A Bullet That Could Make 3-D Printed Guns Practical Weapons

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/atlas-314-3-d-printed-guns-bullets

by Fjolsvith • 12 years ago

33 46 12 years ago

Part of me is somewhat worried. Part of me recognizes that a 3D printed firearm is hardly very practical, consider it's easy enough to get a real firearm, even for convicted criminals. (I'm speaking of the US here.)

What keeps people in the US from going on shooting rampages is not the difficulty of getting guns. It's the fact that most people don't want to go on shooting rampages. And while I'd much prefer it if guns were banned in this country, in the end, I'm not planning to lose any sleep over it. I'm far more likely to die in a car accident, even without adjusting for risk factors like where I live or my lack of involvement in criminal activity. So if I want to worry about something, I'll focus on driving more carefully.

Anyway, there's precious little you can do to stop 3D printed firearms from eventually being available. Betting against progress is rarely safe, especially in this domain where it's pretty obvious how things are going to go.

foundersgrid2• 12 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree. Very worrying times when mentally unstable people can start printing guns and bullets at home. Vice has a documentary on 3D guns if you haven't seen it already.

hiou• 12 years ago

Its not really at home but the black market, like the guy at the bar that sells drugs and knows a guy who prints guns. Or that shady cell phone shop if you know what to ask for. It becomes much, much easier to become an unlicensed gun dealer with 3D printed firearms. DVD burners resulted in a lot of black market dealers as opposed to simply people making the copies themselves at home.

drmilsurp2• 12 years ago

I just don't understand the appeal. As far as firearms go, the last thing I want is one that can not be relied upon. I get that solving technical challenges is fun but in this case, to what end? To make practical home-built firearms? Boys in Afghanistan are making practical ak-47's with little more than a file, scrap and tenacity. If you want to build a firearm (semi-auto) at home in the US it isn't even illegal.

refurb3• 12 years ago

If you want to build a firearm (semi-auto) at home in the US it isn't even illegal.

Incorrect. The only limitation is you can't make an NFA weapon (automatic, etc) or build it out of more than 10 imported parts.

"Firearms may be lawfully made by persons who do not hold a manufacturer’s license under the GCA provided they are not for sale or distribution and the maker is not prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms. "[1]

[1]http://www.atf.gov/files/firearms/industry/0501-firearms-top...

newaccountfool• 12 years ago

Can I ask what the problem would be then? If it's already easy to get, and the thing stopping people going on rampages is themselves, then sureley there is no difference from how it currently is?

Sophistifunk2• 12 years ago

A gun with a 2 inch-long barrel is going to be pretty useless at not much more than a dozen feet. Good for mugging somebody I guess, but not self-defense or fighting the next revolution. And you can mug somebody with a knife.

foundersgrid2• 12 years ago

That's now. The 3D printing landscape will look very different in a few years time.

Sophistifunk2• 12 years ago

The rest of the gun doesn't matter. A two inch barrel leaves almost no space for the propellant to expand before it escapes containment (and all its remaining energy is wasted), and no chance for any useful rifling.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

why would this design be limited to 2 inches? it's a prototype.

you could easily design a 4 inch version with rifle grooves on the inside of the casing. it's just another 2 inches!

alricb• 12 years ago

In a way, with this, each bullet is like a miniature percussion cap musket.

Ammunition robustness isn't only important for plastic guns: witness the explosion of an 1895 Lee Navy, where the use of relatively thin .30-40 brass (since original 6 mm ammo is not available) is suspected to be the culprit [1]

[1] http://www.forgottenweapons.com/winchester-lee-navy-safety/

Niksko• 12 years ago

This kind of worries me. Not because I'm worried about 3D printed guns killing me or other people. If somebody wants to kill other people, they're probably going to do it. This doesn't really make it much easier.

What worries me is that this will be used to regulate 3D printing. As somebody with a 3D printer, and as somebody who is excited about the potential of 3D printers, this terrifies me. It's exactly things like this that could be used to incite mass hysteria and banning of 3D printing, especially since 3D printing doesn't yet have wide consumer adoption or appeal.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

they're probably going to do it

you probably forgot the "not" there?

