The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: 3D Print All The Things

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Andrew and Phil are joined by Nic, friend of the show and fellow miscreant. Join the trio as they dive down the rabbit hole of 3d printing, the applications in the firearms world, and the political scheisse storm that has brewed up around the subject.From Cody Wilson's visionary work to the current efforts to register 3d printers, it's sure to be a wild ride.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices.Intro and Outro Music by Phil RabalaisAll rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical

Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rablis, and my co-host, Andrew Bobo, is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast. Phil and Andrew other side of the mic and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. Phil and Andrew back behind the mic. We have Nick to talk us through how to piss off every one of your local politicians all at the same time. Which is maybe just slight hyperbole given all the hubbub

that's gone on in the 3D printing and the additive manufacturing world around firearms for the last I don't know when did 3D printing really burst onto the firearms scene, guys? I mean, I'm struggling. I'm thinking it's been about eight, nine years. April 2013. April 2013. So, yeah, right at ten years, and time flies when you're, I wouldn't say flirting with the law, but trying to convince politics,

trying to invent new ways around old problems. Yeah, very true. Very true. It's definitely come a long way since 2013. I don't know if you guys are familiar with where the technology was at that time. At that time, almost all 3D printers were kit build printers. almost all 3d printers were kit build printers. So DIY assemble it yourself from a parks kit.

And now we've got things like the Bandu P1 and the Creality K1 speedy that have integrated radar systems for detectable LIDAR systems for detecting failed prints, automatic bed leveling, all kinds of fun new toys. Yeah, I mean, I guess my perspective, like, from a layperson is, like, I remember 3D printing, like, way before Cody Wilson, way before it really came into the firearms world. And it was basically, like, printing, like, chitzy stuff out of blue plastic. You know what I'm saying?

Like, it was, in its earliest days, it was a cool technology. And I think the people that were very forward-thinking were able to really like – were able to see that this was something that was only going to be limited by the imagination of the people who invested themselves in it. You know what I'm saying? Like, think about when, think about every other major manufacturing revolution we've had, whether it was mechanized or whether it was assembly line or whether it was casting or forging or anything else.

It's always been, cool, now we know how to do this. How can we apply it? And that turns into the limiting factor. And it only took a certain amount of time for this to find its way into firearms. And it was, I mean, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but like, you know, it was one, one kind of crazy guy who had the idea of how can we apply this to firearms? He actually got the idea, believe it or not, from everything I've heard,

from a movie. You know, I think it was the original Lost in Space movie. The dad 3D prints a gun, essentially. They had a Star Trek-like replicator device that could make simple mechanical objects, and he makes a gun. I am remembering that now. Oh, my God. So that's where we are. We don't have flying cars, but we do have 3D printers.

And we've got a lot more than that. In fact, even dating back to my shorts and ill-fated college expedition, I went to Milwaukee School of Engineering for a short time, and they had a selective laser-centering 3d printer there that could 3d print metal objects out of non-ferrous non-ferrous and ferrous metals it was pretty cool it was a quarter million dollar machine at the time uh selective laser sintering is still one of the most expensive machines to buy you're talking upwards of fourteen thousand dollars so it's not something you're talking upwards of $14,000. So it's not something you're gonna set up at home, but you don't really need one to make Glock frames.

This here is a 3D printed Glock 19 frame. You can see the support interface there. That was made on a $150 Ender 3. So at the time when I bought the Ender three it was kind of like it was kind of the the entry-level printer of entry-level printers everybody had one any and it was what's called a bed slinger so it's got a build plate of a certain size that moves back and forward in one direction the the head that extrudes material moves left and right and up and down so you got a lot of moving parts there all 3d printers have moving parts and there's really there's really three types that you guys

need to worry about SLA FDM and SLS S SLS selective laser centering, phenomenally expensive. You're not going to use it. SLA or stereolithography printers use a liquid resin that's cured with UV light. Okay. Very simple. You're turning a liquid into a solid.

Sounds kind of like what the U in dental science is. That's exactly what they use to make dental stuff. In fact, a lot of the SLA printers started in rapid prototyping for industry. The materials have come a long way, but they're also still pretty hazardous. For instance, some of the household ones can cause chemical burns. You don't want to touch them with your bare skin. They have to be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol and then cured under a UV light

after you 3D print them to get full curing. So it's not exactly as beginner user friendly, but they are, at least at the beginning, they were a little bit safer than the fdm printers um fdm printers you can think of like a mig welder but with plastic so you've got a spool plastic this guy right here one kilogram spool of pla plastic comes vacuum sealed in the bag it's It's about 330 linear meters of 1.75 millimeter diameter plastic. That's what most of the commercial or the residential printers are going to use. What they do is they liquefy the plastic into a stream, push it through an extruder nozzle of an own size, and draw layers with it.

