WikiWeapon
A liberator for all
An interesting project to create a one-use, 22 caliber printable handgun for 3D printers. In case they’re needed.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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August 20th, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I don’t think they’re talking about a single-use Liberator style pistol. It seems from the video that they’re striving toward a “100% printable” autoloader.
A single shot .22 pistol is nothing difficult — many years ago a high school friend made one in wood shop entirely out of hardwood (including the “barrel”) and it held up for a few shots before cracking.
If they’re serious about printing a pistol, they’re going to have to consider a metal slide and barrel. One solution to the problem of creating a slide without a mill is to bandsaw, grind and file multiple steel plates. These are then bolted and silver soldered together with the necessary channels, slots and recesses formed out of the stacked plates, like a Master Lock. (L. Neil Smith wrote a science fiction novel featuring such a design.)
Making a serviceable barrel from a billet isn’t too hard. Making a decent one with actual rifling is another story.
August 21st, 2012 at 7:14 am
You’d think, from all the futurepundo types, that machine tools were hard to find in this country, or that learning to run one was harder than programming language. What the hell is so mystical about metalworking? Digital Luddites. They teach it in school, you know. It’s not like you need a father.
Truth of the matter: you need your own garage, have to clean your own fingernails, and your childhood must have included something beyond getting to the third level and saving the Princess. If that rules you out, you shouldn’t be making guns.
August 21st, 2012 at 9:10 am
All this reminds me of Cryptonomicon.
“What the hell is so mystical about metalworking? Digital Luddites.”
Good point. Even under Nazi occupation, Polish metalworkers turned out submachineguns in Warsaw.
August 21st, 2012 at 10:33 am
Whatcha gonna do when they ban 3D printers? Hope you have a Home Depot within rickshaw distance.
August 21st, 2012 at 10:46 am
The principle of the reprap machine is that even a 3d printer can be made at home, so banning them (licensing) is pretty much out.
A 3D printer is very little more than a hot glue gun on a computer controlled mount that moves left and right, back and forth.
August 21st, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Watcha gonna do when they ban reprap machines? We can do this all day!
August 21st, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I’m a child of the digital age. I know programming languages. I can build a computer. I also play the hell out of video games.
However, I was raised on a farm. I can weld, operate cnc machinery, and generally anything mechanical. While I agree a lot of my generation is like y’all have stated, there are plenty like me.
That being said, I plan on making a 3d printer sometime soon and trying my hand at some of the printed lower receivers for an ar15 I have saved. Something like this “liberator” would be fun too.
August 21st, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Why go to all the trouble to build one from plastic, which may or may not meet the requirements of SAAMI pressures, when you can find guns in almost every locale?
Learn to SCUBA dive, then systematically start searching your local lakes and rivers, near to where a person may stop a car and toss a gun into the water. When I was in the county Marine Patrol, we knew of several guys who regularly scoured the river bottom below certain bridges which had all the attributes to be the perfect dumping ground for stolen guns, and other valuable loot. There were about 5 such places in the Portland Metro area.
These guys regularly turned guns in to us. I suspect that maybe not all they found were turned in, but we had other things to do than try to make a case on the gun-gleaners, so we left them alone.