by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @11:52AM (#48037649)
I have a small CNC and with a few tool changes and some time i've been making 1911s and ar15s for years...
this isn't new or exciting this is the way ar-15's and 1911s are made
cast rough shape machine to precise specs...
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber so you still need to buy them, honestly making the receiver the registered part is silly most people could build a receiver with time and effort few people could make a decent barrel or precise chamber.
is the only thing he did to make this special is provide the right tooling in the box? and a pre-installed set of gcode big fucking deal it takes 2 seconds to get the gcode for an ar of the net
I think the barrel and chamber aren't tracked because they are wear items that might be replaced on a gun. The receiver is like the frame on the car. You could build one a lot easier than you could build your own engine from scratch, but it's also the part that you're least likely to replace on the vehicle.
If this takes off (which I kind of doubt outside of the fringe), you could expect the government to start regulating replacement chambers and barrels as well. I would expect it to have the opposite effect that Cody Wilson is intending.
However, this just delays the inevitable. As home manufacturing improves over time, it will eventually be cheap and easy to make your own gun at home, at which point the Genie is out of the bottle. About the only thing left would be strict regulation of primers and maybe gunpowder itself.
It would be interesting if the whole thing is a big sting operation. Anybody who places an order for one gets a FBI file.
It wouldn't have to be a sting operation. Since the US is monitoring the entire frigging Internet, including who reads this piece of drivel I'm writing, they can simply just flag any requests made to a site they label as "suspect". Which might still include Steve Jackson's Cyberpunk RPG game for all we know.
My uncle, long retired from the NYPD and now dead several years, told me a long time ago that smart cops carry a "throwaway." A throwaway is a small handgun that cannot be traced back to you. Should you happen to shoot dead a denizen of the 'hood you work in, and the shooting might be deemed questionable, you take your throwaway and plant it on the dead guy. Then, there's no question about why you had to shoot him.
Now, I realize we're only 3-D printing AR-15's at this point, and no one can keep one of those in his sock; but one day all sorts of guns will be able to be printed. The cops will be just as happy about this as the mafiosi and cartel kingpins.
So, your uncle, a law "enforcement" officer, basically admitted to you that he conspired to commit many, many murders over the years, even going so far as to teach his fellow cops how to do the same.
Then he told you about it, and presumably you did not turn him in as you would be legally required to.
Makes a guy wonder... if the average American commits 3 felonies a day, how many felonies do you think Americans who hide behind badges, and their families, commit?
These days cops carry their throwaways in a plastic bag. So the FBI lab can't trace the lint to their pants. Some cops were talking on a forum where they thought they were alone...
I think having a gun/knife in a plastic bag on them while on duty should be immediate firing.
This would be great for organized crime and drug cartels. People with a need for untraceable guns, that use them regularly, and that have money to make it happen
Such people generally use stolen firearms or (more rarely) legally purchased firearms via straw buyers (i.e., Here's $1,500, buy this $1,000 firearm for me and pocket the change)
Criminals don't need to build their own firearms when there are sufficient numbers of stolen ones in circulation.
The ability to trace a firearm is overblown. The majority of traces will lead back to a legal owner who had the weapon stolen. The other alternative is an idiot who buys a weapon, registers it, commits a crime with it, and then leaves it at the scene. Even then that is probably not enough to convict. You will have to establish motive and place them at the scene.
And if you have serial numbers then you are most likely in possession of the weapon, so finger printing is a far better investigative track to follo
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @12:31PM (#48038171)
The Genie is already out of the bottle. In fact it has been for centuries. Manufacturing firearms has been been possible for your average person for about as long as blacksmithing has been a vocation. There are parts of modern weapons which require tooling and equipment that is generally beyond the average garage hobbyist, but none of this technology is all that hard or expensive to obtain or duplicate. All the steps are decidedly low tech.
