Has anyone heard of the guy making gun parts with a 3D Printer? What do we think of this?
It’s flamebait. You can get a mill that will produce better parts for less than what a lot of 3D printers cost.
The general consensus is it’s somewhere between an amusing mockery of the way gun control law defines guns and total crap.
You’ve been able to make guns using CNC machines and drill presses since always, and that actually makes high-quality parts. You can’t manufacture a gun in a 3D printer. There’s a few specific parts that can be manufactured effectively in a 3D printer because they’re low heat and low stress. One of these parts, the receiver, is the controlled part of a gun by the technical definition of the law. Thus you can print the one controlled part of a gun in a 3D printer.
For reference, on some guns this is a part that can be made out of trivial parts: http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2012/11/27/shit-shovel-ak-47/
Private gun making is hardly worth a news story. The fact that this is a private gun maker using a 3D printer is mildly interesting, but the main reason they get so much attention is because they are major showboaters who post vaguely threatening videos online.
Their core team is made of social science and law students, not engineers, and their accomplishments thus far could be reproduced with fairly trivial effort if a real gun mfg decided to give it a go.
Exactly. His parts broke after barely using them.
It was the shooting in Connecticut that makes this story a hot topic, especially with the gun control think that’s been brewing in the background for so long. This guy is just arrogant and sort of oblivious to things. Also, tired of hearing about the whole gun control thing every day.
IT did, but that’s 600 shots from an automatic weapon.
This was a hot topic way before the shooting. And he’s not oblivious at all, he’s a law student. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
As @ThantiK said, it can’t be stressed enough that this is a fame/resume piece above all else. He’s a dog with a bone, and the fact that the 3D printing communities get two dozen questions/threads like this one a week is proof that he’s very good at it getting his name in headlines.
Having made a functional AR15 Lower with a 3d printer, I think it’s an interesting challenge that kept me busy for a few months doing iterations and design work.
basically, everyone is worked up that if you print a lower and spend a grand, you can make a cheap AR that will break quickly.
This is unlikely to be a problem. You can also legally machine your own gatling gun in whatever caliber you want. I haven’t seen many(read any) of those in person, and I’ve been looking for someone who has one.
Glad to hear there has been some more recent innovation.
mine worked fine with 5.45 russian. it’s got a touch more muzzle energy than .223 and is way cheaper.
+Chapman Baetzel keep on chugging along 
– are you also behind the defcad startup?