Skipjack wrote:Why cant you just use a gun that you bought legally instead?
If the State Stupers get their way only supporters of the State would be permitted to arm themselves. The rest of us would be slaves subjugated to the will of the State. The ability to improvise resistance from impossible to regulate means then becomes important.
Not even in Austria, people are prevented from buying a gun (rifles provided they have a hunting license, handguns if they can bring some reason why they need it).
In the US there is no chance that anyone would be taking anybodies guns away and if there was there would be a civil war anyway. So far anyone can buy a gun legally, unfortunately even violent criminals. So there is no rational need for 3D printing a gun.
Skipjack wrote:Why cant you just use a gun that you bought legally instead?
If the State Stupers get their way only supporters of the State would be permitted to arm themselves. The rest of us would be slaves subjugated to the will of the State. The ability to improvise resistance from impossible to regulate means then becomes important.
Not even in Austria, people are prevented from buying a gun (rifles provided they have a hunting license, handguns if they can bring some reason why they need it).
In the US there is no chance that anyone would be taking anybodies guns away and if there was there would be a civil war anyway. So far anyone can buy a gun legally, unfortunately even violent criminals. So there is no rational need for 3D printing a gun.
Metal detecting body scanners the whole country over?
KitemanSA wrote: Metal detecting body scanners the whole country over?
Well I think I made it clear that I dont like that either. We dont have that in Austria, or anywhere in Europe (that I know off) other than airports and courts, btw...
It is also not quite that drastic here in the US either. Still, it does not mean that people will take away your gun. You just cant go into certain places with it.
Easier than the low melting point alloys would probably be to get a electron beam fusion machine like a "metalicarap" that can fuse high end alloys. http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap
Modern laser machines have accuracy enough to make gun parts, and can make them strong enough, but they're far too expensive, and laser tubes make a weak point in the supply chain.
The other thing 3D printing needs to serve as a point of supply is the previous step--feedstock production. For a plastic machine, that means making or recycling plastic(including reconditioning), then exruding into the filament used to run the printer. For metal, that generally means very fine powder, generally sized in nanometers.
I don't know about either easier, better, or cheaper.
The plastic required for this is the cheap, soft stuff. No professional 3D printing involved. Aluminum with a bit of copper thrown in is tough, strong, and light, and melts at low temperatures. The plastic is printed in close to final dimension and surface finish, with allowance for shrinkage, with venting and spruing. It is embedded in in something like a bucket of drywall compound (glass fiber added if required to prevent cracking) and lidded, then a vacuum pulled for just a bit. Remove the coated model and let the compound cure. Melt out the plastic. Pour the metal.
For other metals, even steel, other fluidized ceramic preparations can be used, although they are both more costly and finicky to work with...and high temp (3800degF) furnace cement has hydroflouric acid in it, or at least the one I tried did. Yeeoch, metaphorically. Glad I read the MSDS. And the cured refractory sucks to clean out of the casting, needed way more silica flour or something. However, the temperature required for steels begin to be problematic in and of themselves. Aluminum alloys, however, are easy.
For firearms, you end up with just a few square inches to work with rough and then fine files and a drill to bring to final tolerance and finish. The cost is around $1000.00 for one (less the cost of the 3D printer and plastic, which should be under $1000.00, and even may be under $500.00), and around thirty hours.
Hard to estimate time, if you roll your own 3D printer, you should make it able to work with existing 3D files of parts, and the time to first part goes way up. If you do your own files, you're really screwed for time, and will have to make prototypes and test them. If you buy the printer, include time worked to buy printer. It's around 5 fours and $50.00 for the next one. The files last a long time. So do the gun parts, enabled immensely by 3D printing of cheap plastic. You can take small plastic subassemblies and fit the product together to mold larger parts. All times neglect time the the 3D printer spends printing, while you are presumably doing other things, and time for metal to heat and cool, same reasoning.
Similar production methods work both for the various "build your own machine shop" efforts, a la Dave Gingery, and frankly in principle will work fine for aerospace components of, well things that chase things and boom when they get there and many other things. Worst case scenario, short of literal broadcast mind control, the ports could all be shut and the borders sealed (yes, borders can be sealed) and Flyover Country still becomes Can't Flyover Country, because of the anti-aircraft.
3D printed guns are the least of what the totalitarians have to worry about.
But the attitude behind the 3D gun and the inventiveness behind it--the refusal to accept a government monopoly on politically effective violence--this attitude is what the 3D printed gun can and should spread worldwide. At worst, the planet is the abattoir it's always been, and at best it's spring 1775 again somewhere.
Maybe here.
We could use it.
Of late, the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Be a shame if the good guys never show up.
Last edited by TDPerk on Sat May 18, 2013 2:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria
kunkmiester wrote:Easier than the low melting point alloys would probably be to get a electron beam fusion machine like a "metalicarap" that can fuse high end alloys. http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap
Any idea what the cost and availability of the materials is, and the first piece cost (capital and time) and next piece cost (production cost and time), for something like an AR15 receiver?
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria
Who would use it in the current real United States, other than a criminal?
It's not for now, necessarily, but for later. People in government(and not just in the US, in other countries that still allow some gun ownership) have stated quite clearly that they want a government monopoly--no proles allowed in the gun club: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffI-tWh37UY
The point here is to completely destroy the illusion that this could even remotely be possible. It's not regardless, but some people think if we rub their noses in the impossibility of the idea they might not even try.
Ohh, please! You can not ban people from going hunting. You need the hunters. Hunters need guns. There are a lot of people in the government with quite often a lot of stupid ideas. That does not mean that they are in the majority, or that their ideas have a chance at ever getting implemented. Also in a democracy, you can vote the morons off.
Skipjack wrote: You need the hunters. Hunters need guns
Why exactly are these 'hunters' required. Would the US be overrun with terrifying deer and bear if there wasn't an army of highly trained (cough)
fat bellied assholes running around in the woods shooting critters on sight?