UK Police Seize 3D-Printed 'Gun Parts,' Which Are Actually Spare Printer Parts 279
nk497 writes "Police in Manchester have arrested a man and seized what they claim are 3D printed components to a gun. They made the arrest after a 'significant' discovery of a 3D printed 'trigger' and 'magazine,' saying they were now testing the parts to see if they were viable. 3D printing experts, however, said the objects were actually spare parts for the printer. 'As soon as I saw the picture... I instantly thought, "I know that part,"' said Scott Crawford, head of 3D printing firm Revolv3D. 'They designed an upgrade for the printer soon after it was launched, and most people will have downloaded and upgraded this part within their printer. It basically pulls the plastic filament, and it used to jam an awful lot. The new system that they've put out, which includes that little lever that they're claiming is the trigger, is most definitely the same part.'"
Re:Thank god (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Kudos to the police for realizing... (Score:4, Informative)
I'll teach you how to make a better "gun" than you can with a 3D printer.
1) gather components: a bullet, a block of wood, a rock.
2) drill a hole through the block of wood that matches the diameter of your bullet.
3) place bullet in the hole in the block of wood. Congratulations, you're done.
Fire the "gun" by hitting the back side of the bullet with the rock.
The "gun" described above doesn't require a 3D printer, knowledge of CAD software or metallurgy.
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Informative)
After that explosion, it's hard to remember anything really.
Re:The process is the punishment (Score:5, Informative)
Is that meant to be a prediction, or a statement of fact? If you read the article it becomes clear that they had search warrants as part of a targeted investigation into organised crime, and apparently were surprised to discover the 3D printer at one of the searched areas. Given that they arrested someone because they think he was making gunpowder, and because you can't make gunpowder with a 3D printer, it seems that they believed (correctly) that someone was trying to manufacture ammo and got a judge to issue a warrant on that basis. When they discovered the printer, they made the obvious logical conclusion - someone who is illegally making guns, and has a 3D printer, might be experimenting with 3D printing plastic guns. What else would he use it for?
It may turn out in the course of events that the printer was used for something else, or making tools used to help make ammo rather than making gun parts, or something else. But ownership of the 3D printer is incidental. There isn't even any way they would know he had such a device, as far as I can tell.
Re:The process is the punishment (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the reason why they raided this place originally. It wasn't because he was a guy who owned a 3d printer, it was because he was associated with criminal gangs in Manchester and they were raiding him and others to confiscate the proceeds of crime. This was one of the things they found, alongside ~$3.5m in counterfeit goods, $500k of drugs and $50k in cash and 50 people arrested.
When you find a 3d printer in the garage of a suspected gangster, you don't assume anything and investigate everything. Last year, a member of one of these Manchester gangs, already wanted for double murder, lured a couple of unarmed female cops to a house to investigate a break in, and then killed them with grenades. This is a fucked up part of the UK.
Re:More Apt than you think? (Score:4, Informative)
While it does indeed take more knowledge to operate the lathes and such, currently that tool set can produce far more capable devices, and I'd imagine that at least the CNC cutter shouldn't be that much more complicated to program than the printer.
It's actually put it the other way round for now. I have a bit of experience in CNC milling and a bit of experience in using a 3D printer (the type in the $1000-$2000 range). I think that puts me in a reasonable position to judge since I'm an expert in neither field so know how far a bit of knowledge can take a person.
Honestly the 3D printers are harder. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic machines and I love them, but they are not easy to use. After receiving instruction on how to use it, getting reliable prints out of it still took considerable work. Even after figuring out that much I (and ecen much more experienced people) still have the odd problem with parts sticking too hard, not hard enough, curling up, etc.
And don't get me started on how the slicing process can go bad...
I think the main thing is that the 3D printers are cheap and small and clean devices so you can have one without having to dedicate serious space (I don't own one, but I live in a place which could easily accomodate one. The same cannot be said about a machine shop). You also only need one, rather than a quite large collection of tools.
It's also that the barrier to entry is lower in that there's a nice library of 3D things to print online and the slicing process for the printing is simpler the software to do the printing is more readily available.
So, they're not necessarily simpler to use (that really depends on the shape being produced), but they are much, much, much more accessible.
