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UK Ballistics Scientists: 3D-Printed Guns Are 'of No Use To Anyone'
New submitter graveyardjohn writes: "The BBC has a short video about why the U.K.'s National Ballistics Intelligence Service thinks 3D-printed guns are 'of no use to anyone.' They show a 3D-printed gun being fired in a test chamber. The barrel explodes and the bullet flops forward a few feet. They say, 'without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves.'"
I'm fucking sick of seeing 3D printers associated with guns.
But we're always being told the criminals will grab the guns and use them against us.
So this is a win.
Yet...
3D printed guns are in their infancy and already quite capable according to these tests in Wired.
It's a good thing technology never moves forward. This issue can now be put to bed.
Good to see that Ameriker hasn't cornered the market on worthless media reports. Also seems like some of the homebrew done stateside has had much better results.
Yet others have been fired multiple times, successfully.
Either the UK-NBIS sucks at 3D printing, or this is disinformation.
Thanks a lot U.K.'s National Ballistics Intelligence Service, way to throw down the gauntlet and challenge folks...
Even the BBC article admits that 3D-printed guns have been successfully fired in the United States, and this is a police body warning people not to try to 3D print a gun.
If they ever get reliable enough to be a problem I wonder how much of a high powered laser would be needed to damage the barrel enough to render it useless.
Though I guess a flamethrower could be used in a pinch.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
There are several commercially successful makes of polymer AR lowers.
In AR-land, the serial is on the lower.
A 3d printed lower gives you the ability to print a non serial numberd AR. Which is legal (US federal. YMMV) because home-made guns don't have to be serialized.
THL phish sticks
This technology will improve, it will become widely available, 3D printed guns will become very usable, the knowledge to build them will become widely available and when that happens they will (depending on your political leaning) either become a big problem or they will solve all of mankind's problems because everybody and their dog will be packing a 3D printed Uzi.
Hint: you're using the wrong materials for your chosen design.
The BBC has a short video about why the U.K.'s National Ballistics Intelligence Service thinks 3D-printed guns are 'of no use to anyone.' They show a 3D-printed gun being fired in a test chamber. The barrel explodes and the bullet flops forward a few feet. They say, 'without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves.'
In a related story, the U.K. Horse and Buggy Registration Service thinks the automobile will be 'of no use to anyone.' They show a vehicle being driven on a test track. It travels a short distance at 10 mph, then the engine blows a rod and one wheel falls off. They say, 'without additional expertise and the right type of petrol, anyone attempting to drive one would probably main or even kill themselves."
That is exactly the reason
[wdw]
To bring a 3D printer onboard a plane? One could print themselves a gun or knife
Reading an article like this confirms it's all monarchs and corgis living in some fantasy land.
If you watch the video you will notice they printed the barrel with a rectangular fill density of about .2.
In other words the barrel was mostly air! Anyone printing for strength would use a density of 1 (solid)
and a contour following fill pattern. In other words a continuous series of strong rings.
Of course they may be trying to fool bad guys into not trying this. However it does understate the
performance capability of 3D printed weapons.
Yes, I do, in fact expect the plastic ones to disintegrate under the typical chamber pressures that come from firing a round. The plastic 3D printers are the ones everyone is gushing about in the sensationalist news sites everywhere and that are practical to be widely available to the everyman. The metal deposition, selective laser sintering types that make metal parts are much more costly and not nearly as widely available, but those can, depending on the material and method) make viable gun parts that will withstand the loads for several rounds before succumbing.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
It's sad that 3D printing had become synonymous with FDM or glorified glue guns (GGG). There are lots of different technologies that fall under the umbrella of 3D printing.
Here's a gun that was 3D printed using DMLS (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) for the metal parts and SLS for the grips. It's both durable and viable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www.engineering.com/3DP...
Here's a few other 3D printing processes that are not FDM glorified glue guns:
SLS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
DMLS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
LOM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
SLA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Look at the exploded gun barrel in the video. They used the wrong setting and didn't set the machine to completely fill the volume with solid plastic. Of course the gun is going to fail if you intentionally weaken it.
Since they have found these guns are completely useless, then hopefully they won't enact legislation to require all 3d printers have crippling DRM that makes it impossible to print guns.
Or maybe they might, but given that they now have a government study that say these guns are useless, it's gonna be a lot harder(I hope) for scare-mongering politicians to cripple or ban 3d printing
Properly fabricated 3D metal guns would operate no different from a traditionally fabricated version. The density and material strength is roughly equivalent to a wrought part.
You in fact SHOULD be concerned about this technology now, even if it's currently ineffective...because it won't be ineffective or useless forever.
