Mega Rad Gun Thread

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Puff said:
3D printed AR lowers are EASY. Went from first printer to working lower in a week. Most of that was figuring out bed level. I do have some experience in making precision things though.
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I'm positive they would work, but I would be concerned about the safety mechanism. And to a lesser extent the trigger pin holes. There is going to be a ton of slop in the trigger that only gets worse over time. Done right though, maybe with brass bushings in the holes.. I would expect a full service life out of a 3d-print lower.
 
Puff said:
Yeah, I don't get it. You'd think more conservatives would be in on it, especially considering the dissident conservative rise in the recent years. Probably some gatekeeping in the chats or maybe just conservatives shutting up when surrounded by leftists.
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Regular people who can walk into a store and buy guns aren't going to be as interested in 3d printing. But if you have felonies/drug charges/domestic violence charges or have been involuntarily put in the loony bin you can't. 2020(and the existence of twitter) taught me that those things are much more common among the far left.

Plus righties are more likely to know a guy who does machining or have some kind of background knowledge that would make 80% building more viable.

Wish em the best though
 
Hippopatumus said:
I'm positive they would work, but I would be concerned about the safety mechanism. And to a lesser extent the trigger pin holes. There is going to be a ton of slop in the trigger that only gets worse over time. Done right though, maybe with brass bushings in the holes.. I would expect a full service life out of a 3d-print lower.
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It's not hypothetical, it's been done and finished for years at this point. The main issue is buffer tube reinforcement, and there's a plethora of valid options for that.

The safety is just a turn-latch when you get down to it. Probably the simplest thing to print in the first place.
 
Hippopatumus said:
I'm positive they would work, but I would be concerned about the safety mechanism. And to a lesser extent the trigger pin holes. There is going to be a ton of slop in the trigger that only gets worse over time. Done right though, maybe with brass bushings in the holes.. I would expect a full service life out of a 3d-print lower.
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CTRL-Pew only posts stuff that's been through a pretty extensive beta process, so those generally have a good longevity. The recent iteration of lowers have been tested to 2000 rounds plus. The failure is usually the grip mount since they started using metal reinforcement in the buffer tower. Not seen anyone do checks on the long term creep of the holes for the pins, but they ARE my main concern for longevity, and that would be more effected by time under stress than number of rounds.
The pin holes are bare plastic and the wall thickness of the FCG area is constrained by standard pin length. I've left it sitting around with the hammer back, which should be the worst condition for this part, for six months and there's no noticeable change. I suspect it won't last to heirloom status though.

Edit: There's a 3-D printed upper in testing right now, meant to fuck with the receiver rules. Semi-moot as AR's got a grandfather clause on the multiple receiver rules, but I'd be interested to see how finicky they are. PLA is not good at high temps, even for a plastic. They claim to be around 150 rounds at the moment.
 
Hippopatumus said:
I doubt that. Actual movement of the action should be the 'worst condition' really.

Interesting post tho.
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The melting point of PLA is so low that it's normally operating at creep temp (anything over half the melting point on an absolute temperature scale) and a sustained force that does not instantaneously deform it will deform it over time.
The leverage at the hammer pin is so low that it's not a critical failure point in my in depth analysis (of looking at it and squinting a bit) and, in fact the force actually on the hammer pin is limited by the spring force. I'll admit shock and fatigue loading delaminating the thing is well beyond what I know about, so the shock of the hammer strike might do something over time. Some designs (I'm thinking of the firebolt) are printed in an orientation where that couldn't happen. Not sure how drop in trigger packs mount, but that might mitigate some stress as well
Edit:
Here's an M-16 hammer. I'm listening to a podcast and needed something to do.
I fixed the hammer face, made the pin hole a rotating joint, and applied a force (1 Newton, we're operating in the linear range, so if you want to estimate higher forces, you can just multiply the stress in an area by that force) to the spring surface. The whole thing is inexact napkin calculating, but should demonstrate it.
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Here's the Hammer face
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spring surface,
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, and bearing surface for the pin (View shows the worst stress). They've changed section views and I can't be assed to figure the new one out to show it better.
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Note that the majority of the stress is taken up by the spring. It's not 1 to 1, because the surface that the pin is interfacing with on the body is quite a bit more narrow than the bearing surface. Also using a stress simulation to determine resultant forces is both overkill and not really suitable, but I've been drinking and don't want to measure the thing and do a hand calc.
 
