CAD/CAM gun blueprints questions

[Hulamac]

does any one know where i can get either freely or paid for, free preferred of course, blueprints and measurements for firearms receivers and/or parts? im in the process of getting my manufacturers FFL right now and i need measurements to program a CAD drawing for use with a CAM software for a CNC machine. I've been trying to find measurements and tolerances for these parts and cant seem to find a reliable source or any source for that matter. can anyone suggest a place for me to procure them?

 

[dusty14u]

If you can get a sample of the gun you are interested in you could always reverse engineer it. I use SolidWorks and that is how we do many of our customers parts. A CMM machine could also be used if you have access to one. CMM's can usually save to IGES, SAT or other solids formats.

 

[brickeyee]

blueprints and measurements for firearms receivers and/or parts

Outside of a few older designs, and things like the 1911, they are copyrighted private property.

Learn how to design.

 

[Owen]

Just using other companies designs is a good way to end up in court. If you're designing replacement parts, you're going to need a few guns to test your creations in anyhow. Your best bet is to buy a few samples and reverse engineer from there.
If you can afford a Cnc machine a couple guns are peanuts

 

[Lee Roder]

I'd think you'd need many samples to reverse engineer tolerances

 

[Texan Scott]

HULAMAC, if the Chinese can reverse engineer an AK from a few samples, I bet you can too. (just make sure they're all the same model. Get a good consulting metallurgical engineer on call, and have at.

 

[Cesiumsponge]

You can reverse engineer one part but the problem with reverse engineering is you have no access to the original prints and designers, so you'd have to hold all tolerances very tightly because you don't know what you can be "tight" on and what can be "loose" except through trial and error.

 

[Owen]

To get a really good handle on the tolerances you'd need about 5 guns from different periods of the same revision. Say production dates spread out over a few months. If the company in question is into Statistical Process Control, and 6Sigma, the actual tolerances are probably about double what the part measurements indicate.

But, once again, outright copying of another company's product is going to get you into trouble.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 Tapatalk 2

 

[bergmen]

To get a really good handle on the tolerances you'd need about 5 guns from different periods of the same revision. Say production dates spread out over a few months. If the company in question is into Statistical Process Control, and 6Sigma, the actual tolerances are probably about double what the part measurements indicate.

But, once again, outright copying of another company's product is going to get you into trouble.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 Tapatalk 2

Copying for one's own personal use is okay. Copying for sale is what is verbotin. I have a patented design (non firearms) that I have communicated to interested parties that they can copy this without penalty - for their own use only - if they need a lathe project at home. Once they sell it, I can come after them.

So, one can take a proprietary (patented) design and replicate it - legally - as long as it is for personal use only and not for sale or sold. If it is NOT patented, it is in the public realm and all bets are off. That is what the patent protection system is all about.

Now, as far as firearms laws are concerned and copying functional firearms to BE functional, I'm not versed in this. I am only talking about designs in general.

Dan

 

[brickeyee]

If it is NOT patented, it is in the public realm and all bets are off. That is what the patent protection system is all about.

There are other protections besides a full up patent.

Like trademark, trade dress (appearance), etc.

You can only get an idea of tolerances without the source drawings.

Even five samples is barely going to get close since you have no idea how those items fall on the allowable tolerance distribution (or even if they have been made to the same tolerance set).

 

[bergmen]

There are other protections besides a full up patent.

Like trademark, trade dress (appearance), etc.

Oh yes, that is true. I was only describing physical inventions or designs that would be covered by a utility or design patent (I should have mentioned that).

Dan

 

[Owen]

Copying for personal use is OK, but you don't need an ffl for that either

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Hulamac]

Thanks for the ideas!

Hey i appreciate the ideas guys, i was looking for firearms to replicate and then sell, designs that are proprietary and have patents aren't really what i was looking for, but they will certainly help me in understanding how they work. When i design a gun (ultimately what I'm trying to do) It will also give me an idea of how the tolerances and so on need to be and where i can loosen them up and so on.

A lot of gun designs have only a certain amount of time they are patented from what i understand about patent law in the US, although i know very little. Types of guns like the 1911 and mosin nagant i believe were made long enough ago so that wouldn't infringe on any weapon that is around today those types of ideas are mainly what i was after.

