5/31/2013
5/30/2013
Introducing the WarFairy P-15 3D-Printed AR Stock
Introducing the WarFairy P-15 3D-Printed AR Stock
The 3D printed Liberator pistol may be gone, but it is not forgotten. Even with the Department of State bringing down the banhammer on Defense Distributed’s distribution of the plans online, there can be no stopping the continued development of this new branch of firearms technology, by Cody Wilson or anyone else.
The new WarFairy P-15 AR-15 stock by “Shanrilivan” is proof of that. Part AR-15, part FN P90 the P-15 stock is a modular design that allows you to put together a full-size stock with a custom length of pull even on small, non-commercial 3D printers.
One of the primary limitations on hobby-level 3D printing is object scale. While some inexpensive 3D printers like the LulzBot TAZ can print relatively large objects, many non-commercial 3D printers are limited to much smaller print jobs.
The P-15 gets around scale limitations by being composed of smaller stock parts that are later glued together to make the complete stock. The stock compliments a 3D-printed lower receiver but would work with any standard AR.
Another difference between this stock and most other AR stock designs is that it sports an integrated buffer tube; the stock is the buffer tube, including an extension that passes through a lower receiver’s buffer tower.
It’s a thumbhole stock that connects the pistol grip to the buffer tube. This is a particularly well thought-out design that reinforces the buffer extension, the weakest spot of an AR lower receiver and an especially vulnerable part of a 3D-printed lower.
The first DefDist/Wiki Weapon 3D-printed “firearm” was a 3D-printed lower receiver paired with an AR-57 upper receiver. The lower withstood five direct-blowback impacts before breaking apart on the sixth,right at the buffer tower.
Later on, Defense Distributed developed an improved 3D-printed lower receiver that would withstand sustained fire and rigorous use. While this stock is a far cry from a complete rifle, it’s clear that in the future only a small number of manufactured parts will be necessary to complete an AR-15 rifle.
On the one hand, this is just a 3D-printed stock. On the other, however, is something more important. 3D printing has its limitations, material properties that cannot be improved on without a major shift in the underlying technology. This stock accepts those limitation and works around them, highlighting the fact that you can quiet an individual but not the whole 3D printing community.
This technology is freely available and will continue to adapt and improve. If you want to try out the P-15 stock, you can download it at Github. Shanrilivan has stated that a P-15 handguard is also in the works as well as a single-piece P-90-style AR-15 lower receiver/stock unit called the Charon.
5/17/2013
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos) - Forbes
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos) - Forbes:
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Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff
Covering the worlds of data security, privacy and hacker culture.
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5/14/2013 @ 11:02AM |14,808 views
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos)
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A photo of a 3D-printed Liberator pistol posted on Twitter by the New Hampshire group the Free State Project.
Just a week after the release of blueprints for the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun, the firearm known as the Liberator is already reproducing–and evolving.
Photos floating around Twitter and sent to me by readers show the DIY weapon created by the high-tech gunsmithing group Defense Distributed beginning to fulfill its promise: To allow anyone to create a handgun at home with an Internet connection and a 3D printer, potentially circumventing all gun control laws. And the State Department’s legal move late last week to remove those blueprints from Defense Distributed’s website, Defcad.org, may have only made the group’s fans more eager to print their own plastic gun in defiance of the government’s takedown.
A version of the gun printed by Maryland software engineer Travis Lerol with a printed barrel. He says he's also experimenting with metal-reinforced and epoxy-cast barrels as well as different calibers of ammunition. (Click to enlarge.)
Travis Lerol, a 30-year-old former military software engineer in Glen Burnie, Maryland, printed his Liberator (shown at right) within days of its appearing online. Unlike the original printed gun, he says he’s altered his to have a rifled barrel, a move designed to avoid the National Firearms Act, which regulates improvised and altered weapons and has a provision covering “smooth-bored” pistols. He’s also built another version of the barrel for .22 ammunition that uses a metal insert for reinforcement, instead of the entirely-plastic barrel for .380 rounds used in Defense Distributed’s original. And he’s cast versions of the Liberator’s barrel in epoxy that take .380 and .45 ammunition, a design he argues will be more durable than the pure ABS plastic Defense Distributed tested.