One layer, one area at a time um sls printers the selective laser centering printers work on a kind of similar principle except they lay a layer of powder down and then they pass a laser beam over the areas so basically laser weld them together um so regardless of what you do what what process you use, 3D printers basically work the same as a 2D printer, except they print a bunch of pages glued together. So your normal 2D printer, which is the closest to an FDM, goes around, traces a 2D layer of your shape at a known height, extruding plastic, moves up to the next layer, and does it again. So your nozzle passes over 100% of the area. I'm not familiar with SLM there, Josh. Sorry, man. It could be, but I haven't used that. I haven't used any of those. You know, if anybody out there watching wants to get into 3d

printing red liquid resin sla or fdm are probably going to be one of the two option are probably going to be your only two options for cost wise you can get into an fdm printer for like 150 200 bucks it's not going to have all the bells and whistles it'll be safe um but it takes quite a long time and the detail is fairly rough that you can get out of it you're talking layer lines of about 0.1 millimeters so i think what is that converted into standard what is that converted into standard freaking tiny uh not really tight it's four thousandths of an inch um you can get freaking tiny to anyone but you can get an engineer yeah let me you can get less than half of that in a liquid resin printer so you can get down to some of the like the

i think the elegum mars will do a one thousand seven inch layer height so the detail they can get so if you're gonna do like art pieces dungeons and dragons miniatures warhammer miniatures those are phenomenal for that the resin is a little more limited than the plastics are for fdm you have a lot more material options with fdm um like pla is probably going to be what you guys are going to start with it's super cheap it's relatively um durable you can make gun frames on it that's what this is made out of my other one of these that i have finished has got about 2 800 rounds through it with no failure so as long as you treat your filament right get your settings right it's not a big deal um you can get into more um engineering type resins like your

pek your nylon your carbon fiber nylon is a new one that came out recently a lot of guys are using for their ars um it's got little pieces of carbon fiber in the plastic itself um so yeah it's basically fiber exactly yeah it's been made exactly yeah it's it's it's the nylon filament that you would use that a lot of people use in firearms frames anyway except with an added filler you're still going to have the weakness in your layer lines like layer to layer so you you can get failure this one turned out really well I don't think there's any imperfections in this one that would show up on camera but essentially what you can get because you're welding individual layers together

every single one of their layers is a potential failure point uh if it's just like a cosmetic part like this little guy here is a piece of terrain i built for a warhammer 40 000 game um the the layers on this one not very strong because i printed it pretty rough you could take this in your hand and break it it's mostly hollow in fact this is probably only a shell of about a millimeter whereas firearm frame is printed a hundred percent so this is completely solid plastic all the way through just like an injection molded part so you can vary what you want for performance-wise durability, print speed, based on your application. Yeah, Kyle, you do need a computer of some kind.

Doesn't have to be much. Most laptops will run a slicer software. So you know how I was mentioning it prints like sheets of paper in the different layers. You start with a model, either a model you have made or a model someone else has made. There's plenty of websites where you can get them. And you can either download the model or build the model yourself and then feed it into slicer software. What that does is it lets you orient the model. Say for this, it's printed bed down, so my hand is the print bed.

The frame was printed just like this. And it goes through and it slices from the bottom up each of those layers and writes the G-code. That G-code is then exported to your printer through either a USB connection, a micro SD card, or an internet connection in the case of some of the more modern printers. Now, you can, I don't know about iPad. There may be slicers that work on iPad. I'm not familiar with the Apple products as much. I mostly run PC.

Now, as far as for preparedness and self-reliance goes, and not just upsetting your local lawmakers making 150 round drums, plastic parts break all the time around the house. My old house, I printed a new refrigerator door handle, took a couple of pieces, epoxied them together, was able to fix my refrigerator without having to go out and buy parts. epoxy them together was able to fix my refrigerator without having to go out and buy parts are they as good as the consumer grade replacements maybe solid maybe depending on the age of your filament because the stuff does degrade with uv light some of it uh depending on how dry it is all almost all plastics are hydroscopic so they'll pull water in from the air so you do have to dry it after a certain length of time so like a food dehydrator works really well for that they do make purpose-built filament dryers that you can just stick your spool in leave it there and turn it on and you can print while it's sitting in there drying um i don't have a purpose-built dryer

but i know they work very well i use a like a jerky dehydrator that i pulled all the trays out of wet filament you're going to get more imperfections you're going to get poorer layer adhesion and it's not going to stick to your build surface. It would be just like trying to bring a to your earlier point, it would be just like trying to make well with a wet surface. Or without flux or without shielding gas.

