{"id":19236,"date":"2013-03-03T11:19:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T16:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19236"},"modified":"2013-03-03T11:19:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T16:19:34","slug":"3d-printed-gun-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/03\/3d-printed-gun-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"3D-printed gun parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

3D printing is becoming much more interesting<\/a> every day:<\/p>\n

Cody Wilson, like many Texan gunsmiths, is fast-talkin\u2019 and fast-shootin\u2019\u2014but unlike his predecessors in the Lone Star State, he\u2019s got 3D printing technology to help him with his craft.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s nonprofit organization, Defense Distributed, released a video this week showing a gun firing off over 600 rounds\u2014illustrating what is likely to be the first wave of semi-automatic and automatic weapons produced by the additive manufacturing process.<\/p>\n

Last year, his group famously demonstrated that it could use a 3D-printed \u201clower\u201d for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle\u2014but the gun failed after six rounds. Now, after some re-tooling, Defense Distributed has shown that it has fixed the design flaws and a gun using its lower can seemingly fire for quite a while. (The AR-15 is the civilian version of the military M16 rifle.)<\/p>\n

The lower, or “lower receiver” part of a firearm, is the crucial part that contains all of the gun’s operating parts, including the trigger group and the magazine port. (Under American law, the lower is what’s defined as the firearm itself.) The AR is designed to be modular, meaning it can receive different types of \u201cuppers\u201d (barrels) as well as different-sized magazines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n