3D-Printed Gun May Be Unveiled Soon
colinneagle writes "A 3D-printed gun capable of firing multiple rounds may be unveiled soon. Cody Wilson, the 25-year-old founder and director of nonprofit organization Defense Distributed, recently told Mashable that the end product of Wiki Weapon, the initiative to create an operational 3D-printed gun, may soon be ready to unveil to the public. In a March interview with CNN, Wilson said he hoped to have a printable gun ready by the end of April, so his most recent comments suggest that he may fulfill that promise. While Wilson was sparse with details, he did tell Mashable that the prototype would be a handgun consisting of 12 parts made out of ABS+ thermoplastic, which is known for its durability and is commonly used in industrial settings. The firing pin would be the only steel component of the 3D-printed gun, which will be able to withstand a few shots before melting or breaking. Wilson reportedly anticipates making an official announcement soon."
If the barrel and/or the slide is made of even the best plastic, I wouldn't trust it to take the 35ksi of a normal 9mm round even once. That application requires properly heat treated 4130 or 4140 steel (or 316 stainless).
To 3D print the cartridges.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They would make perfect assassins weapons,
but information wants to be free!!!
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1500/fc01440.htm
get a 3D printed silencer to go with it?
...of this year's Darwin award.
"It might blow up in your hand! But have fun!"
someone better print band-aids, because this don't go down well.
This is one of those instances where right-wingers suddenly stop believing in the market economics they dogmatically apply everywhere else. Supply and demand: make killing people cheaper, easier, and more available, and more people get killed. It's hilarious to watch gun murder apologists fly into fits of hand-waving about why lowering the cost of killing will magically decrease the amount of killing.
One quick Google search later:
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
No, making guns for sale requires you have a license. Making guns for personal use only requires no licenses at all, as long as they fall under ATF guidelines for weapons that don't need to be registered with the ATF (no assault rifles or SBRs).
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Have fun finding ammo right now...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm interested to see the reaction from the pro-gun groups and lobbies who are supported by major manufactures. Will they still be so keen for everyone to own a gun when those guns aren't being bought from their interest groups? Or will it become like the tobacco industry where only "approved manufacturers" (ie. the current ones) are allowed to design, manufacture and sell guns.
How is this, in any sense of a safe, sane, rational world; a good thing?
I love building, creating, discovering. The first thing that the ability to self-produce a meaningful firearm, should produce though is a limitation on the right to do so.
No one needs the ability to exercise lethal force, much less the ability to casually produce the tools that do so.
make killing people cheaper, easier, and more available, and more people get killed.
Make the ability to protect yourself cheaper, easier and more available, and more people get protected.
Not sure why you want rapists and other criminals to have easier access to victims? That's always been kind of baffling. Unless you have a motive you are not revealing.
There's a reason why MLK and his supporters had a lot of weapons around. You can't have peace where one side of an equation is armed and the other is not. Then you just have a regular culling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They should at least be fully automatic, unlike the old 3d ones. i saw watching him having to pull the trigger to fire a bullet out of the gun made me want to choke. how many clips did he have to reload to get more than 15 magazines through that thing, anyways?
I watched an interview with Cody recently.
While the guy is a little nuts (ok, maybe more than a little) he does actually have a point. Gun control in the age of 3d printing is going to be virtually impossible. In the next decade we'll move from plastics to metals and from niche to mainstream for 3d printing, any 15 yr old with an internet connection and a (no doubt cheap) home printer will then only need to buy bullets to arm themselves to the teeth.
Politics are always behind the curve, it would be nice for a change to see any of them try to tackle inevitable changes to our civilization before they become an issue. FYI I'm Australian and lucky enough to be in a country that has proven gun laws work.
- accompanied by the words "Give your fucking wallet..."
As if guns weren't easy enough to get without a proper license...
"prototype would be a handgun consisting of 12 parts made out of ABS+ thermoplastic, which is known for its durability and is commonly used in industrial settings."
yea but its not thin slivers of plastic that happened to surface bond to a cooling surface, yea it seems strong to your hand, but not to any mechanical force, its actually quite brittle
but yay 3d printing with weedeater string!
This man is single-handedly ruining 3D printing for EVERYONE, just because he's a gun nut obsessed with firearms. He's pushing into a gray area and setting a very early precedent that will impact the availability of 3D printing for the rest of America.
Cody Wilson is just what you'd expect from a 25-year old, gun nut, pothead, government conspiracist. He's afraid of having his weapons taken away, he's afraid of having his weed taken away, and he's afraid of his rights being taken away. His entire life is ruled by fear. So how does Cody respond? He perverts a revolutionary technology to make _more_ fucking weapons with them in violation of the law.