“When the Liberator came out, I was pretty curious and also surprised that the barrel hadn’t exploded when they fired it,” says Lerol. “I want to progress it from the entry level it’s at now to something more advanced, and then put that information back up to share.”
A Liberator printed on a $1,725 Lulzbot 3D printer. (Click to enlarge.)
Another DIY gunsmith and engineer, who asked that I call him only “Joe” to protect his anonymity, printed his version of the Liberator (shown at right) over the last weekend on a $1,725 Lulzbot AO-101, a 3D-printer that costs a small fraction of the industrial Stratasys Dimension SST printer that Defense Distributed bought for $8,000 secondhand and used to create its prototype. Joe, who also rifled and extended the gun’s barrel, added metal hardware to hold his gun together rather than the plastic printed pins in the original.
He hasn’t tested his more affordable version of the weapon yet, but he says he’s confident it can fire a .380 round just as well as the gun Defense Distributed printed on its higher-end printer. “I’m an avid gunsmith, and I’m about one hundred percent sure it’s going to work,” he says.
And why print his own gun? Partly defiance of the State Department’s attempt to suppress the gun’s blueprint and partly “just for the hell of it,” he says. “I’m a big believer that information should be free. You can’t ban things outright just because they scare some people,” he says. “Also, it’s a neat concept that hasn’t been done before, and I have the perfect skills to make it happen.”
By all appearances, the State Department’s efforts to take the CAD file for the Liberator offline for possible export control violations have done more to generate interest in the printable gun than to prevent its spread. In just the two days before the government’s takedown letter to Defense Distributed, the gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. It’s also been uploaded at least a dozen times to the Pirate Bay, and more than four thousand users are now making the file available on their computers for download via bittorrent, compared with just a handful early last week.
The Liberator printed on a Stratasys 3D printer by Michael Guslick. (Click to enlarge.)
Downloading the gun’s blueprints has become a kind of “Streisand effect” says Michael Guslick, a hobbyist gunsmith and one of the first engineers to write about his experiments in printing and testing 3D-printable firearm components. Guslick printed his own Liberator using a printer similar to Defense Distributed’s (shown above) and has been searching for others who have printed the gun over the last week.
He says he’s found that only a small fraction of those who download the gun’s blueprints are actually putting them to use. But he compares the weapon’s CAD file to the encryption program PGP, the first strong cryptographic software available to non-government users, which like the Liberator became the target of a State Department investigation for export control violations after it was released online in 1993. “ A lot of people downloaded [PGP's] source code, but very few compiled it,” says Guslick. “It became an act of passive rebellion.”
By the time the State Department decided not to indict PGP’s creator Philip Zimmermann, three years later, his tool had already spread around the world and helped to inspire a cypherpunk movement that created everything from WikiLeaks to Bitcoin. If the backlash against the Liberator’s takedown follows a similar path, the evolution of the 3D-printed gun may be just beginning.
My Dinner with Cody Wilson: "I'm Looking Forward to Jail" | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns
My Dinner with Cody Wilson: "I'm Looking Forward to Jail" | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns:
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Earlier this week I had the pleasure of taking Cody Wilson, mastermind behindDefense Distributed and the Liberator firearm, out to dinner. Well, technically Robert took him out to dinner and I tagged along. But since Robert is otherwise occupied and can’t post at the moment, I get to write the story the way I want. Anyway, while we’ve already interviewed Cody Wilson about the nature of his work and his beliefs (we liked him before he was cool) it was nice to get an update on how he’s doing since he became one of the most feared and hated people to gun control advocates. And let me say that anyone who can make Chuck Schumer brown his pants is a friend in my book . . .
The first thing we wanted to know is if he’s worried about a possible stretch as a guest of the the federal government in one of their high security greybar hotels. Cody’s response: “I’m looking forward to it. It’ll give me time to catch up on my reading.”
