Defense Distributed Is The Greatest

[Fragony]

I don't understand. Is it saying you can print the whole gun, or just a few parts of it? How do you make the barrel?

Doubt it would make much difference in the UK, as it's very hard to get bullets, and I doubt you can print those.

It's very easy really, you can just order them from Belgium

[Idaho]

Ok. So I have printed my stock, magazine and trigger. I've ordered my barrel from Belgium and smuggled in my bullets from Russia. Will I finally be safe from the king of England?

[gaelic cowboy]

bah big deal some company decides to print a piece of 19th century tech.



The real innovators are talking about printing everything from toys, musical instruments, clothes and jet engines.
This is going to be big and just like in the music industry has the potential to turn manufacturing upside down.

The exporting of manufactured goods will essentially evaporate overnight once it becomes widely available.

[Greyblades]

Wow. Imagine the computer parts you could make with this stuff.

[gaelic cowboy]

Wow. Imagine the computer parts you could make with this stuff.

The parts might be big at first but you could print hundreds of chips and essentially create a super computer.

You could print a house or a car if you like, maybe you fancy building a corporate jet or a spaceshuttle. The only limit is the size of the printer and the material for the printer itself.

But even that can be overcome with some clever CAD design (or download someone elses)

Major corporations we think are monolithic will go bust as they wont be able to monetise the new system.

[ICantSpellDawg]

3d printing is that big thing that we've been wondering about. It will destroy the economy of China... and probably the rest of the world. But the possibilities are endless, guns, household parts, car parts, computer parts, etc.

As far as bullets go, getting smokeless powder will be tricky. You can print the casing in polymer and will be able to print the projectile, but the only powder that you will be able to get no matter what is black powder, which will render an AR15 completely ineffective due to the soot - the primer will be easy enough, but you won't have an effective modern weapon. This is the next problem, but I'd imagine that printable rail guns or some other magnetic accelerator arent too far behind.

[HopAlongBunny]

Pretty wild stuff :)

I remember listening to a lady who was touting the ability to have your feet scanned, and print custom-fit shoes on the spot. The savings in labour, transportation and inventory management would be huge.

Too bad for the schlobs out-of-work...

[Sir Moody]

3d printing is that big thing that we've been wondering about. It will destroy the economy of China... and probably the rest of the world. But the possibilities are endless, guns, household parts, car parts, computer parts, etc.

As far as bullets go, getting smokeless powder will be tricky. You can print the casing in polymer and will be able to print the projectile, but the only powder that you will be able to get no matter what is black powder, which will render an AR15 completely ineffective due to the soot - the primer will be easy enough, but you won't have an effective modern weapon. This is the next problem, but I'd imagine that printable rail guns or some other magnetic accelerator aren't too far behind.

While Gauss guns would be the holy grail of this sort of technology they just are not feasible for hand held weapons without radical changes in our ability to generate power - to get the same velocity as a standard firearm you need a massive amount of energy to generate a large enough magnetic field - right now the best we can a manage for a hand held gun would be similar in velocity to a air gun - and would have a fire rate similar to a crossbow

personally I find that comforting because they are really easy to make...

The technology is far better suited to static or mounted emplacements where larger generators (and longer barrels) can be employed

I believe DARPA has a coilgun department so maybe they will crack it someday

[Tellos Athenaios]

Wow. Imagine the computer parts you could make with this stuff.

The parts might be big at first but you could print hundreds of chips and essentially create a super computer.

Eh no. The problem with "big" is not just that you need a lot of space, but also that there is physically more stuff of which you need to coerce electrons to do your bidding. Coercing takes power, which means heat, which means coolers. Additionally longer wires have long propagation delays, which means lower clock speeds, which means less bang per buck of electricity bill and less performance. Additionally the bigger package, thermal and power enveloppes mean that even relatively straightforward electronics won't "fit" in the packages we currently expect.

You need semi-conductors, and you need them to be tiny (order of magnitude of now more than a few tens of nm) because you need to cram in millions of them. Then you need to have good switching properties for your semi conductors, which also means longevity and longevity of semi-conductors is not improved by applying more force (more power) or running at higher temps (melting). You also have industrial specs to contend with which may require typically -45°C to 80°C ambient temperature operating range, even for CPU's.

For modern CPU's we are currently down to such a scale that only a few atoms of Si can fit together in the wire (22nm) and the material has to be subjected to quite some special treatment to achieve this (basically "stretching" the atoms). Parts are cut out by means of intense (i.e. human-frying) UV radiation, and doping the semi-conductors is a lot trickier at that scale as traditional doping would not yield sufficient conductivity at all when the semi-conductor is switched "on". Try injection-printing that.

You could print a house or a car if you like, maybe you fancy building a corporate jet or a spaceshuttle. The only limit is the size of the printer and the material for the printer itself.

But even that can be overcome with some clever CAD design (or download someone elses)

Not if you need the thing to behave as "a solid thing". That is traditionally overcome with welding, but how will 3d printed stuff take to industrial welding? That's a major headache with current aerospace techniques already given the operating parameters the parts are subjected to.