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The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

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Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#71

Post by horsawlarway »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #50
horsawlarway wrote: post #38

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns. I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. So given we don't do this regulati…

Not that I support any of these obviously stupid bills but: > what's special about 3d printers? They can make guns made out of plastic and metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people. You are probably right about the lobbying group, I agree. Edit: I'm not saying it makes sense, but this is the angle the congress folks are taking, sheesh.

> They can make guns made out of plastic

So can many, many other things. Hell - something like this will do SO MUCH BETTER than anything I can print:

https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=pl...

It's weird because 3d printed plastic is WAY down the list of things I'd prefer to trust handling the explosion from ammunition.

Frankly - even the hobbyist CNC I have is a MUCH better method of creating a plastic gun. FDM printing is not something I'd want to trust in this case, neither is SLA printing in most materials (some of the very high end ones like nylon in a formlabs printer... maybe?).

But my point stands - guns aren't that hard to make, and we aren't trying this legislation with any of the other myriad manufacturing methods. Hell - compare to a potato cannon... (also a plastic gun, btw...)

So what's different about 3d printers?

My hunch is this has fuck-all to do with guns, and a lot to do with something else, because 3d printers ARE different in that they let me manufacturer all sorts of other, much more complex, goods much more easily and cheaply at home.

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#72

Post by GenerocUsername »

trollbridge wrote: post #66
rolph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats special is speed and consistency. when you manufacture a personal firearm, it is supposed to be yours, for your use. the 3d printer aspect, makes it possible for a group to print large quantities of receivers, under the radar, to be combined with "accesory parts" close to "drop-in" assembly style.

At issue here is that anyone can build a 3D printer. There's one in my basement a hobbyist built entirely from easily-sourced parts, and the controller is entirely open source. It never phones home and isn't really connected directly to the Internet at all.

Careful. Or they will try to regulate ghost printers.

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#73

Post by 15155 »

jmyeet wrote: post #17

I'm surprised the EFF didn't address the issue that traditional printer manufacturers already comply with law enforcement, specifically that a fingerprint of yellow tracking dots [1] are printed and printers will often refuse to or fail to copy images of money. My point is there's already precedent for printers cooperating with authorities so one can see this as simply an extension to 3D printer manufacturers. I susp…

> how this is different

From purely a technical standpoint: the printer indiscriminately adds tracking dots to all documents, the proposed 3D printer regulation requires the printer to phone home and make some dispositive call on what it's allowed to do.

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#74

Post by aidenn0 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #38

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns. I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. So given we don't do this regulati…

I'm not on top of the current SOTA in 3d-printed guns, but the way it typically was done in the past is that you don't actually 3d-print all of what you or I would call a complete gun.

The barrel will be metal. In designs made for the US market, it will almost certainly be an actual manufactured gun barrel, since gun parts other than the receiver are not closely tracked in the US. In designs for Western Europe, the metal parts will be either milled or things you can buy at the hardware store[1].

The barrel and chamber being made of something tougher than you can get from an FDM machine is basically a requirement for making a gun that doesn't explode in your face when you shoot.

1: Here's an image of all of the parts going into a gun designed to be made in the EU. Per the wikipedia article, the barrel rifling can be added with electrochemical machining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Compon...

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#75

Post by cjbgkagh »

ahs1 wrote: post #45
subhobroto wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can make a gun, you can certainly make ammunition theoretically true but having re-sleeved ammunition, the chances of injury is tremendously different. That said, a lot of people in California are having to resort to re-sleeving ammunition, not out of choice but because for all practical purposes, California has made buying ammunition impossible. While you can crawl and bite your way through getting a horrib…

> For regular people to own a gun that you can actually use in California, (not LEOs or certain other people), you either needed to have inherited them or bought them from the cartels. or, you can just break these stupid, unenforceable laws and buy out of state or just "uncastrate" it yourself. no idea why so many people get their panties in a twist everytime California passes an unenforceable law. they're unenforcea…

They’ll be selectively enforced

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#76

Post by 15155 »

trollbridge wrote: post #67
15155 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people What are bullets and shell casings made out of again?

And I'd argue that shell casings are probably harder to manufacture than a fully working firearm. The equipment needed to manufacture working ammunition end-to-end is pretty serious.

All of these manufacturing equipment and processes existed more than a century ago.

If you have a capable VMC, you can make the die and other equipment necessary to stamp shell casings from commonly-available parts and machinery.

From there, with a modern Dillon or Hornady reloading press, you can crank out thousands of rounds per day without issue.

Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture, but (good-enough) bullets, casings, etc. are completely doable.

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#78

Post by aidenn0 »

15155 wrote: post #68
krunck wrote: post #57

Lets imagine a similar situation but instead of with an additive manufacturing process they try to regulate a subtractive manufacturing process: a traditional CNC machine. There is no way to prevent the CNC system from machining gun parts as along as the machining is done in discrete steps with the same work piece. The software can't know what sitting on the CNC table. In additive manufacturing it is more difficult b…

WA state's legislation includes subtractive methods, CA's omits it so that they don't have to deal with the wrath of Haas.

Omitting subtractive methods makes it rather toothless, since there have been places you can go to push a button to start a mill making you a receiver (which is the part that is considered "the gun" to address ship-of-theseus questions aboug guns), then you can add the other parts yourself.

Re: The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

#80

Post by horsawlarway »

rolph wrote: post #54
horsawlarway wrote: post #38

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns. I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. So given we don't do this regulati…

whats special is speed and consistency. when you manufacture a personal firearm, it is supposed to be yours, for your use. the 3d printer aspect, makes it possible for a group to print large quantities of receivers, under the radar, to be combined with "accesory parts" close to "drop-in" assembly style.

Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover?

So no - not buying it. Hell, there's not even a real price difference. I can get a Nomad3 from Carbide 3D for the same approximate cost as an H2D from bambu labs.

And I can get super cheap temu versions of either for under 500.

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