dunt let the door hit ya on the way out

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/oh_no_its_the_plastic_3d_gun/

 

...apparently 3d printers are only good for iterating/prototyping. for now.

can't really foresee how it can replace mass manufacturing, not for a long time. it's always cheaper to get low tech things done with cheap labour.

 

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you take the bear arms and we take the bear legs. everyone is happy.

Hyperbolic it may be, but Bosh does have a very good point. There's a lot of factory machines now that can be used to manufacture crude weapons, as well as miscellaneous parts that can serve in that capacity- heck, in Season 4 the Mythbusters ran into a working gun made entirely out of plumbing supplies... by an inmate in a maximum-security jail! But right or wrong, there seems to be little impetus to ban or restrict any of these "advances" (although the inmate did of course get his plumbing gun taken away). Now, 3-D printing is a Big New Thing, so people in power (usual mechanical engineering level: three-month-old baby) might not see it that way (which sort of demonstrates the "dark side" of all the hype about these devices), but given the current bias towards inaction in most if not all of the G8 governments, I doubt it.

 

I'm a little more concerned with why the team that made the plastic gun called their toy the "Liberator"...

As am I.

However...we really should get back to the functionality/uses of 3D printers and whether one is better or not than another....and ignore their potential for nefarious use...;)

True, true. The last thing I want is a debate on gun control... now I understand why SD pays you. The nefarious uses component is I suppose tangentially related to that, but the Guardian article only reinforces my initial idea that 3-D printing is useful, but not revolutionary.

I would imagine it was borrowed from the  WWII era FP-45  Liberator Pistol I don't know about you all, but I wouldn't want that gun, the printer gun or any home made wooden POS in my hand when it fired a modern cartridge. Maybe if a couple of bales of hay separated myself from these "grenades-to-be" it would be interesting to see what happens but over the years, I have become rather attached to my fingers, hands and eyes.

Most people are missing the obvious though...you cannot print ammunition and you can't just stroll into Walmart or a gun store and buy bullets without some sort of ID check but tighter controls on ammo make more sense than more gun restrictions. (that aren't working anyway) Photographing every ammo buyer at point of sale and halting online sales of all ammunition wouldn't harm the gun owners/collectors/hunters. It would, however, make it harder for some nut job to accumulate 25,000 rounds of military grade ammo.

P. S. All modern ammo is detectable by metal detectors so even if a plastic gun was smuggled into a plane, courtroom, etc, you couldn't shove the bullet far enough up your @$$ to get away with it.

I have to agree there. I spent a great deal of my younger days building models. Cars, trucks, airplanes, trains, ships, you name it. Being able to print out my own parts would have been a really fantastic thing. 

Oh. Printing guns. Marvelous. Just the most needed thing. Ever.

I still do....currently building the Tiger 1 model that comes in 100 plus weekly parts...many are metal...and just started the collecting of the bits for the Red Bull F1 car.... both models end up around $2000 -ish ....but you don't quite notice it at $15 a week...;)

I can think of a million things I could replicate with a 3D printer....but then my hobbies include scratch-building in paper or plastic...all the way up to designing and building my own bicycles [in steel]...;)

Cool!

I do a lot of model work as well, though it is likely not as involved as yours. Mine relates mostly to tabletop war-gaming, oh and spaceships!

 

My understanding is that since the plastic gun (potential grenade...) is essentially a zip-gun (1 round), they named it after the popular zip-gun from WW2, the Liberator. Nothing nefarious intended there at least as far as I can tell.

 

3D printing is cool and convenient, but realistically for most things (including zip-guns, toy soldiers, other objects), it arguably doesn't make it easier or cheaper for someone to build any of those things. If someone wanted to, 3D printer or not, they would make them anyways.

 

Now 3D Metal Printing machines (which do exist as I have used them) are 'VERY' expensive, but realistically are in my mind where the future of at least industrial manufacturing are headed. Thoughts?

Yes, CNC machining from bilets etc all handled by CAD/computer is where it's at, particularly in Aircraft and Motor Racing....but the concept of actually making multiple 'bits' inside each other via a 3D printer is mind-boggling ...OK, so the whistle complete with ball is 'quaint' but the idea of effectively having pre-constructed components without any facility for dismantling...that's the amazing bit....when all that's needed is an 'exit hole' for the non-printed powder/material to be removed.

I can remember when the concept was Science FANTASY ....then it became Science FICTION...and now it's almost simply affordable kit...;)

You're not going to be able to ban commercial 3D printers, they have too many practical positive uses.   The real issue won't be America, but the places that do have gun control, and criminals in general.  Besides, who gets to determine which businesses are "legitimate?"

 

Of course, the materials cost won't decrease, so maybe crime will be something that is easier if you are rich (then again, if you're rich, why do illegal things, just bribe the government into making your actions legal, it's so much cheaper than improving your competitiveness)

 

IMO personally, I dislike the NRA, but I also am not in favor of gun control.   I do not wish to fire a weapon, did it in the military- I just don't like having the potential to kill someone.

 

As machines of this nature become more commonplace materials costs will fluctuate accordingly based on demand and supply. In general though, I feel the costs will eventually come down low enough to where it will much more affordable for the everyday person at least in comparison to where it is now.

