperson for Solid Concepts, in a blog post.
In other words, the Solid Concepts gun still requires expensive, industrial-grade equipment that most DIY enthusiasts or homeowners can't afford. That makes the metal gun very different from the plastic guns of Defense Distributed, a Texas group that has developed an open-source design for guns intended for manufacture using home 3-D printers.
Defense Distributed's plastic guns haven't proven durable enough to survive more than a few shots. But the group's focus on plastic firearms produced by cheaper varieties of 3-D printers has raised fears that 3-D printers and open-source gun blueprints could theoretically allow anyone to make a gun at home—either legally or illegally.
Such fears have already driven lawmakers to propose laws that would restrict the manufacture of 3-D–printed plastic guns. Police in Manchester, UK went so far as to seize a 3-D printer and what they claimed to be 3-D–printed gun parts from a private home last month. (The police quickly backed off their claim after people pointed out that the parts displayed in police photos appeared to be printer parts.)
Can’t happen.
Thanks to the 2nd Amendment, there are still enough guns per capita in this country to prevent door-to-door confiscation.
I don’t currently own one, but I would print one ASAP were this the case.
The fact is it’s too late for them to end the 2nd Amendment now, thank God.
They can’t even impose any more gun control because of 3D printers. Doing so is absurd on its face thanks to Defense Distributed.
Good luck printing an iPad at home. That will NEVER happen.
Mechanical objects, sure, but you’ll never see additive manufacturing of semiconductors done in the home.
The leftists are going nuts over the fact that this was done.
What they don’t realize is that this puts one more nail in the coffin for the rationale for people control.
There is no way for the government to totally get rid of the Commonsense Civil Right of self-defense –there are still ways for guns to be produced and that people control only punishes the law-abiding an rewards the criminals – public and private.
Now if we could 3D-print µm-scale high-temp superconductors...
If all you want to make is handguns, the necessary machines cost about $1500 (without tooling) for both lathe and mill.
These are the Seig "minimill/minilathe" that are popular in the hobby machining area from places like Harbor Freight.
We have a couple of these (from MicroMark) for quick and dirty prototype work. They need a bit of tweaking during initial setup, but they can certainly "turn out" the necessary precision/accuracy.
I guess a crackdown on technology is likely to be sooner than later.
DMLS and other advanced 3D printing technologies will be the modern Weapons Shops of Ishtar. Anyone who does not get the reference should go look it up and read the books.
Wow, that is wild! That bit of artwork deserves its own thread.
Yes. Gunsmithing has been done since forever with small lathes. A gunsmithing lathe needn’t be powerful or large. An old Southbend 9A lathe would work, and a Southbend 10L (aka “Heavy 10”) is considered nearly ideal by lots of gunsmiths to this day. These were very inexpensive and reasonably priced machines back in the day when we used to make something in this country.
Today, you could gunsmith full sized rifles with a 12x36 lathe from Grizzly that you can get for, oh, less than $3500, delivered in CONUS.
Then you need to buy some tooling, so reckon you’ll be up to $5000 to crank out product.
For a mill, you can make a milling attachment for your lathe. Lots of gunsmiths didn’t use to have a mill. John Moses Browning didn’t have a mill. Today, the cheap price of used Bridgeports means that instead of owning a drill press, most shops have at least a Bridgeport mill.
In it’s current form, sure. It was a crude example. The biggest hurdles being the precision of the available printers and availability of necessary materials. But saying ‘never’ is foolish. You should look into what is currently being worked on and imagine the way this is going to go.
It is more likely that ‘open source’ devices where people can print most parts and purchase others to build a final product will be more viable for quite some time. So, you wouldn’t be scanning an ipad and printing it, but you’d be able to build something comparable using printed parts and purchasing some of the more complex ones.
Things like this are getting us closer and closer though:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130425103318.htm
I’m quite comfortable saying ‘never’ in the case of most semiconductors.
The equipment and process steps used in making a leading edge semi are so incredibly complex they’ll never be done by additive manufacturing. The A7 processor that powers Apples newest iPad is 1 cm square and has over a billion transistors on it. Critical layer transistors have feature sizes of 28 nanometers. The fabrication facility it’s built in cost Samsung over 3 billion dollars to build. The air in the fabrication areas is the cleanest in the world, as even the smallest little particle of dust can make the end-product useless.
I’m very, very comfortable in saying never. Additive manufacturing is a wonderful process and will enable many, many things. But there’s also a lot of hype in it, and there’s an awful lot that it will never be able to do.
Oh - also, thanks for the link. There’s some interesting stuff there. I particularly like the spray-can image sensor article.
/johnny
Affordable “printing” at the molecular level is coming within a few decades. Within 5-10 years for researchers. The pieces are falling into place at an exponential rate.
Unless, of course, the idiots running this planet bring on a new stone age...
Next up: Background checks for 3D printers.
640k ought to be enough memory for anybody. -Bill Gates
think about how well the tolerances can be made.
I’m not so sure the printing part of that is so unobtainable...but scanning tech certainly needs to be a lot better to copy semiconductor devices,
Imagine printing parts for old cars that are no longer made or available. Better yet, make formerly metal body parts (cheaply) out of a very tough but light plastic that lets you make, say, a ‘69 GTO that weighs 500 pounds less than the original.
I see some enterprising soul making a fortune selling now unavailable plastic interior parts for dozens or hundreds of popular old cars. All you need is one example and a good 3-D scanner, plus some knowledge of the restoration market, and you’re rich.
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