https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REGeDjuADXI

Cody Wilson’s first 3D printed firearm (The Liberator) was a dead simple design. A single shot device with crude parts and even cruder looks it nevertheless did its job: it proved the concept. The idea that a 3D printed gun could actually function was proven. Now, with the addition of a couple new metal parts, people are starting to 3D print their own firearm creations and the latest is a fully functioning semi-auto 9mm handgun. How cool is that!?

Some of the more astute readers might recognize that this is basically an AR-15 lower with a new plastic upper. You’re more or less right, but that still doesn’t change the fact that a 3D printed gun is handling the recoil forces without flinching. More info here.

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64 COMMENTS

  1. Much like atomic weapons the genie is out of the bottle for 3D printers now. You can’t stop the procession of technology. Not when it’s something that people want. 3D printers are just going to get better, faster, cheaper, and harder to trace.

    • Not if they are anything like paper printers. Those stayed equally crappy, but added on a scanner and fax machine to be terrible at three jobs instead of one.

        • Borrowing from the loss-leader approach by shaving blade companies, the printers actually cost far more than “$30” but the companies hope to make the undercharges back though the sales of ink/toner replacements. HP specifically were so aggressive about this that their ink recharges were discovered to be priced (for no explicable reason) at some $8,000 per gallon (!) – while designing systems so that competitor ink could not be used. Several years back they were sued over that by a consumer class action, successfully iirc.

      • Well it’s true that there are a lot of crappy quality 3D printers out there. But at the same time they’re starting to get better in quality rather fast across the industry. Did you know that Boeing is using 3D printers to make a lot of parts for their engines now? Metal 3D printer is here. In fact some of those parts for Boeing can’t be made any other way and they’re better than traditionally made parts. It’s just still expensive. Give it another decade and you’ll see these babes everywhere..

  2. Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of anti-gunners cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I feel something wonderful has happened.

  3. ???

    Looks like it didn’t fire with the first pull of the trigger. And the first round that fired seemed much louder than the rest. Whenever one round doesn’t sound or feel like the rest, I always stop, clear and inspect. I’m assuming this is not the first time ever the gun is being fired. In which case, you should only load / fire a few singles.

  4. This might just be the answer for a convicted felon who would like to have a handgun around, just in case.
    Of course, if he had to use it, he might find himself in a predicament. He would have to get rid of the body somehow, and of course hide or get rid of the gun.
    In the long run, as you know, better be judged by 12, than carried by 6.

    • Right after he purchases a 3D printer and has the know how to print and assemble a firearm. He then has a plastic firearm that is overly large, and unwieldy, hard to conceal, and has questionable durability. He could do that, or send his GF, brother, grandmother into a gun store and buy one, or steal one, or simply buy one from another criminal. Nope, much more likely he’ll spend several thousand dollars on a 3D printer, and learn how to assemble a weapon and magazine.

      • Yeah, I really wasn’t too serious on the post. I think if I was going to build a firearm, I would build one out of aluminum. with 4, steel barrel inserts, all in line with each, side by side. Single shot. Each breech would have a spring actuated firing pin, that could be pulled back, and of course some kind of removable steel breech block.
        The whole thing could be made to a size around, 1 1/4″ thick, 4″ wide, and 5″ from tip of barrel to rear end.
        I wouldn’t have any need for such a weapon, but it would be fun to build.

  5. I guess you could call that a hand gun if you squint your eyes just right…
    It’s cool that it’s somewhat possible to accomplish, but printing a mind craft looking AR pistol is still years away from printing out a reliable copy of my XDM.

    • By years you mean like 2 or 3 right? 3d printers are getting better each week. The polymers are becoming more durable on the high end and the number of designers is only increasing. In less than 10 years (probably closer to 5) we will have people printing metal and plastic items and merging them to be something like a Glock or xd.

      • Polymers? Good golly you are miles from reality.

        We’ve been printing in metal for years. That’s what matters. Cody Bieber and his self-aggrandizement BS are so far from relevant as to be laughable.

        • His point is not to make a reliable gun. His point is to show how easy it is to make a working (where working = capable of firing a round) gun to demonstrate how futile gun control is long-term. For that, he needs to use the cheaper tech on the market; printing a metal gun wouldn’t draw quite as much attention once the people find out that equipment costs several thousand grand at least, and needs quite a lot of space. But when they see a working plastic gun printed on something that anyone can order on the Internet for $500 and run on their desk, that’s another matter.