Then they shouldn't be crying about it.
With a "bullet ( that ) flops forward a few feet". Come on, get real.
In slow motion you can see that the bullet barely travels any distance at all. - Quote from the video
What we in fact see is that the object that "barely travels any distance at all" is the spent shell casing. This is completely fine as the aim is not to magically embed the spent shell casing into the target. That is what the projectile part is for. The projectile is likely to have whizzed off as expected, albeit not with great accuracy.
As for the general usefulness of plastic firearms, even if they can only fire a few shots, there are clear advantages.
1. You can obtain a firearm without it being registered to you or exposing yourself to criminal firearms dealers/police sting operations.
2. They are less detectable.
3. You can melt and/or burn the murder weapon with ease.
The tone of the video is a bit odd. It's comes across like a video trying to convince kids not to play with fireworks. It's not as if we all have loads of ammunition laying about here in the UK just waiting for a 3D Printed gun to come along so we can finally have some fun. Making something that can fire a bullet (at least here in the UK) is not the main obstacle to a working firearm. The main obstacle here is obtaining the ammunition.
Well, that itself could be pretty useful.
I suspect the test was setup to fail, to prove a predetermined agenda, but even if it was 100% true, we are just starting out with this use for printed materials, and it takes time to perfect new technologies. Even if it *never* becomes viable, it still helped push the limits of the technology and will benefit other uses.
Pretty sad when if people were to operate that way " well, it doesn't work so no point in trying"... If that was always the case, we would still be living in caves hoping we dont get eaten.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sex Toys! Yes, Sex Toys are the real 3D Printing market!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
As the company Solid Concepts discovered, 3D printing metal guns demonstrates the ability to create fined machine parts that are also durable.
because the guy's last words would be along the lines of 3d printed guns don't kill people....
So if this is no good there is no reason to rush out and pass ridiculous laws, right?
Oh yea, this is more fud.
All their little spectacular proves is that government is scared to death of 3D printing improving to the point everyone will be able to use it to manufacture weapons without any government ability to control it. So they're attacking early and doing a bad job of it. The funny part is the government isn't worried about crime they're worried those weapons will be pointed at them.
'without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves.'
The same could be said about metallurgy, cnc mills, caustic chemicals, drugs (legal or illegal), a 1 year old and eating utensils. The list goes on and on and on. Just because something requires knowledge to be done safely doesn't mean people shouldn't have the freedom to explore such things at their own risk.
"It surves no purpose." "No use to anybody."
Which is hilarious, because neither does Alcohol.
You'll shoot your eye out!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
a 22 round is more than enough to seriously hurt you when the casing explodes and takes pieces of the gun with it i've had guns made of metal with bad ammunition fail catastrophically and if it wasn't for the safety gear i wear i'd likely be blind
the issue is when it doesn't just go a few feet forward when it stays in place and the expanding gases rupture the chamber creating high speed projectiles travelling in random directions
that you can build a REAL gun using metal in a machine shop. It's not hard and doesn't even have to be that expensive.
Unless your trying to get it through a metal detector a plastic gun is simply inferior and a waste of time.
Someone needs to tell these guys about crowdsourcing. You only need the plans for the first decently made gun, then you can make as many as you want.
You can print a perfectly functioning copy of a Colt 1911 pistol in steel with a 3d-Printer with the same price as a 2d Postscript Printer did cost in 1984.
Since it was 3d-printer related, I'm sure the article has been posted here at least a dozen times.
It might not work for poor teens, but for criminals with a working "business model" and funds, it's a piece of cake.
Why can't the UK just download those plans and do it right?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Thus you have your choice: bad guys armed and good guys disarmed, or everybody armed. I'll take the latter, thank you. Statistics show that ordinary citizens are not likely to misuse firearms, and do in fact use them to stop crime (often without anyone being hurt; bad guys would rather surrender and have the police take them away, than be shot).
How would you propose to decide who is responsible enough to own a firearm? Can crazy people own them? What about clinically depressed people? What about people under psychological treatment generally? At what age should someone be able to carry a firearm? Should they be allowed in all buildings? Should businesses be allowed to deny entrance to people carrying weapons? What about on a plane/train/bus/etc.?
If someone is considering offing themselves, it might be simpler to take their gun and blow their head off instead of trying to hang themselves, jump off a building/bridge, slice their wrists, etc.
To the person doing the act, shooting themselves in the head is probably going to seem less painful and more convenient then most other options.
If that's the case, then removing the gun might reduce the chances of actually carrying through on a suicide attempt.