Fuck Cody. This is why scientists and engineers fucking hate people that take what they pour their lives into and deform for their own fucked up needs. When the 3D printer was invented people envisioned a technology that could help, that could make development rapid, that would improve our lives. Now Mr. Wilson has ruined all that and made it a tool to create weapons.
Cody Wilson is a fucking asshole.
Doesn't matter...he's got the license, and is likely going to sell them.
It can only fire "a few shots" before needing repair, and the muzzle velocity is probably low enough that even those are unlikely to be deadly. If a nutcase in my neighborhood was getting a gun, I'd want him to get this one.
Stricter control on real guns, and 3D-printing for the masses seem to be a good way forward.
What about countries where firearms are illegal or strictly controlled? Great, now our sundry criminals will be able to get guns made to order. Way to go with extreme irresponsibility. Hope you can live with the blood on your hands.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It will not be safe with any real live ammo. .22LR rimfire ammo, so how could anything made of polymer/plastic?
Zinc alloy guns cannot cope with pressures from plain
Maybe if it uses special ammo (primer + bb pellet or such) it works. It absolutely will not work with real ammo unless the pressure-burdened parts are made of steel. Proper steel, not some MIM cast crap or powder-printed sponge.
Setting off a cartridge is a bit like touching a blowtorch to the barrel.
Everyone I've talked to with gunsmithing or general materials engineering knowledge thinks an ABS barrel is not worth trying.
Unless the charge is very small it's a handheld plastic grenade that just happens to be shaped like a gun - ABS is very brittle.
I know what I'm thinking. "Did I fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is plastic gun, and if it backfires it will likely blow my head clean off, I've got to ask myself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do I, moron?
I want a 3D printing gun. *pow* Hoberman sphere! *pow* Strandbeest! *pow* 3D printing gun!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That would be quick on the draw then.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
I imagine that the first "threat" as a result of this is going to be the TSA worried about people sneaking plastic guns through screeners. Sure you still have to somehow get a few rounds of ammo and the metal firing pin though the scanners, but compared to trying to get a normal weapon though this is going to be considerably easier to sneak though. I am curious what the TSA will do once this becomes more of a reality for them.
The National Rifle Association in America will be preparing its statement. Each time a nutcase goes berserk with a gun, the NRA insists that this proves everyone should have a gun, so in a couple of days it'll announce that the only way to respond to events in Boston is for every citizen to have a nail bomb. In particular, marathon runners, instead of taking a bottle of water and a sponge at each stage of the race, which are useless in the fight against international terrorism, should be handed a grenade and a flamethrower.
The logic of the lobby that last week defeated the attempt to introduce gun controls must be that this is the only way to keep marathons safe. It might be trickier with sprint races, as the starting gun would go off and every runner would instinctively shoot at the poor sod who fired it, which might make race-starting a difficult post to fill. But the right to carry a nail bomb is surely a constitutional right of every US citizen.
People such as the pro-gun campaigners exhibit a special sort of genius. At a time such as last weekend, when you wouldn't think you could feel anything but sympathy for Americans, they manage to make you think: "Mind you, quite a few of them are bloody creepy." For example, on the night that the surviving bomber was captured, you might expect a mood of sombre relief. But CNN showed cheering crowds, and the reporter described the atmosphere as " elated, excited and jubilant". Then we saw them chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A", and some of them let off fireworks.
Maybe the anxiety had disturbed them and caused them to get the capture of a lunatic mixed up with New Year's Eve. Perhaps the same thing happened here, so that when Raoul Moat was shot the local community held hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne" and snogged their next door neighbour. "We got 'em, we GOT 'EM," roared a series of men, waving flags into cameras as if they'd won an Olympic medal. And once the story wasn't so much a human tragedy as a triumph for the USA, I couldn't help thinking "Oh, you ARE masterful aren't you, managing with no more resources than the army, SWAT teams, marines, an assortment of helicopters, the FBI and the entire population of Boston to track down a lunatic covered in blood who'd been shot through the neck and was wriggling about in a boat in someone's garden. I wonder who you'll meet in the SECOND round of the World Hide and Seek championships."
The strangest part is that this excitement doesn't usually happen on the occasions that a madman in America gets captured after going on the rampage in a school or shopping centre with the machine-guns he's constitutionally entitled to carry. For example, there were no joyous celebrations when James Holmes was captured after blasting 12 people dead in a cinema in Denver. I suppose that, unlike in Boston, the people of Denver just aren't party-going types. Or it could be that there's a rule that the capture of a dangerous criminal is only a victory for America if the criminal can be portrayed as not American. Because if you're going to go on a killing spree in America, you should at least have the decency to be American. There must be some people saying: "It's a disgrace. These Chechen lunatics are coming over here taking our lunatics' jobs."
