This $1,200 machine lets you make untraceable semi-automatic rifles at home

originally posted by: mindseye1609
a reply to: Yeahkeepwatchingme

Not at all. 3d printers under $100,000 dollars are nothing more then a novelty or a very very niche tool. Prototyping is about the only time these new cheap small single material 3d printers are actually useful outside of making little green army men.

The day a 3d printer can print us a working firearm or the coinciding parts to put a working firearm together we won't be too worried about gun violence any more. The entire shape of the world economy and landscape will be very very different. In the meantime the printers that can do this now are very very very expensive. And 100 grand can just buy a buncha untraceable guns instead of a machine to print them.

Already DONE! a completely printed stainless steel 1911 colt forty five !!!!!
Every part printed......they call it sintering and use a laser to print the stainless powders I believe....still it shot reall bullets!!!

a reply to: Yeahkeepwatchingme

The concept of an untraceable gun is utterly absurd.

A rifle barrel leaves unique markings on the bullets which leave the gun. Whether that gun is numbered or not, incidents involving that weapon can be traced and tied up together with the weapon if it is ever recovered by law enforcement officials.

Now, granted, if a shot is fired during the commission of an offence using that weapon, and a bullet recovered from the scene, it is true that you would have a situation where the bullet would not automatically register as being shot from a rifle with a serial number, and a sellers and buyers history attached to it.

But that is not the same as being untraceable. If the gun is ever recovered and test fired, it could be linked to any criminal activity undertaken which required it to be fired. Striations on the bullets, corresponding to the barrel of the gun itself would be enough.

a reply to: TrueBrit

This is true to an extent. A smart (or devious) shooter would know to either A) deep 6 the weapon so it will never be found and therefore linked or B) permanently tamper with the rifling, firing pin, powder type, etc so as to disguise the characteristics of that particular weapon so it cannot be linked.

I am not advocating this, just food for thought.

To the OP:
I think we are still a ways off on 3D printing versus the current state of CNC milling. A skilled machinist (or some even not so skilled) can successfully create a fully functioning firearm. No need for serial numbers or any form of registration. Sure the law might connect your access to machining equipment and purchase of common weapons grade aluminum or steel but of course a criminal will always find a way around it.

It seems like a lot of hassle when you can just buy an 80% lower and finish it yourself with a little know how and tools that cost a lost less that this set up and just like the end result of this apparatus, you have a lower receiver with no serial number. To me, the easier and less expensive route is the 80% lower and imho the 80% lower is going to be, for less money, made of mil spec materials which to me means safer for me to operate when all is complete. I've been building AR platforms for years since I got out of the service so maybe its a familiarity issue for me but for now at least, for around $100 USD plus the cost of a few tools and a LPK I can have a well made lower receiver that I believe is going to be safer, hold up longer and be more reliable. Its cool the tech is moving forward for those that can affords the toys but I'm old school when it comes to smithing my own wares and prefer somethimg I know will work well.

originally posted by: ParanoidAmerican
a reply to: intrptr

The lower receiver is the gun as that is where the serial number is. The rest of the parts can be purchased and are not tracked as the lower receiver is.

The intent to misuse a gun is the crux here. If a person has malware for a brain then they will get hold of a gun somehow, or a car; not "buy a printer".

a reply to: Yeahkeepwatchingme

Unless it creates every part independently then assembles it well enough to satisfy knowledgeable gun owners I think it'll be awesome but slightly impractical.

Agreed. Printing one part does not a gun make. Printers will never make a barrel by the way, heat treating and broaching lands and grooves will be beyond that ability for the foreseeable future.

originally posted by: mindseye1609
a reply to: lostbook

It's not actually a 3d printer it's a desktop CnC machine. You need the original blank casting of a lower reliever before you can then mill all the openings and whatnot.

It's cutting area is pretty small too. 3 inches by 6 inches by like 3 and a half inches tall. You could get better for your money if you know what your doing but as far as plug and play goes this thing is pretty well in a class all it's own.

You can bet every single one of these sold will be recorded and watched. If the right person gets their hands on one the government could have a poster boy for banning the 80% blanks.

I'm not sure the cost is worth it either if your only gonna mill a few. Can't be more then $100 bucks and a few hours to have someone do it for you at a machine shop.

I've noticed they push the "turns it into a semi automatic rifle"..... Ya maybe the stock loaded design but a little tweak and you have yourself a full auto.

This thing has to have some politicians all In a huff. Anyone got a pool on when the ATF raids the company?

Yeah, I was a bit unsure about that. Thanks for clearing that up.

a reply to: lostbook

Manufacturing home based firearms is not a new thing, and also the need to not have it serialized.

You really should save your outrage for other more important items.

This is a good thing. The ability for people to exercise their 2nd Amendment right is the larger issue.

a reply to: thesmokingman

An absolute boon for criminals. These guns make crime easier to commit especially shooting people. Easier to get away with it.

As a project manufacturing guns from designs on a computer screen must be really interesting. You can tweek the design to your requirements or experiment say with a longer barrel.

For society as a whole this is not good news but for criminals and dare I say it terrorists, excellent news. Make your own guns. Make your own rocket launcher in a couple of years and no one will be any the wiser.

a reply to: ispyed

That is the biggest load of crap.