 

We technically have the technology to metal rapid prototype on a 3d printer a complete motor assembly that will run, though I do not believe it has been fully attempted (at least in full scale) yet. The cool (and for some, scary I suppose) part about metal rapid prototyping is that you have a metal component, or component assembly that has the strength of a weld throughout it's entirety. Need a new motor for your model airplane? Print one off and install it. Need a new wrench while you're in space, or on another planet's colony? Print it off in about thirty minutes.

The material has to be mined, you'll have a finite supply and increasing demand.   Plastic requires petroleum to make.

 

 

You're assuming that the production market for these materials is already saturated. As demand rises more manufacturers of these materials will appear which will drive competition and the costs will be reduced. As the industry drives forward and demand increases, producers will rise to take advantage of this demand and the costs will go down. I am fairly certain that there is a large enough profit margin is already instilled in these materials that the cost can significantly be reduced with a profit still being turned.

 

This is my opinion just as your opinion is yours, but I think you may not fully understand how easy it is for manufacturers to create many of these materials that are used in the rapid prototyping process.

this is true for ABS plastic, BUT there is also  the PLA plastic which is claimed to be based upon plant starch.

and as boshimi hinted at, there is a SIGNIFICANT margin in the current pricing of the plastic filaments, but the commercial scale machines that make the filament are of the order of $20000+ and only produce about a couple of filament rolls per hour they take a significant time to payback the capital costs, then the running and material costs.

harpo

Not quite right....not when the most common 'plastic' on the planet is wood [and glass is a liquid too, btw]

Synthesizing 'plastic' from alternate sources is a lot easier than doing the same for petrol....pure supply and demand will determine how, where and why alternatives are sourced...;)

Not to mention, any change in supply would affect conventional fabrication techniques as well.

I definitely expect 3-D printers to take up a serious role in machine shops within my lifetime, probably a lot sooner than that. But I doubt they'll become the only (or for that matter, the most common) machine there- right tool for the job, and all that.

I'm not even sure if they'll end up in houses. Especially the metal kind. I don't know much about them, specifically, but if they use any sort of straight powdered metal there will probably be safety concerns*. Mechanically-inclined people might put one in their garage, but I can't really see the majority adopting them to make kids' toys.

*Maybe if the powder is coated in some kind of inert material it wouldn't be a fire hazard, and if they did it right it might not hurt people to ingest it?

Assuming you're talking about laser sintering or similar techniques, the strength is going to be pretty questionable unless you're a skilled metallurgist already and have the facilities to do the work in an oxygen-free atmosphere and anneal it afterwards. At best, it'll still be at least somewhat inferior to casting or milling.

From what I have seen on most of the metal 3d printed prototypes I've managed to work with is that they are slightly weaker than heat treated 17-4 SST H-900 (41-46 HRC) in that they will have after heat treat a 38-40 HRC min. For most applications this difference in HRC is a non-issue, though I can certainly imagine situations where it would not be ideal. I'm not as sure about other materials but here is a quick reference:

 http://www.interpromodels.com/services/dmls-direct-metal-laser-sintering/

17-4 Data Sheet:

http://www.interpromodels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/InterPRO_DMLS_Stainless-Steel-PH1-15-5.pdf

 

 

I have believed that 3d printing is the future for quite some time now. Ever since I first saw it in action, I imagined all the possibilities. In the future we could 3d print everything, from homes to food, totally eliminating the need for most manual labor. Of course there are drawbacks to this, many people out of work, etc. But as the technology matures and shows us we can provide for all our needs without employing majority of the population, I believe the society will change.

 

It is far from just prototypes, it saves lives. Right here and right now. It can also manufacture automobiles.

I just donated my MakerBot Cupcake CNC to our local high school engineering class. 

It was first generation and I failed to make a single print with it after playing with it for a year.  The amount of fixes, tweaking, tuning, modifications and technical knowledge/intuition needed to "just use it" made it really impractical for me.

A few days ago I got my 3rd generation Solidoodle printer.  I spent quite some time reading through forums posts on it before ordering one.  Looks to be a little more practical and yes--plastic ain't cheap but I can get 2lbs for  under $50usd and that's enough to print potentially scores or even over a hundred prints.

It does however blow away paying someone to cast molds or make plastic prototypes for you and would be invaluable for a product sales pitch or patent application.

I'm $1600 into the 3D print market and am going to stick with it.  MakerBot opened the door and user experience has made all of the machines progressively better--though you have the learning curve of Sins MP involved in actually getting the hang of using them.

Printing is slow compared to commercial machines and down time for re-tuning, tweaks and repairs is likewise high.

BTW--a hospital just printed a 3d structure matched with MRI images to fit in the chest cavity of a newborn girl with a collapsed chest and un-inflated lungs.  It was made of biodegradable plastic and after implantation she immediately began to breath normally and it allowed her chest to grow into proper shape.

NASA just funded development of a 3D food printer for astronauts so exact nutrients and calories can be designed into each individual astronaut's meals onboard a space vessel.

Food replicator anyone?

This is a myth.

Not quite....but can you spell 'amorphous solid'? ....;p