Posted on 08/24/2012 8:35:19 AM PDT by marktwain
Cody Wilson has a simple dream: To design the world’s first firearm that can be downloaded from the Internet and built from scratch using only a 3D printer–and then to share it with the world.
Earlier this month, Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves “Defense Distributed” launched an initiative they’ve dubbed the “ Wiki Weapon Project.” They’re seeking to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for a plastic gun anyone can create with an open-source 3D printer known as the RepRap that can be bought for less than $1,000. If all goes according to plan, the thousands of owners of those cheap 3D printers, which extrude thin threads of melted plastic into layers that add up to precisely-shaped three-dimensional objects, will be able to turn the project’s CAD designs into an operational gun capable of firing a standard .22 caliber bullet, all in the privacy of their own garage.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
And it would be deliciously ironic if the power of the First Amendment would eventually come to reinforce tht of the Second, in a wy that the founders might not have anticipated, but which surely would have delighted them.
Perhaps, like Ben Franklin, I may start calling myself a *Printer.*
bmfl
The barrel of the 12-gauge model 59 Winchester shotgun was of fiberglass with a metal liner mounted on an aluminum receiver. The Armalite AR-7 .22 survival rifle, now made and sold by Henry, has an aluminum receiver and barrel with a thin rifled steel liner. Other adaptations of other materials,including ceramics,are possible.
During the Second World War, some barrels for some productin versions of the British STEN submachinegun wer made of a flat stamping that was then milled with grooves at an acute angle, the metal strip then being formed around a mandrel and fusion welded into a prerifled tube, ready for use after a chambering reamer cut the barrel for the apropriate cartridge, almos always he 9mm Parabellum round still very much in use. It cost more to manufacture the seven magazines that accompanied each gun than it did to build te guns themselves.
It used to be said in the newspaper buisness that people were fools to try to throw mud at a publisher who bought ink by the barrel. There could now be a completely new meaning to that phrase.
That's prettty much what they said about Eugene toner's first military rifle designs utilizing aluminum refined from bauxite ore, which is essentially just the right kind of dirt.
We've got a while to go before the all-plastic barrel becomes a reality, however. Ceramic is a real possibiulity though, and steel-liner fitted aluminum has been with us for some time now, despite early setbacks.
Good work!
The use of the flashcube percussion unit is an inspired bit of practical engineering.
Also lots go EDM and CNC programs laying about. Bench top 5 axis solutions abound......
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