Category: General

3D printed firearm

3d Printed Firearm

Via Adam Greenfield, comes the news about a member of the AR 15 forums (the AR15 is a semi-automatic rifle, a civilian version of the M16) claiming to have successfully 3D printed a working firearm:

To recap, I have an old Stratasys 3D printer (mid-to-late 90s machine, but works fine) and early last summer I printed a modified version of the lower from cncguns.com (I beefed up the front takedown lugs, bolt hold lugs, and added an integral trigger guard).

It’s had over 200 rounds of .22 through it so far and runs great! To the best of my knowledge, this is the world’s first 3D printed firearm to actually be tested, but I have a hard time believing that it really is the first.

3d Printed Firearm lower receiver

While this firearm is composed of a 3d printed lower receiver (which holds the ammunition clip, trigger and butt stock) and a regular upper which holds the firing mechanism, creating the gas-pressure required for the bullet to fire, this is undoubtably a harbinger of things to come. What will happen when metal sintering machines become cheap, available, and with the right tolerances to withstand the pressure of a bullet discharing?

At what point will government start to restrict printing machine or digital files? Adobe Photoshop already can detect the presence of banknotes and disallow printing banknotes (as does some copiers and printers) based on the presence of EURion constellation found on banknotes (constellation found below, which would render this webpage unprintable).

Further on in the thread user ultramagbrion comments:

As far as the manufacture of firearms goes , I dont think these machines will force any law changes , one way or the other . It’s still just a matter of making something , whether it be a decorative widget for your daughter , or a suppressor baffle for your buddy in the militia . . . .somethings are GTG , and some are verboten .

Laws are laws , and they’re already in place to say what you can and cant make , and what you can or can’t do with it once it IS made . I dont think the ATF is going to care HOW you made the suppressor baffle , but the fact that you made it in the first place . Whether you hand carved it with a Dremel and file , spun it up on your bench-top Southbend , hammered it out from a store-bought washer , or spit out 400 an hour from your $400 antique screw machine or $400,000 CNC turning center . . . . the baffle is still illegal to own without jumping through the proper hoops .

At what point will we be making the ammunition so expensive that the 3d printed firearms are worthless piles of plastic?

Happy Leap Second!

Readers, tell me: How did you spend your leap second?

Update 2 July 2012

Well, looks like the Leap Second of 2012 crashed part of the Internet:

Yesterday’s leap second killed half the Internet, including Pirate Bay, Reddit, LinkedIn, Gawker Media and a host of other sites. Even an airline. Any Linux user processes that depends on kernel threads had a high chance of failing. That includes MySQL and many Java servers like webapps, Hadoop, Cassandra, etc. The symptom was the user process spinning at 100% CPU even after being restarted. A quick fix seems to be setting the system clock which apparently resets the bad state in the kernel (we hope).

The underlying cause is something about how the kernel handled the extra second broke the futex locks used by threaded processes. Here’s a very detailed analysis on the failing code but I’m not sure it’s correct. According to this analysis the bug was introduced in 2008, then fixed in March 2012. But it may be the March fix is part of the problem. Patch here. OTOH most of the systems that failed will be running kernels older than March so the problem must go further back. Time is hard, let’s go shopping.

Prince Holds The Katamari On His Shoulders

Prince Holds The Katamari On His Shoulders

This was for my sculpture 1 class at the Academy of Art University over in SF. we were to make a sculpture in wax to be cast into bronze. The topic of katamari damacy came up with a friend and i decided i might wanna do something in that theme… but then again i also wanted to make an Atlas holding the world on his shoulders… so i thought about it and the only logical conclusion is that i should do both!

The sculpture is 9 lbs. of cast bronze, 8″ tall, with a liver of sulfur cold patina base on both pieces and then a cupric hot patina on the Prince. the Katamari is designed to balance on the back/arms of the Prince so the two pieces are not welded together (this was an aesthetic choice because it’s really cool holding the ball on its own and also i wanted to make sure the patina on both was distinctly separate). the Katamari was cast hollow with one bump missing which was then welded on later.

What is the Katamari Damacy? Only the trippiest and most awesome game for Playstation 2, where you have a sticky ball and you have to roll larger and larger things. All of this is to fix the damage the King of All Cosmos‘ created after a night of binge drinking which wiped out all the stars from the sky. The King, who is dissatisfied with his 5-cm-tall son’s small size, charges the Prince to go to Earth with a “katamari”—a magical ball that allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow to collect enough material to recreate the stars and constellations. If you play long enough The Prince is successful, and the sky is returned to normal, but the Earth is destroyed.

Like I said, it is pretty awesome and hypnotizing game.

See more photos of the Prince Holds The Katamari On His Shoulders.

prince holds the katamari on his shoulders

prince holds the katamari on his shoulders

E. chromi – color-coded bacteria

E. chromi is a collaboration between designers and scientists in the new field of synthetic biology. In 2009, seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of coloured pigments, visible to the naked eye. They designed standardised sequences of DNA, known as BioBricks, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria.

