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Cat's out of the bag and running
Forbes reports that a fellow has created a rifled, durable, handgun with a 3-D printer. He used a different plastic and a different design than that used in the original effort.
The rifling is vital, because a smoothbore handgun is NFA regulated.
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Wouldn't it be fun to print a couple dozen of these for the next gun "buyback"?
These plastic barreled guns are not guns they are destructive devices, because they are going to blow up. Only a complete moron would actually hold a gun with a barrel made of plastic in their hand and pull the trigger. Someone is going to blow their hand off and then discover why it is that barrels and chambers are supposed to be made out of steel.
Let's see, he fired it a total of 9 times remotely because he didn't want to be holding it if it blew up, it misfired several times and he had to replace some of its screws and a firing pin during this test, and the casings expanded in the chamber so much they had to be pounded out. That's durable? Let's see if it can fire a proof load first without blowing up, and then a few thousand rounds afterward, and then we can say whether it is durable.
New technology always has bugs. Why do you think Microsoft puts out 10-13 "updates" for Windows 7 every week?
Beyond that, any gun owner who hopes this technology fails is a fool. Add another 100 million homemade plastic runs totally without records to the gun supply and the Gun Control movement is doomed.
Materials technology is one of the invisible wonders of our age. Once there is a known need for a plastic "ink" for these printers that can produce a durable barrel, don't you think the chemistry geniuses will focus on producing one?
Wait five years and you will see the big boys ( S&W, Colt, Ruger, Sig, etc.) using it.
Today the 3D is where the airplane was 105 years ago. I am going out on a limb in saying five years. It will not take long.
3D printing has been around for decades. I gather that its primary industrial use is in rapid prototyping, or for producing a complex one-off part for some other purpose.
It's quite possible that S&W used 3D printers when developing their M&P auto line, and that both S&W and Ruger used 'em to develop their polymer-frame revolvers. It's much cheaper and faster than making and modifying molds during the design process, but it's way too slow, and probably too expensive, to use for volume production. Once you've printed the perfect design, you spend the money for injection molds and pop parts out in seconds instead of hours.
I suppose this would be an inopportune moment to remind people that Speer has been selling plastic cartridge cases and bullets for decades.