Slashdot Mirror
Wiki Weapon Project Test-Fires a (Partly) 3D-Printed Rifle
MrSeb writes "In its continuing mission to build a 'Wiki Weapon,' Defense Distributed has 3D printed the lower receiver of an AR-15 and tested it to failure. The printed part only survives the firing of six shots, but for a first attempt that's quite impressive. And hey, it's a plastic gun. Slashdot first covered 3D-printed guns back in July. The Defense Distributed group sprung up soon after, with the purpose of creating an open-source gun — a Wiki Weapon — that can be downloaded from the internet and printed out. The Defense Distributed manifesto mainly quotes a bunch of historical figures who supported the right to bear arms. DefDist (its nickname) is seeking a gun manufacturing license from the ATF, but so far the feds haven't responded. Unperturbed, DefDist started down the road by renting an advanced 3D printing machine from Stratasys — but when the company found out what its machine was being used for, it was repossessed. DefDist has now obtained a 3D printer from Objet, which seemingly has a more libertarian mindset. The group then downloaded HaveBlue's original AR-15 lower receiver from Thingiverse, printed it out on the Objet printer using ABS-like Digital Material, screwed it into an AR-57 upper receiver, loaded up some FN 5.7x28mm ammo, and headed to the range. The DefDist team will now make various modifications to HaveBlue's design, such as making it more rugged and improving the trigger guard, and then upload the new design to Thingiverse." Sensible ammo choice; 5.7x28mm produces less recoil than the AR-15's conventional 5.56mm. I wonder how many of the upper's components, too, can one day be readily replaced with home-printable parts — for AR-15 style rifles, the upper assembly is where the gun's barrel lives, while the lower assembly (the part printed and tested here) is the legally controlled part of the firearm.
And hey, it's a plastic gun.
No, it's not. It's not even close to that. It's a plastic lower receiver with the rest of the gun being not plastic.
As someone who's taken gun safety, I'm shocked he put himself at risk to test this. Making a shooting bench is fairly trivial. Automating a trigger pulling mechanism is a little more difficult but would require very basic knowledge. I'm surprised someone with access to a 3D printer would be stupid enough to pull a plastic lower receiver up to his face, put his hand on it and pull the trigger until it failed. In gun safety they show you what even an obstructed barrel can result in when firing a gun. That action mechanism would basically become shrapnel for your right hand, left forearm and face.
If these guys want to be taken seriously, they probably should 3D print something that will prevent them from winning a Darwin award.
My work here is dung.
Since the lower receiver is the "regulated" part of the AR-15 (the part that the ATF considers to be the actual gun), isn't think rather illegal?
I wonder what having techie types with superior firepower as the societal norm will do to the prevalent stereotype.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Well, hell, if this qualfies as a plastic gun, then so is my Sig SP2022, and it survives a lot more than 6 rounds. A plastic lower is just a frame; just like my Sig, or Glocks, or numerous other firearms, the actual firing mechanisms(trigger assembly for lower; barrel, firing pin, chamber, and numerous other parts for the upper) are still made of metal.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The recievers on Glock handguns are plastic, just to point out. Obviously, its possible to make plastic guns, just not by replacing plastic with metal
Barrels, springs and working parts are the only thing that needs to be made out of metal.
also 5.7x28 is a terrible calibre. Its pistol ammo, that at best has the knockdown and kick of 9mm, and at worst is an expensive non-standard cartridge. Its far overhyped, and far overrated.
Is it too early to set up a kickstarter to pay for the finger reattachment that one of these plucky alpha testers is going to earn himself?
"So, um, guys, I'm working on a project that will involve briefly generating an overpressure of up to 50 thousand PSI accompanied by a release of heat, probably not more than a dozen cycles within a one minute period. It's handheld. What 3d-printable thermoplastic would be best?"
Object and Stratasys have completed their merger yesterday, so we'll see about that "libertarian mindset"...
If we are going to use printers to make weapons why aren't we making non-lethal weapons at least?
Second of all why do we need to be making weapons at all? The government should have a monopoly on violence as it is the role of government to control weapons. Do we really want this?
STOP! Entrapment, Lists, Oath Breakers. Go ahead fuck your life up. IDIOTS
But once you paint that gun, it's no longer nekked!
