Criminals Find New Uses for 3D Printing. 3D printers--desktop devices that can print out objects as easily as your home inkjet prints out documents--are getting less expensive and more common every day, and they promise to revolutionize manufacturing in the same way that desktop printing revolutionized publishing. I've written elsewhere about how we're at the start of a 3D printing revolution. In the past year, people have used 3D printing to tackle everything from spare parts to entire cars to blood vessels. It seems as though a new use for 3D printing emerges every week. Unfortunately, though the promise of 3D printing is great, we've also begun to see glimpses of its dark side as criminals--and average citizens who are up to no good--think up dangerous and creepy new uses for 3D printed material.
How About Your Car Key? Proscribed Printables. Interesting milestone in open-source 3D printing over at Thingiverse: User crank has published a freely-downloadable magazine for the ubiquitous AR-15 rifle.
As downloaded, crank’s magazine only holds five rounds, but a person with basic 3D modelling skills could modify it with little difficulty to produce a “high-capacity” magazine. I’m not sure what the current state of law on magazine size limits is, but prior to the sunset of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (Wikipedia) in 2004, manufacture of an AR-15 magazine with a capacity of more than 10 rounds was an offense.
The Digital Promise. Additive Manufacturing Could Save DoD Time, Materials and Money By ALEXANDRA SCHWAPPACH Published: 24 October 2011 A little-known technology that essentially makes something out of nothing could mean cheaper, faster weapons and equipment for the Defense Department, according to some top military researchers. And the Pentagon already is embracing it. Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM), or additive manufacturing, uses a computer image to fabricate an item by feeding metal wires into an electron beam that melts the wires and fuses them layer by layer, piece by piece, into a finished product.