Hobbyist builds working assault rifle using 3D printer
Hobbyists have used 3D printers to make guitars, copy house keys, and bring robot dinosaurs to life, but a firearms enthusiast who goes by the handle "Have Blue" has taken this emerging technology into a new realm by assembling a working rifle from 3D-printed parts. Specifically, ExtremeTech reports, Have Blue used 3D CAD files …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Re: FAIL indeed: Holmes passed his background check
"But youi're right, the background check failed. Shouldn't the bureaucrats who gave him the green light to buy that gun, be held accountable? Shouldn't the politicians who passed these rules be held accountable? Shouldn't the NRA be held accountable for pressuring these politicians?"
In a sane world they would be. But in the US amongst gun owners any regulation of their precious guns is seen as a violation of the 2nd amendment.
The actual answer IMO is to actually implement 2nd amendment in its stated intent and form a "well regulated militia", i.e. some kind of reservist force with defence obligations and training. Anyone part of that force may keep their government issued weapon at home just as Swiss reservists do. Everyone else would have no constitutional entitlement or right to any weapon whatsoever.
Re: FAIL indeed: Holmes passed his background check
Why should the NRA be held responsible? The person responsible was the one who pulled the trigger and ONLY that person!
"The actual answer IMO is to actually implement 2nd amendment in its stated intent and form a "well regulated militia", i.e. some kind of reservist force with defence obligations and training."
No it's not. Only Constitutional revisionist believe that. (ie Anti-Gun nuts)
Re: FAIL indeed: Holmes passed his background check
Early variants of the M-16 could fire full suto and were generally phased out of active duty in the late '80's except in basic training. If you've fired one of these you're either from the Vietnam era or still in basic.
Re: For those w/o time to read the paper
He was not certified as his therapist never reported him.
Re: FAIL indeed: Holmes passed his background check
You're right about the A2 variant, When I left the army in the mid 80's we only had the A1's. those most definately did NOT have a 3 round burst setting. The A2 was the first with the 3 round burst capability and was adopted by the Army late in the '80s. They also did away with the awful triangular front hand guards in the A2 or A3.. not sure which.
Re: FAIL indeed: Holmes passed his background check
SA80? That's a trade name for a whole family of weapons.
You must mean the L85A1 Rifle, which I admit was not the best bit of kit ever but was certainly not the clusterfuck that it was made out to be in the press.
Now of course we have the L85A2 which is basically L85A1 with Service Pack 1 which performs just fine.
Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Baltimore, Maryland, July 30, 2012
The editorial staff of the Register
Monsieurs et madames:
Of course I am aware that the Reg is a red top, and therefore prone to exaggeration, especially for the sake of an eye-catching headline. It's one of the things I've always enjoyed about your fine publication. But could you please prevent your writers from actually telling flat-out lies in your headlines and your articles?
One 3D-printed component of a firearm, and at that a component which is not subject to the force of a round going off in the chamber -- and a component made of a material which cannot withstand such force, and would immediately explode if anyone unwisely made the attempt -- does not a "working assault rifle" make, nor anything remotely close to same. Nor, given the limitations of the materials which 3D printers can now or will soon be able to work with, does it suggest in any sense that a "working assault rifle" could be produced with a 3D printer, however inexpensive those devices should become.
There is also the quite salient point that, under US federal law, it is quite legal to manufacture your own firearms, so long as you never sell them and you are not otherwise prohibited from buying or owning firearms, whether you have a federal firearms license or not. Weapons and components regulated under the National Firearms Act(1) require ATF approval and tax payment in order to be legally manufactured; all other categories of firearms, specifically including this semi-automatic rifle whose barrel is over sixteen inches in length, require neither payment nor approval.
In added light of the fact that the remainder of the firearm was assembled from "off-the--shelf parts", which implies legality of said parts' purchase under the National Firearms Act, Have Blue's manufacture of an AR-15 lower receiver, and his use of it in a finished firearm, is therefore perfectly legal and permissible under United States law, whether it carries a registration number or otherwise.