But, see, they're both parts of a gun so the whole thing could explode and take out a school bus and a nursery and ten police officers at a moment's notice!
Yep, guns are a joke and a laughing matter. Be sure to build your own at home and just try to eyeball the caliber of the pipe you use for the barrel. If the shell goes in, it'll probably work. Those 12 gauge and 20 gauge shotguns have interchangeable ammunition. Don't worry, it's not like they'll take out a school bus and a nursery and ten police officers at a moment's notice if it doesn't work.
Of course, you'll still have to follow the retarded rule about having a certain percentage be American parts if in America, but hey...AK parts kits are cheap and not that hard to build.
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/179192-DIY-Shovel-AK-photo-tsunami-warning
Because of the weapon's design, the receiver on an AR-15 is a notoriously easy part to produce, and has been possible to produce on low-end CNC mills for years. It's not in any way the most difficult part of the weapon to produce; it's just the outer housing within which the actual functional parts are located. Sort of like printing a computer case but not printing what goes inside the case.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why that round? It's not a rifle round (making the "printable rifle" really a "printable carbine") and it's not even a standard AR rifle round (which is traditionally 5.56x45, but the design is flexible..).
I would think for initial builds you'd want to at least target the baseline round for an AR, 5.56x45, or if they really want to work out the bugs, 7.62x51 NATO, which is a much more powerful cartridge and thus making the design guaranteed to be backwards compatible (from a strength perspective) with 5.56x45.
If they start with the really small cartridge like 5.7x28, their design won't scale up.
And the 5.7 is a weird round to choose anyway. Apocryphally, it was designed to be some super high velocity round designed to defeat bullet resistant vests when you used the right ammo, which they stopped selling to consumers. I think it really was part of a whole paramilitary/protection system of weapons designed to replace the use of 9mm handguns and MP5 submachine guns.
This is going to bite the maker community in the ass.
Polictian looking for votes on the Fear platform: "Hey Look at THIS! These 3-D printing machines are being used to make plastic GUNS! Guns that can go through a security scanner!! Terrorists will use this to kill your children!!"
John Q. Public will not go and investigate this on their own. They will not see that the barrel needs to be metal. Or that the ammunition is metal. Nooooo. They'll jump on board and give the politician the backing to ban 3-D printing or license it to the point where it's too expensive to Joe inventor or hacker.
Couldn't he have used the 3-D printing for a custom case or something?
A gun?!
Fucking A.
over the previous version of the printer which only printed a 2D version of an AR-15.
One of the main problems with the earlier version is that, when trying to load the printed rifle, the bullets just seems to roll right off.
Also, paper cuts were a problem.
it's more guns
I'm posting from the future here, and I just wanted to say that printing an AR-15 is a total newb move. In 2043, if you've got 1337 skillz, you torrent and print your own aircraft carrier.
While the lower receiver doesn't see the kind of stresses that are present in the upper receiver and bolt carrier, the lower receiver failed exactly where it sees the most real stress. As the bolt carrier moves backwards during the ejection phase of the cycle, it compresses the buffer spring and that stress plus the stress caused by the stock attachment was more than the lower could handle.
Personally, whenever I test fire a gun, I put it in an appropriate test jig and make sure I'm clear from any likely failure. I don't think his gun would have blown up, but if the lower failed just as the bolt carrier began moving rearward, it's likely that the carrier and upper would have been damaged and things would have gotten interesting.
I shot an conventionally made AR-15 that suffered a catastrophic failure of the bolt lugs and in spite of the bolt carrier coming back much faster than normal, everything held together just fine. If such an event happened with a printed plastic lower, it's likely that the gun would have been damaged badly.
I've seen prices on 3d printing for metal and the prices to render a standard lower receiver would have greatly exceeded the cost of buying a conventionally manufactured one.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
zombies are coming, bar the doors! we still need 8 hours to finish printing our single gun...
ob: "everyone posting in this story has a tiny penis" post
oops.
It's not illegal to manufacture your own firearms in US.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Yeah, you can't make the other parts out of plastic because of the pressure from the round, but you could reduce the pressure and projectile speed making it a lot less lethal but still usable for targets and defense. There really isn't much between paintball/airsoft and lethal firearms. I wonder if there would be a market for people wanting something like that.