ProCynic• 12 years ago

Maybe the NRA will ride to the rescue?

ars2• 12 years ago

The bullet is still metal though, and not 3D printed, all they have to do is regulate the bullet instead of the gun.

markdown• 12 years ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107206/

drmilsurp2• 12 years ago

There was a period of time in the last decade (due to war and politics I presume) where getting primers was somewhat difficult. I can get lead and cast bullets at home from tire balancing and fishing weights.

nether• 12 years ago

Did you know that when they erected a suicide barrier at a bridge in Washington, suicides in the state dropped? People lacking the means didn't just turn to other methods. They quit altogether. Why do we pretend that the ease of doing something has no effect on the likelihood of it being carried out?

tomschlick2• 12 years ago

Over the past 20 years gun regulations have been eased and the number of weapons sold has skyrocketed. However in that time the violent crime has gone down.

adventured• 12 years ago

It's an interesting data point.

That suicide prevention barrier on the George Washington Bridge was completed in 2011. Suicides had been gradually falling for ~25 years at that point, and hit a low in 2005/2006, and have increased since then even with the suicide barrier. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that I can find that it reduced the overall suicide rate.

In fact, the rate appears to have climbed since the barrier went up:

http://www.intheforefront.org/media/stats

CamperBob22• 12 years ago

Did you know that the number of active pirates is proportional to the average global temperature?

Fjolsvith• 12 years ago

Well, there are open source solutions for 3D printing. Its not like they can keep some lone wolf or gang from making their own 3D printer.

http://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_metal_3-D_printer

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Well that is a non-novel solution :-) Basically the cartridge is the barrel. A much more novel solution would be a barrel that was a rail gun, then just recharge it to refire. Of course we can't really store enough energy in a capacitor or battery that we can in gun powder yet. .22 caliber CO2 fired guns would be more dangerous (they could have longer plastic barrels and be more accurate.) But all of this simply strokes the survivalist bent that folks have to somehow come out on top when the world comes crashing to an end.

I am much less worried about a nerd trying to mug me with a plastic gun than I am with the wrong person getting hold of a UAV with a shotgun [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYz_D89BLUg

Wogef2• 12 years ago

If you are going for the "shell as a barrel" solution you might as well maximize the utility and make it either silenced (captive piston) ammo: http://www.sadefensejournal.com/wp/?p=1812

Or make it electronically fired multishot using a superposed load like the Metalstorm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposed_load

That being said, while metal home use printers won't be feasible anytime soon, FDM plastics are getting much, much stronger (Ulthem etc) and being released to prosumer market at an impressive rate. Having a barrel stand up to a dozen shots or so will not be a problem for long.

noonespecial2• 12 years ago

So he machines a "barrel" into the round (presumably with a lathe or mill) and it takes an hour for each round. So why not just machine a little metal barrel for your plastic gun? Or just take your same machine tool and make a metal gun? That would be because people have been doing that for 200 years. You have to say the magic words "3d printed gun!!!!" to get a magazine article about yourself.

jrometty2• 12 years ago

I can't source this atm, but I believe the forces exerted by firing a bullet badly damage the structural integrity of the plastic without any absorbing "barrel."

Current 3d printed plastic can't hold that caliber of explosion, hence the need for a swappable -padding- that absorbs the damage to protect the gun.

This solution is obviously better than destroying your gun with every bullet, but it doesn't really solve the practicality problem.

Crito3• 12 years ago

His "thing" is using emerging technology (3d printing) to get people to realize the current state of things (it being trivial to manufacture your own firearm).

