# 3D Printing and Plastic Guns **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 7, 2013, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671 "2013-05-07T01:19:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/21 "2013-05-08T00:36:06Z")
> [@11811](#): > > Yeah, I was thinking of an adjustment to the density of the printing, interruptions in the printing, something along those lines. Problem with that being – if it could be implemented at all – it would prevent the 3D printer from working as intended on non-gun components. Rather like legislating that all pry bars must be made of rubber so that they cannot be used for burglary. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/22 "2013-05-08T00:45:12Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Main concern seems to be when the cost of 3D printing drops any jamoke could make a gun even without basic metalworking knowledge… Jamoke? “What’s a mook?” Johnny Boy (Robert De Nero), in _Mean Streets_, after taking part in a free-for-all fight started because somebody called him a mook. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/23 "2013-05-08T00:47:53Z")
> [@TimeWinder](#): > > And in any case, that’ll get better really fast as 3D printers start to become mainstream… I can’t imagine why they would. Of course, I thought radio had no future. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/24 "2013-05-08T03:15:43Z")
It looks to me like that plastic gun just has the components printed, and the user still has to assemble it. A modern CNC mill isn’t much harder to use than that-- You basically just download the program, put in a chunk of metal of the appropriate size, and hit “go”, then assemble the pieces. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/25 "2013-05-08T04:56:23Z")
I don’t agree that the lower receiver is THE gun. The gun is a barrel that can chamber a cartridge whereupon it can be fired. A revolver cylinder doesn’t even qualify. If you worry about basement gun makers, worry about stacked cartridge barrels. They’re very easy to make, using mild steel. And if you’re good with computers and interphases, you can make a 1 million round per minute firearm. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/26 "2013-05-08T15:34:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It looks to me like that plastic gun just has the components printed, and the user still has to assemble it. A modern CNC mill isn’t much harder to use than that-- You basically just download the program, put in a chunk of metal of the appropriate size, and hit “go”, then assemble the pieces. Staples will soon make available 3D printers. The first ones may not have the capability to make a plastic gun. However, people are ingenious and could easily adapt their printer, and the market will soon demand better quality printers. The point being the tool to make the gun will become more widespread to the teeming minions. I don’t expect the availability and cost of a CNC mill to change much, nor be as readily available at your local Home Depot. BTW, a California legislator has introduced state legislation to ban DIY guns. It’s all just starting. There will be plenty of rhetoric and buck-passing until there is the first real use of a 3D plastic gun in a secure area. Probably either a disgruntled employee or an attempted skyjacking. We seem to be good at doing thing after the fact, after the damage has been done, and not before, if we do anything at all. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/27 "2013-05-08T16:08:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Yeah, it’s a lot easier to make a grenade than a gun. Even if you’re not trying to make a grenade. This is my thoughts. I think most of the scare is to non-gun types. I grew up with guns and I wouldn’t fire a printed gun on a bet. Legal guns are still cheap. Hot guns are much easier to obtain than 3D printers. It’s a problem that’s still a long way away, imo. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/28 "2013-05-08T18:18:16Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > I don’t agree that the lower receiver is THE gun. The gun is a barrel that can chamber a cartridge whereupon it can be fired. A revolver cylinder doesn’t even qualify. Disagree with the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms](http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/firearms-technology.html#air-gun-regulation) if you wish.: > [@ATF](#): > > **The term “firearm” is defined in the Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. Section 921(a)(3), to include** “(A) any weapon (including a starter gun), which will, or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; \*\*(B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon….” \*\*Based on Section 921(a)(3), air guns, because they use compressed air and not an explosive to expel a projectile, do not constitute firearms under Federal law — unless they are manufactured with the frames or receivers of an actual firearm. Accordingly, the domestic sale and possession of air guns is normally unregulated under the Federal firearms laws enforced by ATF. **Emphasis** mine. For the sake of regulation, the part of the gun that matters is the receiver or the frame, depending if it’s a non-revolver or a revolver. That’s why you can’t sell a full-automatic receiver and call it “not a gun” for regulatory purposes. Since one of the unstated premises of OP’s question must be the legality of a 3d-printed weapon, considering which parts of a gun are distinctively regulated is an important consideration. ---
**Author:** ![toofs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@toofs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toofs)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/29 "2013-05-08T19:03:12Z")
Ah, the quarterly SDMB “oh, noes! 3D printed guns!” thread. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/30 "2013-05-08T22:38:37Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > BTW, a California legislator has introduced state legislation to ban DIY guns. I hear that back in the 1920’s it was illegal to make bathtub gin. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/31 "2013-05-08T22:48:01Z")
You can use a lot of plastic in a gun, but you can’t make a gun completely out of plastic. Yeah, with a little metal that dude mentioned at Forbes managed to make a gun \*not quite as good \*as the WWII Liberator, which was basically a zip gun. > **[FP-45 Liberator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_pistol)** > > The FP-45 Liberator is a pistol manufactured by the United States military during World War II for use by resistance forces in occupied territories. The Liberator was never issued to American or other Allied troops, and there are few documented instances of the weapon being used for its intended purpose; though the intended recipients, irregulars and resistance fighters, rarely kept detailed records due to the inherent risks if the records were captured by the enemy. Few FP-45 pistols were distri... You can make far better guns out of scrap metal. Are we going to ban scrap metal soon? Note that that guy used a $8000 printer, and the Liberator can be made today for under $40. It’s more reliable, more accurate, safer to shoot, etc. ---