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
When you start comparing crime rates, violent crime rates, gun deaths, or any other socially important data, you really need to pay careful attention to terminology. It matters little that the UK may experience only 1% of our gun deaths, if they also experience 800% of our violent crime rate. After you are mutilated or dead, is it really going to matter to you that you were killed with a gun, or a knife, or a stone, or you were choked to death? Violent crime is violent crime.
Given the choice, I think I'd rather be shot to death, than bludgeoned to death. The suffering is likely to end much, much sooner.
BOTTOM LINE: liberals, progressives, and socialists always want to disarm the public. But, disarming the public never makes the public any safer. It only makes it safer for GOVERNMENT TO OPPRESS THE PEOPLE!!
Ask any number of infamous people, starting with Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao tse Tung.
Do you /really/ think that a punch in the face, a rape and a mass shooting are all the same thing? They're all violent crime...
Keep in mind that the statistics aren't derived the same way in the two countries. The UK includes a much wider array of crimes as "violent crimes", while the US doesn't - it's rate is effectively lower because there are crimes that it puts in other categories. ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/24/blog-posting/social-media-post-says-uk-has-far-higher-violent-c/ )
Also, you're probably more likely to be bludgeoned to death in the US than in the UK. The murder rate is far higher in the US after all.
If somebody is going to commit a violent crime against me, I'd much rather it involve a fist than a bullet. You're welcome to feel otherwise.
I have a loaded weapon in my pants.
Only shoots blanks, though...
Hm. Anyone think of bringing back the Gyrojet concept? One of the features was very low pressure in the chamber and barrel, which it seems would favor 3d printed firearms. The disadvantage was that the slug took 30 feet or so to build up to a reasonable velocity. But with advances in propellants since the 1960's, I wonder what could be achieved now?
Heck, you might even be able to 3d print the ammunition.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"'without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves"
Maybe it's time start handing out free 3D printers to criminals.
...from 3-D printed guns. Now they've warned people.
Both groups want to force something on the other.
The anti-gun groups wants to force all civilians to relinquish their guns and never own them again.
The pro-gun groups wants to force all civilians to live among neighbors who might own guns.
Both groups force members of the other to accept something they don't want. Both groups need to justify their position to the other.
Considering ABS is not as strong as wood why bother? What they have done makes the point that the material sucks utterly for this purpose.
Personally I think the printed gun people are just attention seekers that don't give a shit if their games cause governments to regulate 3D printing and fuck us all around when there are printers available that can produce more suitable materials for that purpose.
Also why so much fuss about printed guns? A few weeks ago a group of researchers printed a working chunk of human kidney - that's a vast amount more interesting than trying to get a very crappy zip gun to work.
If you are suggesting casting it from an aluminium alloy then your "I can do it" is an empty and overconfident boast based on ignorance. An aluminium-silicon barrel would be a brittle thing that would give you a fragmentation grenade with no delay in the shape of a gun. The alloys used in aircraft/bikes/etc get their strength from rolling, age hardening etc and are soft weak things when initially cast. Even cast bronze barrels had serious problems (which meant a lot remelted immediately after casting) and were given up on hundreds of years ago. ...
Making it from wrought steel scrap on the other hand
Consider that ABS plastic made from powder is not as strong as most types of wood.
These things are going to fail without anyone trying to make them fail so long as the designs are completely and utterly stupid. The designs are stupid because the goal is stupid - the goal is not a gun that can be made at home but a gun that uses one single fabrication method and one material. A few parts made a different way is the difference between a low end Glock workalike and a handheld plastic fragmentation grenade with no delay.
It's like making an entirely wooden knife instead of a wooden handle and a steel blade.
In the states and around the world guns are pretty easy to trace. A lot of crimes are solved on ballistic evidence. 3D Printed guns do away with that.
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The sintered metal power material has a lot of voids (holes) which make it a very bad choice of material for gun barrels, just like any cast cannons with internal air bubbles tended to explode when fired.
There are sintered powder metal parts used in such situations where voids would be a disaster and those are dealt with by forging after making the sintered blank (like a blacksmith does making horseshoes in movies you may have seen). That's not something an additive 3D printing device is going to do on it's own.
geeks/nerds/gear-heads/etc read before the basic truth it exposes FINALLY sinks in?
What truth?