To imply otherwise, as Mr. McAllister has here done, goes far beyond anything which might even charitably be called "exaggeration", and appears to reach and surpass the point of utter, bare-faced mendacity. Surely this is not the case, and the cause of this blatant misrepresentation of fact is not a lack of anything resembling journalistic ethics on the part of Mr. McAllister, but rather simply that he has failed to detect, much less address, his ignorance on this subject.
I understand that the Reg is a UK-based publication, and that people on the eastern side of the pond mostly have some really strange ideas about firearms and firearms owners. I also understand that someone based in San Francisco, who statistically speaking has probably never so much as laid hands on a firearm in his life, probably has a lot of the same strange ideas.
But would it be too much to ask that you check, or require that your writers check, with someone knowledgeable? In this case it would have sufficed merely to review applicable US federal law, and to read "Have Blue"'s own statement of what he actually did -- and then to represent it honestly, rather than whomping up a bunch of arrant nonsense that makes it sound like any Holmes-alike wannabe with a RepRap in his garage can manufacture automatic weapons wholesale with nothing more than a few kilos of ABS feedstock? I grant, of course, that Mr. McAllister never goes quite so far as to state in his article that this is the case; the implication of same, however, I think could not be made any more clear with any amount of effort.
I would expect this sort of behavior from the Daily Mail, for example, whose authors are frequently known to be extremely tendentious to the point of lying outright in their work, or the News of the World, whose editorial staff is not above blatant criminality in the cause of stirring up scandal. Red top or no, I have always esteemed and respected El Reg as being above this sort of behavior, and in the past I have never had reason to question that esteem or that respect. That such outright falsehoods should pass, without any apparent effort on the part of the Register's editorial staff to redress the error, forces me to wonder whether I should reconsider that esteem and that respect.
I would greatly appreciate it if said editorial staff would revisit this article and, when they find that my statements regarding the article's flaws are accurate, perhaps discuss the situation with Mr. McAllister to the end of modifying the article such that, at minimum, it at least avoids the sort of plain misrepresentation of fact which can only be due either to arrant ignorance or to blatant mendacity.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.
I remain, sincerely, &c., &c.
(1) "Machine guns", defined as anything which fires more than one round on a single pull of the trigger; rifles with barrel length under sixteen inches; shotguns with barrel length under eighteen inches; suppressors ("silencers"); explosives, missile launchers, and anything of caliber greater than .50, under the heading of "destructive devices"; "All Other Weapons", an ill-described category including, not all firearms, but rather only such esoterica as smoothbore pistols, disguised or concealable firearms, &c. (Source: 26 USC ch. 53.)
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Good post Aaron, thank you for the clarifications and corrections. It was good to read a clear, well written post. The part about "people on the eastern side of the pond mostly have some really strange ideas about firearms" I will let pass because it was not the main thrust of a post that clearly had some thought and care put into it, and this is not the place for a (yet another) gun control debate or discussion.
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Always glad to be of help, and thank you very kindly for the compliment!
(I would note, parenthetically, that I don't really see the "eastern side of the pond" bit as being particularly unfair, given some of the shit I've heard folks in the UK say, quite earnestly, about Americans and firearms. Just as you say, though, it's far beside the point. Thanks again!)
@Aaron Em (was: Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another)
"One 3D-printed component of a firearm, and at that a component which is not subject to the force of a round going off in the chamber -- and a component made of a material which cannot withstand such force, and would immediately explode if anyone unwisely made the attempt -- does not a "working assault rifle" make"
That's the entire point. The "printed" portion is the ONLY portion of the weapon that requires a federally tracked serial number ... Please, do try to understand the gist of the article before commenting. Ta.
Re: @Aaron Em (was: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another)
The article I clicked on implied he print a gun, not one piece. Doing what he did is nothing special and he could have easily made the piece out of metal. He certainly didn't print a gun.
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
"some of the shit I've heard folks in the UK say, quite earnestly, about Americans and firearms"
What? That they basically appear to have wet dreams about owning a gun? Shit indeed...