Many people believe that it is currently difficult to make a gun, and will not believe you when told otherwise. However when you give them an excuse to be wrong without being ignorant (emerging technology), then they listen. 3d printers allow people to acknowledge that it is easy to make a gun, without forcing them to admit that it always been for the past century.

noonespecial2• 12 years ago

This I consider to be a Bad Thing. The reason being that by allowing them this comfortable linus-blanket of ignorance, we give them an opportunity to vilify and regulate 3d printers despite the 3d printer being no more important to the construction of the workings of the firearm than hammers, screwdrivers or bits of wood. The 3d printer is part of this deadly firearm the same way "Lucky Charms" are part of this nutritious breakfast.

I do NOT want to be anywhere near the "war on 3d printing", "permits" and inspections for 3d printer owners, county "stickers" for my stepper motors or anything even remotely along those lines.

Wogef2• 12 years ago

Or just take your same machine tool and make a metal gun?

Even in the infancy of the technology home 3D printers are already far more common than home mill/lathe setups and require far less skill to use. With the growing success of Dark-markets (even with the recent raids) there will be a growing move to design illicit goods specifically for mailing (even now this is done for drugs). It’s far easier to get a bullet with integrated barrel through UK customs than it is to get an entire gun.

All of this is being discussed with a heavy US bias. In some parts of the world homemade guns are a serious problem-

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/06/16/australian-pol...

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2013/11/21/revolving-shot...

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/08/25/homemade-semi-...

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/09/16/south-american...

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/crime/441342/northern-pen-gu...

3D printing has the potential to significantly lower the level of skill required to make them. I’m saying this as someone who knows the level of skill required- I learned metal work hand-scraping surface plates and using a shaper to cut cams, moved onto CNC and now use 3D printers. I give classes on 3D printing, am active in the community and a huge fan of the technology. No, we should not be hysterical about it but we also should not blindly say decreasing the level of skill required to build firearms is something we can safely ignore.

jrometty2• 12 years ago

I see a lot of fear in the comments; the worry is that 3D printing will be regulated.

I find it terrible that pragmatism will be skimmed over by the very liberals I associate with who will use "new 3d printed bullets" as political ammunition.

CamperBob22• 12 years ago

It's almost as if modern nanny statism and traditional authoritarian statism are just two sides of the same coin... or two manifestations of the same personality disorder.

PhasmaFelis• 12 years ago

Gosh, thanks, guys! More paranoid backlash and stupid regulations are just what the 3D printing industry needed!

olefoo• 12 years ago

I like the lateral thinking on display here. From what I've seen the most successful adopters of the new wave of fabrication technologies are adept at solving problems by looking at them in a way that is "upside-down and backwards" compared to how most people would.

The fact that these bullet casings are milled out of steel rods isn't that big of a deal, if you have the right CNC mill you could automate that too.

Despite the antics of defense distributed I don't think printed guns are that big of a deal in and of themselves, but the idea that someone could be creating untraceable weapons is the worrisome part.

It wouldn't surprise me if the moral panic over custom fabricated guns were used to build support for DRM requirements on mainstream printers. But the push for controlling fabrication technologies is going to come from established economic interests wanting to keep extracting rents from the rest of us, regardless of the fact that the realities that created their business models have changed in fundamental ways.

And just wait until molecular fabrication technologies become cheap enough that average people can generate any molecule they choose just by picking it from a catalog. That's when the sewage overflow will really intersect with the turboprop intake.

Crito3• 12 years ago

Anybody that is concerned by printed or "untraceable" firearms should go on YouTube and look up the videos of shotguns that teenagers in the Appalachians have been making out of plumbing parts from hardware stores for decades.

Give me $50 and access to a Home Depot I can legally make a shotgun in an afternoon. That includes labor costs, though I keep the gun. Transferring it would be illegal.

Since I'm bored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OoBwLVXpFc Obviously anybody with any sense would just go to Walmart and buy a proper shotgun. But obviously anybody with any sense wouldn't use a 3d printed plastic gun either.

thesz• 12 years ago

I think it is aligned to Metal Storm tech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm

At least I can see how they intersect - in both cases barrel is a round.

A Bullet That Could Make 3-D Printed Guns Practical Weapons

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