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The Lamborghini Aventador costs over $400,000, putting it out of reach for most people. Unless you 3D print one for yourself. That’s what Sterling Backus of Erie, Colo., is doing, after he and his son, Xander, decided they wanted their own supercar while playing a racing game. They’ve been working on it for over a year, and the sleek black two-door is starting to take a shape that's not a carbon copy of the Aventador, but heavily inspired by it. Backus is a physicist who works as the Chief Scientific Officer of a local laser firm and is an adjunct...

I sat at a banquet a week ago with a guy who started up, worked, then sold his wholesale machinist biz, in our Sacramento CA suburb, Rancho Cordova. That’s where the money is, in the long run, but for young people starting out, a starting wage of $20, up to $26, is not chopped liver. The happy-stance is that the computer control programming, like specialty AutoCAD, for 3D printing, at local education specialty clubs and for hobbyists, strongly resembles the professional computer application software for machinist vocational training, that now goes by the jargon CNC, for Computer Numerical Control. Our...

3D printers have ‘fingerprints,’ a discovery that could help trace 3D-printed guns, counterfeit goods Photo illustration of how the technology works. Credit: Wenyao Xu, University at Buffalo. BUFFALO, N.Y. — Like fingerprints, no 3D printer is exactly the same. Related Assets: Media Contact Information Download Images See Video/Multimedia Download Documents Find a UB Expert That’s the takeaway from a new University at Buffalo-led studyDownload pdf that describes what’s believed to be the first accurate method for tracing a 3D-printed object to the machine it came from.The advancement, which the research team calls “PrinTracker,” could ultimately help law enforcement and...

At a news conference in Austin, Texas, Paloma Heindorff has announced that she has taken the position of Director now that Cody Wilson has resigned the post amid his legal troubles over alleged sex with a 16-year-old prostitute.  The press conference has become global news. Defense Distributed has always been adept at beating the establishment media. They posted the entire new conference online at Youtube the same day. It is worth watching. The video is reasonably short, at 19:37 minutes Youtube has a history of taking down Defense Distributed videos. You can click on the Youtube link to watch...

I know the title is confusing, you probably think you know who I’m talking about but in fact, this is an art post. I was inspired by the art work contained in yesterday’s comments: from Son of Sobieski’s fine skeletor street art to Claire’s little granddaughter’s hand drawn and painted cartoon characters. So I’m just going to drop this lesson in optical illusion here for you to study. It seems a very helpful skill to have in today’s climate. So get your paper, pens, crayons (I’m talking to you Jetti) and rulers out so you too can practice the fine...

Cody Wilson, the owner of a company that makes untraceable 3D-printed guns who is wanted on an arrest warrant accusing him of sex with an underage girl, has left the U.S. and was last known to be in Taiwan, investigators in Texas said Wednesday.Austin Police Cmdr. Troy Officer told reporters that the department was working with national and international law enforcement to locate Wilson, whom Officer said missed a scheduled return flight to the U.S.Officer said it was unclear why Wilson went to Taiwan, but he added that a friend of the 16-year-old alleged victim told Wilson that he was...

A Seattle court prevented Cody Wilson from publishing 3D files on the Internet for free. Wilson obeys. Now he sells the 3D files in thumb drives instead. Cody Wilson, while complying with a court order requiring the State Department to retreat from a First Amendment legal settlement, has taken another route showing the irrationality of the court decision.Here is a brief history of this interesting, if silly, attempt to stop the flow of information. In 2013, Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed showed the technical potential of using 3D printers to make a simple, plastic, one shot pistol. They called...

Glock frame being completed with files not covered by federal injunction More Fake News from the ignorant and biased media. A brief recap: In 2013, the State Department, in the Barack Obama administration, unilateraly declared that posting computer code that could be used to print 3D firearm components, violated the vague International Traffic in Arms Regulations. This was new law, and had not been done before. In 2015 Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit against the State Department for violating their First Amendment rights. In 2018 the State Department agreed to a legal settlement of...

Judge Robert S. Lasnik, United States District Judge of the Western District of Washington, at Seattle, issued a permanent injunction against the Trump Administration State Department. The injunction is to prevent the State Department from implementing a court settlement with Defense Distributed, allowing them to exercise their First Amendment rights. The permanent injunction was issued on the 27th of August, 2018, in Seattle, Washington State.  The temporary restraining order had been issued on 31 July.   Judge Lasnik has taken the power of deciding what may or may not be lawful, based on the principle of potential harm. Potential, or irreparable...

A team of Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers have developed a way to bioprint tubular structures that better mimic native vessels and ducts in the body. The 3-D bioprinting technique allows fine-tuning of the printed tissues' properties, such as number of layers and ability to transport nutrients. These more complex tissues offer potentially viable replacements for damaged tissue. The team describes its new approach and results in a paper published on Aug. 23 in Advanced Materials. "The vessels in the body are not uniform," said Yu Shrike Zhang, PhD, senior author on the study and an associate bioengineer in BWH's...