Area man uses CNC machine and metalsmithing lathe to build a gun! Complete with Barrel, upper and lower receiver!
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
All this 'gun printing' talk is what's going to be used to help get 3dprinters banned or require a license to even buy/own. it's going to have controls slapped on it somewhere.
Stop fucking telling people that doing this shit guys. Until they are everywhere they are way easy to regulate and control.
You're not helping. serious.
Dear AC who cannot form a cogent sentence:
We refer you to the response given in Arkell v. Pressdram.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
... more cheap guns.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Even the pressure necessary for match grade air rifles would be too much for plastics. That is, if you want any real accuracy.
Telecoms were generally exempt from liability/responsibility for things said by callers under a "common carrier" theory - they didn't monitor or censor conversations, and so weren't responsible for what was said. (You could argue recent copy infringement actions by ISP's is breaking this theory and opening a whole world of potential liability for ISP's to what's on their networks, but that's an argument for another day).
I think Stratasys has really set themselves up for some potential liability here by repossessing their machine (by effectively rejecting any cover of a common-carrier-like theory.) By monitoring what their customers are doing and taking action, it seems like they're effectively accepting responsibility for knowing what their customers are printing, and the responsibility to take action against those who it deems are acting illegally.
That's a terribly precedent for them to set. What happens when one of their customers prints something that someone else holds a patent on? What happens when someone prints an unlicensed replica of a copyrighted cartoon carrier? IANAL, but it seems like Stratasys just put themselves on the hook for a bottomless bit of lawsuits...
Home CNC are getting more popular too, and you can make real guns in there entirety, a 3d printed AR-15 Lower receiver is pretty boring,
I've always thought the registered part should be the barrelled chamber and or upper receiver, thats the actual hard part to make.
More importantly people have been making home made guns for hundreds of years, now they have a tool to make it slightly more precisely this changes nothing just a bunch of pussy city folk all worked up over nothing
They've made barrels that are a sleeve of fairly thin metal wrapped in fiberglass before. I think it was mostly a gimmick and never caught on though. That'd probably be the minimum amount of metal you could get away with in theory, a sleeve for the chamber and rifling, wrapped up with reinforcement.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
All this 'gun printing' talk is what's going to be used to help get 3dprinters banned or require a license to even buy/own. it's going to have controls slapped on it somewhere.
Stop fucking telling people that doing this shit guys. Until they are everywhere they are way easy to regulate and control.
You're not helping. serious.
Yeah, guys, quit exercising your first and second amendment rights before we're not allowed to exercise them anymore.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
The first victims are going to be pre-teens and teens who print a gun and fire it into their classmates.
At which point we might finally get some decent penalties for unlicensed gun *use*.
Or maybe Americans really need do gun-printing kiosks on every street corner?
Such effort being put into making deadly weapons more accessible to the neighbourhood whack jobs.
If there's any justice in the world the truncated-2nd-amendment quoting nimrods who are behind this affront to civilization will be among the victims in one of the upcoming, inevitable massacres it will be used in.
I'll start believing this is about rights when the douche-tards start seriously advocating private nuclear weapons ownership. Anything short of that means it's about the sick fun and power implications of owning boom sticks.
WTF does a 3d printer have to do with a well regulated milita?
Are you going to print soldier men?
That's what the 2nd amendment talks about, right? It gives all Americans the right to form a well regulated milita, correct?
A busted beer bottle can be a weapon, or just a busted bottle. It all depends on the responsibility of the person holding it.
It makes no sense to me to panic about printing a firearm, or pieces of it, when I know any dumbass could just as likely run me over with his/her car while texting on their phone. Point is, address the problem of bad decision making instead. Running around making prohibitions just causes people to be more sneaky about obtaining said item anyway.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Citation required.
I occasionally see vehicles with no hood whatsoever (or having an obviously fiberglass part, pinned down). I have yet to see any of them surrounded by angry tin stars, with the owner on the ground, trussed up like a chicken.