The truth is that government will inevitably be run by, and serve the agendas of, supremely stupid and short-sighted people whose policies are more often established as a form of control than for any productive purpose. The political class, being largely ignorant of technology and lacking any desire to "think ahead" still does not understand the basic principles (and implications) of things like 3D printing, digital data, software, distributed computing, crowd sourcing, kick starting etc. and they'll consult with "experts" who either share their ignorance or whose best advice they'll ignore anyway. The sort of people who want to run big governments (and the sort of people they prefer to get their advice from) still think they can control the distribution of information (and by implication that they can "get it back" after it's out). They also think they can control the behavior of people by controlling their access to various THINGS (as though 3D printing will never be practical). These morons in the UK apparently missed the unveiling of Elon Musk's Dragon V2 ...... among the juicy bits he displayed was a new rocket engine produced entirely by 3D printing with inconel!!!! (his so-called "super draco"). The obvious thing these UK "experts" apparently missed and that Musk's presser exposed was: it's now possible to 3D print a gun better than any gun in the arsenel of the UK military (the ONLY barriers are the cost of the printer, the supplies of the raw materials, and the creativity of the users (who will ALWAYS be more creative than those of the bureaucrats who try to regulate things)).
Building MORE government and putting this sort of moron in charge is absolutely INSANE; these people are no longer competent to run a government half the size of what they already have, no matter how many wonderful things they may promise. You'll never be able to find "the right people" to run government ... because the sort of people who are truly competent to run such monstrocities are the very sort who do not want to spend their time doing it ... and the sort who are eager to run it are the very sort not competent enough to do it well or benevolent enough to do it safely. This is NOT a new problem; it was covered very well by F. A. Hayek in the book "The Road to Serfdom", one of those books too many geeks miss while scanning the shelf for a copy of "Atlas Shrugged". As a story, "Shrugged" may be a (stiffly-written but useful) tool to expose the brainwashed to the concept of "freedom", but Hayek is a much-better (non-fiction) book for those who are trying to figure out why the direction we're all heading in (and which establishment group-thinkers assure us is "good") feels so "wrong" and is failing to produce the promised success.
I am not sure that the violent crime rate or even the murder rate per 100,00 people in one country vs another is actually the be all and end all of the story.
Let's take two anecdoatl stories from my own life. concerning two different incident one on the USA, one in the UK.
story 1 takes place in a small city about 30 miles from a major city on the pacific north west of the good ol' USA. population circa 12,000.
parking dispute get's a little out of hand in the local supermarket between yours truly and another local citizen who was to quote part of his soliloquoy "was born and bred in these parts, you fucking Limey" - I am relaibly led to beleive you will find the sort all over the states, drives a pickup, hunting rifle permananently kept on a gun rack on the cab of said pickup. the pickup driving gentleman was rather irritated that I had not backed out of my space with sufficient alacrity to allow him to occupy the spac emext to mine due to his pickup bneeding to spaces.
The usual verbal altercation was had, some insults were passed, regarding my sexual orienattion, purely on the basis from his comments that unlike him I was not carrying a gun and spoke with an "Australian" accent ( I blame downton abbey and for the older americans Brideshead Revisited for the lack of ability to recognise a British accent) after the usual insults and being told that the Deepwater horizon Oil spill was my fault he proceeded to threaten to kill me.
Now lets be honest, not a threat that is entirely new new to me - have you ever heard posturing British teenage men after a beer or two?
However the mere Fact that this man was armed with a gun on his hip, raised this threat to an entirely new level and I took it seriously.
Now in the UK an altercation with someone who lets be honest is probably on a similar social and intelelctual levl, but physically far more impressive and intimidating.
different source but same result, only this time the 6'6 skinhead with biceps the size of shotputters thighs swung a fist at me.
Guess what? Adrenaline was flooding my system almost as much, but I had no fear of death from that incident.
Lets be honest a good stomp on the head from 220 lbs of 6'4: musclebound stupidity is just as likely to put my ife in danger.
but the evisceral threat was less in my eyes, and i HEV to be really unlucky for him to kill me accidentally.
Which is the threat that is greater? and is having teh ability for everyone to kill anyone else, really that great a move?
Incidentally from what i recall of the figures, the UK town had a poulation circa 140,000 including 10,000 university students and the incumbent drunken stupidity involved with that group anad approximatley 7000 serving military personal and their desire to let of steam involving violence and alcohol when retruning from 6 month tours of war zones.
UK town had violent crime rate apprximately 50 times the small US City adjusted for population I Think it worked out approximately 6 or 7 times greater.
The US city had a per Annum Murder rate infinitely greater than the UK town over the previous three years uk 0 us city approximatley 11.
Over my 40 odd years of life I believe that UK town has had a grand total of about 30 odd murders ( including surrounding villages that come under the police force but are politically separated.) oh and one terrorist bomb that involved no loss of life.
