Comments by "" (@tomk3732) on "I 3D-Printed a Glock to See How Far Homemade Guns Have Come" video.

  1. But why you would bother, just get a lathe and a milling attachment (or make one) and you can make any rifle or handgun you want. Manufacture any gun at home with ease. Some people do that today - in fact 1000s of gunsmiths in the world do this kind of work today. Everyday. As an example, why would you attempt to create a spring when you can create a spring by winding a metal wire around steel core on a lathe. It will be like 100x more durable than any attempt at metal 3D printing a spring. Also 3D metal printing has issues printing stuff that will survive pressures needed in rifle's chamber.
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  2. Can someone tell the masses people have been producing rifles for like 150 years or so now - modern style rifles. With 150 year old tech you can produce a rifle. Rifles were made, mass produced, by Polish resistance, during WWII in total conspiracy. Mass produced. Full auto. That was more than 80 years ago with basic tooling available 80 years ago (!)
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  3. Why use a CNC - you can just use manual milling machine.
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  4.  @toddabbott781  But its not pushing a button - its WAY more skills needed. You need to have programming skills, machining skills, engineering skills etc. With manual machining a lot of things are simpler when making simple things such as weapons - weapons are excellent at being worked on with manual machines. Finally its faster to do a prototype in many cases on manual machine than on a CNC. Especially when changes are needed. This is why repair shops in factories have manual machines, not CNC.
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  5.  @toddabbott781  Sure, you still need the pre-build lower to 80% or cut to size metal and know how to locate it. Also you are limited to just this stuff, not any other stuff to make without engineering skills. Take regular 3D printer (plastic) its all fun and stuff if you can engineer your own stuff - the actual library of things you can download is super limited & there are very few things that are of any use. Trust me on that one. Producing almost any part of a rifle is EASY on manual machine for semi capable hobby machinist from scratch - so adding a CNC to it is not much of help, maybe time wise. CNC is for small production runs. What is difficult & for which you need to create your own machine + get special drill bits + get special reamer is making the barrel. What good is the lower if you cannot make the barrel of your rifle? For US only purposes this does make some sense, as in US the lower is by law for some reason considered a rifle essential. But in reality its the barrel that is far more difficult. In fact, if you were to remove from the market the drills and the rifling reamers you would make it super difficult for anyone to make weapons (yes you can make at home both the drills and the reamers but it is difficult for average home machinist, even one can say difficult for advanced guys).
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  6.  @toddabbott781  There are no millions and millions of 3D printing files. Not on this site or any other site that I know of - there were few things I found of moderate use but most things in 1000s are ... toys. I did go to Cults3D. Toys and more toys. No tools. First of all a printer prints i.e. it deposits metal to create a new object. If you are cutting something out of raw aluminum you are milling the part. A small CNC machine for hobby use will run you around 10k or so - check out Tormach - they are one of the older established brands. LOL, about "lathe attachment" - to do rifling you need long drills, custom made bushings and ability to insert or remove these - you need a 14x40 lathe that weights around 1500 lbs or so, or you are making a toy gun ;) Also you need high pressure oil pump, the drill bits are very expensive as they are made to special size and have holes in the middle to push oil through. Oil is under like 300 PSI. Check out "rifling machine". To make brass casing you would need a press and a special form. If this was so easy to do all 1 million plus people reloading their guns would have done it LONG time ago. But instead they buy their brass. 3D printing brass to specs would be very difficult, I assume maybe doable with a 250k machine, maybe - this would be very hard. Your description is of automated production line - if this could be done cheap like few large arms manufacturers would be all over it. The current process is quite automated. If you can put what you say for 7500 I buy it immediately. I trade machinery as a hobby. I am actually building my first CNC milling machine. Realistic pricing would be around 10,000 for CNC machine at minimum. Than a lathe, say 6000, and you need to make your own rifling adapter for say 1000. 3D printer is cheap, say 300. Hydraulic press would need to be somewhat automated if you want to actually make your own casing, but a pneumatic model should be had for 2000 without much automation. Dies would be expensive - if there is a set to buy I assume it would be up to 1000. Other stuff say 2000 to 3000 - measuring stuff, vices, basic tooling. So I say for well over 20000 you could have an nice setup to make ghost guns. Oh and I have friends who do what I say above, so I know how much effort and learning curve it is to do proper rifling. For experienced machinist we are talking about 5 to 10 tries, with initial tries taking up to a day. After that you can make barrels like two per day that are more accurate than what you can buy at a store. Oh, and stainless costs 2x as much as regular.
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