When it was known the bombers were nice and foreign, the fun could start. Bob Beckel, a reporter on Fox News, informed viewers this was the time to "cut off Muslim students from coming into the country". The New America Foundation in Washington, which influences the government, declared that the problem was whether Muslims see themselves as "Americans first or Muslims first". New York Senator Steve King was one of many who concluded: "We must increase surveillance amongst Muslims."
But Adam Lanza, who went nuts in December with a gun in a school in Connecticut, was said to be from a "good Christian family".
On /. spouting off their anti-gun rhetoric. What happens when technology catches up and this ancient crude firing pin primer propellant charge mechanism is replaced with more advanced energy based weapons? Human kind is still very uncivilized(in fact a very large amount of them really suck) and yes the right to protect oneself, loved ones and property is a human right. It is also my opinion(supported by first hand experience) that many who would want very strict gun laws are also the type that would walk out of their employers place of business with anything that wasn't nailed down or currently being used to provide them a paycheck. The other type of anti-gun filth are the ones that aren't really interested in protecting personal freedoms in the long run providing that they are still part of the group in power. In fact a truly open transparent civilized free society probably scares the living shit out of many anti-gun nuts.
And my guess would be that he's going to get himself thrown in jail for ignoring the laws around selling them even though he does have the license.
Arrogant dicks have a habit of doing that; unless they're in the banking industry.
He has no plans to sell them. In fact Cody has stated this. He got the license so that he can manufacturer types of firearms that do not currently exist. Otherwise he'd have to stick with existing designs.
Then he doesn't understand the law at all. You can make your own original design and build it so long as you aren't selling it.
You mad
I don't believe 3D printers would ever be banned, based on the principle of technology we're using every day.
The Internet is an information super highway for any illegal activity imaginable, ranging widely between the sale of drugs, human trafficking, contract killings and child pornography to international terrorism. Banning the Internet would only cause people to get creative elsewhere, which would be impossible to control. Same with 3D printers.
I expect that governments would much prefer to watch certain flagged webspaces where they know people can obtain dangerous blueprints for their printers, or require users to register their printers at the time of purchase.
Making guns is not illegal. I'm allow to build as many guns as I want. In fact, guns I build don't even need serial numbers or identifying marks. If I transfer the gun (sell or give) then it's illegal.
Let me know if they make "mini" printed Abrams battle tank prototype. I would love to give that to my daughter!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What would be nice would be if the NRA came down on these people. Really, the NRA represents the gun-making and gun-selling industry. It's in their interest to prevent everybody from being able to make guns for basically free, with the ease with which they might toast a pop-tart.
Here's a valuable contribution the NRA could be making to society. They should lobby, lobby, lobby that Cody and "Defense Distributed" are violating our 2nd Amendment rights. Seriously - "keep and bear arms". Says nothing about "making arms" or "printing arms" or "creating arms".
How long before the definition of gun changes? That's all I can think of. I can see laws being made saying that if it's not manufactured a certain way or have X% of something in the case it's not to be considered a gun and is regulated diffrently.
"I can sell some of the pieces that we've been making" Hope he has a license to do so. As per, http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/general.html#gca-manufacturing ->> With certain exceptions a firearm may be made by a non-licensee provided it is not for sale and the maker is not prohibited from possessing firearms. However, a person is prohibited from assembling a non-sporting semi-automatic rifle or non-sporting shotgun from imported parts. In addition, the making of an NFA firearm requires a tax payment and approval by ATF. An application to make a machine gun will not be approved unless documentation is submitted showing that the firearm is being made for a Federal or State agency. [18 U.S.C. 922(o) and (r), 26 U.S.C. 5822, 27 CFR 478.39, 479.62 and 479.105]
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
* POOR SHOWING TROLLS , & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!
Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.
Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?
Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.
If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.
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Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.
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I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.
If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!
You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his ba
No pun intended, but I don't get what the big fuss is all about.
a) We can still buy ball bearings, nails, fireworks (in some states), batteries, garage door remotes and pressure cookers even though two shitheads killed 3 people and injured over 200 using those items. You can go to home dipshits and buy all the tools and materials needed to make a weapon. So it's highly unlikely that 3d printing will be banned.
b) Can we just see what this dude comes up with first? If it's all made of ABS, it will be either extremely unsafe to use, or it might just fire some plastic blobs 10 feet, which would make it less harmful than a pellet gun or hell, even something from toys'r'us. This dude is obviously just enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. How about we just ignore him?
And a zip gun can be made easily enough by someone who really wants a gun, but doesn't have thousands of dollars for a 3-d printer, not the knowledge to print one.
And while we're at it, we have the highest death-by-firearm rate in all of the first and second world - go ahead, tell me Australia, or the UK, or France is less "free" than we are. Prove it.
