3D printed *real* guns are apparently *real*

 awesomeness, blather, news, science, weapons, youtube  16 Responses »
Nov 082013
 

Well, I’ll be. Not that long ago, people were going bugnuts because someone had printed a crappy single-shot all-plastic zip gun. Looked ugly, wasn’t reliable, couldn’t hit a damned thing with it, yet the hoplophobes in the media and  politics wet themselves in panic. So how are they going to handle THIS:

World’s First 3D Printed Metal Gun

The gun is a classic 1911, a model that is at once timeless and public domain. It functions beautifully: Our resident gun expert has fired 50 successful rounds and hit a few bull’s eyes at over 30 yards. The gun is composed of 30+ 3D Printed components with 17-4 Stainless Steel and Inconel 625 materials.

3D-Printed-Metal-Gun-Low-Res-Press-Photo-1024x638

This is fairly staggering, and far sooner than I expected. Importantly:

It’s rifled and the rifling was built directly into the part – or as we like to say, “grown” into the part – using 3D Printing. This gun has NOT BEEN MACHINED. We used hand tools for some post processing (our finishers are wonderful), but we did not machine this gun.

There is, however, a downside:

The industrial printer we used costs more than my college tuition (and I went to a private university)

So… no home-printed 3D gun for *you,* ‘ceptin’ that yer some kinda bajillionaire.

At least… not yet.

And according to a later posting, there’s some more bad news:

Should we decide to sell the gun, the cost of the 1911 would be in the five-figures.

Yikes. Ten grand is a *bit* much for a 1911.

A metal printed gun requires commercial equipment that costs anywhere from $400,000 to $1,000,000+.

Drat.

Now, something a little funny seems to be going on with the action, when the feller fires three rounds in sequence:

[youtube u7ZYKMBDm4M]

Their stated purpose in creating this pistol was to demonstrate the strength and practicality of 3D laser sintered metal components. This could, of course, have been accomplished with any of a number of different non-firearm projects… but by printing up a gun, they’ve gotten themselves some press. Had they made some other sort of widget, nobody would be talking about them. So… success!

Today it’s a million dollar machine. In ten years? Maybe ten grand, who knows… still too much for most of us, but well within the means of a proper gunsmithing business.

 Posted by at 8:38 pm

Anyone know this Tommygun???

 art, blather, history, weapons  4 Responses »
Oct 262013
 

*Many* years ago (maybe 20?) I read an article in a firearms magazine about a highly modified Thompson submachine gun. I was not in a position to copy the article or obtain the magazine, and I’ve been looking for the subject of the article ever since. Sadly, my memory is dim on the details.

IIRC, an industrial designer – or perhaps just an artist – sometime in the 1920’2 to 1940’s chopped the bejeebers out of a Thompson, turning it into a *true* pistol… just a few inches of barrel ahead of the drum magazine, and the receiver was shortened drastically so that it ended not much aft of the pistol grip. As memory serves, the gun was described as fully functional despite the massive changes. I recall it being nickel plated or some such, and barely recogizable as having once been a Tommygun. Familiar to anyone?

 Posted by at 11:31 pm

Neutral Particle Beam Weapon concepts

 blather, drawings, history, nukes, projects, science, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Oct 172013
 

Very little has emerged from the Strategic Defense Initiative days revealing *actual* weapons designs. With the exception of some of the Brilliant Pebbles and Zenith Star designs, almost nothing apart from unreliable artwork has been released. On occasion, though, bits have come out. Three neutral particle beam satellite weapon concepts were shown, in low-rez and frustrating detail, in a report on power systems for SDI use.

The Martin-Marietta NPB concept:

Martin NPB

The Ge/Lockheed NPB concept:

 

GE Lockheed NPB

The TRW concept:

TRW NPB

The drawings are too small to glean details such as full-scale dimensions, or even get a really good handle on layouts. The GE/Lockheed design seems to come equipped with large  panels, presumably radiators, held within a triangular cross-section framework.  The Martin and TRW concepts appear to be roughly cylindrical. And unlike the majority of the artwork produced for public consumption, here you can make out the nuclear reactors meant to power the systems.