The person firing the weapon may perhaps lose grip of the weapon but the upper receiver is doing all the work. Anyone with a shred of AR-15 knowledge knows this. As for failure after firing merely six rounds, that is completely pathetic. It's not as if the test was using a safari Nitro round or 50 BMG. I am assuming the test involved 5.56 x 45 NATO ammo which is an extremely light round or perhaps they used .223 which is almost identical.
They have a long, loong, looong, very loooong way to go before it works. Keep up the good work and keep trying new materials.
So what's so special about this one besides being poorly made?
Not sure why you'd want to print a plastic lower when it's easier and better to CNC one.....unless the 3D printer printed the internal mechanics as well.
This is a PR stunt. It's not like guns are expensive or hard to get in the US. It's not good engineering, either. If you're going to design a plastic gun, design a plastic gun, accepting that it's weaker than metal but you can form more complex parts. Maybe the whole trigger assembly can be made in one piece, with flexible parts. Replacing individual parts from a metal gun with inferior plastic parts is a PR stunt.
3D printed plastic parts tend to be weaker than injection-moulded plastic parts. The bonds between layers are weak. For the RepRap/MakerBot extruder type machines, the bonds are pathetically weak. Those machine work by trying to weld a hot thing to a cold thing. That never bonds well.
Let's revisit that:
"...with the purpose of creating an open-source gun [...] that can be downloaded from the internet and printed out."
Right, because what's really holding back modern society is this frustrating lack of weapons availability. I can hardly wait for 3D nano printers so EVERYBODY can download their own Ebola virus from the internet and print it at home!
No
First off the Constitution doesn't grant any rights it is a reaffirmation of natural rights and then it places a limit on governmental power.
The Second Amendment is about the right to keep and bear arms
Since when is taking a gun saftey course make some one a SME on the matter. Go take a gun smithing course and you'll see how silly your argument really is!
When I first read an article about molecular manufacturing way back in the 1990s (when I first started seeing nanotechnology articles), I thought this would never happen. Our last industrial revolution introduced quicker methods of assembling objects by parts. On the other hand, molecular manufacturing is building the object atom-by-atom using nanoscopic self-replicating assemblers... such objects were said to be *perfect* replicas of the design.
What they're doing with 3D printers now-a-days is not molecular manufacturing but it's as close as we've gotten. It's assembling on a much higher-scale level. This is so exciting. While these gun parts failed after 6 shots, we're still getting so close to the point where you download just about any design and "print" a copy of it in your own home. HOW COOL!!
Is is just the stripped lower that is plastic, or is it the whole thing including the buffer tube?
Remember that tube that the stock attaches to isn't just for that, it contains the recoil spring and buffer. The bolt carrier flies back against the buffer, in to that tube, and is then pushed back in to position by the spring. If it broke, you could get a face/arm full of spring and so on.
It isn't a plastic gun any more than any other gun that has a plastic receiver is. The barrel, chamber, bolt, firing pin, hammer, etc, etc, etc are all still metal. This "OMG WE CAN PRINT A GUN!!!!11one" stuff is stupid.
Yes, you can make the receiver, the low stress part, out of plastic. Big deal, this has happened for a long time. The barrel and chamber are the parts that face stress. Try that and see how it goes... But fire it remotely if you value your face n' fingers.
There's an awful lot of stupid going on in this thread that this one post would solve.
Until Leo Szilard made him famous. You can argue about a theorem, but you can't argue with a nuke. When the next Leo prints an AR-15 and shoots his critics, then Gutenburg will be as glorious as Einstein, and nobody will fuck with a publisher. Someday, they will have a printer that can build an Abrams M1A2. Of course, that tank will be a rare antique by then, but I'll be the first to order one.
1st Amendment meets 2nd Amendment, and they kick ass - William Randolph Hearst had wet dreams about this.
The 2nd amendment says
'A well regulated militia, being essential to the security of a free state, ...'
By my reading, the 'right of the people to bear arms' existed so that people could form well regulated militias. Gun collecting and assertions of a fundamental 'right to bear arms' seem like a pretty clear abuse of the intent of the 2nd amendment.
The natural right is not to bear arms but to have a defense against those who would unjustly do one harm. It is part of the right to life.
If the state provides sufficient protection from harm, then you have no implicit right to carry a gun to achieve the same purpose. Since you carrying that gun creates an implicit risk for others, then it is sensible for the state to restrict your ability to carry guns as long as the state protects you from criminals and foreign armies.