I propose manditorily treating guns *exactly* like cars, including licensing and insurance.
mark
From my comment here?
Clearly you are just pretending to be very stupid in order to play a petty and childish little game at my expense. Although you may not be so bright since you've been taken in by the gun as a substitute penis with a flag tattooed on the side NRA propaganda you are obviously not so stupid as you pretend. Fuck off and use a local example for your childish justification of your toys without responsibility and don't pick on a country where we use them responsibly as tools instead.
The decline is because of various efforts over the last generation and not by magic.
I know that doesn't help your pathetic little line of "kids are just going to have to die in massacres - Australia tried to do something but it didn't help so let's just do nothing, keep using overpowered guns as toys, and be cowards avoiding all responsibility".
Well we did try to do something, and we've been trying since before you or I were born, and it has worked, so piss off with your cowardly bullshit pretending it hasn't. Just because the NRA lost their balls doesn't mean you have to cut yours off too.
There's a good reason why we send military doctors to your adopted country to get experience treating gunshot wounds. I'm sure you can work out why.
The Weapon Shops of Linux! It was awesome.
I'm currently beta testing my process to 3D print a pointy sharp thing you can poke people with.
The United States has approximately 85 gun deaths a week. Its around 3000 per year.
If you exclude all the waring nations (Syria, North Korea, etc.), thats more than the total of the rest of the world by about 2000 deaths.
So, here is a unwell meaning jerk that wants to show how to print a gun. Who buys the printers? Terrorists, Mafia, small hoodlims who band together to make a throwaway gun once it was used.
America, whats wrong with you? The second amendment was to fight the British, hunt for game, and protection from Indian raiders and rustlers. But we are civilized now, with no more wilderness to conquer.
gosgog:
Gun control, lets do it properly....How, get rid of Physyciatrists & physycologists! Look, less cars, less car crashes, basic logic right!
So, less school murders from the unbalanced, less Physyciatrists & physycologists!, less kukoos to do it
A couple of months ago I worked really hard to research, write and independently publish an ebook on 3D printing, aimed at ordinary computer users. I made it easy to read, tried to be as imaginative as I could about all the different uses, and endeavoured to fill the book with useful, practical information. I even kept the price down to an absolute minimum ($3.49), just a fraction of the cost of my nearest competitor. I would have liked to have made it free, under a creative commons licence, but, after all, a man has got to eat. Since its release, I have worked hard on promotion, sending out review copies to anybody that showed an interest, as well as making a fair few clumsy mistakes in trying to obtain some free publicity. After all, it was my first attempt at self publishing. Most of all, I wanted to share my experience and enthusiasm with 3D printers, and counter all the articles that describe this technology as a fad, or simply over-hyped. Now Cody Wilson, on the other hand, only has to fart, and the media are all over it, giving him miles of column space, even though my dog probably has more creative flair than this gun obsessed redneck. Now, do not get me wrong, I am as anarchist as the next man (especially if that next man happens to be a noted MIT Professor ;-)), but it it is really getting me down that I am spending so long trying to get my work noticed, while some idiot, who wants to jeopardise the entire 3D printing industry, seems to get more press attention than the leader of North Korea.
At the moment, I am working on an updated edition of the ebook. That may seem fast, but this technology is evolving much faster than most of us expected. My own makerbot experiments are going really well, but my enthusiasm is being hammered every time I read the latest news splash in the wiki weapon saga. What am I doing wrong? Am I banging my head against a brick wall? Am I destined to remain in obscurity while some upstart gun-nut steals the show?
As the saying goes, guns make all men equal. a 60yr old man with a limp and a pistol is just as likely to win a fight as an equally armed 20yr old intruder.
As the more accurate saying goes, "Guns not only allow anyone to kill instantly, with ease, and regularly unintentionally, they make even the most good natured a little power mad, thirsty for violence, and filled with painful memories of every slight, insult, or offence they've ever been made to bear and the hunger for vengence which comes along with them."
Yes, truly the world would be a better place if it were easier for anyone and everyone to kill with ease.
Which brings me to my real point. How long is it gonna take for us to get 3d printers capable of making nuclear warheads??? I'd like to be able to insert some stolen radioactive material and be good to go.
These nuclear proferation treaties are so harmful and i long for the day when every man, woman, and child above the age of 14 is capable of killing everyone within at least a mile radius should they feel threatened or angry or just particularly anti-social. Think what a peaceful world that would be!! The threat of mass annialation should deter most communities from messing with you but should one cause a problem, you can kill them all with ease. And for the softies among us, it could be placed on the outskirts of a city so as not to kill everyone dead immedietely, but simply irradiate them and maybe destroy some infrastructure thus wounding them and teaching them a lesson.
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