What keeps most from doing all this is that you have to have an uncommon level of understanding of the processes required as well as how to run the equipment needed to produce the necessary parts and it takes a LONG time to run though them all. There are a lot of steps needed to produce properly tempered parts of the correct shapes and sizes. None of the steps are beyond the guy in the garage, there are just a lot of steps. So many that it's a whole lot easier to just buy a ready made weapon, especially when you consider how much your time is worth.
I don't even think it'd require all that many steps if you designed a weapon meant to be built and assembled by amateurs. During WW2 some clever people actually designed what became known as the STEN, which could be easily produced in significant numbers by resistance fighters and used the ammunition stolen or looted from the Germans. Sure if you want to replicate something as complicated as an M-4 you are looking at a lot of work, but something like a STEN could be done much more easily.
What stops your average hobbyist is that if you screw it up it will blow up in your face and likely kill you. Even if that risk is minimal for even a minimally skilled person using known plans it is still a non trivial risk that will deter quite a few people.
So what you're saying is that gun-control laws keep stupid people from killing themselves, thereby raising the average intelligence of the citizenry? Now I see why the government wants to stop him!
strict regulation of primers and maybe gunpowder itself.
I would hate to have to make primers myself, because it's a pain in the ass.
Gunpowder (more properly smokeless powder) isn't all that hard to make though. Take the usual precautions you take when doing chemistry with not-necessarily-stable compounds, and you're golden.
The basic chemistry isn't terribly hard, but producing a consistent product is going to be tricky for a guy in his basement. Theoretically nothing is impossible for a really determined guy in his basement, but in practice if the bar is set high enough you can effectively eliminate the behavior from all but the most extreme people. Ultra-extreme people already get increased scrutiny from law enforcement, so the scope of abuse is at least somewhat containable.
For centuries people have had seriously inconsistent black powder. Having all of your bullets fire properly is a 20th century invention. Like I said, the tools are there, but manufacturers have machines that do it more precisely than a human is capable of and don't make mistakes (usually).
For powder, this mostly just means some bullets will be hot or smoky or heavy with residue and you'll have to clean your barrels more often.
For centuries people have had seriously inconsistent black powder. Having all of your bullets fire properly is a 20th century invention. Like I said, the tools are there, but manufacturers have machines that do it more precisely than a human is capable of and don't make mistakes (usually).
For centuries people who wanted a precision item made would have to go to either a master craftsman or industrial manufacturing facility; being able to 3D print aforementioned items in your garage is a 21st century phenomenon.
Point being, if we can build a computerized additive manufacturing machine in our home sheds, it's not unreasonable to think that the same society could reasonably build and operated computerized smokeless powder production facilities in the same space.
For powder, this mostly just means some bullets will be hot or smoky or heavy with residue and you'll have to clean your barrels more often.
Smokeless gunpowder isn't a mixture of powders, though. It's (mostly) nitrocellulose. To make a consistent product, you'll need a consistent stock of cellulose (paper, cotton, etc), a consistent stock of nitric and sulfuric acid, and a consistent process of carrying out the reaction and cutting/flaking the product. It's not a difficult process, but it's more involved than making black powder (which is not worth going back to) and consistency is key.
Making primers, which are primary explosives by necessity,
Side note: There are types of smokeless powder that are made from materials other than nitrocellulose.
Main point: Smokeless powder was invented in the 1880's. Pretty sure if we can build a 3D printer in our garages, we would be able to come up with a home manufacturing process for that too.
Agreed on the primers - I researched rebuilding used ones a while back and wow, what a dangerous pain in the ass.
Black powder sucks, which is why it's as commonly used today as muskets and other obsoleted technology. It's not like it's a drop-in replacement for nitrocellulose; very few currently used cartridges could accommodate an adequate load of black powder. Besides that, it's corrosive and dirty. Bleh.
> Small Arms tech has languished, mainly due to the ATF having a chilling effect on anything firearms related. > I don't think a major change in design has happened since the 50s with the use of composites.
