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Comment by monsterix | Hacker News Reader

While this is awesome when application is help to mankind. What happens when people start printing guns, grenades and bullets?

Edit: No this is not flame-bait. I really feel that this type of innovation will end up within the ambit of "Government licensing and regulation model". Which also means goal to persuade "...manufacturing ... to household garages or backyards and places where you want quick production of parts in a very short time" will take a hit.

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This is flamebait (perhaps not intentionally on your part), as this question usually flares up in the 3D printer mailing lists every so often with everyone weighing in.

Mainframe Computers was first used to crack codes and calculate ballistic missile trajectories. If you were around in 1979, when personalized computers came along, would you have asked asked "what happens when people start cracking secret codes to read wires and calculating ballistic missile trajectories and selling them to foreign gov'ts?" And if so, do you think it's an important question given what you know about computer usage in 2012? Do you ask yourself that question about computers now?

Perhaps pertinently, the government absolutely did ask that question, and restricted computer export for precisely the reasons you give. It might not be a valid concern in and of itself, but it's definitely going to be interesting to see how the government handle it.

Poor metaphor. If anything, the risks of hackers and proliferation of Wikileaks like sites have made this danger more of a reality.

Killing people is a trivial effort when it comes down to it; most people in the world would rather not kill people nor go to jail.

You've obviously never heard of the Sten submachine gun then?

You can knock one of those up with a pillar drill and a mid-range lathe/mill and some easy to get hold of raw materials:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten

Licensing and regulation of mills and lathes has not happened yet...

That is thoughtless flamebait. You can apply that fear to anything. Paper (what if people start planning crimes on paper), wooden sticks (what if people hit each other), cars (what if someone drives into someone else on purpose), computers (what if they are used to commit crime).

Not to mention lathes. Lathes have been able to make guns for decades/centuries.

Many of you have down voted, but here is what came to my mind: This technology, like it or not, will end up being regulated easily. Which also means that the goal to get manufacturing in household garages or backyards in a very short time will take a hit.

Isn't it unwarranted to push this call into something as negative as flame-bait?

What this technology can achieve is one thing, but will it be able achieve that as freely as it could is a question that I sought to ask. IMHO, it is not easy for technology people to convince and help other people (read decision makers) overcome their fear of misuse/abuse of any new technology. These people dislike the word "disruption".

Lathe machines, paper, Internet, mobile networks have all gone through this vetting at their time, and I believe that same barrier-to-explain will apply on 3D printing too. Only thing is, that it is going to be really tough to convince the authorities and allow "free usage in the backyards" as claimed in the article.

But it is completely irrelevant how things are manufactured. The end product is what needs regulation/laws. For example if you build a gun at home, then you own a gun and are bound to whatever laws exist for that in your jurisdiction. The means of creation are irrevelant.

"End product is what needs regulation/laws" is, I am afraid, a very narrow view. The degree of difficulty in manufacturing or obtaining (along with operational training) has a significant impact on use (or misuse) of weapons. Printing such objects in your household backyard, for example guns, will surely be a matter of "concern" for authorities who not only have to make laws and design regulation, but also enforce it.

Already being done:

http://defensedistributed.com/

People already create guns and bullets on their own with commonly available equipment.

Guns are low-tech.

John Browning, who produced most of the "modern" gun mechanisms, died in 1926, about the time that electric motors were becoming commonplace in factories.

Today there are folks making very functional guns with hand tools in very primitive conditions.

Yep. Afghan gunsmiths can recreate an AK47 from raw materials.

That's interesting. I would imagine you would need precision to the hundredth of the millimeter when making guns? I hung around some people who reloaded brass once and they were using these measuring gauges with that kind of precision.

It depends on what you want to do. Long-range or other forms of precision shooting are going to require more precision in the manufacture of the firearm and ammunition.

An AK47, on the other hand, well the whole design is based around very loose tolerances for ease of manufacture and for reliability - not as affected by dirt, mud, sand, etc as other designs.

> I would imagine you would need precision to the hundredth of the millimeter when making guns?

You do for some types of shooting, but in general no.

And, even if you did, what makes you think that 0.01mm requires modern equipment?

Moreover, tight assembled tolerances don't require tight part manufacturing accuracy. You can hand-fit parts.

Here's a an older but still accurate article:

http://www.armscollectors.com/darra/darra.htm

and a more recent one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5066860.stm

John Malkovich's character in "In the Line of Fire" made a wooden gun capable of firing two bullets (before becoming worthless), and the Mythbusters made a duct-tape cannon good for a few shots.

I believe mass-produced street guns will be more cost effective and reliable for the foreseeable future. However, the likelihood of this being used as a reason to regulate 3D printing or 3D design files shouldn't be ignored.

Probably just end up like color scanner and copiers that have "anti counterfeit" measures baked into the hardware.

"Error, I see your printing a spiral bored tube...."

Maybe future gun designs will include a EURion[1] mark?

The problem is you're building a utility item that can be constructed in literally an infinite number of ways, and defining some sort of 'Is this a gun?' test seems to me like verging on hard AI.

Of course, simple rules like 'this is 85% the same as that knockoff AK47 pattern distributed in the "Anarchists 3D Printing Handbook"' will probably catch the dumb ones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

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