Good advice, Jake. You should follow it
Read the law I cited. A homemade lower receiver does not require a serial number of any sort, federally registered or otherwise, in order to be legal to manufacture and to own. You don't even need to hold a federal firearms license. You can't legally sell it, and you can't be someone who is banned from firearms ownership, but other than that you're free and clear.
Care to try again?
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Yeah, that's pretty much the attitude. Good example, thanks. Feel free to keep showing everyone what I'm talking about.
Re: Good advice, Jake. You should follow it
If you re-read your own ... Maybe, just maybe, you are not so focused?
Re: @Aaron Em (was: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another)
jake,
What you fail to understand is the reason that part has the number stamped on it.
That is it is the part least likly to ware out and be replaced, the other part that usually has (part of) a serial number on it is the bolt assembly for similar reasons.
springs, barrels, magazines, stocks, sights,... all get replaced quite regulalarly either due to them becoming worn out or simply because the owner wants something a little different. Making stamping numbers on any of those parts mostly pointless.
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Mostly a well written post. The comments regarding the UK are however very ill informed. There is gun ownership in the UK. The types of weapon and what you can do with them are more limited these days. I grew up in a rural area and many people had rifles for sport and work. Many still do. They just don't wander down the high street armed to the teeth. Perhaps they are just nicer to each other :-) If you act like an arse I can understand why you feel the need to carry.
As for people having wet dreams about gun ownership, I'm not sure you would class a dream about living in a country where you are 59 times more likely to be murdered with a gun is a pleasurable dream. Hawai'i has some of the strictest gun laws in the US, it also has the lowest incidence of gun releated deaths. Concealed carry is extremely rare in Hawai'i although home protection is fine, as is hunting. I'm sure some people want CC, most just don't care.
I am pro ownership of guns. In the right hands they are safe. The problem is the pro gun lobby forcing laws allowing nut jobs their guns back. In this case, I doubt any legislation, including an outright gun ban, would have prevented the massacre. He would have used different methods. That doesn't mean felons and loons should be allowed their guns back. Bad stuff is always going to happen to some degree, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and minimise it. Allowing loons and felons guns back is the most likeliest reason we will see stricter gun control. Not somebody fabricating a part of a weapon or somebody with legally obtained weapons going postal.
Re: @Aaron Em (was: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another)
Except it doesn't need a federally tracked serial number as it was not made for sale, only personal use.
Please, do try to understand the gist of the letter before commenting. Ta.
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
Thank you for posting that.
There are large communities of people in the US that manufacture their own firearms. Most commonly built was the AK-47 style rifle. Other then the barrel and trunnion an AK pretty simple. The receiver, the part that makes it a firearm is just a flat piece of metal thats folded and tack welded in a few spots. As you can see from this...
http://armsofamerica.com/images/products/detail/ak_builder_sidefolder_flat12458586404a424b508dceb.jpg
The AR was always more of a problem to build because it required a machining a lower receiver, which most people weren't going to let them run your mill to make, and even if you did, you probably wouldn't have enough experience to do it right.
Most machinists will not help you run the tools, since they would be considered the manufacture and liable for making the weapon. If you build it yourself it's considered for personal use. What's interesting now is instead of machine shops it's computer labs that can do it now. Interesting to see where this will go.
A question I have is can you embed reinforcing materials in a 3d print? A wound cable or Kevlar string embedded length wise would help reduce the risks of cracks forming and a catastrophic failure occurring while firing the weapon.
*Also engrave or stamp the receiver with a serial number of some type and document when it was created. If the weapon is ever stolen you'll need the information to give to the police, and the ATF would be very unhappy at you if you released an unmarked weapon in to the wild.
Re: Letter to the editor: Sensationalism is one thing; outright lying is another
"....Most commonly built was the AK-47 style rifle...." Never really understood why when the AR-18AR-180 is just as easy to make, it's an all-stampings welded receiver design that can be made with folded steel and it fires the US 5.56mm round. It's also a gas piston design, so not as sensitive to "dirty" ammo fouling as the AR-15/M-16 direct action designs. Maybe it's because Armalite are more likely to sue than the Russians?