Also, designs such as the 1911, the most popular firearm recently, are time-tested and known to be very reliable and safe. In the rare instance where you actually need to fire your weapon, it absolutely, positively must work. Even more, you're holding an explosion in your hand. An "you're holding it w
I'm surprised to learn that the other parts of guns aren't also tracked with issued serial numbers. Heck, if you were to use matching numbers, it would create a secondary market for higher-valued all-original guns, based on what happens in the automobile enthusiast circles.
Other parts of the gun are often serialized, but the serial on the receiver is the one that is considered the serial number of the gun for legal purposes. For collectors, matching numbers on all parts still fetch a premium, especially for antique or just old firearms, such as WW2 rifles.
Speaking of old guns, this is one other interesting side effect of treating the receiver as the gun, and all other components as appendages. Federal law defines a category of firearms called "antique", which is any firearm m
Way back when each individual part was serialized (and for such guns an "all matching" gun is indeed worth a premium), but these days its just not efficient. Plus we've come a long ways in parts interchangeability. 100 years ago if you bought a part for a gun it needed to be fitted to that gun to work (and that is still true today for many "old" designs from that era, such as the 1911 handgun). On most newly designed guns parts just drop in and work. Being able to match it to a certain gun just isn't imp
The hard part is the rifling. I think there has to be some neat way to do that with modern technology that would make that a home-build option. Some kind of small robot that would make its own way along the barrel or something.
Absolutely it's silly. Not only is the receiver one of the easier parts to make but the chamber and barrel have a lot more to do with the marks on the projectile and its casing. It would make a lot more sense if the goal was actually to track crimes to have the parts tied to the ammo tied to the registration paperwork.
The receiver is the only part of the gun controlled by the federal government. It's considered "The gun" for all intense and purposes.
All other parts can be ordered online and are exempt from firearms laws. So for those that think the federal government over-regulates firearms (myself included) making a tool that can cheaply produce a receiver is a big win. For years you could cast a receiver and then mill it out. But that required a lot of skill. With this, you can buy this CNC mill, order the cast block o
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber so you still need to buy them, honestly making the receiver the registered part is silly most people could build a receiver with time and effort few people could make a decent barrel or precise chamber.
Building a rifled barrel is hard. A smoothbore is fairly easy, though, and it's still "accurate enough" out to 100 yards or so (on human sized targets, anyway). In a close range full auto firearm, you care even less about accuracy.
And turns out that you don't even need to build it - you can just take some standard pipes and use them for it. There are some that fit remarkably well for 9x19mm, for example, and a guy in UK built a submachine gun out of them, and wrote a book about it. That being UK, the guy is
One final comment. He uses a series of 'steel collars' in his design. I presume that's a British term. If you look up 'steel collars' on Google you get a bunch of bondage sites. Instead look up 'shaft collars.'
So to avoid finding bondage sites I should search for "shaft collars"? Feels counterintuitive to me. But I'm british. .
Little known fact about Middle Earth: The Hobbits had a very sophisticated
computer network! It was a Tolkien Ring...
This device is not new or interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a small CNC and with a few tool changes and some time i've been making 1911s and ar15s for years...
this isn't new or exciting this is the way ar-15's and 1911s are made
cast rough shape machine to precise specs...
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber so you still need to buy them, honestly making the receiver the registered part is silly most people could build a receiver with time and effort few people could make a decent barrel or precise chamber.
is the only thing he did to make this special is provide the right tooling in the box? and a pre-installed set of gcode big fucking deal it takes 2 seconds to get the gcode for an ar of the net
Re: (Score:2)
and if you don't want to buy any expensive machining equipment you can make an ak47 with some sheet metal and a large format printer
Re: (Score:2)
Hell one guy made a good one out of a single steel shovel and a few parts (barrel blank, bolt, etc).
Re:This device is not new or interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Or just get a shovel.
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/179192-DIY-Shovel-AK-photo-tsunami-warning!
Re: (Score:2)
so it takes you to a 100% complete receiver same as this device does
apples to apples
Re: (Score:2)
No you can not. The barrel and chamber require special machines.
