Meliva wrote:Leo wrote:From my understanding hobbyist of the 3d printed guns (called ghost guns) get pretty good at making them to the point where they are just as reliable as a regular gun. There's a really interesting vice episode on it where the journalist goes to a ghost gun convention and makes one with the help of a hobbyist
They are not. They have a very limited life. They are not made of the right material and can't last long when used to actually fire. They will start to break down and become less reliable the more you use one. After a dozen shots, if it hasn't failed yet, it's probably damn near about too.
Which again, real good if your goal is just to go and kill one person who isn't guarded, but in a shoot out? With other people with actual metal guns? Or even worse a battlefield or war zone? Better have a bunch of back ups to fall back on when the one you're using breaks down..
Since I have a bit of knowledge about this I figured I'd dispel a few misconceptions. Most modern 3d printed guns include several metal parts, most usually the barrel and the other important working parts. A lot of modern firearms already include some amount of polymers anyway, a Glock is a great example, it has a polymer frame. In the United States, citizens have the right to manufacture their own firearms, but historically most people don't do so because of the expertise and equipment required. For most firearms, the frame is the part that is legally considered the firearm. For most models, the frame experiences relatively little stress, and so is able to be made out of polymer (and thereby be 3d printed) without any real downsides. So a person can 3d print a frame, and buy a bunch of metal parts and manufacture their own firearm.
In Myanmar, rebel forces have used (and I believe are still using in reserve duties) entirely self-manufactured guns. They are able to 3d print the frames, magazine bodies and a bunch of the other smaller parts. They use a process called electrochemical machining rifling (ECM) to put rifling into correctly sized regular steel tubes, which they can purchase on the open market. Using this process they have manufactured thousands of functional and reliable firearms without traditional gun-making equipment.
Now to be clear no 3d printed gun made on a consumer grade printer will ever be as reliable as a traditionally made firearm. But, the difference is that the lifespan of the gun is going from say 30,000 rounds down to 5,000 rounds. And if I'm being frank, that's still more than most people will ever fire through a gun. There are also entirely plastic 3d guns, which is more what I think Mel is imaging, the Liberator is probably the best example-- and yeah a dozen rounds is frankly optimistic from that thing.