Yeah, anything that causes porosity or imperfections is definitely a problem. Currently as it stands, some of the better printers like a K1 Speedy runs you about 500 bucks. So if you're looking to get into it, figure out first, how big of things do you want to make? The K1 Speedy, I think has an eight inch by eight inch by 10 inch build area so pretty sizable 500 bucks uh their next bigger one i think is about 11 and a half inches cubed and that's like 800 bucks maybe nine a spool of filament or a liter of resin is probably going to run you about 15 to

20 bucks depending on what you get um if you get into the more exotic materials you could be looking at up to 150 bucks but that's more for like the peak plastic and whatnot if you're using those kind of engineering resins you have a use case for it and it justifies the expense but so i mean the thing is though is what's interesting is you know you're talking about you're talking about 3D printing a refrigerator handle. Okay, that's cool. But what's interesting is the technology has went from the last 10 years, the technology has went from, all right, you can kind of afford a MakerBot. Right.

And you can kind of afford the MakerBots were great at the time, but they can only do so much. Whereas now you're getting to the point where it's getting affordable to buy a good enough printer where you can print Glock frames, you can print magazines,

stuff like that. But now they're coming out with stuff that you can print metal. I mean, they have stuff that they're making stuff for houses. They're building houses out of 3D, like 3D printed houses. And so the idea. I've actually seen them 3D printing a house out of cardboard. Yeah, there's some problems with that. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's a lot of problems. No, no, it's not a problem of like the durability of the houses. It's actually a really great idea. The problem is it actually ends up costing way more to build a house that way because you have all the costs of interior finishing of a concrete brick house and all the costs of hiring out an extreme specialty company.

These costs will go down, granted. But really what those companies are doing right now is proof of concept for space exploration. And that's, you know, yes, has 3D printing revolutionized industrial manufacturing? A hundred percent. I will never try to tell you it hasn't. But 3d printing is always well i should i shouldn't say that it's almost always more expensive than traditional bulk manufacturing methods right well yeah i mean especially when you get the like the electrical that goes into it as well when you have to have run a machine for uh 10 to 15 hours just to print one little one thing or whatever you know what it is to make one unique part it's cheaper but at volume it's not cheaper right but that's what i'm but that's what

i'm saying though is just imagine the the future i mean and i know it's not there as far as car parts because you can't get the hardening the hardening isn't is there isn't there for creating like good nuts and bolts and stuff like that to that to put together a car or anything like that. The idea that you can 3D print a door handle for a fridge. 15, 20 years ago. 50 years ago. When my grandpa

when they were younger they never would have thought that. I'll just... Then on top of that it's like now this this broke well if you have the ability to 3d print metal of any kind uh really i mean you could sit there and be like oh i can i if i want to design a crazy door handle or something like you can and that's the thing is we're getting to that point in our in our technology and in our we're getting to that point

in our our time really i guess that we're able to it's crazy the things that we're getting to that point in our our time really i guess that we're able to it's crazy the things that we're able to do not just firearms but you're taking and i don't think because i don't think you're ever gonna hurt the commercial market uh because people are gonna want to sit there and instead of 3d printing and waiting they're gonna want to go to home depot or or Menards and buy it right away. But if you like the specialty markets, I think you're going to start seeing more of those pop up. You actually are starting to see it in automotive products,

specifically custom motorcycles. Yeah. So the other thing I was going to point out was it's not like, yes, on large scale, 3D printing is not necessarily as cost effective for rapid prototyping it's a hell of a lot faster and a lot cheaper but the other thing i'm noticing is like i have this same discussion about reloading which both of y'all know enough about to understand where i'm coming from but i tell everybody i'm like you know if you're trying to beat cost or time investment

loading like bulk nine millimeter with a hand press you're never going to do it it's just it's not it's not there it's not cheap enough to justify the time you go put an extra hour of work and completely blow that argument up but when you start talking about ammunition that is like exotic or when you start looking at like cartridges that are out of production or really off the beaten path stuff now you're in a situation where the cost to have that produced by somebody else is so high and the time investment to wait is so long reloading it yourself suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense all you know really really quickly and i look at this in somewhat the same guise because like it reese i recently saw where they were starting to 3d print