Re:This device is not new or interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
If this takes off (which I kind of doubt outside of the fringe), you could expect the government to start regulating replacement chambers and barrels as well. I would expect it to have the opposite effect that Cody Wilson is intending.
However, this just delays the inevitable. As home manufacturing improves over time, it will eventually be cheap and easy to make your own gun at home, at which point the Genie is out of the bottle. About the only thing left would be strict regulation of primers and maybe gunpowder itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone already has an FBI file.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be interesting if the whole thing is a big sting operation. Anybody who places an order for one gets a FBI file.
It wouldn't have to be a sting operation. Since the US is monitoring the entire frigging Internet, including who reads this piece of drivel I'm writing, they can simply just flag any requests made to a site they label as "suspect". Which might still include Steve Jackson's Cyberpunk RPG game for all we know.
Re:This device is not new or interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
People, like, the police, for instance?
My uncle, long retired from the NYPD and now dead several years, told me a long time ago that smart cops carry a "throwaway." A throwaway is a small handgun that cannot be traced back to you. Should you happen to shoot dead a denizen of the 'hood you work in, and the shooting might be deemed questionable, you take your throwaway and plant it on the dead guy. Then, there's no question about why you had to shoot him.
Now, I realize we're only 3-D printing AR-15's at this point, and no one can keep one of those in his sock; but one day all sorts of guns will be able to be printed. The cops will be just as happy about this as the mafiosi and cartel kingpins.
Re: (Score:3)
So, your uncle, a law "enforcement" officer, basically admitted to you that he conspired to commit many, many murders over the years, even going so far as to teach his fellow cops how to do the same.
Then he told you about it, and presumably you did not turn him in as you would be legally required to.
Makes a guy wonder... if the average American commits 3 felonies a day, how many felonies do you think Americans who hide behind badges, and their families, commit?
Re: (Score:2)
These days cops carry their throwaways in a plastic bag. So the FBI lab can't trace the lint to their pants. Some cops were talking on a forum where they thought they were alone...
I think having a gun/knife in a plastic bag on them while on duty should be immediate firing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This would be great for organized crime and drug cartels. People with a need for untraceable guns, that use them regularly, and that have money to make it happen
Such people generally use stolen firearms or (more rarely) legally purchased firearms via straw buyers (i.e., Here's $1,500, buy this $1,000 firearm for me and pocket the change)
Criminals don't need to build their own firearms when there are sufficient numbers of stolen ones in circulation.
Re: (Score:3)
The ability to trace a firearm is overblown. The majority of traces will lead back to a legal owner who had the weapon stolen. The other alternative is an idiot who buys a weapon, registers it, commits a crime with it, and then leaves it at the scene. Even then that is probably not enough to convict. You will have to establish motive and place them at the scene.
And if you have serial numbers then you are most likely in possession of the weapon, so finger printing is a far better investigative track to follo
Re:This device is not new or interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The Genie is already out of the bottle. In fact it has been for centuries. Manufacturing firearms has been been possible for your average person for about as long as blacksmithing has been a vocation. There are parts of modern weapons which require tooling and equipment that is generally beyond the average garage hobbyist, but none of this technology is all that hard or expensive to obtain or duplicate. All the steps are decidedly low tech.
What keeps most from doing all this is that you have to have an uncommon level of understanding of the processes required as well as how to run the equipment needed to produce the necessary parts and it takes a LONG time to run though them all. There are a lot of steps needed to produce properly tempered parts of the correct shapes and sizes. None of the steps are beyond the guy in the garage, there are just a lot of steps. So many that it's a whole lot easier to just buy a ready made weapon, especially when you consider how much your time is worth.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't even think it'd require all that many steps if you designed a weapon meant to be built and assembled by amateurs. During WW2 some clever people actually designed what became known as the STEN, which could be easily produced in significant numbers by resistance fighters and used the ammunition stolen or looted from the Germans. Sure if you want to replicate something as complicated as an M-4 you are looking at a lot of work, but something like a STEN could be done much more easily.
