3D printing

[abunaitoo]

I know almost nothing about these things, but they sure look interesting.
I've seen in the web where they printed out a working adjustable wench.
They didn't say if it was as strong as a metal one, or if it was even usable.
If it's strong enough to be usable, couldn't reloading equipment be made with it????

[Firebird]

Sure, depending on when they figure out how to 3D print materials with the correct strengths, hardness's etc.
Currently that is the big problem with 3d printing - the less expensive models are limited to various plastics that simply don't have the strength for many applications. The models that can do multiple different plastics in one part that allow much more flexibility and can print things that can't be made any other way are also limited to plastics. The more expensive models that can do metals are also much slower and are limited to a single metal at a time. None of them are yet suitable for mass manufacturing as they simply take too long to make a part.

[corbinace]

We have a member here that prints and sells several items for the Dillon presses.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

[QUOTE=abunaitoo;3706372]I've seen in the web where they printed out a working adjustable wench.
QUOTE]

My goodness, that sounds useful. The naturally occurring product doesn't seem susceptible to adjustment.

There has been a great commotion about people potentially making guns with these, including mostly plastic ones that would be undetectable in airport scanners etc. Like .25 automatics, all I have seen would be worth pressing into the hand of anyone who would come after you with a yard of concrete reinforcing bar instead.

But the big lesson of computers and the internet is that it never stops where we are at any moment in time. Someday we (or somebody) will be able to spark erode 3-D cad drawings in any kind of hardened steel. Governments may try to ban it, but they have already produced a whole industry of crooked organic chemists. They will have to fall back on reducing people's desire to shoot people, and I think the carrot and the stick in equal amounts is likely to be the best way.

[Four-Sixty]

Boeing is using similar technology on hundreds of aircraft parts already. This technology avoids so much labor and warehousing expense that some day soon, we'll wonder how we lived without it. I bet it won't be competitive with reloading equipment makers for a couple of years yet, but will happen.

Can you imagine that one day we'll buy equipment designed by each other, and "printed" at the corner print shop as opposed to buying it on-line from a manufacturer?

Talk about a custom mold...

[dragon813gt]

There was machining after the printing but you get the point: http://www.gereports.com/post/118394013625/these-engineers-3d-printed-a-mini-jet-engine-then/

[Johnch]

I saw a "Printed" AR 15 lower that had all the parts added to make a rifle
No clue to how long it held up
If I remember right there was a file on the web for how to do it

But since I can just get my printer to copy paperwork , I am the wrong one to even try something interesting like that

John

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I saw a "Printed" AR 15 lower that had all the parts added to make a rifle
No clue to how long it held up
If I remember right there was a file on the web for how to do it

But since I can just get my printer to copy paperwork , I am the wrong one to even try something interesting like that

John

I once chucked an excessively long piece of supposedly spring tempered piano wire in my Dremel tool, which has a slightly slower rotation than that jet engine. It protruded about four inches, and immediately bent over under centrifugal force, with violent vibration. That engine rotor must bear far greater stresses than an AR lower receiver. But I don't think diverted and undocumented factory products are rare enough to justify, for criminals, the time and expense involved in getting one that way. Not yet anyway, but someday perhaps.