suppressors yeah and the the trick there is that they're able to make things with additive manufacturing because you're printing in one layer at a time not even that it's cheaper to make it that way it's impossible to make some of these things microchamber baffles. triangles they were i mean they were weird flowing arcs and everything and it was all 3d printed because it was like maximum strength for minimum weight and it's things that it's things like that it's applications that get away from we're trying to reproduce this thing we can make with current design technology with 3d printing and it gets to the point where it's like no we're we're making things that cannot be made without 3d printing and i feel like that's where 3d printing really starts to come to its own is when we stop trying to make it

do what the old tech would do and we start saying okay these are things we could dream up but we literally couldn't we could not build them with casting we couldn't build them with forging we couldn't build them with machining but we can. That's actually had a pretty big impact on my particular industry in mold making. A lot of cooling designs that have come out lately, you can take and build a core that your plastic is molded over with a honeycomb series of helical cooling channels through it that are impossible to machine by any any mad method that you want to use except for maybe building a small stack of inserts down below them that would never be waterproof anyway but you can 3d print it as one solid contiguous piece of metal it's that it's it's gonna be interesting you know and like I mentioned before space exploration is really where it's going to be interesting you know and like i mentioned before space exploration is is really where it's going to be completely revolutionary because no longer would you have to bring all of

your spare parts with you you know oh you can you can you can 3d print suppressors i mean there are people that are currently form wanting 3d printed suppressors i know a couple people that are working on developing a few and a few outside of the u.s that are developing them in countries where they're not regulated and you can 3d print a can for an ar-15 i've seen them puncture yeah yeah hawksworks uh i just looked at all the plastic hawksworks is one of the ones that doesn't even need a printed it yeah no yeah and it's but it's interesting because that's the thing is you have the ability for the engineers and everything like that. You can mock up something in metal to a point. But the way that some of their flow through technology that they've been really pushing to actually pull some of the gases now, instead of the gases going back and blowing back into your face

a lot of them now they redirect and they go out the front of the the suppressor and so to me that to me they're and being able to 3d print it and stuff just makes that product even better definitely especially since it's the tolerances and everything like they're having great luck with it and i mean it's lasted i don't know i mean i don't know how many rounds they have through one of them i can't remember but uh they it's went through some fbi uh some stuff with the fbi some uh different tests and to figure out what the fail point is and everything like that and they're they're not failing they're they're they're just as good and they're lighter yeah. And pretty much lighter than a standard suppressor that's made out of metal.

Right, because it really only has to be self-supporting. It does not need to support machining pressures. Exactly. And see, that's the thing is, what company was it? AAC? I don't remember what company it was. They just released a series, basically a recall on a line of suppressors for a certain number. I can't remember what the number exact for the range was, but they found a weakness in one of the welds. They found a weak point to where it was blowing.

Because of the gases and all that stuff, it was it was it was blowing it was because of the gases and all that stuff it was it was blowing uh it was causing failure catastrophic catastrophic failures and if you have the i mean and so yeah that's that's one thing and yeah i mean i'm not saying that the 3d printing stuff can't fail it can it has every possibility of failure of a traditional well applying exactly but if you if you have if you have a series of 3d printers set up and you have okay this this suppressor this the program that you have the the file that you have you know it works it's been proven to work you have that exact same file that you go to each or you know you print every single time off of with the exact same like the

filament uh like the filament brand or whatever it is like you you keep to the certain specs the the likelihood of it failing are extremely it is it is lower but unfortunately with um with the sls printers which they're using the selective laser centering to print those i believe it's selective laser centering to get the tolerances they're trying to achieve. You do have to x-ray everything that comes off those to ensure that you don't have any voids. If you get excess

humidity in that powder, because it's a very, very fine powder and it sticks together, you now have a void where that metal is not sintered. Although I was going to point out in industrial applications when you're talking about pipe fitting and welding, they x-ray all that anyway for the exact same reason.

So, can't really say that's a downside. No, but it's a consideration in your costs, for sure. Right, but that all goes down to QA. It does. But that's a thing, though, is having the ability

to x-ray take the time okay we have this extra cost of an x-ray machine or whatever we got to do with it and then you have that extra cost but you can 3d print and your cost of creating that printer or the cost of building that suppressor just cut in half. Well, your operator costs are really where you're going to save a lot. You know, a skilled machine operator like myself can demand, depending on the area, wages in excess of $40 or $50 an hour. And if you've got to pay a guy $40 or $50 an hour to run off your suppressor parts, well, it's... So when do metal printers become affordable?

