While the classical music is a nice touch, they could have done a little better with the camera placement. Which we shall fix, as we’ve got an invite to test out the latest in 3D printed firearms technology. Just as soon as Cody gets back from Europe, that is.

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30 COMMENTS

  5. Some loser politician has already decided that these need to be regulated, but the genie’s out of the bottle.

    X-control where X = whatever some politician doesn’t like is rapidly becoming impossible.

  6. Even if you dont own a 3D printer, or even ever think you will, download those files and keep them somewhere offline (like a $5 usb drive).

  8. I like these guys.

    I’ve been modeling up a slightly different concept towards the same goals; using a 10 round mag body along with a 3D printed extension. You would grind off the base plate lips on the 10 round mag and epoxy the extension on with the spring and factory follower permanently embedded.

    With this design, you get:

    – Factory magwell dimensions.
    – Metal feed lips.
    – Metal mag catch contacts.
    – Factory follower.

    I’m thinking such a design would be more reliable in the long term, and get around the melting issues ABS+ has.

  9. What a great name, Cuomo Mag! Where’s the DiFi adjustable buttstock? Or the Bloomberg BTHP assault bullet?

  12. Bwahahahaha!!! The barn door has been officially left wide open. Even if they ban “future” production of these, I’m good bc I just printed out 5 billion of these to make sure I’ll have enough!!

  14. This is definately awesome! And, with the price of 3D printers coming down a little more every month…it’s possible this is the wave of the future. Now, all someone has to do is figure out how to print with a polymer compound rather than ABS and we’re set!

    http://defcad.org/

  15. Let’s try this again, as my comment from 12 hours ago hasn’t posted. Seems to happen most often with this author, though that may just be a coincidence…

    “…as we’ve got an invite to test out the latest in 3D printed firearms technology.”

    The current state-of-the-shelf is 3d metal printing. It has been for a couple of years. What this kid is doing with repraps and thermoplastic? 5-8 years in the past.

    Since the first stereolithography (3D printing) tech hit the market, machinists have been grabbing the company Faro Arm, digitizing gun parts, and printing them up. This isn’t new, or news. To be fair, the kid has been waving his thang in the face of the ATF and I appreciate that. He’s gotten it out to a wider audience beyond the cognoscenti, and I appreciate that. But he’s not bleeding edge. Not even cutting edge. He’s about 10 years behind the curve with what he’s doing. It’s just that the pioneers have chosen not to tempt the ATF to come after them by doing youtube vids.

    You can print an entire gun in metal, save for the barrel. I’ve seen it done, and it is just as functional as any machined part. NASA builds rocket motor components using SLM (selective metal melting). Printing barrels is coming soon as the tech gets refined further.

    Like I said, it’s a neat thing to be distributing what little he has done, and the world of teh interwebz has changed a bunch since the early 00s, when the limited bandwidth and computing power would have made all this stuff hard to distribute.

    But “distributed defense” is past trailing-edge tech.

    • The point went right over your head.

      It’s not about the best 3D printer. The cutting edge part, is the part where 3D printers have gotten down to consumer level pricing. Someone can just buy one and print this out, that’s revolutionary.

    • OK big shot, where can I get a 3D metal printer that can do all that for the $3-4k that a consumer 3D printer would cost me? And it has to be as easy to use and design for, with cheap/free CAD tools and work with STL files too.

      • You can get a variety of (far) higher quality epoxy printers in that price range, pre-owned. A reprap is just a computerized hot glue gun. A used pro machine will actually make stuff that’s tough enough to use.

        He’s kinda stuck with the reprap, as Stratasys took away the 3D printer he was leasing a few months ago – when they found out what he was doing.

        As I said, what he’s doing is admirable. Stupid, drawing a whole lotta negative PR when we least need it, new attention from ATF on a field they had been ignoring for a decade, and not creating much useful, but admirable.

        If making almost useless items out of weed trimmer grade thermoplastics is what you’re looking for, then this is cutting edge-stuff.

        There’s currently a fair amount going on in the DIY laser-sintering world. Anyone who’s actually interested in something that’s actually useful beyond decorative purposes should start there.

    • For someone who got up on his tech high horse, I was surprised to see you say “the world of teh interwebz has changed a bunch since the early 00s, when the limited bandwidth and computing power would have made all this stuff hard to distribute.”

      I had a cable modem in the early 00s, and even in the 80s or 90s this could have been easily distributed over modems. Computing power is irrelevant because the modem or 3D printer will always be the bottle neck, not the CPU.

      • So, back in the late 80s, I could have been distributing multiple MB files over dial-up 2400 baud modems on our BBS systems? My late 80s IBM XT with a massive 640k on the board and 10 meg hard drive might have been able to hold one image. Then break it up into 20 320k floppies. Or not.

        If you had cable in 2000 you were very lucky. There were only 1.5ishMM people who had a high-speed cable access to the web in 2000. Everyone else suffered with 56K dial-up, because it was all you could get. (Unless you had $800+ a month for T1). Beyond his inherent weirdness, why do you think Josh Harris failed? It was really hard to keep people watching internet TV when they don’t have broadband.

  16. 3D printing is definitely cool and is the high tech approach to making your own mags/parts. But magazines are just stamped sheet metal. Most towns have a shop that could easily manufacture mags and gun parts. We could all do it as home with basic tools and patience.

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