    • If Minecraft had pistols, that is exactly what they’d look like. I can almost see the pixels from here. Hmmm…now I wanna play Minecraft.

  7. Yep cool-Maybe this’ll give Di Fi and hildebeast the heart attack both hags richly deserve…

  9. Has any of you ever thought about what you would do if by some stretch of the law, you found yourself with the right to own a firearm taken away!
    It wouldn’t be too hard to make a formidable weapon out of a piece of pipe. get a long compression spring, plug the breech end, and fashion some kind of trigger. Load this thing with a crossbow bolt!
    You could have more than one lashed together.
    Of course, this would be more of a home defense weapon, too big to carry a round.

    • you really need to check out the sling shot channel on youtube. The guy lives in germany and weaponize all sorts of things…

      • Yeah, Lot of ways out there to ward off an intruder. How about a guillotine over your front entrance! Dude with a gun starts to enter you place yelling hands up! You reach up to the button on the wall behind you, and the next thing you know, the intruders arm with gun still in hand is laying on floor!
        Remember the scene at the first part of the movie “Machete”

        We have black lab that could probably do a number on an intruder, but only if he wasn’t shot first.

  11. So far, printed plastic firearms have been designed to look like firearms. That is not required. A printed plastic 9mm could look like a lunch box, a portable radio, a thermos or you name it. The first ipad looking .22magnum video posted on YouTube will have anti gunners shrieking like banshees.

  15. Traceable or not, it is of no matter. Proper and improper use will always exist as long a humans are around. I expect few would become popular with criminals as it is too much hassle. Why go to the expense when you can steal a brand-name firearm?

  16. The 1966 Star Trek replicator is here. Gene Roddenberry was a space alien. Gary Seven was autobiographical.

  17. IMO just another iteration of the 3D printer revolution. We have far to go. As with many things in life the product its self isn’t revolutionary but rather what it’s made of/how it’s made is.

  19. We’ve proven that polymers, even crappy polymers, will handle the force of a firearm receiver if not a barrel, so let’s make a chunky Sig or even a Tec-9 or MAC clone. Whipping up a veritable brick worth of plastic in CAD is proof of concept, yes, but I think by a week’s time we could have three more refined iterations, a little closer to the definition of a handgun than an AR pistol wearing an Uzi top cover. I’ve seen some other designs that are starting to get there, even a revolver.

    I’m still wondering how soon we’ll get to accessibly making one on par with a conventional firearm, that you could be expected to count on for more than a few hundred rounds. It would do a lot for the image and for breaking into the mainstream if we weren’t making what amounts to throwaways.

  20. Just had a conversation with my daughter concerning a 3D printer she saw in use for first time this week. She was amazed by the layering process, yet what she saw made was basically a keyring holder. This video of a functional firearm will literally blow her away. But Daddy…….plastic guns? Yeah baby girl, cause bang bang.

  22. 3D printers are useful and we do use the technology at work, but we also have a Haas machining center to machine metal and more durable plastic parts. There are at least dozen CNC machining centers in every small town in the Mid-West. Really, making an AR or AK would really not be that tough for most locales with a modest industrial base. Look how many people have jumped on the AR bandwagon.

  23. Having a little foundry in the garage is easy as well, the biggest problem is the melt facilities for ferrous materials. Years ago, some toy company sold a foundry in your kitchen for children.

  24. CNC MILLING: CNC JR. Table Top Mill, $5,423.00
    Another option for creating an aluminum billet AR lower.

  25. I don’t see 3D printers getting more popular. Seems like you can only make little plastic trinkets aka junk. It’s a novelty.

    • I disagree with your assertion. We’re producing 3D printed muzzle brakes out of actual Inconel metal (100% density, similar properties to a forged part, and proven capable of withstanding 8,000+ rounds of fully-automatic fire) and 3D printed Glock 43 mag extensions out of carbon-filled nylon (tougher than the Glock magazine itself). We don’t have to pay for tooling, our products are updated on the fly with no added cost, and we can come to market with a brand new product in days instead of months. This technology has the capability to completely change the firearms industry.

      • Most of the same technology applies to CnC milling… The majority of the advantages you speak of have nothing at all to do with being 3D printed. That’s just the output system. False correlations.

      • Nothing about a popgun muzzle-brake that couldn’t just be machined from a block.

        But marketing…

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