Like many of you, I've heard of the Defense Distributed and their case with the program data to print a 3D gun. It's quite interesting, blending the 1st Amendment (freedom of the press), along with the 2ns Amendment (right to keep and bear arms)
Most of the hype is overbolown. For several reasons.
If you believe that 3D printing is the wave of the future, you might be right. It's certainly an emerging technology, and it is a lot better this year than it was last year, or the year before. Bit is still an emerging technology. A gun, especially one that is small enough to be printed, is a fairly complex device. It requires several parts that have to work in complete harmony and contain pressures that over time, tend to wreck the material that is (today) capable of flowing through a printer. From what I read, the printed guns, while cool, simply aren't durable enough to be considered practical.
3D printers are more expensive than the guns that they print. If you're a criminal, who can't buy a gun legally, it's a heck of a whole lot easier to buy one on the black market, or simply to steal it, than to go to the trouble of printing in.
One of these days, inexpensive 3D printers may be available that use materials suitable for gun building, but today ain't the day. This is an emerging technology that will be very useful to lots of folks in the future. Maybe the sooner future than any of us imagine, but not today.
But, if I've learned anything over the past 60+ years, it is that you can't stop the march of technology. It's coming, whether you like it or not. The best you can do is to try to co-exist with it. Being afraid of it never helps. One of these days, 3D printing may save lives, become a new manufacturing method, and benefit humanity in ways we can't predict today. It may build hearts, or eyes, or yes, even guns. But not today.
3 comments:
You can't stop the signal.
I agree. This particular situation is being hyped because it combines two 'hot button' topics dear to big city liberals hearts - 3D printing and guns, so they ignore the impracticality of the situation.
Additive Manufacturing (or 3d printing) is not nearly the revolution the people that fear 3d printed guns think it is.
It's much worse.
This is the first step toward Star Trek type replicatiors. Today they only do a relitvely small subset of thermoplastics and a very few can do sintered metals. There are also several projects based on recycling the materials.
But the tech is being expanded is so many ways. Different extruders, cutters, shapers, and materials every year.
Picture being able to make a single use tool and recycling it until you need it, or a totally different tool, again. It will revolutionize manufacturing, design, and distribution.
Just not in my lifetime. We can see where it is heading, but the current tools are too expensive and way too slow to be truly a replacement.
But picture a world when enyone can make a knife, or stick, or gun at need. :)
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