Re: (Score:2)
What stops your average hobbyist is that if you screw it up it will blow up in your face and likely kill you. Even if that risk is minimal for even a minimally skilled person using known plans it is still a non trivial risk that will deter quite a few people.
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is that gun-control laws keep stupid people from killing themselves, thereby raising the average intelligence of the citizenry? Now I see why the government wants to stop him!
Re: (Score:2)
I would hate to have to make primers myself, because it's a pain in the ass.
Gunpowder (more properly smokeless powder) isn't all that hard to make though. Take the usual precautions you take when doing chemistry with not-necessarily-stable compounds, and you're golden.
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Drug cartels today could manufacture their o
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The basic chemistry isn't terribly hard, but producing a consistent product is going to be tricky for a guy in his basement.
Lol, remember how people who owned industrial manufacturing facilities used to say this before things like 3D printers became commercially viable?
Dude - it is not hard to get a consistent mixture of powders. Especially a mixed powder people have been refining for centuries.
Or can people in basements not get their hands on mortars, pestles, and measuring systems?
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For powder, this mostly just means some bullets will be hot or smoky or heavy with residue and you'll have to clean your barrels more often.
Re: (Score:2)
For centuries people have had seriously inconsistent black powder. Having all of your bullets fire properly is a 20th century invention. Like I said, the tools are there, but manufacturers have machines that do it more precisely than a human is capable of and don't make mistakes (usually).
For centuries people who wanted a precision item made would have to go to either a master craftsman or industrial manufacturing facility; being able to 3D print aforementioned items in your garage is a 21st century phenomenon.
Point being, if we can build a computerized additive manufacturing machine in our home sheds, it's not unreasonable to think that the same society could reasonably build and operated computerized smokeless powder production facilities in the same space.
For powder, this mostly just means some bullets will be hot or smoky or heavy with residue and you'll have to clean your barrels more often.
I could live with that, just like
Re: (Score:2)
Smokeless gunpowder isn't a mixture of powders, though. It's (mostly) nitrocellulose. To make a consistent product, you'll need a consistent stock of cellulose (paper, cotton, etc), a consistent stock of nitric and sulfuric acid, and a consistent process of carrying out the reaction and cutting/flaking the product. It's not a difficult process, but it's more involved than making black powder (which is not worth going back to) and consistency is key.
Making primers, which are primary explosives by necessity,
Re: (Score:2)
Side note: There are types of smokeless powder that are made from materials other than nitrocellulose.
Main point: Smokeless powder was invented in the 1880's. Pretty sure if we can build a 3D printer in our garages, we would be able to come up with a home manufacturing process for that too.
Agreed on the primers - I researched rebuilding used ones a while back and wow, what a dangerous pain in the ass.
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Drug cartels today could manufacture their own guns, yet they don't.
Why should they? It's quicker and cheaper and easier to steal them.
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Me (at 13): Dad, we're doing a some chemistry, can I get some 5 molar nitric acid for bullshit reason....
3 week later, thinking dad had forgotten the nitric acid: Dad, we're doing some chemistry, can I get some 5 molar sulfuric acid for bullshit reason...
Dad: Nitrocellulose is much safer then nitroglycerin. Don't be an idiot son.
Dad was happy. Mom had sworn him to secrecy regarding his own explosive pyromania. Once I got there on my own I got the hear all the stories.
Powder is 9th century tech, easy to make (Score:2)
> About the only thing left would be strict regulation of primers and maybe gunpowder itself.
Powder is really easy to make. It is, after all, 9th century technology.
Primers are a little tedious just because they're small.
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Powder is really easy to make. It is, after all, 9th century technology.
Nitrocellulose is not black powder.
and penguins aren't horses. Your point? (Score:2)
> Nitrocellulose is not black powder.
And penguins aren't horses. Your point is?