While dimensions are either unavailable or illegible in these illustrations, two show the SP-100 reactor and associated radiator system.  The radiators change from illustration to illustration of the SP-100, so cannot be firmly relied upon as a scale reference, and the Sp-100 reactor itself is little more than a dot, but this illustration of the SP-100 should help to give a rough idea how big it, and by extension the NPB concepts, were going to be.

sp-100

 Posted by at 2:28 pm

SDI Neutral Particle Beam weapon

 art, history, nukes, projects, science, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons  10 Responses »
Oct 102013
 

Another space-based anti-missile system contemplated for the Strategic Defense Initiative was the neutral particle beam. Specifics are exceedingly thin as befits a concept that sounds a *lot* like science fiction.

In practice, the system is a particle accelerator that ionizes hydrogen atoms, grabs them with massively powerful magnetic fields and accelerates them to near light speed. At the end o the weapon, extra electrons are stripped from the atoms, making the hydrogen atoms electrically neutral. This makes them largely impervious to natural and artificial magnetic fields, so they go where you aim ’em and can’t be readily shielded against. However, atmosphere rapidly scatters the beam, so space basing is really the only option. Unlike a laser beam, a mirrored surface would not faze a neutral particle beam. In fact, much of the damage would be done *within* the target, as the hydrogen atoms would penetrate  some distance before being stopped and depositing their kinetic energy as heat.

Most of the artist impressions of NPB weapons that I recall showed U-shaped accelerators. By folding the accelerator in half, the spacecraft would be more compact. The energy requirements meant that nuclear powerplants were needed, but the power requirements –  billions of Watts  for a tiny fraction of a second – would make the power storage and supply issue entertaining. If that issue is cleared up, firing rates of perhaps thousands of shots per second would be possible.

Heres a terrible-quality image of unknown origin, but shows the basic idea:

npb art

Another illustration, credited to Los Alamos National Lab. Note that what at first glance appears to be solar panels is actually transparent; these are either the result of severe artistic license or depict not solar panels but radiators.

neutral particle beam 2013-10-06

I’ve seen virtually nothing  to judge the scale of these systems, but there were multiple references to NPB weapons being very large systems requiring numerous launches and considerable on-orbit assembly. Studies in the early 1990’s indicated that operational NPB weapons would probably not be feasible before 2025.

 Posted by at 4:24 pm

SDI Railgun

 art, history, Hmm..., models, nukes, projects, spacecraft, weapons  10 Responses »
Oct 082013
 

During Reagan’s “Star Wars” days, concept art of space-based anti-missile systems were cranked out on a fairly regular basis. Much of it was, most likely, pure artistic license with little basis in reality. However, some of the weapon artwork was clearly based on actual engineering, such as the Zenith Star and Brilliant Pebbles programs.

One uncertain design is shown in the painting below. It represents a space-based railgun, apparently capable of firing projectiles at high speed in rapid succession. While attributed to the DoD, the vehicle has “Boeing” painted on it. Unlike a lot of the designs, this one at least has a sufficiency of attitude control thrusters. Power for the system is probably nuclear, with the reactor on the far right, surrounded by conical radiators.

Seems it’d make a nifty display model.

railgun 2013-10-06

 Posted by at 10:45 pm

MSNBC: Your source for “news”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Sep 192013
 

They went to the bother of creating a crappy computer animation of the Navy Yard massacre. And they further went to the bother of arming the perp not with the shotgun he actually had, not just with an Evil AR-15, not just the full-auto M4 (the military weapon the AR-15 most resembles), but an M4 with an M203 40mm grenade launcher.

Spectacular.

[youtube qs35NnT6lZk]

 Posted by at 7:43 am
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