Re:smug retribution (Score:4, Informative)
You are wrong.
US: 4.7 per 100,000
UK 1.2 per 100,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Re:smug retribution (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same.
By "here" you mean in your head? Only total moron would post lie that can be disproved by 30 second search in google. Here is source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org] . USA - 4.7 homicides /100 000 vs 1.2 in UK. Almost 4x difference is 'about the same' ? Go back to polishing your penis enhancer^W^W gun and leave discussion to others.
One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.
Exclude cities with highest murder rate and murder late drops a lot ... thank you captain obvious! You can't exclude any cities, because people are free to move between them without any border control.
The problem is, the facts don't line up with the Liberal Logic. Less guns do not produce less violence. This means people are violent with whatever tool they find handy, just like killing themselves. We should address the reasons for violence, not the method.
Considering that you started your rant with total nonsense, your conclusions are not any better.
I mean just recently, you had a trained military person beheaded in broad daylight by a couple guys with knives. AND nobody stopped them. Nobody could. In America, you would have had someone (or a few someones) kick the shit out of the guys before they could finish cutting the soldiers head off.
Sure they would. That's why every other month another guy has ample time to shoot 20 people and off himself.
Sorry, I don't want to live in a Society that is so scared of everything that people don't step up and face evil directly. Call it "Rugged Individualism", something Liberals can't understand and therefore despise.
Your 'rugged individualism' exists only in Hollywood action flicks. Your are living in society of sheep scared half to death of 'terrorists' and everything else.You do know that majority of US citizens actually supports TSA ass-groping because it makes them feel safer? On Slashdot it might look differently, but slashdotters are tiny minority. If you want example of actually brave society, then look how Norway handled Breivik incident. They prosecuted, sentenced and chucked him into a prison then got on with their lives. No PATRIOT acts, no crazy witch hunts, all civil liberties retained - just business as usual.
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Informative)
indeed, when an unconfined handgun round goes off, the brass flies away from the bullet. at gun club I used to belong we'd sweep up powder residue and brass after matches and burn the pile since a portion of the powder is ejected from a gun unburned. every now and then a live round would pop and send the brass flying. but put that round in the shortest metal tube, maybe even inch beyond edge of brass (e.g. like a snub nosed revolver, which even has *air gap* before the short tube), and that's a whole different matter, that's a lethal weapon.
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Informative)
I should also like to point out that 3D printing has existed for over 15 years. It just took that long to get the price and size down enough for home use. However, the seeds were there almost two decades ago. I actually held a 3D plastic model in 2000. The technology existed then.
When it comes to making tiny transistors, there IS NO OTHER METHOD besides the conventional silicon fab.
There were some experiments to print circuits using modified ink-jet printers (in theory, all you need is a conductor, an insulator, and an 'N-type' and a 'P-type" semiconductor). These actually worked (nobody said that they worked well, or were capable of any type of speed). Even assuming that this technology takes off and gets millions of dollars in research, there are fundamental limits in this type of technology. You will not be able to "spray" transistors at the size that we are talking.
Now, if I wanted to prototype a million-transistor digital circuit right now without takint it to a real silicon fab, let me list the ways that this can be done today. 1) Simulate in software. 2) Put on an FPGA. All other methods (including hardware-accelerated simulations) are combinations or enhancements of the above two approaces. There is no thrid approach, even in the labs, as far as I am aware.
Let's look at building a custom chip in a 28nm process. The mask costs are easily over one million dollars. This means that the very first chip that you get back will cost over $1,000,000. The 2nd might only be $50, but the first one is the expensive one. If you find a bug, hopefully the problem is small enough that you can re-use most of the masks. If not, expect to hand over another million for a re-spin. So, if your design is risky and you are not guaranteed that it would work, paying $250,000 for a single prototype made by some other method would be a bargain! Yet there is nobody out there offering to prototype an ASIC like this.
The old saying is that what we have in our homes today was in the labs 20 years ago. There is nothing in the lab right now that looks promising for making your own high-density circuits right now, other than the FPGA. Low-density? Yes. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of transistors? Maybe. Millions of transistors? No way that I can forsee.