Those pushing for a disarmed population have been educated to the fact that effective restrictions on arms cannot be achieved without strong government censorship and control over information. The First and Second Amendments in the Bill of Rights reinforce each other and make restrictions on both free expression and the right to keep and bear arms difficult. A spokesperson articulated the protestors passion for a government regulations that the believe will make them safe.  From CBS8.com: SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - Protestors of the Del Mar Gun Show addressed the Fair Board on Tuesday afternoon with their newest concerns....

On 18 July, 2018, on the Sunshine Coast of Eastern Australia, in the town of Mudjimba, police raided a house and found some 3D printed plastic guns, some printed false identification, and a small amount of drugs. From news.com.au: "They are all polymer and all they needed was a pin and a spring-type assembly pushed into it to make it work. For all intents and purposes they would look like a gun." Police allege that three 3D-printed handguns, along with weapon parts, a knuckle duster, false licences and drugs, were found at a house at Mudjimba on Wednesday. The...

There is a long history of banning books both here in the United States and abroad. Books that come to mind are D. H. Lawerence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and a whole host of others. In more recent times, the Supreme Court has rejected efforts to ban books just because someone didn't like it. See Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) Here is a book that you need to buy that many in the gun control industry would like to see banned. It is called The Liberator Code Book: An Exercise in Free Speech. The book...

FAIRFAX, Va.— Chris W. Cox, executive director, National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, released the following statement on Tuesday: “Many anti-gun politicians and members of the media have wrongly claimed that 3-D printing technology will allow for the production and widespread proliferation of undetectable plastic firearms. Regardless of what a person may be able to publish on the Internet, undetectable plastic guns have been illegal for 30 years. Federal law passed in 1988, crafted with the NRA’s support, makes it unlawful to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive an undetectable firearm.”

Elections have consequences. One of the levers of power in the executive branch is the ability to settle lawsuits. Trump era officials in the Department of Justice have agreed to settle a lawsuit meant to stop an egregious violation of First and Second Amendment rights. Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed published computer code that enabled people with 3D printers to print a crude single shot pistol and parts of semi-automatic rifles. The Federal government ordered Defense Distributed to stop distribution of the computer code. Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed complied, and filed a lawsuit, with the help of the...

The machine that printed the record-setting beam will be the 3D printer for Archinaut, a robotic system that Made In Space is developing. Archinaut will also feature robotic arms, allowing the spacecraft to repair satellites and build large structures in Earth orbit, company representatives have said. This same 3D printer passed a "thermal vacuum" test last summer, successfully printing out parts in a chamber that imposed the temperatures and vacuum of space.  That test was conducted at standard Earth gravity, but Made In Space does have experience manufacturing things in zero-G: The company has launched three separate machines to the...

For the last decade, the 3D printing sector has been dominated by closed systems, in which 3D printers could only be used with the manufacturer’s resin and software. The trouble with closed systems is that they limit innovation. One printer manufacturer alone cannot offer the variety of materials needed for the thousands of potential 3D printing applications. As a result, the development of new end-user applications and materials has stalled, and growth in 3D printing has plateaued. To break out, the industry must reinvent itself and become open. There has been progress in that direction. Players from adjacent industries have...

Wi-Fi can pass through walls. This fact is easy to take for granted, yet it's the reason we can surf the web using a wireless router located in another room. But not all of that microwave radiation makes it to (or from) our phones, tablets, and laptops. Routers scatter and bounce their signal off objects, illuminating our homes and offices like invisible light bulbs. Now, German scientists have found a way to exploit this property to take holograms, or 3D photographs, of objects inside a room — from outside it. "It can basically scan a room with someone's Wi-Fi transmission,"...

In the picture the 3D printed replicas are in the lower row. From the left, they are 1,3,4 and 5. The typical 3D printed striations are easily visible on #4. Australia has, in many ways, some of the most extreme gun regulations in the world. By jumping through a great many hoops, and carefully filling out the right forms over several months, you can own and use a significant number of firearms. The regulations are a wish list of most of those proposed by gun hating activists from around the world. The were rushed through the Australian political machine...

In late November of 2016, the leftist Guardian, in the UK, reported that 3D printers were used to make illegal submachine guns in Australia.  Reports of homemade submachine guns in Australia have become fairly common. From theguardian.com: A highly sophisticated weapons production facility using 3D printers and computers to make machine guns has been uncovered in a series of raids across the Gold Coast. Police say they found four homemade automatic submachine guns, silencers, ammunition, a replica handgun, a .45 calibre pistol and equipment used to make weapons at two Nerang businesses, as well as a pill press. The...