Serialized Receiver?
What idiot changed the rules? 20 years ago I was told I couldn't buy a replacement barrel for my damaged 22 because the barrels were the key serialized parts. A hardened barrel, rifled, and properly machined so it won't blow up in your face is a major undertaking both in the metal working and just the appropriate materials. I could carve that receiver out of a piece of seasoned oak and it would work as well as a printed plastic one.
Re: Serialized Receiver?
Nobody changed the rules. You were lied to. I've had barrels replaced on several occasions (legally, mind you) spanning the past 30 years, and never once was the barrel the serialized part. It has always been part of the frame of the weapon - that is, the part that the barrel, trigger assembly, magazine, etc. are attached to.
Re: Serialized Receiver?
I should have indicated that is from the perspecive and laws of the USA, I do not know if firearms manufactured for sale / use in other countries are serialized in the same manner though I suspect many, if not most, are.
Re: Serialized Receiver?
Getting replcement barrels is no problem in the UK, you must however get a licensed gun smith to do the work.
In the UK there are a lot of really odd laws on fire arms, with the basic premis that you cannot purchase without correct certificates/authority any component that is deemed fundermental to the operation of a firearm.
So this includes barrels, bolts, receivers and moderators, it gets a bit more dificult on certain internal parts such as springs, firing pins as these parts as some of these may make a gun difficult to use but not imposible.
Firearms legislation in the UK is a complete muddle, with hundreds of laws/acts/regulations layered on top of each other, many of which directly contradict each other.
Note: some firearms are specificaly designed to allow the end user to change barrels/calibres (eg: the SAKO Quad) these require the owner to have each alternate barrel and the required ammunition added to their FAC prior to purchase.
A few facts and clarifications...
1: In the US, where this has all taken place, it's perfectly legal to build a firearm with no serial number, no registration, etc. on the federal level. At the state level, there may be laws and/or restrictions. (Frankly, that's a can of worms I'd rather not open- I'll be here all day otherwise) Haveblue just can't sell it to anyone, or make them for sale- he's breaking federal law at that point. (There are machine shops that skirt this edge rather frequently- google "80% receivers" and be educated.)
2. The lower receiver of an AR-15 holds the fire control group (parts for the trigger, sear, and safety), the magazine well and the parts for the magazine catch and hold-open lever. It's under relatively low pressure with the exception of a few key areas, and can be made out of plastic or wood without a lot of hassle.
3. The upper receiver is the portion that contains the bolt assembly (bolt, bolt carrier, and firing pin) and the barrel. This assembly is exposed to the high pressures of a fired cartridge, and frankly, anyone making one out of plastic I'd rather not be around when they test fire it. The upper receivers are also, at the federal level, unregulated. I can buy them via mail order from any number of companies as long as I comply with the state laws. ( See point one regarding that can of worms) The bolt is not required to be serialized in the US, and most are not. Same with barrels.
Re: A few facts and clarifications...
1. He can sell the firearm, as long as he can show that he didn't build it to sell
It's also important to note that it's not as free and easy as people think, such as certain weapons are restricted (some you are not allowed to build, short barrel shotguns, full auto, silenced/surpressed etc.), some require tax to be paid if you build them (even not for resale) - and this requires preapproval (but can give approval for full auto if it's being manufactured for an agancy who can legally use the weapon.
The point (in the US) is rather moot, as you can walk into a gun fair and buy an assault rifle without a waiting period with nothing more than a driving licence and cash (in some, not all states).
Re: A few facts and clarifications...
Everything you say is correct. A point of clarification about the serial number though...
I was told by an ATF agent you should serialize and document the date of creation of all weapons created for personal use for a few reasons.
1. If you get stopped by the cops with a unserialized (*modern) weapon it will be taken and you'll be thrown in jail while they are it sorting out. Most of the time unnumbered weapons are stolen and defaced and very few cops are taught the laws on manufactured weapons for personal use.
