3D printing and gun parts

By now, we're all familiar with the drawbacks of currently available tech for affordable 3D printing of firearms parts (like AR receivers). I just came across this article on some of the tech that NASA is developing for METAL 3D printing. I gotta think this will have the gun grabbers crapping themselves...

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/08...rocket-engine/

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NASA hot-fired a rocket engine using an injector fabricated from layers of a nickel-chromium alloy powder. That’s cool. What’s cooler? They used 3-D printing to create it. It’s the biggest printed engine component the agency has tested and it’s a big step for NASA, which hopes to implement the technique across several facets of space travel.
The injector component is part of the rocket engine that allows the hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen to pass through to the combustion chamber, where the thrust is produced. The engine tested with the 3-D printed injector developed 20,000 pounds of thrust, about 10 times more than any previous engine that’s used a printed part.
“We took the design of an existing injector that we already tested and modified the design so the injector could be made with a 3-D printer,” Brad Bullard, the propulsion engineer responsible for the injector design, explained in a statement from NASA. “We will be able to directly compare test data for both the traditionally assembled injector and the 3-D printed injector to see if there’s any difference in performance.”
Using selective laser melting, layers of the nickel-chromium alloy were printed by Directed Manufacturing Inc. of Texas. The injector was designed by NASA and the resulting data from the test will be available to other U.S. companies.
NASA has big plans for 3-D printing. In addition to simply reducing the costs of rocket engine components, the agency is also looking to use the technique to print tools on the International Space Station. Printing food for long space trips is another idea being explored, and one day astronauts could print parts when the nearest repair shop is millions of miles away.
The printed injector used in the engine test is still being analyzed, but early data shows it withstood pressures up to 1,400 pounds per square inch and temperatures of 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit, good news for NASA’s hopes of further expanding the use of printed rocket engines.

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Awww man, NASA gets all the coool toys! [gohome]

It is quite cool - though with the cheapest of the real metal 3d printers currently over six figures, and not expected to drop below $25,000 or so within the next decade, it won't have quite the same impact as the sub-$1000 3d plastic printer.

Anyone who could afford a 3d printer could already afford a cnc turning center and be cranking out real metal gun parts.

They're also working on a food printer if you haven't heard of it. Things like this are necessary for long voyages in space (such as Mars) where you can take lots of ingredients in powder form and create nearly any meal/taste you can imagine.

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spa...e_3d_food.html

Isn't a 3D printer the same as a mold when it boils down to it?

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Originally Posted by Irving

Isn't a 3D printer the same as a mold when it boils down to it?

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I guess it'd be more of a digital mold, in that there isn't a physical mold but the program tells the motors to stop placing plastic/metal/food/etc at a specific spot and move to the next layer.

I think the really cool part is the 3D scanning THEN printing. Saw a video on that where they scanned a crescent wrench, then printed it, in full, in one step and it was able to be used.

Again, its the technology necessary for long term space voyages. Not to mention, third world countries. Forget to tie a tether to your only crescent wrench in space and it floats away. Not a big deal if Houston can email you the 3D printer file and bam, you're only set back a few hours.

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Originally Posted by Irving

Isn't a 3D printer the same as a mold when it boils down to it?

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No, it is called metal sintering. Essentially a laser combining powdered metal. It has been around for quite a while, but is very expensive equipment (as circuits noted). If you own any knives with CPM S##V blades, they are metal sintered.

Also of note. The guys jerking off to this technology dream of it being implemented in most households. A customer would purchase the file, which in turn prints the part purchased. With file sharing I don't see how it would be practical. Not to mention the start up costs. But again, this is the futuristic view they have.

I realize they are not the same. Perhaps what I should have should have asked was, "Do you think people were as excited about molding, as they are about 3D printing?"

Not sure dude. They have brittle plastic in common initially.

I bet they were stoked when they figured it out, and probably had the same amount of skeptics. Look how far it has come though. The development was before my time.
Paging old school injection mold operators.

At an Office Depot near you. Though I don't think 5.5x5.5x5.5 will work for rifle parts...

http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/...rs/N=5+551578/

It'd work for small bits, but you'd probably have to modularize an existing design to print in that small of a footprint. Even with a bigger volume heated bed printer, there are limits to how big you can make things, simply because they tend to warp and curl, and depending on the volume of your extruder and speed of your head, you need to keep laying down new plastic before the layer below has cooled down too much for the pieces to successfully fuse to the each new layer.

Larger build volumes start to need to be totally enclosed, and internally heated to the hotbed temperature, which ups the cost hugely, and before you know it, you're getting out of the small hobby range and up into five figures. A 12x12 heated bed machine is pretty much the biggest you can go before you have to enclose it and heat the enclosure, at least if you want to print single pieces that take advantage of that much printing area.