Probably going to be a few years. They are affordable now if you're a corporation. What's your definition of affordable? Let's be honest here. We all have some pretty expensive hobbies, shooting being one of them. I guarantee some of you in this chat have spent over 14k on firearms and ammo i don't want to talk about the bag that's right here at my right

foot with the nods in it yeah anybody anybody running dual tubes can probably can probably justify a metal 3d printer if they felt like it um I mean they went Andrew they went from they went from being a quarter million dollars to like 14 or 15 000. oh positively paltry I mean let me just go smash the piggy bank for that I mean really when you think about it for the capacity it gives you either as a business or as an individual and yes these things are going to continue to come down in cost i mean look at the laser engraving cutting machines you can buy a 20 watt laser engraver right now for 1400 now that's not getting close to the 80 watt and 100 watt and higher laser centering heads that you got to have but it's getting there uh these new these new laser cutting engraving heads that people are using are LED diodes so

you don't have to have purged carbon uh purged uh carbon monoxide tubes or CO2 tubes or any of those consumables you just have a diet a series of diodes that project the laser. Brings the cost down astronomically. As those are better... 3D printing to me is... It reminds me... I look at it a lot like reloading. I have the ability to.

I have the supplies. But do I want to? No. I don't want to sit down and reload. I'd rather spend the money and actually buy rounds true that are already loaded and you know you're you're basically you're paying for that convenience of them being loaded now if i'm looking at fine tuning a load like what phil does and what phil's looking at doing then yeah i could definitely sit down and fine tuning because that's what i will be doing with my six five pre-orders i will be i have a couple hundred rounds that i'm going to sit down and i you know i have a k or i have a round a grain that i like that it likes and shoots well and i'm going

to load up a bunch of that stuff i now yeah i can understand that but just like 3d printing it's one of those things it's like well i don't know i I'd rather pay you and take some money to do it. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of 3D printing places for hire right now. In fact, you go on Etsy, you go on Fiverr, you go on Xometry. You can order stuff 3D printed shipped to your door. Right. Very simple, very easy.

No muss, no fuss. What I like about having the 3D printers is if I need something that does not exist, I could either A, design it up, take it down to work, machine it out of whatever stock I've got, fine. Or I can model it up, fire off my 3D printer, and walk away for 12 hours and do something else, print more productive with my time. So I currently right now downstairs, I have some 3D printed terrain for D&D that's being ripped off right now. So I paid somebody 20 bucks for his models because they looked great. Running it off right now. It's going to cost me about $1.45 in filament and about $0.29 in electricity to buy

this stuff. Pre-made online, you're looking at probably $15 or $20. I think the other thing about 3D printing that really interests me is when you start playing around with things like infill. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's one of those things where, like, I see the ability that I always look for ways that one technology.

I look for the, how can I put it this way? It's the opposite of, like, a Venn diagram. It's like, this will do this and this will do do this but what will this do that this will not and when you start talking about like infill like think about like this if you wanted let's say you wanted to take something like an ar-15 lower for example and you wanted to make the walls hollow that's technically doable but can you make those walls hollow fill with a honeycomb? Absolutely. You get to a point where, with traditional machining, is what I'm saying.

So you see, and you cannot do that with casting. No. Can't be done. Can't be done with forging, I don't think, either. Like, I guess what I'm saying is, like, you get to a point where things that are, to your initial reaction, like, oh, yeah, that's easy. It's really easy for additive manufacturing but for traditional subtractive manufacturer casting it is it ranges between impossible down

to severely difficult so you get to the point where it's like the things that to me the things that 3d printing does well are things that if traditional manufacturing can't do them it becomes much more difficult and much more expensive much more time consuming versus three for 3d printing you literally like hypothetically slide a slider bar to decrease your infill that is exactly how that works that easy it is it is literally a slider yeah so with with that simple flick of a wrist you've decreased the weight and probably the strength to some degree. Less than normal.

But you have the ability to play with those things. Yeah. They're actually seeing a lot of advancements in ultra high performance aircraft and drones. Even with the metal 3D printed parts. printed parts the um the ability to just do the shell which is where most of your strength comes from on a polymer printed part anyway the honey the the internal infill is really just to support the outer shell as it's printed the um one that I can think of right now is landing gear on aircraft. There's a ton of material that has to be there just because of the connecting features. So you've got to have the hub for the wheel that holds the bearings. That's got to be so much bigger in order to be welded to the uprights that go into the hydraulics up top.