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Puff said:
Yeah, I don't get it. You'd think more conservatives would be in on it, especially considering the dissident conservative rise in the recent years. Probably some gatekeeping in the chats or maybe just conservatives shutting up when surrounded by leftists.
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The issue is that there is a true generational divide. Ivan's entire shtick on twitter was being a reply guy to know-it-alls, and most of them belonged to two camps:
- libs who thought that gun control was inevitable because 3d printed guns don't work and blow up in your hands
- conservatives who said libs were loony for caring about 3d printed guns because they don't work and blow up in your hands
Typically, the older conservatives fit in the latter. Hell, the guys who went to the Maker's Match said that by coincidence Hickok45 was in town, and they asked him if he ever tried 3d printing guns. According to them, his response was that he can't get involved because the feds are definitely watching.
Now that could be just Hickok fucking with them, but the old man might actually believe 3d printing a gun gets you in trouble.
The reality is that the type of people into 3d printed guns are mostly under 35. We're talking about people who checked out of politics and adopted an ethos similar to Cody Wilson*, the boogalarpers, the Ron Paul 2012 lolberts, kids raised on anime/Fallout: New Vegas/STALKER/4chan.
So the "right" side of 3d gun printing has people who aren't explicitly conservative or actually detest conservatism for cucking on gun rights, people with radical views who transcend conservatism/progressivism, people who are willing to use leftist talking points or even arm leftists as an accelerationist tactic, etc.
Meanwhile most "dissident conservative" circles don't seem to talk about guns that much. They mostly recognize that armed conflict is not sustainable if all institutions are working against them so they mostly discuss how to take back institutions or create parallel structures.
likeacrackado said:
Regular people who can walk into a store and buy guns aren't going to be as interested in 3d printing. [...] Plus righties are more likely to know a guy who does machining or have some kind of background knowledge that would make 80% building more viable.
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Well, the point about 3d printing isn't about passing a background checks because many people on the right love them 80%ers too.
 
AGPinochet said:
Sig won NGSW
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Already seeing quite the uproar from people declaring that this thing will completely phase out the m16 family immediately . To quote the announcement
The value of the initial delivery order on the contract is $20.4 million for weapons and ammunition that will undergo testing. The contract includes accessories, spares and contractor support. It also provides the other Department of Defense services and, potentially, Foreign Military Sales countries the opportunity to purchase the NGSW weapons.
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Who knows how smoothly this will go, but I can imagine that there will be hard to solve issues simply coming from the standards the ngsw had to meet.
Both weapons provide significant capability improvements in accuracy, range and overall lethality. They are lightweight, fire more lethal ammunition, mitigate recoil, provide improved barrel performance, and include integrated muzzle sound and flash reduction.
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Gotta love some of the weasel words used in there "lightweight" compared to what? "Mitigate recoil" means nothing. Not sure what "improved barrel performance" is supposed to mean, shooting a high velocity 6.8 on a heavy firing schedule can't be sustainable unless there's some magic I don't know about.

That's all without going into how Vortex plans to power the lpvo/reddot/irvislaser/hud display/rangefinder/ballistic calculator/atmospheric sensor/communication device abomination that sits on top.
 
likeacrackado said:
That's all without going into how Vortex plans to power the lpvo/reddot/irvislaser/hud display/rangefinder/ballistic calculator/atmospheric sensor/communication device abomination that sits on top.
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The idea of cramming all that shit into one device... Who'll be designing the software for that? Will there be over the air updates? I can just see some poor bastard sitting in a foxhole, waiting for a software update on his optic to finish.
 
likeacrackado said:
Already seeing quite the uproar from people declaring that this thing will completely phase out the m16 family immediately . To quote the announcement

Who knows how smoothly this will go, but I can imagine that there will be hard to solve issues simply coming from the standards the ngsw had to meet.

Gotta love some of the weasel words used in there "lightweight" compared to what? "Mitigate recoil" means nothing. Not sure what "improved barrel performance" is supposed to mean, shooting a high velocity 6.8 on a heavy firing schedule can't be sustainable unless there's some magic I don't know about.

That's all without going into how Vortex plans to power the lpvo/reddot/irvislaser/hud display/rangefinder/ballistic calculator/atmospheric sensor/communication device abomination that sits on top.
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I can see them replacing M110s and M249s, with some adoption of peripherals, but I doubt there will be a full replacement for the M16 platform. There’s been over a half century of fine tuning to make one of the best platforms out there, and there will need to be a significant advancement to justify the cost. The biggest takeaway from the NGSW program will hopefully be a standard issue suppressor.
 
likeacrackado said:
Already seeing quite the uproar from people declaring that this thing will completely phase out the m16 family immediately . To quote the announcement

Who knows how smoothly this will go, but I can imagine that there will be hard to solve issues simply coming from the standards the ngsw had to meet.
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The choice of a new bimetallic cartridge alone made me :story:, while the rifle & caliber themselves are really just incremental improvements over the M16. Fuck the 249 though, that piece of shit should've been replaced a long time ago.

Personally, I was hoping to see a full composite case adopted, since that's the trickle-down tech most likely to end up in civilian markets, and have the biggest impact on ammo prices/availability down the road.
 
There's also the logistics considerations of how many millions of rounds the US military, and NATO by extension, have stockpiled of 5.56.
 
1Tonka_Truck said:
I saw they want to rechamber the M240 as well. With the M24 long gone, does that leave any 7.62x51 platforms in inventory?
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I've heard that, and it'd probably be more cost-effective than replacing them with a different system. They're also more robust & easier to repair than the M60 was, so I don't figure we'll see 240s turning into rattling assemblages loosely holding formation, like the 60s got in the end. At least not in our lifetimes.
 
I think coasties and EOD still have a good deal of m14s? Those are x51.

Frankly I thought SIG wasn't going to make it. The GD looked like a shoe in from what reading I did. I also am stupid so, perhaps I'm wrong in my assumption.

Yeah this won't kill the AR platform at all or anytime soon but it's the next step or a plan to phase.

6.8 uppers and multi cal lowers because government program means spend as much as you can with as little common sense as possible, and that will be 30 years down the line.
 
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