You're just noting that you can choose to use either black powder or nitrocellulose based powder, or other propellants, in a gun?
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Black powder sucks, which is why it's as commonly used today as muskets and other obsoleted technology. It's not like it's a drop-in replacement for nitrocellulose; very few currently used cartridges could accommodate an adequate load of black powder. Besides that, it's corrosive and dirty. Bleh.
Re: (Score:2)
false, most modern guns don't give you the choice and will not function with black powder.
Also, time-tested. Bugs are not acceptable. (Score:2)
> Small Arms tech has languished, mainly due to the ATF having a chilling effect on anything firearms related.
> I don't think a major change in design has happened since the 50s with the use of composites.
Also, designs such as the 1911, the most popular firearm recently, are time-tested and known to be very reliable and safe.
In the rare instance where you actually need to fire your weapon, it absolutely, positively must work. Even more, you're
holding an explosion in your hand. An "you're holding it w
Re: (Score:2)
No, primers are very hard to make because the chemicals are difficult to make and handle safely.
Modern powder (excepting for light target loads such as Bullseye(tm) is a mixture of two or more chemicals, not easy to make
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I'm surprised to learn that the other parts of guns aren't also tracked with issued serial numbers. Heck, if you were to use matching numbers, it would create a secondary market for higher-valued all-original guns, based on what happens in the automobile enthusiast circles.
Re: (Score:2)
Other parts of the gun are often serialized, but the serial on the receiver is the one that is considered the serial number of the gun for legal purposes. For collectors, matching numbers on all parts still fetch a premium, especially for antique or just old firearms, such as WW2 rifles.
Speaking of old guns, this is one other interesting side effect of treating the receiver as the gun, and all other components as appendages. Federal law defines a category of firearms called "antique", which is any firearm m
Re: (Score:2)
Way back when each individual part was serialized (and for such guns an "all matching" gun is indeed worth a premium), but these days its just not efficient. Plus we've come a long ways in parts interchangeability. 100 years ago if you bought a part for a gun it needed to be fitted to that gun to work (and that is still true today for many "old" designs from that era, such as the 1911 handgun). On most newly designed guns parts just drop in and work. Being able to match it to a certain gun just isn't imp
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber
The answer, of course, is that you print them.
Re: (Score:2)
The hard part is the rifling. I think there has to be some neat way to do that with modern technology that would make that a home-build option. Some kind of small robot that would make its own way along the barrel or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely it's silly. Not only is the receiver one of the easier parts to make but the chamber and barrel have a lot more to do with the marks on the projectile and its casing. It would make a lot more sense if the goal was actually to track crimes to have the parts tied to the ammo tied to the registration paperwork.
Re: (Score:3)
The receiver is the only part of the gun controlled by the federal government. It's considered "The gun" for all intense and purposes.
All other parts can be ordered online and are exempt from firearms laws. So for those that think the federal government over-regulates firearms (myself included) making a tool that can cheaply produce a receiver is a big win. For years you could cast a receiver and then mill it out. But that required a lot of skill. With this, you can buy this CNC mill, order the cast block o
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber so you still need to buy them, honestly making the receiver the registered part is silly most people could build a receiver with time and effort few people could make a decent barrel or precise chamber.
Building a rifled barrel is hard. A smoothbore is fairly easy, though, and it's still "accurate enough" out to 100 yards or so (on human sized targets, anyway). In a close range full auto firearm, you care even less about accuracy.
And turns out that you don't even need to build it - you can just take some standard pipes and use them for it. There are some that fit remarkably well for 9x19mm, for example, and a guy in UK built a submachine gun out of them, and wrote a book about it. That being UK, the guy is
Re: (Score:2)
From one of the reviews:
One final comment. He uses a series of 'steel collars' in his design. I presume that's a British term. If you look up 'steel collars' on Google you get a bunch of bondage sites. Instead look up 'shaft collars.'
So to avoid finding bondage sites I should search for "shaft collars"? Feels counterintuitive to me. But I'm british. .