As for an older gun that is no longer in production i was first going to start off trying to buy a gun and the tooling from a manufacturer that has stopped making the gun anymore, like a military rifle that has been out of service for a while, so that people only have a few places if any to go to other then myself.

Thanks again for the responses, hope to hear from you folks again!

 

[CMC]

Go to grabcad http://grabcad.com/ for solid models.
Drawings for the ar and 1911 are available free do a search.
http://www.m1911.org/M1911-A1_REDUX.pdf 1911 drawings

 

[Ian]

What sort of machines do you have? Keep in mind that most older guns were designed for manufacture on banks of horizontal mills, and may not adapt all that well to modern vertical CNCs.

 

[Hulamac]

@ Ian

well im just in the process of getting the information so i can tell my venture capitol folks what i need and how much its gonna cost

what type of machines would you recommend? i was thinking a CNC Lathe and a CNC Mill would cover my options pretty well. however im not a machinist, and im not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to this type of thing. i have asked several other gun shops and they were really not helpful most of them didnt even bother to respond to me so i decided i was going try to hire a consult.

this isnt really a problem, trusting the person IS. after all im trusting them with making a decision on what im going to spend thousands possibly 10s of thousands of dollars on i want to make sure i ask as many people as i can before i go make a purchase. i would take any help or suggestions you could offer because i again am going to be spending alot of money so i want to make sure its gonna be able to do everything it need to be able to do.

 

[SSN Vet]

You have to crawl b4 you can walk.

Start your venture with a CNC converted knee mill and when you have your class VII FFL start machining AR lowers from AL billets. Detailed info. on how to do this can be found on the CNC Gunsmithing site

Don't neglect ITAR registration...

And a little insurance never hurts...

You may soon discover why many firearms manufacturers are being consolidated under very large parent companies.

 

[mgmorden]

Copying for one's own personal use is okay. Copying for sale is what is verbotin.

Actually there have been a lot of people sued over downloading songs and movies that would beg to differ. Copying for personal use is just as illegal as copying for commercial.

That said, most mechanical designs fall under patents, not copyright. Trademarks also typically apply to things like names and logos. Hence why you can have Lone Wolf replacment parts for the entirety of a Glock (including slide and frame). They still can't call it a Glock (because the name and logo are trademarked), but they can make the gun just fine. Since patents typically go 17-20 years, many, many designs are out of patent.

In all actuality though, I'm surprised that no open-source gun design has cropped up. The concept of open-source in software is that volunteers develop the program code for a piece of software and then anyone else can change it, modify it, etc as needed without cost so long as they share their changes back with the community.

To some degree the commonly modded gun models (1911, Glock, 10/22, AR-15) have kinda taken on this role, but it seems like the community would have developed something from scratch by now. If anything I'd like to see a gun design that is thought of from the ground up with personal production in mind. Basically, rather than being the bestest gun ever, the goal is simply to be a functional gun but with the simplest possible manufacturing. All parts would be things that can either be sourced from a hardware store or are machined in very simple steps that someone with a minimal machining background could handle.

 

[il_10]

You'll have a LOT better luck with these types of questions here:

http://www.homegunsmith.com/

They do a lot of from-scratch building. I'm sure there are some great machinists on THR, but they'll be able to give you a lot more information than we can as a whole.

 

[Ian]

Ok, I have to ask how wise it is for you to be doing this. If you don't have equipment, capital, knowledge or experience in the field, what are you bringing to the market to keep your new venture afloat?

For machinery, what I would want to start out is a 4-axis mill and a lathe with live tooling (this allows you to perform milling operations on lathe parts). Cost is probably somewhere between 100k and 200k for the pair, depending on size and quality. You'll also need all the tooling for them, inspection equipment (a CMM would be good to have), and a variety of smaller manual tools - grinder, press, etc. It's not a cheap shop to equip.

If you have to hire a consultant to get this far, my advice is to find something else to do. Either start a business in a field you have a lot of expertise in, or go get a CNC certification from a local community college and go to work for a fabrication company for a couple years to build basic skills before you get into a quarter million dollars of debt.