As far as he’s concerned, the government might get him on any number of technicalities. Cody started listing the ways that Uncle Sam could justify putting him away, almost as if they were badges of honor — thumbing his nose at their attempts to control the proliferation of firearms. It fits well with the “crypto-anarchist” persona that he’s developed as his efforts with 3D printing have progressed.
Robert was concerned that Cody didn’t have a lawyer already on speed dial in the event of his arrest. We started spit-balling lawyers that might be interested in taking his case, and Cody wasn’t too impressed with any of them. Alan Gottleib was definitely a no-go. “Didn’t he support that Toomey-Manchin background check bill? No, f*** him.”
As the appetizers were being served we started talking about the gun itself, the Liberator, and its technical specifications. At the moment, the only working model is a smoothbore .380 caliber version that technically falls under the “Any Other Weapon” category of U.S. firearms law. Cody says there’s an alternate version available with rifling, but that the rifling would either not survive the first shot or the added pressure would split the barrel. He says he hasn’t tried yet, but based on his experience it won’t be effective. Translation: it won’t work with rifling.
We asked about shotgun shells, and apparently they’ve already tried — and failed. “There’s something about the rapidly expanding cartridge” that Cody says splits the barrel whenever they fire it. Either that, or the plastic wadding gets caught on the side of the barrel and obstructs it.
But the gun isn’t what the members of the mainstream media he’s talked to are most interested in discussing. They want to hear about the implications of the technology, and Cody says that’s exactly the way he wants it. “They all accept the premise,” he says, “that now that the gun is out there nothing can take it back. And that’s the way he wants it portrayed, as if it’s an unstoppable force that governments can’t control. That it has happened, and all there is to do now is watch the aftermath. Can’t stop the signal . . .
“I’ve talked to people who have walked into hacker spaces and seen a row of printers all printing Liberator parts,” Cody said as his roasted chicken dish was being placed in front of him. Hacker spaces are collaborative locations where exceedingly nerdy people get together, pool their money to buy equipment and space and experiment with technology, usually including 3D printers. Hacker spaces have popped up in cities across the world, including New York, Washington, D.C., London, Helsinki and Lisbon.
Cody says that there are even Liberators being printed in China right now, which is the reason that there’s a Simplified Chinese version of the “readme” (instruction) file in the download package. “I’m actually meeting a girl later tonight to translate it better.”
“The next big thing is getting a picture of one of these things printed out in another country,” Cody says. He says that he isn’t actively enticing people to break the law in other countries, but according to him a picture of a fully assembled Liberator in the middle of London isn’t far off. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a picture leaks out after he finishes his final exams this weekend.
As for his own future, Cody says that he’ll keep refining the design, but doesn’t want to stay in the limelight. Robert kept offering suggestions as to how to increase his profile and get more publicity for the project, but Cody says that he’s happy to melt back into the background once the furor dies down. But while the spotlight is still on him and his plastic fantastic, he seems to be having tons of fun debating the talking heads. Well, most of them. “I still have to decide if I want to go on Colbert,” he mentioned with some trepidation.
5/03/2013
5/02/2013
The sad fact...
The sad fact of the matter is that the Federal government of the United States has been driven insane by countless wars, coups in the third world, and the espionage of the cold war system. The federal government is now set upon ruling over the planet as a steward deity. Unfortunately it doesn't know what is best for humans, and so in that sense we should all be terrified as this monstrous leviathan stomps around the surface. What is so interesting to me is that there are some humans who want to help this monster obtain absolute control over the bodies and minds of all the inhabitants of this planet. The most explicit, reactionary, and (what I argue are) misguided forms this assistance takes are the so-called gun control campaigns. Now, to be sure, firearms in the hands of civilians are no more guarantee against tyranny than say access to a free and open internet, but they are better than nothing. I am not a strict constitutionalist I should probably add. It's not clear to me that the document can bind those who did not write it and sign it when it was ratified. As for the political future of the United States? I think we may have a civil war by 2018 when the debt comes due. Other than that hard to say. I hope the future is free, as in humans are mostly free to develop their talents and satisfy their curiosity about the world without being droned. Time well tell.
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