2. Documenting the date of creation shows that when you created the weapon you were acting in accordance with all state and federal laws at the time.
3. Serializing your weapons at the time of manufacture helps to show that you were making them for personal use and not for manufacture. If the ATF thinks you were manufacturing weapons for sale illegally, they will raid you with stormtroopers and make your life hell. Serial numbers give some means of accountability. When a numbered weapon breaks, document its destruction too.
4. If your weapon is ever stolen, with a serial number there is a much higher chance you'll get it back. If you go to the police and tell them you had an AR-15 with the # A101 stolen, they'll never look in to the fact that you manufactured it yourself. If you say it had no #, first it will be hard to identify your weapon if it is recovered, and if it is you'll most likely end up at #3 of this list.
*many old firearms do not have serial numbers due to the fact it was not required by law at the time.
6,000 rounds is not the question
Actually, I think the number of rounds has become a misleading question. He only needed a few hundred rounds for the killing he actually did. That was plenty, thank you to the morons who think more well-regulated militias are just what America needs these days. My fuzzy recollection is that I bought rounds in boxes of 50. Three or four boxes would have been enough.
Actually, when you start talking about thousands of rounds, then it doesn't make any sense to think that you are going to use them on innocent victims. You have to be planning on a major shootout against an army of policemen. Perhaps that was going through his crazy mind, though I wouldn't have minded if a few bullets had gone through instead. Alternatively, someone who really loves target shooting could go through thousands of rounds--but everyone knows the targets are guilty and deserve to be shot. I'd even argue it's a better waste of money than whiskey or cigarettes.
Now the 100-round magazine and the complete body armor... Those raise more interesting questions. The presumption of innocence is a good thing, but the presumption of sanity in this case?
Re: 6,000 rounds is not the question
The body armour killed no-one. If you're going to allow that many weapons in a country, then perhaps innocent citizens should be wearing body armour routinely.
I'll take the kevlar one.
Re: 6,000 rounds is not the question
When I used to do a bit of clay pigeon shooting with my mates, I used to regularly buy 12 gague ammo in quantities of up to 10 000. You get a much better price when you buy in bulk. Then we would head off to my friends farm, and blast away. This was in the days before bismuth shot, we must have pumped hundreds of kilos of lead into the country-side. Probably not brilliant for the environment...
But this is a bit beside the point: What I was thinking was: I have made parts of relative complexity, and very high strengt from resin and metal-filings. Most often brass-filings, but on occasion steel-filings. How about loading up a 3D printer with iron-filings as the matrix dust, instead of the usual stuff? Would that work? Still probably wouldn't be able to print a good barrel, but possibly something that would fire.
This is going to get interesting soon...
I'd bet most of the weapon could be made with a 3d printer; even the metallic bits - except the barrel and springs- could be made with a method similar to Lost-wax casting, using 3d-printed plastic pieces as molds, perhaps with some little bit of machining afterwards for the rough edges .
Re: This is going to get interesting soon...
Lets go with Selective Laser Sintering and get the end use parts directly, parts that can have 'property gradients' (example, a beam made to be stiffer at one end than the other) and can often be superior to parts made by other processes. I don't want to know how much these cost, though!
Hmm, lost wax... are there any 3D printers than can use wax in place of ABS?
Re: This is going to get interesting soon...
The metal parts can be made of metal, use an EBM machine.
Although these are well out of a (non wealthy) hobbyist's price range.
Home CNC would be cheaper.
Re: This is going to get interesting soon...
> are there any 3D printers than can use wax in place of ABS?
The CandyFab makes parts out of sugar. I'm sure that would work[1] in much the same way...
Vic.
[1] Albeit the resolution probably isn't up to much :-(
Re: This is going to get interesting soon...
