Friday 24 May 2013

The 3D printed gun conspiracy


It is interesting to note that certain mainstream news media outlets are entering the debate on the availability of 3D printing technology to the general public. 3D printing has been around in industry for about thirty years, and has traditionally been used for rapid prototyping and small scale production runs. There are a number of different methods of 3D printing but the technology that has brought this technology to the attention of the public is fused filament fabrication. This method takes a drum of plastic filament and heats and extrudes it into thin, bonded layers typical onto a heated build plate. The key reason for this sudden increase in interest is that this technology has now been brought to a price point and level of simplicity that makes it available to almost anyone.

Take the Robuster, a desktop 3D printer manufactured in the UK by RP Techworks. It retails at £1500 and the plastic filament comes in at about £40 per kilo. Not what anyone would call expensive for something that is essentially an industrial prototyping machine. The ease of use is incredible too. From a 3D computer design, many thousands of which are readily available online if you aren’t a designer yourself, the software that ships with this machine automates the process of preparing the image for building and controlling the unit itself, so in literally a couple of mouse clicks anyone could be building a 3D model of anything, from a lampshade to a fully working 3D gun. This is the part that is causing all the media hyperbole.

You can imagine the news stories, even if you haven’t seen them. A working gun, unregistered, uncontrolled, unlicensed, made of plastic so it will pass metal detectors. Certain sections of the press are having a field day, but isn’t that rather missing the point? In the US where this technology is taking hold faster than almost anywhere else in the World the legitimately held guns are far more of an issue than a few hobbyist who are exploring the possibilities of a new technology. No-one in their right mind would actually rely on a firearm created on a 3D printer and made of plastic, and certainly not when the real thing is so ubiquitous and a great deal safer and more reliable.

So why the level of panic in the press? Could it perhaps be that it is better for the elite to make us fear each other than to fear our rulers? If we are scared of our neighbours and what they might be up to then we are less likely to get together into groups and challenge authority. By separating us we are kept isolated and therefore weaker. Isn’t this somewhat more credible than a vast army of secretive terrorists beavering away making dodgy plastic guns to wreak havoc on society?