**Author:** ![busterpickle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@busterpickle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/busterpickle)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2013, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/32 "2013-05-08T23:44:41Z")
I had, at one point, a 3D printer that was based on an open-source design. With about 30 hours of time I was able to print things down to .15mm with a considerable amount of consistency and quality. The printer cost less than $1k but it did have a small build envelope. For $2k-3k plus your time you can approach the pro-level printers which cost much much more. The difference is in how much time it takes you to calibrate and the ease of which you can get a decent print. Stratsys and the like have awesome software that you load your object to be printed. The open-source ones, well, use open source tools. Hence, the 30 hours it took me to get a good print for one object. Could I have made a gun? Yup, but, the effort to work out the quirks for each part of the gun, then, multiple prints to finalize it, would simply not be worth it. I’d rather use my lathe and mill and “free-machine” it without any CNC and I’d probably do a better job. Or, as mentioned before, build a zip gun. Go to Home Depot, buy a piece of pipe, an end cap, a drill bit, a rubber band, and a nail. That’s the zip gun right there (drill bit used to make a hole in the end cap for the nail, rubber band is attached to pipe and nail and is pulled back to slam the nail into the ammo). But, wait, where is the plethora of gang violence with zip guns? Heck, how about bow and arrows or cross bows? Exactly. There are many other methods available RIGHT NOW that no one gives a wet fart about. The reality is that anything other than a professionally build gun by an actual manufacturer is going to be too dangerous or unreliable to use. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/33 "2013-05-09T01:17:34Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I can’t imagine why they would. Of course, I thought radio had no future. Because the endpoint of this technology is something very like a _Star Trek_ replicator, albeit probably not using the same variety of magic. Walk through your local Target or Walmart: - about half the store is textiles; which probably won’t be printed for a while. - about half of what’s left are items made of either a single solid chunk of a material, or else constructed of pieces which are single solid chunks of material (toys, dishes, household items, jewelry, etc.). Those are amenable to printing now, and rapid advances should give us more materials in years rather than decades. - chemical products: soaps, medicines, food, etc. Chemprinting isn’t as far along, but there’s a lot of work done on it already. The containers fall into the previous category, by and large. - electronics. So far as I know, no commercially-available 3D printers are currently printing electronics, but this is working in the lab–I’ve held samples. Right now we’re talking simple circuits and traces for things like flashlights or garage door openers, but this will advance quickly as well. That’s not touching the whole DIY and artists market: why buy a case for your iPhone when you can make a custom one yourself? Want a replica plastic sword to go with your costume? Maybe you’re the only person on earth who wants to be Greedo for Halloween so you can shoot first – make your own mask. There are stores that sell nothing but basically containers: sorters, organizers, storage stuff. All this you could print yourself, constrained only by size. IMHO, 3D printing isn’t a fad: it’s not CB radio. It’s fire, or desktop printing, or the Internet. It’s going to accelerate rapidly, for uses we never imagined, and bring with it a whole slew of issues: what does intellectual property mean in a world where _everything_ physical is just software? It’s not here yet, but it’s just turning the corner from “impossible” to “possible” for the enthusiast. They’re going to run with it for a couple years until it becomes inexpensive and powerful enough for the consumer, and then it’s going to turn over a generation every few months, like computers, printing, and internet services before it. This is one of those technologies that our children and grandchildren will wonder how we lived without. “You actually had to go to a STORE to get a new gadget? Or order them off the internet and WAIT 24 hours or more? And you only had the colors, shapes, sizes and logos available that the manufacturer decided you could have? How did you survive?” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/34 "2013-05-09T01:34:59Z")
> [@](#): > > - chemical products: soaps, medicines, food, etc. Chemprinting isn’t as far along, but there’s a lot of work done on it already. The containers fall into the previous category, by and large. It isn’t even there. Chemprinting is nowhere at all, and will remain nowhere until there’s some massive, un-anticipatable technological paradigm shift. What exists now is 3d printing of chemistry-lab equipment, which is worlds away from printing of the chemicals themselves. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/35 "2013-05-09T02:06:14Z")
Are any of these home 3D printers printing anything other than extruded plastic? I know that industry printers print interesting things, but even those have limitations. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/36 "2013-05-09T02:31:31Z")
For the foreseeable future any 3D printed plastic guns will be very unreliable. In reality you’d need a 3D printer that works in better materials to make a more reliable gun. At that point you truly aren’t that far from CNC machines which can be loaded with plans and do the same sort of stuff. Right now it’s a lot of money, time, and skill to get all the 3D printed plastic pieces done correctly and assembled. The people able to do this are people who almost certainly either know their way around a CNC machine or could easily learn, and probably have the means to buy one. We’re a long ways away from actually useful guns being printed from a machine that isn’t either expensive or moderately complex to use. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/37 "2013-05-09T02:35:38Z")
You could easily print a gun that uses rocket propelled bullets. They would have no problem passing through a metal detector. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/38 "2013-05-09T02:52:49Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You could easily print a gun that uses rocket propelled bullets. They would have no problem passing through a metal detector. It has been tried with the [Gyrojet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet) - except for the printed part. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/39 "2013-05-09T02:53:55Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > It has been tried with the [Gyrojet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet) - except for the printed part. Yes, and it didn’t work great, but it worked better than printed guns using conventional bullets. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671/40 "2013-05-09T03:06:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Are any of these home 3D printers printing anything other than extruded plastic? I know that industry printers print interesting things, but even those have limitations. I’ve seen 3d printers that work in paper. I don’t know if there are home models, but it wouldn’t be all that hard to jerry-rig one out of other devices that are home-available. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3d-printing-and-plastic-guns/657671.md?page=3)