Polythene and paraffin wax are pretty similar. (Same chemical formula CH3.(CH2)N.CH3, much bigger N for polythene). I expect with a bit of tinkering, they're interchangeable. At the printer end, the problem would be feeding wax "wire" which wouldn't have the tensile strength of polythene. At the lost wax end, you'd need to investigate whether it burns out of a clay mould as cleanly as wax. Molten wax will rapidly soak into porous clay. With polythene, you'd probably have to "cook" it for longer, and watch out for problems caused by gas pressure build-up behind a still-solid or highly viscous polythene plug.
... be very, very afraid.
People have made Sten guns using hand tools, and they never heard of 3D printers. One can make a functional if not particularly safe or accurate mortar from tubing available at many home-improvement (heh!) stores as well, and, somewhere in Gaza, someone is probably making a Kassem rocket as we type.
However, THIS will scare people...
You an't seen nothing yet.
Wait until someone uses 3D printers to create the bullets.
(It's probably impossible with current tech, thank god; I can't see how someone could print with mercury fulminate or cordite. But never say never.)
Re: You an't seen nothing yet.
The bullet itself may be a bit difficult to produce, but if we assume a 'caseless cartridge' design, it should be possible to manufacture the completed cartridge 'at home'.
You'll need a mold where you place the bullet in the bottom, then cast the charge in the mold, and when that dries, you 'paint on' the ignition charge.
Gunpowder is an old and not very good charge, but it can be manufactured at home, and incidentally, there's a liquid stage in the manufacturing process.
Now, assuming that we're talking about a 'single use' weapon(say, something like a Derringer), it might be feasible to print the weapon out of plastic, cast the charge in place and have a working gun.
(you probably have to add a metal firing pin. Maybe a small nail of some sort. and you'd also have to drill out the barrel after printing.)
Or you could have a handgrip(with trigger mechanism) and replaceable barrels?
The only part I can see a problem with is the initiating charge.
(If you can accept the firing delay, it might be an idea to look at how matches are made?)
Re: You an't seen nothing yet.
Single use? Caseless?
Electrical initiation, use a flashbulb with the glass removed
Re: You an't seen nothing yet.
Don’t need a computer to make a bullet. I cast lead bullets with and without a gas check base and Swag bullets with a brass jacket. Real old tech.
This one is way too easy
I got involved in the 3D printer biz a while ago. This is something that is talked about very little. It should, though. As some are waxing lyrically about the law and plastic vs. steel, the printer technology is getting better more quickly than ever. The ability to use a large variety of materials is certain. Larger pieces are coming, too. Faster speeds and lower costs are a given. I don't doubt machines like routers will also become more personal.
We will all be able to acquire CAD drawings from all over the world for just about anything, including previously ridiculously expensive car parts (there is some good news in all this, after all). There will be an underground economy that will be nearly impossible to stop, and trade in stolen drawings will be only for the very greedy and fearless.
This is not hard to pull off: Bad people (some good ones, too) can hop on a plane with just their clothes and a flash drive - or just buy one when they get there. They just need access to a computer and printer in a clandestine location and they're off and running. Download, print, assemble, shoot. No markings, no numbers, nothing to identify them. For the small job, the deed is done, leave the weapons. For big ones - like under-the-radar wars - this process can be replicated in the hundreds at one time. Even if this took weeks, it would be a better situation than most in need of weapons like this, have now.
This is pretty serious. Asking a lot here, but I hope someone in leadership has their wits about them.
Re: This one is way too easy
What about the EU calling everyone who has a 3D printer a manufacturer? And adding ANOTHER million Brusselscrats?
Re: This one is way too easy
Then we should throw printed lower receivers at the fracking taxfeeders until they die!
Re: This one is way too easy
If you're going to summarise one of the main plotlines of "Rule 34" by Charles Stross, at least attribute your source. (To be fair, one suspects that it was the main motivation for the thrust of the original article, so maybe all concerned should 'fess up to that one.)
Re: This one is way too easy
Could you make a gun barrel out of plastic, even for just one shot at short range? I'd have thought it had to be steel to resist the firing pressure (and of course extreme precision machining needed as well for long-range accuracy). Definitely the hardest component to DIY and the one most in need of regulatory control.
