Nick Bilton
With a 3-D printer, building a gun with the push of a button
Cody Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas, is in the process of building a completely functional printed gun. “We hope to have this fully tested and put the files online in the next couple of months,” said Mr. Wilson, who runs a Web site called Defense Distributed.
He calls the gun the Wiki Weapon. In a video explaining the project’s goals, he describes the Wiki Weapon as the world’s first “3-D printable personal defense system.”
“What’s great about the Wiki Weapon is it only needs to be lethal once,” Mr. Wilson says in the video, in a monotone voice. “We will have the reality of a weapons system that can be printed out from your desk. Anywhere there is a computer, there is a weapon.”
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Can’t print out the ammo.
novaculus on October 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM
Too awesome to be true, and yet it just may be. Could God possibly allow such awesomeness to exist? And what will come next? Corn dog pills?
abobo on October 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM
One Earl Grey tea for Jean-Luc Picard, please.
John the Libertarian on October 9, 2012 at 8:11 PM
3D Printing can, indeed, theoretically do this.
Whether or not it will work effectively is an entire other story.
Scott H on October 9, 2012 at 8:12 PM
Okay, the whole bit about untraceable murder weapons aside, Von Neumann machines are more than a bit beyond current 3d printer technology. You’d have to be able to produce microchips and work with multiple materials.
Count to 10 on October 9, 2012 at 8:13 PM
I am so tired of the idiotic fear mongering here.
bj1126 on October 9, 2012 at 8:14 PM
By idiotic fear mongering here I mean about printed guns not HotAir.com.
bj1126 on October 9, 2012 at 8:15 PM
Grief. Give me access to the plumbing aisle at any hardware store and I’ll produce a basic gun for you in just a few minutes.
This stuff ain’t hard, folks.
Scribbler on October 9, 2012 at 8:25 PM
Until 3D printers can do some pretty intricate work still don’t by hand in some factories in proof steel, this story has a lot of BS in it.
Speakup on October 9, 2012 at 8:37 PM
What most people are missing is that it is NOT at all hard to fashion a weapon that can be called a ‘gun’. Very good point about plumbing supplies; you’re not at all far-fetched.
Where the rubber truly meets the road:
—Making effective guns, by which I mean good for something besides robbery and terrorism.
—Training enough people to be physically able to hit a target smaller than the broad side of a barn, and mentally ready enough not to run screaming the first time their targets return fire.
—Putting together the logistics to support anything more than very small-scale strikes.
And finally: doing all of the above without being caught in a way that your opponents can capture or kill enough of you in one swoop.
MelonCollie on October 9, 2012 at 8:39 PM
When do we get our desktop CNC machines? Because I want some real freaking gun parts, not plastic copies.
TexasDan on October 9, 2012 at 8:45 PM
Yeah, like basically, anyone can print up their own tank or jet fighter, then we are all done for. It only has to explode or crash with you in it once! The end of the world is here! Then what about people building nuclear weapons in their basements using plastic and low quality fuzed metals and radioactive RADON?? The humanity is gone from the world. Stop all technological advances immediately! Oh, and give up your coal, oil, natural gas as well.
astonerii on October 9, 2012 at 8:46 PM
I got one. Slightly larger than desktop.
astonerii on October 9, 2012 at 8:47 PM
What a load of horse droppings!
The thermo-plasictic used in 3-d printing could not possibly hope to contain the explosive force required of a steel barrel. You can break this plastic with your bare hands. You can make parts that look like gun parts, but if you actually fired it you’d probably lose a hand.
Another Chicken Little trying to rabble-rouse.
LincolntheHun on October 9, 2012 at 8:54 PM
News headline from the future:
“President Bush the Fourth made history today with a unanimous bilateral vote in favor of his national directive. In it, Congress declares that with the emergence of ‘Print-A-Nuke’, which have been widely distributed on torrent sites by Islamic sympathizers, a new branch of the armed forces will be formed for world containment of nuclear weapons.”
Don’t laugh. I’m not meaning this as a joke.
MelonCollie on October 9, 2012 at 8:55 PM
Debunked two months ago:
http://www.publiusforum.com/2012/08/01/media-falsely-reports-man-used-3-d-printer-to-print-his-own-assault-rifle/
Warner Todd Huston on October 9, 2012 at 9:00 PM
An armed society is a polite society.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Looking forward to a significant improvement in people’s manners…
ZenDraken on October 9, 2012 at 9:09 PM
You know, I don’t think even most of the metallic 3d printing can make something strong enough to serve as a barrel. The vacuum chamber, ion-beam metal deposition versions might be able to, but the metal would probably not be optimally tempered.
A plastic barrel would end up spitting molten plastic out the end any time it managed to survive firing.
Count to 10 on October 9, 2012 at 9:19 PM
What a dumb article.
You can use a 3d printer to make the inert parts like the stock and case. You cannot use a 3d printer to make any important part, like the barrel, chamber, or any of the internal mechanical moving parts. In other words, you can make a gun with a 3d printer about as well as you can make an iphone with a 3d printer: you can make an iphone case and thats about it.