Turns out you don't need the majority of that material inside of the pipe what you need is just a certain amount of volume um just to get from point a to point b and the less material you have in between the better you get well with some of these high performance landing gear that they're doing out of magnesium and a few other a few other metals, titanium, for instance, they're doing like 30% to 40% weight reductions in key components. That's huge in aircraft and drones. Also huge in space exploration because, I mean, you and I both know that when it comes to payload costs, the heavier it is, the more money it costs. Because every extra pound that the launch vehicle weighs is a pound less you can put up into space. It's a pound less fuel or a pound less payload.

And let's call it what it is. The heavier the vehicle is, it takes more fuel. So you have to have X amount of fuel for X amount of weight and there's not many ways to cheat that arrangement. No, and there is a hard limit on weight. So what you wind up doing is, yeah, but what you wind up doing is you wind up reducing your payload. And if you can get less payload in space

in one run, your cost goes through the ceiling. I mean, I'm the business economics guy. I mean, that's just the way Same for aircraft. Same for drone flight time. A lot of these guys out there now that are making their own diy drones are printing them in carbon fiber nylon because they can do entirely hollow frames and so they can they can actually print the frame in two halves or print the frame part way up run the wires through the hollow frame and then tell the printer go ahead and finish and it prints the rest of the frame partway up, run the wires through the hollow frame, and then

tell the printer, go ahead and finish. And it prints the rest of the frame with the wires integral to the frame. And the other interesting thing about this discussion is as your weight comes down, your strength requirement comes down too. Not exactly the same. It's not one-to-one. But especially if we're talking about aircraft because that was my first love if we're talking about aircraft like the heavier it is the heavier it

has to be the landing gear has to be heavier in rotary wing aircraft your rotor head has to be heavier your blades have to be heavier everything has to be heavier but if you make it lighter then the stress placed on all those things that hold it up off the ground or hold it in the air decrease as well. It's, it's an interest. It's like two bell curves that are chasing. Yeah. And the lower your fuel requirements. So the longer your flight time, the less fuel you have to carry. So less strength, the plane has to have it all. It's kind of an interesting feedback loop right there. That's why, that's why I always tell people you want to you want to explore space invest in 3d printing that's that's really what's going on so nick i mean kind of you saw where the you've seen i mean we've all seen it but you really since you paid a lot more attention to

it than i like i do uh i mean you've seen where we've gone in the last 10 years as far as tech where do you see it say in the next in the next 10 years as far as tech. Where do you see it, say, in the next 10 years? Where do you think it's going to go or where are the signs pointing to? You know how everybody and their brother that's any kind of handy has got a miter saw, got a circular saw, got a cordless drill, might even have cordless of the other two, maybe even a cordless table saw. That's where we're going. These things are going to become

ubiquitous. Every household is going to have one, maybe not in 10 years, but anybody that's moderately tech savvy, anybody that does any kind of fiddle farting around in the garage, whatever your hobby is, 3D printing can enable that hobby to go a little bit further. And as they become more and more of an appliance, the more people are going to be able to use them. When I got into 3D printing about 10 years ago, it was not an appliance. You were going to have to tinker with it. You were going to have to troubleshoot it. You were probably going to have to understand some electrical wiring because stuff stuff was going to break at that point stuff was going to break a lot you know it's um i think that in 10 years we're going to see definitely

homeowner level sls laser sintering from powder 3d printing. I don't think there's anything in the way of that other than the cost coming down on the laser heads. Because the only difference right now between an FDM printer and an SLS printer is the laser heads and the powder feed mechanisms. And the powder feed mechanisms are not that complicated. Now, the other thing too is, uh i mean we were talking politics with it uh where as things get going as things keep going forward i mean you already have new york that's like talking about background checks for 3d printers and all kinds of stupid crap uh if it starts becoming more and more of a household item do you think that there's going to be some political kickback from it? Like you think that they're going to sit there and they're going to try to

regulate it because they're seeing, they're going to try to get ahead of the, they're going to try to get ahead of the industry. And I know like your, your name, your title on underneath your name says, you can't stop the signal, which you can't once it's online. Like, I mean, you really, you can't stop it. You you can't uh once it's online like i mean you really you can't stop it you can't get that back and so and that's what's funny i mean you know tying it back into the gun industry they're trying hard they are really trying hard to uh to stop people from 3d printing from uh from creating the i mean the frames and receivers rule and stuff is basically directed at this pretty

much sure but it's completely incapable of stopping anything that's that's the thing right april april 2013 was the death of gun control whether or not anyone wants to admit it gun control died april 13th with Cody Wilson. Exactly. Which, by the way, and I've told both of you all this, I have an unabashed man crush on this guy. That guy's got some good ideas. In the most heterosexual way humanly possible. I'm just saying, like, you're right.