If I wanted to kill someone at short range I'd make a crossbow. Just as deadly, less noisy, no technology needed that they didn't have in the middle ages (though modern alloys and composites would let you make it smaller and more powerful).
hrm...
Bullets are easy to make. You take some lead, melt it down and then pour it into a mold. Let it cool, break open the mold and you have your bullet. These types of bullets are suitable for low-powered ammunition like handguns and large, but relatively slow, rifle rounds. They are not suitable for something like the the Nato .223. To use those you need jacketed bullets and those are more complex to manufacturer.
However if you take a soft lead bullet and have a small iron or steel spike molded into the center of it then you have 'OMG' armor piercing rounds.
If you want to use your '3D printer' to make it bullets then what you need to do is use a soft plastic and make a series of bullets that are held together with lines. Those lines form a channel and you hard pack that plastic 'bullet' into sand, melt the plastic out, then pour the molten lead into the resulting void and you can make dozens of bullets at the same time. After it cools you can break the sand mold and you have now cast bullets.
If you want to produce rounds of ammunition you must then have a copper case of the right size and gun powder of the right chemical nature. These typically you cannot make yourself, except you can recycle copper cases many times.
As far as practical firearms using made entirely 3D printing you are probably going to be limited to blow-back operated firearms. Glock has proven that you can make incredibly reliable firearms using mostly plastic as long as you use large metal pieces in strategic areas.
However to be able to fire ammo like 9mm in a handgun or .223 in a semi-auto gun it requires a complex recoil delay action. The gun uses the energy from the gasses expelled by the round to drive the action. On higher power guns a spring alone is not enough to control the action; therefore to make more powerful cycling guns possible you need a way to accurately delay the action after firing a round to reduce the energy that the gun's mechanism has to withstand.
So for a practical self-made firearm made completely from scratch you are going to probably restrict yourself to lower powered ammo. So for larger guns you can use Luger 9mm. For handguns you are going to be limited to things like the 380 ACP. The bullets in both types are the same size and easy to come buy so you could use the same manufacturing facilities to produce both small-sized 380 guns and larger sized 9mm guns.
If you are willing to accept these restrictions then the mechanism of the firearm is MASSIVELY simplified. It is well within the means of a technical person to produce reliable firearms with a small milling machine for manufacturing the metal pieces, 3D printer, and some practice. You could purchase everything you needed from a well stocked hardware store.
What is more is that blow-back operated fully automatic firearms shoot at extremely fast speeds. With no delay action they operate as fast as a small steel spring can cycle from compressed to uncompressed. This is going to be MUCH faster shooters then what you will find being used by military and police forces.
I guess your country is going to have to make it illegal to download 'How to be a Gunsmith' courses and license out milling machines and 3D printers if they want to be able to control the import of firearms in a decade or two.
Of course, most people here being British I am completely certain that most people understand that denying people easy access to firearms isn't going to be people from being mass murders. The IRA proved that household chemicals have a lot of potential for mayhem. A backpack full of nail bombs is going to be massively cheaper then going out and buying decent firearms. It's just not as 'cool'.
Re: hrm...
Just a minor correction. Hard cast bullets can indeed be fired in higher powered rifles like the .223 / 5.56, and when gas checked and properly lubed bullets made from the correct alloy are used they can be brought up to very nearly the same velocities as jacketed projectiles. It really isn't that difficult to achieve 2,000 fps, and 2,800 fps (.30-06 velocities) isn't out of the question.
Re: hrm...
A second minor correction. Cartridge cases made of copper will jam in most actions. Copper has the unpleasant characteristic of stretching permanently* under the sort of pressures you find in a cartridge case that's being fired. Use brass, which rebounds properly.
* Not by much, but by enough to make the action prone to jamming much more than normal.
Given that inkjet printers are about the most unreliable element in a computer system, no great surprise that it's only a short step from Paper Jam to Gun Jammed.
Legal/licensed firearms
Just one thought: has anyone ever heard that criminals have problems obtaining illegal and unlicensed firearms?
This topic is closed for new posts.