This is the international norm, anyway. This is one area in which the US is an outlier.
The post is almost an exact cut and paste of the first 4 paragraphs of the ExtremeTech article, with "we" (Extremetech) replaced by "Slashdot" and a phrase in the first sentence replaced by a link to the original article.
A subtle hyperlink does not equal an attribution - the /. post doesn't even mention ExtremeTech by name, just copies 2/3 of the article. Lame!
There are already polymer lower receivers out there. http://www.lw15.com/ is one. I prefer to machine my lower receivers out of an 80% completed block of aluminium. I'm not seeing why everyone is up in arms (punny) over this. :) It's legal to make your own firearm.
+1 fucking brilliant
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It's made of plastic, using the template for a metal part.
both materials have different strengths and weaknesses. I'd imagine that a part redesigned to take into account the material would work better.
The whole concept of "natural rights" is moronic. Dominance and control is natural; humans organize themselves hierarchically to that end, accepting dominance and control from something they can tolerate. That's why we have police who have power over us--they prevent us from murdering each other so we don't have to fear murder. Even with the ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH, actual civilization resists it instead of supporting it: speaking your mind can get you socially rejected or killed in the night. At the very least you won't have any friends if you're a vocal Obama supporter in south Texas, which has large social consequences. That's why it's artificial: the entire species fights to keep the natural order of suppressing undesirable ideals, and punishes those who voice those ideals.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
In Canada its the lower that's a restricted item, the upper is not. No matter I can't really see anything useful coming out of this project
Or the ability to print custom Disney products without paying a license fee. This a Millennium Falcon.
The fake 2nd amendment promoter, think the NRA, will go after this because it will be a way for them to make their toys while keeping the real weapons that might defend our liberty off limits.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
DefDist has now obtained a 3D printer from Objet, which seemingly has a more libertarian mindset.
Except Stratasys bought Objet.
Wow, that is an authentic experience - it even jams just like the real thing! ;)
just kidding. I like the AR-15. It is prone to jamming though. :-(
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It was finalised yesterday:
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000803148
I guess that means they'll have to get another printer in a few days.
Who cares what the printed gun is made out of? Use the printed piece to make a sand mold and mold metal pieces from it.
Some poor bastard in a village blacksmith shop who can't read or write can produce AK47 clones day in, day out, that work!
Unless somebody "prints" a REAL rifle (one that can fire thousands of rounds of a useful cartridge (7.62x51) without a major failure I call this just more kids indulging in mental masturbation, trying to entertain themselves.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
That's all I really wanted to say. Thanks.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
There really isn't much between paintball/airsoft and lethal firearms. I wonder if there would be a market for people wanting something like that.
There is... air rifles.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
This just a proof of concept exercise....
Hay! I betcha $20 I can print a gun!
"Will it blend?"
Rick B.
If only he'd used his 3-D printer for niceness instead of evil!
A fairly smart guy once said "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have..." If the state provides you sufficient protection from harm, you're almost certainly in a padded cell, whether or not your delusions allow you to recognize it as such, and because of this your life is as tenuous as the whims of the person who holds the key.
Yeah, no thanks, I'll keep my liberty; damn the international norm.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Populists!!!
Seastead this.
Fantastic way to invest time and passion. The world, especially the US, needs MORE GUNS.
Idiots.
... also 5.7x28 is a terrible calibre. Its pistol ammo, that at best has the knockdown and kick of 9mm, and at worst is an expensive non-standard cartridge. Its far overhyped, and far overrated.
The 5.7x28 was designed by FNH as part of a competition to develop a new NATO military round. NATO has some interesting requirements, including the idea that if a combatant receives a survivable wound one or two fellow combatants will be required to carry the injured party to medical attention. This at least temporarily reduces the number of combatants. While the 5.7x28 was not chosen by NATO it has been chosen by quite a few military and law enforcement agencies around the world.
The 5.7x28 round was originally presented for consideration with the FNH P90 full automatic short barreled rifle. Following that FNH designed the PS90, a semi-auto carbine. The P90 will empty a 50 round magazine in very short order. Several years after those weapons were introduced the FNH Five-seveN semi-auto pistol was introduced. All of these weapons use polymer extensively, though all critical parts are metal.
