“Interestingly enough I did find a supplier selling an 80% completed polymer receiver tonight, which I was not aware of previously. The link I provided previously was to a company which sells an inexpensive CNC milling machine which will do most of the work automatically after you bolt your receiver into it. They are suppose to be “
You don’t need a CNC Mill. You can purchase a bench top mill from a number of people (Harbor Freight and Little Machine Shop being two). These mills are all made in China by the same company (SEIG), and with tooling cost less than $1,000. Those folks selling 80% lowers also sell very good fixtures for about $200 that “guide” your milling cutter to properly finish the part. AR15 kits are available that contain everything you need minus the lower. When you are finished with your “personal firearm,” you are into it (minus the cost of the mill) about as much as if you purchased a finished gun.
I actually worked as a millwright in a family business for eight years before I went to work for a fire department. So I already have the skill set and tools available to finish an 80% receiver and get good results. I still would probably purchase a kit with jigs and instructions to save time and effort. So of course the “Ghost Gunner” CNC Mill is certainly not necessary to finish an 80% AR receiver but it is an amazing effort and was designed as much to tweak the noses of liberal politicians as it was to finish 80% AR Lowers. It comes from the same guy, Cody Wilson who designed the most well known 3-D printed gun, the Liberator 3D-printable pistol. They have actually already sold hundreds of “Ghost Gunner” CNC Mills and it is totally freaking out liberal politicians.
Is it worth the money? The CNC mill is a time saver and may help get more consistent results depending on your skill level. The coding and set up is the time consuming part that takes knowledge and skills that most people do not have if they were trying to do something like this completely on their own. The entire Ghost Gunner project is “open source” people outside of Defense Distributed have been assisting in the development of both the tooling, jigs and the coding.
Make a deposit on one of these if you want to assist Cody Wilson and Co. with his agenda and legal battles with the government. I personally would consider one of the primary objectives to be helping in an effort that is completely and effectively freaking out the media and the left and living in their heads. The gun controllers would be banning drill presses if they thought it would help keep "homemade" ARs out of our gun loving hands.
As word has gotten out and these things have been perfected the price has gone from $1000 to $1500 and I understand that they have a huge backlog of orders. I have no idea what the wait time is; I am sure that it is measured in multiple months or more. If their ongoing legal battles go bad you might even lose your $250 deposit... so it isn't an option for me. But what a conversation piece if you actually ended up with one!