Each BioBrick part contains genes selected from existing organisms spanning the living kingdoms, enabling the bacteria to produce a colour: red, yellow, green, blue, brown or violet. By combining these with other BioBricks, bacteria could be programmed to do useful things, such as indicate whether drinking water is safe by turning red if they sense a toxin. E. chromi won the Grand Prize at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).

E. chromi

How Will Greece Get its Drachma Back? Put a Stamp on it!

So it seems like everyone is talking about Greece, and how might Greece exit the Euro so that it can devalue its currency and begin to end its deep recession. If you want monetary policy and commentary, check out these articles:

I don’t know if Greece will be part of the European Union in six months (my guess is no), but I’m not going to take that bet.

More interesting to me is something found in this passage:

Printing and distributing new notes would be no easy feat. In 2003 the US-led coalition managed to do it in Iraq in less than three months. But that required the efforts of De La Rue, a British speciality printer, a squadron of 27 Boeing 747s and 500 armed Fijian guards to ease the process.

I’m more interested in how exactly they will, possibly overnight, physically switch their currency from the Euro to the Neo-Drachma. Well, it might be as easy as putting a stamp on the banknotes, which has been done for hundreds of years, but recently in the former Czechoslovakia:

Thus, the Czech government and the [Czech National Bank] decided on January 19, 1993 to separate the currency. After secret negotiations with the Slovak side, the separation date was set as February 8, 1993, and the Czech-Slovak Monetary Union ceased to exist less than six weeks after it came to being.

“The separation was publicly announced on February 2. Starting with February 3, all payments between the two republics stopped and border controls were increased to prevent transfers of cash from one country to the other. During the separation period between February 4-7 (Thursday through Sunday), old Czechoslovak currency was exchanged for the new currencies. The new currencies became valid on February 8. Regular Czechoslovak banknotes were used temporarily in both republics and were distinguished by a paper stamp attached to the face of the banknote. The public was also encouraged to deposit cash on bank accounts prior to the separation since a person could only exchange CSK 4,000 in cash. Business owners were not subjected to this limit. Coins and small denomination notes (CSK 10, 20 and 50 in the Czech Republic and CSK 10 and 20 in Slovakia) were still used after the separation for several months. Nevertheless, such notes and coins only accounted for some 3% of currency in circulation each. On the other hand, the notes of CSK 10, 20 and 50 accounted for some 45 percent of the total number of banknotes. The stamped banknotes were gradually replaced by new Czech and Slovak banknotes. This process was finished by the end of August 1993.”

Source: Stability of Monetary Unions: Lessons from the Break-up of Czechoslovakia, by Jan Fidrmuc, Július Horváth, June 1998

via A Primer on the Euro Breakup.

So to physically make the currency change, the Greek government (which doesn’t exactly have the reputation for quick and speedy service) might have to do the following:

  • Design & agree on the stamp
  • Print up these stamps
  • Distribute stamps throughout Greece
  • Freeze all outgoing transfers
  • Announce the currency change
  • Offer to stamp bills for the next “X” days (where “X” is less than five or so days)

All without a run on the banks or civil unrest in a very short amount of time. We live in exciting times, and if I had some spare change (sorry) I would go to Athens to cover and photograph a currency exchange.

Coincidentally, when I was looking up stamped banknotes, I found this Depression Scrip from Fostoria, Ohio (above) and from New Philadelphia, Ohio (below).

Depression scrip was used during the depression era (1930’s) as a substitute for government issued currency. Because of the banks closing temporarily and the lack of physical currency, someone had to come up with another form of currency to keep the economy going and a way for trade to continue. Therefore the old idea of local currency was reborn. Paper, cardboard, wood, metal tokens, leather, clam shells and even parchment made from fish skin was used. At one point, the U.S. Government considered issuing a nation wide scrip on a temporary basis. But that idea was quickly shot down by the Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin. Instead, the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing was tasked with increasing their printing of new Federal Reserve notes.

The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore

Print-On-Demand Book Printer

Add to the large pile of things I didn’t know: the privately owned Harvard Book Store owns a print-on-demand service which will print out books from Google Books, out of print titles, or hard to find books and will deliver them via bicycle:

Essentially, Jeff installed a printing press to close the inventory gap with Amazon.  The Espresso Book Machine sits in the middle of Harvard Book Store like a hi-tech visitor to an earlier era. A compact digital press, it can print nearly five million titles including Google Books that are in the public domain, as well as out of print titles. We’re talking beautiful, perfect bound paperbacks indistinguishable from books produced by major publishing houses. The Espresso Book Machine can be also used for custom publishing, a growing source of revenue, and customers can order books in the store and on-line.

You can walk into the store, request an out-of-print, or hard-to-find title, and a bookseller can print that book for you in approximately four minutes. Ben Franklin would be impressed.

But you don’t even have to go into the store to get a book. If you live in Cambridge and neighboring communities, you can order online and get any book delivered the same day by an eco-friendly Metroped “pedal-truck,” or a bicycle, as I like to call them. Beat that Amazon.

via The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore – Forbes.

Reading and print isn’t dead, just transformed cf., Newspaper Club and Blurb.