3D Printed smokeless powder

[ulav8r]

In 1999 I got to see various products made by 3D printing. A chess piece was a white plastic formed by extruding but the most interesting was a metal manifold for a small 2 cylinder engine. It was deposited as layers of metal beads. Each layer was fused into a solid by a laser before before the next layer was deposited and fused. There was no extrusion of melted material.

[414gates]

Think of what the audience would have said in the black powder era, when the chemist announced he would produce gunpowder that could be pressed into shape. And then he did, and we had extruded smokeless powder.

Smokeless powder chemistry is from the century before last.

It's only a matter of time before someone figures out an equivalent if not superior formulation and how to 3D print it.

[printedboolits]

Most of the hard work has already been done as far as equipment goes. There are a lot of paste extruders out there.

Here's a very simple and cheap diy version of what I posted on the previous page.

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/22/3d-p...stom-extruder/

Here's some even simpler syringe based versions. Lots of remixes.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:482873

The syringe stuff probably isn't as accurate as an auger, but I'd imagine that with some tuning it could be good enough.

Balled milled versions of the crimson and golden propellant formulations could probably be extruded with a water base. Something like that could possibly be used to make ammo for the Daisy VL. Especially if you use some of the more powerful blended versions.


There is nothing crazy about what Cris T has suggested when he created this thread. Those harshly denigrating him were just a bit ignorant of the tech that's out there, or are hyper focused on older propellants and methods.