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NY bill would require a criminal history background check for the purchase of a 3D printer
(www.nysenate.gov)
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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So the big thing people, including lawmakers, whiff on this is you dont actually 3d print guns. You can 3d print superficial parts like the grip and whatnot, but the actual firing part of the gun is largely not 3d printable.
You can print it, and people have tried, but it usually only lasts 1-2 rounds before it breaks.
However, what you can print that is a huge deal, is the very precise jigs necessary to very easily manufacture the firing mechanisms of the gun, to quite a degree of precision. Then you use a drill or whatever to actually make those metal parts.
Basically, you can easily 3d print a gun maker, and then 3d print all the "extra" parts like grip and whatnot that attach to what you have created, in order to improve it.
Thats the actually serious part, because normally these sorts of jigs need to be extremely precise and are quite difficult to get ahold of. You need a fairly high end CNC machine to make one, or you have to buy it.
But 3d printers, even fairly affordable ones, when fine tuned by hand, do have the necessary precision to print such jigs, which makes them much more accessible for quite cheap... And once you print the jig, it becomes pretty easy to mass produce DIY guns.
People have been making paper templates for a long time, I can't see how plastic would have any real advantage. A plastic guide isn't going to constrain a metal cutting tool, at best it just shows you where you need to drill the same as a paper template. If you wander outside the lines you'll just mess up both the part and the jig.
If I were to set up a clandestine gun manufacurer I would try and design a product that could be made using mostly aluminum extrutions and paper jigs. That way it's easy to compartmentalize each step, harder for one guy to flip on you, and fast/cheap. Plus if you get raided you don't have a bunch of incriminating files cached on your CNC machine from previous runs.
It's a lot more complicated than that. We are talking a lot more than just "guides" when it comes to these types of jigs. Adapters and entire jigs that require a bunch of common parts you can by at the hardware store + the plastic parts to assemble.
Think more like creating bespoke fairly precise CNC stuff to adapt a drill or router. It's a lot more advanced than just paper guides, because 3d printers are for all intents and purposes CNC machines themselves.
This doesn't track. You can do way better with a manual mill and, as the other poster mentioned, a 2d paper template with some spray glue will do fine in a pinch. Drilling steel will heat the bit up enough to melt plastic anyway. You could set drill bushings but they won't be perfect and will drift a bit once they heat up.
The jigs in question are a lot more complicated than I think what you are imagining. If you look up on the topic (and possibly get added to a watchlist), it's fairly sophisticated equipment being created to handle a lot more of the finesse work required to produce a ghost gun that can actually reliably hit targets its aimed at.
Thats what separates this sort of work out from your run of the mill DIY handcrafted stuff, the guns in question actually have a lot of accuracy as 3d printed rigs can have very high precision once they have been fine tuned, and unlike stuff like paper they can be produced in 3 dimensions, which means you're working with a lot more than just following lines.
Think more like extremely augmented drill presses and routers and shit that can produce a lot of the parts you normally cant make yourself and have to buy.
I may be underestimating it since I'm a jig builder.
We're talking about different things I think.
Sure, but you still need to buy the actual firing mechanism parts of real guns in order to manufacture "3d printed guns".
And you can also make those same jigs and fixtures out of wood or any other raw material.
Nah thats the parts the jigs make, as well as a couple other key pieces that require higher than usual precision. At least, if you want to actually make a gun that can reasonably hit a target.
Not by hand with the precision needed, not for the parts in question. Unless you want to risk a misfire and losing a finger.