He drove a stake into the heart of gun control on that day. Like, the moment he did two things. He posted those files into the heart of gun control on that day. The moment he did two things. He posted those files on the internet, and he released the video that the damn thing didn't blow itself up. The minute that happened, to me, gun control was not. I just remember, it was funny because I remember talking to someone. I used to work at one of my old jobs about it, and we were talking about Cody Wilson, and we were talking about the 3D printing and all that stuff, and it was funny because,

you know, Dianne Feinstein, may she rot in the underground hell that we have, she was, like, pushing the assault weapons ban, magazine ban, multiple states pushed magazine bans and stuff like that. I think Colorado passed theirs or something. One of the states did. He released the 3D printed mag. The Mendez mag. Yeah. Named after Senator Mendez. Yeah, that means nothing.

Then the lower, they were sitting there and they were throwing a fit about the lower. I remember he posted one video and I it did... I think it did fail. But then he was like, here's version two, and he fixed the issue, and it, like, it never failed. So, and that's the thing, is like... And that's where I really see, that's where the whole gun control... The gun control fight is they're trying to get ahead of what they see possibly coming down the pipe, but they can't get ahead of it. It's a speeding

train going down a track where they can't outrun it. There's nothing they can do. Literally, the only thing they could do is basically make firearms illegal. It would be a law. That worked great with cocaine, didn't it?

Andrew? Here's one for that. firearms illegal like you it would be because that law okay Andrew that's what I'm saying so here's one for that make firearms illegal have you ever heard of Arc flash laboratories yeah okay yes that's not like that's a gauss rifle it is not regulatable under any existing firearms laws it's full auto it's not a machine gun by definition well anybody that's curious uh look that up on forgotten weapons they did a nice little video on at least two of the models one anvil or sledgehammer i can't remember which one it is uh yeah it's pretty impressive it is. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. It throws, I believe it's

a quarter inch or a three-eighths diameter steel dowel rod at something like 75 feet per second. It's very slow. But, it's another proof of concept, and guess what boys and girls? It's mostly 3D printed. The other cool thing about

that weapon in particular, and the concept behind like Gauss rifles, uh, Gauss rifles. Yeah. But they used another term. They said it was something that wasn't a magnetically accelerated projectile. Yeah. There's,

there's a lot of different terms for it. Yeah. But basically what they said was that because of the mechanics, the collector mechanics of how the silly thing works, there is kind of a baked in limitation to your velocity. Because there's only so fast you can turn the electromagnets in that series on and off with any kind of current technology, but the limit on weight is much, much higher. So we could wind up in a situation where it's a traditional fire. Let's say an AR-15, fire a 55 grain bullet at 3,000 feet per second. And this thing will just hurl a bowling ball at you with 70 feet per second.

Yeah, you know, and that's, that's, that's another point, you know, they want to try to get ahead of, you know, as Andrew was saying, try to get ahead of what's coming. Well, too bad. So sad. You're 10 years too late. You were 10 years too late you were yeah no they're 10 years too late when cody released the liberator i mean once once somebody got the idea now granted cody was the first one to do it publicly i would not be surprised if other people had done it privately and stayed below the radar oh yeah well yeah i mean if you think about it it's if yeah if one person's done it you know

other people have done it probably i mean he's a smart kid he really is he wasn't really applying anything other than the same principle applied behind the hardware store 12 gauge made out of black pipe and a two by four i mean you can make a gun out of just about anything that'll hold pressure. Turns out that's an awful lot of things, you know, and now that it's gotten to the point where anyone with a bridgeport mill in his garage going i'm gonna make an ar because i can no now it's a now it's anybody that has 150 yeah expedient homemade firearms that's a great one pa luddy would really be proud um firearms that's a great one pa lovey would really be proud um in fact there's defense distributed that cody started has sort of morphed into deterrence dispensed which is a group of people that do nothing but develop 3d printed firearms 3d printable firearms specifically firearms to be built in countries where guns are completely outlawed that use zero firearms components.