Armor piercing rounds are available for military and law enforcement use. They are designed to poke a modest hole after penetrating body armor. Civilian rounds like the Hornady V-Max tend to yield a 4+ inch pear shaped wound cavity in ballistic gel. I don't want to stand in front of one.
As to the round's effectiveness, perhaps Muammar Gaddafi should be consulted. Oh wait, his 5.7 injuries were quite fatal. Ok, how about the Fort Hood shootings? Again, the Five-seveN was used, presumably because the round is fast and accurate, plus the gun uses 20 round magazines with extensions available to allow the magazine to hold 30 rounds. It worked altogether too well.
Yes, there are arm chair shooters who disparage this round. Experience has, none the less, shown the 5.7 to be quite effective. It's also a lot of fun to shoot. Low recoil, fast, and accurate. It would seem to be a very good choice for an initial experiment with a printed AR receiver.
The truth of it though is that at the end of the day you have to trust government, and government has to trust you, in order for the day-to-day stuff to work. Sure, it means leaving yourself open to more risk; if some hitleresque person actually tires to gain power then you'll have left the state more avenues to control you. But in exchange for that you get pragmatic solutions to everyday problems. From the Government's POV, if the population will always distrust it and will always counter its moves, no matter how benign, then it will simply get better at hiding the nature of any potentially controversial laws and feel no remorse about doing so because the people will hate it no matter what it does anyway.
Gun control, for example, is at one level pragmatic; all else being equal, it's safer to have fewer guns than more. Sure, you have to trust the government not to go Nazi, but in exchange for that you'll get a criminal population that's far less likely to carry guns and little Johnny will be less likely to accidentally shoot his foot with the family .45.
And, in the end, if you spend all your time worried about Hitleresque edge cases and weird scenarios like being put in a padded cell (to what? keep you from seeing the sun? why?), you'll lose sight of the petty tyrannies that crop up.
It was designed to have a light personal defense round that is capable of piercing body armor, and that can be fired full-auto controllably.
Enter the gun designed for it, the FN P90. It's small (10" shorter than an M4 carbine, but the barrel is only 4" shorter), holds a lot of ammo (with 50 rounds it weighs five ounces less than an M4 with 30), and the whole magazine can be emptied at once on full-auto while staying in a 10" group at 50 meters. And you get a companion pistol that holds 20 rounds in a standard grip, and is still armor-piercing.
That's a pretty awesome deal for personal defense. Note personal defense, not assault. The average soldier whose regular job is not fighting (truck driving, tank driving, etc), or bodyguard, can have this with 200 rounds total and still be under ten pounds of gear.
But the transition to civilian life didn't work too well. We don't get full auto, and the armor-piercing rounds are illegal. It is a superb round, but the two main reasons for this its existence just don't apply in the civilian world.
The British Sten submachine gun was designed so that it could be made with the metalworking skills and tooling of a good bicycle shop in something like five hours. Small shops all over the country were making them for the war effort.
And that's with 1930s machining technology.
This is a -1 ? Seriously?
This is a nascent technology and already people are all like: "Oooh! lets make a machine gun!". Case-in-point: in the TFA they manufactured what is considered the "controlled component" of the weapon. Now this is typically above the head of the uninitiated but what it means is they manufactured the regulated part of the weapon, the lower receiver, all other parts are considered accessories.
I'm counting the days until 20/20 has an expose on "homemade weapons of mass destruction".
"With one of these inexpensive devices you can produce an automatic assault rifle just as easily as printing our your aunt Mary's cheesecake recipe"
Gun culture people... you are going to have to decide what you like more... your 3D printer or your Darth Vader rifle.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
A lot of people do worthless things just to see if they can do it, especially us geeks.
Cost of a 3D printer, $$$$
Cost of 3D material, probably $$$
Cost of a polymer AR-15, $50
In a great many countries, we enjoy being able walk around without the risk of being shot - because no one has guns! For the most part we think you are a pack of backward cranks in this regard, but don't mind too much if you want to shoot each other. BUT PLEASE KEEP THIS NONSENSE TO YOURSELVES!