- Joined
- Mar 12, 2021
A reasonably sized piece of billet/stock worked on a drill press, with some finishing work using hand tools. A proper CNC machine can do a lot, but if you're limited in resources to the point that you're looking at 3D printing, then a drill press is going to be a LOT cheaper.A slide?
Can be button rifled if you want, but the cool thing to do in 3D printer circles is ECM rifling. You can use a nice piece of steel tube of workable size and diameter, the drill press can help you with cutting the chamber afterwards. It's quite cheap and you can 3D print your mandrel for the rifling.A barrel?
Or do a smoothbore shotgun.
I agree that a lot of people are overhyping 3D printing, but when it comes to improvising and making guns on your own, 3D printing can be used for making grips, stocks, frames, magazines (to some degree), certain kinds of casings, and more significantly, jigs and other parts to help work metal. Just the ease of doing ECM rifling alone is a very significant advantage.3D printing is great for modeling, prototype, whatever. But people are jumping the gun by a LOT to skip to believing in it for final pass manufacturing.
I would say that's pretty generous. It can let anyone make a working gun, a passable or even pretty decent one with effort, but a CETME parts kit built with a bulky as shit 3D printed receiver is never going to inspire a lot of confidence.3D printing allows anyone, even a McDonald's worker, to build any kind of gun he wants that can if done right function just as good as any off the shelf gun.
I don't see something like an FN M240, Barrett M82, Benelli M4, or Magnum Research BFR, being made with the help of 3D printing without the 3D printing in question mainly being for helping with working the metal, rather than the limited applications where printed plastic can replace metal.
I'd love to see you prove me wrong, but I think it's unrealistic to expect more from 3D printing on a home scale than mostly simpler guns on a cheaper (but nonetheless decent) end. Building with commercial factory parts is an option in the US, and that'll make things easier because you don't need to do as much, but it's not an option for everyone everywhere.