Guess where I felt safer living. oddly enough my US wife foudn living ther eonly marginally more safe.
I suppose it depends on what culturally you are used to. Amercian gun death is acceptable, drunken fight not - Brit - drunken fight as long as no one dies or is crippled for life - acceptable but frowned on, gun death in no way shape or form.
And that seems to be the issue, which is more important to you, the culturally accepted norm or your chance of death.
The war on guns is going just like the war on drugs: after dire warnings about threats to the suburban middle class ("reefer madness"), we have now reached the "this is your brain on drugs" stage. I expect for the further stages of the "war on..." to follow as usual.
Look up "Solid Concepts 3-D printed metal gun". Plastic is not the only 3d printing materiel. These guys have a 1911 .45 that has over 1000 rounds through it.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. FUD is one of gov's best and most used tools.
This is simply an attempt at scaring people. Plain and simple. A scared populace looks to its benevolent leaders for solutions. Benevolent leaders swing the ban hammer, and create legislation banning the offensive product(s). Over, and over, and over and over, governments across the globe utilize this tactic.
Legislation is not for your safety. Legislation is not for your health or happiness. Legislation gives those in power, more power.
I think that the whole kerfluffle about 3D printed guns worked: it got heavy press coverage on 3D printing just before the printer companies went public, greatly increasing itheir valuations. Anyone who knows anything about gun, the materials that can be used in 3D printing and the easy availability of machine tools that can simply make a real metal fully automatic weapon knows the press hysteria 3d printing received was orders of magnitude greater than it deserved. But, Stratasys et al sure did get a good prices when they went public
Someone could easily put a plan on the website which was deliberately defective. I myself strongly oppose the proliferation of guns. I would expect that someone with my attitude, and fewer scruples and less of a conscience, would consider deliberate sabotage like that a public spirited act. So, when you download that new plan, better be 100% clear that it is not a deliberately defective plan.
"anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves." If so, then they are serving a useful function.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I personally prefer printing the gun from a metallic substance instead of a plastic one. Increases the cost, but decreases the difficulty. You might want to mill the weapon's bore to ensure reliability, but that's trivial once you've cast the parts.
"Don't play with matches, children. You're going to set yourselves on fire ..."
Love without logic is insanity. And vice versa.
You can buy an new entry level CNC mill for about the same as a hobbyist 3D printer, 1k or less (type "3020 cnc" into ebay for some cheap chinese desktop units). Look on Craigslist for used ones too.
To put things simply, brittle stuff that cracks easily is unsuitable for some gun parts.
As for shifting the goalposts to the receiver alone - go jump on somebody else's comment where that actually is the topic instead of trying to change the subject and pretend you are not.
3D printed guns?? Nothing to see here, move along
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
A3D printer to make a driverless car. What would terrorists do with this? A car bomb with no driver. Would the car get 70 virgin Fords in paradise?
Wood is far more suitable in that situation because it flexes. Commercial cast aluminium alloys crack easily due to the silicon flakes that give them some strength and it's unsuitable for anything likely to get dropped or bumped. Even when you cut down the flake size with additives it's still a bit brittle. The aluminium stuff you are used to seeing is wrought - cast in great big billets too soft to use as is and then rolled into shape to give it strength without being brittle. Buying something like that from your local hardware, already strengthened for you, and easily filing or machining it into shape makes a vast amount more sense than the suggestion of the poster above that was trying to present their silly idea as evidence that they didn't have less of a clue than the person they were being critical of.
So if you want something you don't want to have to treat like glass and never drop then you'd choose something other than casting an aluminium alloy.
Typical anti-gun positioning out of the UK. Elon Musk's SPACEX project uses 3d printing to build rocked engine components. While, I'm not an engineering expert it would seem the same technology could easily be used to build something low tech like a typical rifle, shot gun, hand gun...
The bait is for pro-gun and anti-gun extremists... degenerates eventually to ...
UK anti-gun .... your US murder rate is terrible... bla, bla, boa, how can you live like that you bunch of [ fill in the blank ].
US pro-gun ... You UK folks live in a nanny state - wrapped up in cotton wool. you think your safe but eventually you end up like all the other disarmed populations of the world end up ... typically victims of state sponsored hatred...
Is poised to do a great many things and only the stupid mindlessly associate them with guns. That said, how much of this kind of 3d printed gun fear mongering is a waste of time. Like it or not in the time it took various powers that be to get the paperwork through to make 3d printed guns illegal, HUNDEREDS OF TOUSANDS OF DOWNLOADS ALREADY OCCURED. The cork is out of the bottle, and that cannot be changed.