JeffG
Member
Look at how many home blacksmiths and knifemakers there are. The knife and axe industry thrives just fine.
And many hobbyists and artisans can produce comparable if not better products.Look at how many home blacksmiths and knifemakers there are. The knife and axe industry thrives just fine.
the tsa can defnetly find a brass case. Even an empty one that got inside the liner on a suit case.I also think that if a wand can find a zipper, it can fine a primer cup, much less a brass case...
One aspect of this that we haven't discussed is that if the 3-D printing technology progresses to the point where all the parts of guns can be made easily at home, it would mean the death of the firearms industry. Or, if it survives, it would be 100% dependent on government contracts. This doesn't sound like a particularly good development.
What the combination of 3D printing and this company's files does is take home gun manufacturing from the realm of individuals with specific knowledge about firearms and opens it up to literally everybody with a computer and a 3D printer. That amounts to a massive increase in the number of people with the ability to make weapons.
Sharp Dog asked:
...It just seems to me that 3d printed firearms will never be remotely the same quality (accuracy, durability and especially safety)
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I just don't get the attraction at this point.
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Thoughts ?
The technology to print all the parts for a production quality firearm is a long, loooong way off, if ever possible. Even the very expensive DMLS printers that can produce metallic parts cannot be used for every piece of a firearm, as the metallurgy of the substrate just isn't up to the task. DMLS parts are, at best, comparable to sand castings. Ruger has been investment casting for a long time and has refined that production method greatly, yet they still have to make barrels, cylinders and other high stress parts out of chromoly bar stock and heat treat it.
Top of the line 3D printers can't even produce plastic parts that will compare to high strength injection molded long chain polymers, let along fiber or glass reinforced stuff.
People who see 3D printing replacing industrial manufacturing just don't understand manufacturing. There's soooo much more to it than producing dimensionally accurate parts and assembling them. Completely self-sufficient, vertically integrated manufacturing by the end user is pure science fiction, always will be.
This was the point:
The utility of affordable 3D printers is still and will for some time be in the realm of fragile toys and novelties.
I guess I just don’t know much about Mfg
My fav machine gun rated suppressor is 3D printed from inconel or titanium in a design that literally couldn’t be mfg with normal mills and lathes
Granted the pressure in a suppressor is a lot lower than in the chamber but I’ll bet designs could easily be made to handle enough pressure to be useful.
Now you see what I am getting at!Simple,clever designs with standardized, interchangeable parts.This would help minimise the amount of hand fitting needed. Now with the technology behind the 3D printed suppressors by Brevis coming into view, it seems like a 12ga or 20ga shotgun could be made with 3D printing.-I had a neighbor in Southern Oregon that collected Filipino "brake shop" guns. These guns were made primarily from re-purposed materials that had been modified in small shops and assembled surreptitiously to satisfy the needs of various underground and criminal groups.
Some of these were built to surprisingly high standards, at least visually. I handled a Dan Wesson clone that looked near-perfect - until you looked at the rifling.
There were even travelling tinkers that would take your old plumbing, junk hardware, and wood planks and present you with a marginally serviceable shotgun or rimfire rifle for a modest fee.
Combine this "brake shop" manufacturing with 3D printing ... .
https://www.deltapdesign.com/collec...ts/brevis-ii-ultra-5-56-nato-rifle-suppressor
https://www.deltapdesign.com/collec...oducts/brevis-ii-ultra-6-5mm-rifle-suppressor
when i asked them they told me they were printed and they had a patent on printing two metals together as an older version of their can had an inconel blast baffle printed inside the titanium shell. i could be misremembering. i've slept a few times since then
even so, i wonder what kind of pressure, say, a subsonic 300 blk needs. i'll bet those parts would handle it. the delta suppressor i have is on a 10" ar that i've done a lot of high round count stuff with. a quick google search shows bore pressure on my 10.5" 556 is 11,500 psi and 300blk is 35k or so. i'd bet it's doable. or if not currently, that it's not that far off. definitely not impossible
Even Chucky knows that the plastic 3D printed guns are crap, but that doesn't mean 3D printed guns are always going to be crap. Everything gets better over time (except Nancy Pelosi's senility) and we're just now seeing the good quality that 3D printed frames/lowers can be. See, the Chucker knows that too and he's trying to cut the legs out from 3D printed guns before they take off. Stopping distribution of the files is one way of doing it, but that's already been struck down by the courts.Effective enough to give Chuck Schumer a seizure.
That printer isn't going to be able to make a barrel or rifle a piece of steel pipe. The barrel will have to come from something, I doubt there are many pieces of pipe that have the internal diameter of most bullets and even then how are you going to rifle it? Equipment to rifle a barrel blank isn't cheap.