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Plastic Gun 3

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Timelord

Timelord

Mechanical
Dec 18, 2002
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Hi all,

Did any of you guys manage to snag the plastic gun design that was in all the news recently? The feds shut the site down a few days after it made the news. I've got it, but it is all .STL files made to be sent to the printer directly. I'm going to remodel it in SW so I can make modifications where I see fit and then put it thru mastercam and make a copy in a suitable high strength engineering plastic. I don't understand what law they used to shut the site down, the design includes an internal piece of metal so the finished gun meets all the new applicable ATF laws. I don't know about the rest of you, but it scares the hell out of me when the government tries to stifle free speech in this manner in violation of the constitution. It appears that all I can do is make sure the design is readily available, so if any of you guys (and gals) want a copy, let me know in this thread and we'll work something out. I hope this doesn't draw an ATF agent to my door.

Timelord
 
What makes you think that ENGINEERS need cad files to help them make guns?



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
And here's another article that gets into a bit more detail on why this is such a stretch, legally.

Ever been to grabcad.com? Ever see 3D models for things like sound suppressors, magazines, and other things like this? Things that the US government--if only it were consistent, rather than capricious--would also take interest in removing from "public" view/access? Is this ignorance, or perhaps some sort of "do something" attitude because of the press generated?

I know of no laws that expressly forbid/regulate the design of firearms. More specifically, how is the design of firearms that are not intended to be manufactured and sold to others in any way infringing on any existing laws? This is what the US government has failed to demonstrate, and why they cite ITAR to back the actions they've taken against Wilson.

Like what Wilson's doing or not, I see no acceptable grounds for the actions of the US government here. Unfortunately it seems most people--if they don't like what Wilson has done--laud whatever action (legal or not) the government takes against Wilson. That's dangerous territory, and the sort of sanction that generates non-warranted forced invasion of SWAT teams into Boston neighborhood homes (which is illegal, of course). The list is long. You can draw your own conclusions.



Jeff Mowry
A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.
 
Jeff,

My point exactly! We are starting down a slippery slope of giving up freedoms seemingly without any legal basis or protest. This should make any thinking person highly alarmed.

And yes Mike,

Any engineer including me can design a gun, I just am curious how this particular design solved the problems inherent in a plastic gun. The point of this exercise is to assist in spreading the design to thwart the governments illegal shutdown of the site that hosted the files. I'm not a gun nut, don't have them in the house and I don't see any point in designing my own. I'm going to leave the manufacture of this design to a couple of machinists I know who are firearm enthusiasts.
 
Something is fishy about this story. How do you select a plastic to make a cylinder that would experience several thousand pounds per sq. in. of pressure without cracking and have the barrel sustain wear from firing several rounds accurately?
 
Easy... It doesn't. You can only fire a couple of rounds from this "gun" before it's destroyed.

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)
 
Chicopee, the goal wasn't to make an equivalent "real" gun using rapid prototyping methods/materials, but to get it to successfully fire at least one round. If you dig into other stories on this, you'll get the philosophical goals of Wilson for the project.



Jeff Mowry
A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.
 
It reminds me of a home made zip gun fabricated by an 11year old boy. Who fired a test round from the other end of a long piece of string.
He then went back and looked at his creation, which now looked like the top end of an onion dome at the breach end of the barrel. He rapidly decided he did not want to play that game anymore.
B.E.
 
A block of steel and an "I" drill bit will get you a serviceable smoothbore barrel for a .22. The point is that basic firearms are just NOT hard to build, even with hand tools.

Chuck another bit of metal into a CNC machine and you can get something very professional and functional. A lot of guns are made exactly that way.

The 3-D printing aspect is a smoke screen.

old field guy
 
if I wanted to make a gun I would use steel and get one of the many machine shops with gun drilling to do it, I can literally find half a dozen of them within a few blocks of where I am sitting. Or I go 10 blocks and buy a gun.

 
Timelord,
No, it wasn't the ATF moving in and deleting my previous post. I've gotta try this again because I illegally posted my email address.

I'd love to have a copy of those files. I have no plans or even a need to build a plastic gun. My polymer/steel one works just fine. I would just like to have the files as a novelty item. Kinda like that old CAD drawing of the space shuttle. And I never intended to nor have I ever attempted to build one of those either. (for the ATF folks following this thread)

-tg xternal.me

 
Do you have a CAD drawing of the space shuttle?

Certified SolidWorks Associate
SW2013 X64 SP2.0
Dell Precision T5500
Nvidia Quadro 4000
Xeon 2.27GHz Quad Core, 12GB RAM
Win 7 Pro X64
 
It was an old AutoCAD drawing. I know I've got it somewhere. Probably on a 3.5" floppy in the attic. Of course it wasn't a full drawing package, but just projection views of the assembly. Pretty detailed as I recall. And I think I even have a CAD file for a piece of the space station from when I was working on my senior project in college. :)

 
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