The ability to manufacturer firearms has been around for a long time now. There has never been a need for criminals to procure a $1200 device to do so.

Criminals are criminals for a reason, they don't abide by laws to begin with.

All this machine does it automate the small amount of milling necessary to take a lower blank to a functioning firearm. The ability to do this by hand has been there for a long time now.

Oh, let's not forget about many criminals removing serial numbers off of regularly produced firearms.

SO......

a reply to: intrptr

I think for a criminal this could become a lucrative business with this machine you could make and illegally sell lots of untraceable weapons.

a reply to: ParanoidAmerican

Criminal cartels already do this, without the aid of milling machines. They manufacture guns from the raw materials upward, not good ones mind you, but good enough to put a person on the wrong side of the Styx.

a reply to: ParanoidAmerican

I think for a criminal this could become a lucrative business with this machine you could make and illegally sell lots of untraceable weapons.

Except there are plenty of firearms around to not need to manufacture them. Either stolen or procured from other criminals (drug dealers are usually arms dealers).

Having an illegal gun business is not a best choice for an enterprise in the gun crime world. People want the best, not some bargain basement quality.

Would you rather depend on a Colt or Smith and Wesson? Or some underground zip gun?

originally posted by: AnteBellum
a reply to: lostbook

Firearms still need bullets, if they can't take away the guns they can ban the smokeless powder to make rounds. Homemade gunpowder is not that great even if your good at making it.

I personally want a handheld railgun, solves so many issues, have they figured this out yet?

Not to get off topic, but yes.. yes they have. At least a proof of concept, anyway.



And yes, being able to print at home without investing a fortune is a good thing.

a reply to: TrueBrit

TB - Actually in places where guns have been banned, the illegal manufacturers have gotten VERY good at what they do. And of course, only criminals obtain and use these illegal firearms.

www.reuters.com...

There is a great Vice documentary on this topic as well, if anyone cares to look it up.

a reply to: TinkerHaus

I know that Vice did a piece on South Americas scratch built gun trade.

That was a good watch, but they always looked like crap, and some of them sounded really off. I do not know much about guns, but I know about tone and sound.

originally posted by: AnteBellum
a reply to: lostbook

Firearms still need bullets, if they can't take away the guns they can ban the smokeless powder to make rounds. Homemade gunpowder is not that great even if your good at making it.

I personally want a handheld railgun, solves so many issues, have they figured this out yet?

The problem is the power source. We made a 12 foot rail gun in SA just for fun, well I did lol. It was part of an EMP weapon I was project manager and lead r&d engineer on. The EMP weapon had it's own linear accelerator. On the rail gun we needed an almost instantaneous 300 amps to drive a 1" diameter projectile up the barrel and accelerate it to 2000 ft per second using a rather complex linear magnetic accelerator. Fun toy but a lot of scr's and capacitors and certainly not something you could carry as a sidearm lol.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

This is the direction I've been looking.

Graphene

Nano scale

Maxwell tech




I'd really love to buy you a beer sometime bob.

You say 1 inch projectile? How long and what was the weight? Material? Shoot me a direct message if you want so we don't flood this thread too much lol


And antebellum get on YouTube and look up homemade rail guns. There's kids making then in there basement that can do some pretty impressive stuff.

I think it is weird that the main concern is tracing weapons. It should be tracking and jailing or killing those who use weapons illegally. I've read somewhere (forget where) that police rarely catch criminals via serial numbers.

We should be more worried about the creeping mindset that governmental oversight into what we own is important and right.

originally posted by: mindseye1609
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

This is the direction I've been looking.

Graphene

Nano scale

Maxwell tech

I'd really love to buy you a beer sometime bob.

You say 1 inch projectile? How long and what was the weight? Material? Shoot me a direct message if you want so we don't flood this thread too much lol

And antebellum get on YouTube and look up homemade rail guns. There's kids making then in there basement that can do some pretty impressive stuff.

Don't know what the weight was, it was iron I turned on a lathe, just a 1" diameter by 2.5" long slug, it did have good weight though ;-) You wouldn't want to get hit by that sucker at Mach 3, it had no problem going through 6 concrete blocks lol.

I don't mind sharing information and I know a "bit" about supercapacitors. If you could get the materials, like barium titanate (or graphene) plus a metalization layer for a 3d printer and it's resolution was high enough (nanoscaled), you could make an ultrathin wrapped extremely pitted (to increase the area) film that would become a supercapacitor when finished. The problem becomes creating those billions of 10 to 20 angstrom "pits" on a 5 to 10 nanometer thin film. However, once this is done, one cubic centimeter of material would be the equivalent of about 1700 amp/hours.

You might even be able to use graphene on barium titanate ;-) You just have to remember, it's all in the area you can generate. The higher the area the higher the energy storage capability. It;s like when I do hydrogen electrolysis, I coat my copper electrodes in carbon, because I can increase the area by 50 to 5000 times. That gives me test results like 198cc's per second Hydrogen and 198cc's per second O2 (because I use an ozone generator and separate the gases right in the cells using a membrane that allows for easy ion transfer). That way you can actually control the mix and get the 2:1/3:1 ratio that won't melt the heads in a combustion engine.

Cheers - Dave