You know what a synonym for a law student is? A nobody. Being a law student just means youre an unemployed kid who has no business being used as a source for a news article on a subject requiring technical expertise.
Let me get this straight… we are discussing the science fiction concept of a star trek replicator which would, if it existed and if it could be used cheaply enough, would completely eliminate the entire concept of industrial manufacturing (everything would be printed, there would be no need for factories), and the big concern-trolling the foolish author nick bilton can manage is to speculate about how people could print guns for crimes? /yawn
kaltes on October 9, 2012 at 9:21 PM
There actually are 3-d printers that can make metal parts. They had one at IMTS a couple years back. They “print” with a powdered metal with a binder and then sinter the powdered metal together either in-process with a laser or after printing in an oven. I don’t think you’re going to make anything more accurate than +/-.005″ on one and the surface finish leaves a lot to be desired, but I can see the technology improving quickly (and possibly putting me out of a job).
And the plastics they can print with have come a long way in the last decade. The company I work for used to sell machines that did this until about 2002. They were called “rapid prototyping machines” at the time and most used a very weak, low-grade plastic or a multiple layers of a paper-like stuff that was like wood when it dried. The materials they use now are much, much better.
Walter Sobchak on October 9, 2012 at 9:23 PM
Any process by which a 3d printer could make a metal device like a gun would be so difficult and expensive that the result would be far more expensive, and of far inferior quality, than guns manufactured using conventional means.
Even if the technology were to exist, and it doesn’t by a mile, it would not have any noticeable effect on the world unless it was able to replace existing manufacturing by making things cheaper. I don’t see that happening.
kaltes on October 9, 2012 at 9:24 PM
I’m thinking that this would be good to create some “replacement” weapons for the real ones.
So, if Obama wins, we can “surrender” the copies. Of course, the first time someone tried to fired it they’d be taken out of commission for a while…
Hmmm….sprinkle a few of them around Chicago, Detroit, …… loaded….
ProfShadow on October 9, 2012 at 9:24 PM
How do you print the springs necessary for a firearm to work? A main spring in the 1911 made out of plastic would not have enough force to strike the firing pin to cause ignition.
JimK on October 9, 2012 at 9:25 PM
Nor would a firing pin made of plastic carry enough momentum to actually dent the copper based primer.
JimK on October 9, 2012 at 9:26 PM
A little background:
The guy who triggered this and BS stories like it printed a lower receiver for an AR-15. That’s it. No chamber, no barrel, no moving parts. Nothing you couldn’t do better with a CNC 40 years ago.
The 3D printers people are building at home now use the same plastic that’s used for legos. So it’s hard, but not nearly hard enough to contain an explosion.
The RepRap project is a really cool open source 3D printer project with the long term goal of being able to print all the parts needed to make another copy of itself. It’s nowhere near that now, but it’s still a really cool project.
frost on October 9, 2012 at 9:40 PM
That’s what this story is really about, this particular fact. You could make this from a block of plastic that was available thirty years ago in a decent home machine shop, it would just be a lot more work.
slickwillie2001 on October 9, 2012 at 9:44 PM
Like every other technological advance, it will be used for porn. ladies, you can now print yourself an evening companion… any shape, any color!
weew on October 9, 2012 at 9:47 PM
I’ve actually been tossing around the idea of getting a Makerbot printer. I see it as an interesting way to make models that could then be invested and cast as jewelry. This has some real potential for working with non-standard shaped gemstones. They’re fun to work with, but sizing the mounting systems is a pain in the you-know-where.
I wouldn’t bother with trying to make a gun, though. It would be too easy to make enough money with one of these things to just buy a gun.
This is a disruptive technology.
trigon on October 9, 2012 at 9:53 PM
Home 3D printing right now is about where home computing was in 1975. Give it 20 years and we’ll be “building a gun with the push of a button”, or something close to it.
The barrel and firing pin are problematic and might have to be purchased separately, but that’s hardly a show-stopper. And who knows what kind of fab-tech we’ll have then?
ZenDraken on October 9, 2012 at 9:53 PM
Nope, its worthless without it, in my estimation, just plain worthless. Machining is machining. Printing is printing. Worthless is worthless.
Bmore on October 9, 2012 at 10:17 PM
So many falsehoods in one article… What are they tryin’ to do, Compete with the 0bama Campaign, or the State Department?
LegendHasIt on October 9, 2012 at 10:21 PM
A gun story first reported in the NYT. All you need to know.
Christian Conservative on October 9, 2012 at 10:28 PM
+1
Kenosha Kid on October 9, 2012 at 11:05 PM
“No, I insist, YOU shoot it first.”
JohnBrown on October 9, 2012 at 11:25 PM
And this is like the fourth time this or a related article has been on HotAir in the last month and a half, isn’t it? C’mon, AP, there’s no “there” there.
GWB on October 10, 2012 at 9:18 AM