Well, isn't Defense Distributed also the same company that produces and markets the Ghost Gunner? Two separate groups, but yeah, it's the same people running it as far as I'm aware. You know, as far as New York wanting to ban 3D printers or register 3D printers or regulate them, best of luck with that. It's a circuit board, some thin gauge copper wire, some stepper motors that you can buy off of quite a number of websites and Radio Shack if you still have one. Welded together to some aluminum extrusion that you can buy off McMaster car by 10 foot increments. You can't. You cannot stop people from building these things. I mean, they've been building them from kits without video instructions with just PDF instructions

for two decades now. I think the argument in play here is the same one that Cody lodged, though, which was you can't ban firearms without banning the knowledge of how to build firearms. And that is impossible. Especially now. And that's the same one that Cody lodged, though, which was you can't ban firearms without banning the knowledge of how to build firearms. And that is impossible. Especially now. And that's the same – again, kind of the same thing I said at the very top of the show. Like 3D printing is an amazing manufacturing technology. But at the end of the day, it's just another method of manufacturing. So when you apply it to firearms, the real thing is, if you know how firearms work, and let's call it what it is,

a single-shot, hammer-fired anything ain't that freaking complicated to design or build. But if you know how they work, it's not hard to build them. I mean, to my point earlier, Expedient Homemade Firearms, Philip A. Lutie, the guy, who by the way

was a freaking Brit, who wrote this book and built these two squirt guns as a political F.U. to his government. And died in prison for the pleasure. Yes. But he built a pair of 9mm full-auto submachine guns with firearms regulations that are at least twice as stringent as what we have here in the U.S. Because unlike our laws, theirs were written by people that apparently know something about firearms, so they regulated the pressure-bearing components. So things like the barrel, the bolt face, things that are kind of complicated to build. So he wrote those instructions

to go get stuff from a hardware store that was never meant to make firearms. Like, do your own rifling, do everything. I've read, I've got a copy of the book i don't think i'll ever try it but trying it would be a felony yes but it's i mean look that might almost be worth frigging like getting you know getting an sot and everything just to try it see if you pull it off but it's it's just it's an incredible book to read just to see the stuff he thought through to bend around all these firearms. I can tell you I have never done it, but I have thoroughly read through the instructions. It is not difficult to do.

If you have a photocopier, a hacksaw, a set of files, a Drem and a drill plot a drill press you're fine in fact you could probably do it with a handheld corded drill if you weren't too particular about how the finished product looked it's well the thing is though too is i mean the whole politics uh thing is you have you have i mean california has been uh extremely famous for trying to limit magazine capacity. They've been trying to neuter the AR-15 platform ever since it came out, really. 30 years, probably. Yeah, and so that's the thing. But what's funny is as soon as something comes out, you have a company that's just like,

California compliant this. And then California's like, I'm going to do this. And then California compliant this. Like they're constantly right on the foothills of making something that is compliant to that area. And what's interesting is sometimes they make something that is actually, it almost makes a platform in a way better with how it functions and stuff like that and so like it's just innovation and you can't stop the innovation no you can't go ingrained in our

society i i mean good luck stopping it you never will yeah and that's what you're saying you know that's why i agree with you is the the gun the anti-gun establishment establishment, it's a deer that's already been shot through the heart, and it's just, it's running on adrenaline. And eventually it's just going to topple over and die, which, that would be awesome if it did now. Honestly, the way it's going to die is with magnetically

accelerated weapons. That's probably what it's going to be. Because they would have to... Just give me a pulse rifle from Aliens. Right, a pulse rifle with 55 draw. No, but energy weapons, yeah, they're a long

way off. But magnetic weapons, especially with the new capacitors coming out, graphene-based capacitors that can charge in tenths of a second when provided with enough power supply, you can shoot an awful lot, an lot faster i mean their current i think their current uh the gr2 is uh capable of 100 rounds a minute which is that's impressive yeah so i mean that's the thing

i'm thinking about pre-ordering one. Technically not illegal in Illinois yet. Yeah. AR-15s are illegal. Magnetically accelerated full autos are not. But that's the thing, though, is, like, it's interesting because every few years you have, you look at the industry. I mean, you look at any industry, but the firearms industry, since we're talking about that, is every few years you see somebody who creates a firearm that revolutionizes the industry. The AK-47, I mean, was crazy with how just the way it was made, how cheap it was made, and then how it just ran. And then you had the r15 and stuff like that you have certain firearms that have come out that just do amazing job for pushing the the

envelope we're due for something the trouble is we're getting to the end of what chemical propellants can give us right but that's what i'm saying though is going off of like what you're talking about we're we're due for something new and so i think i i believe that within the next five to ten years uh if not sooner i believe that we are going to have a new a new platform that is no longer because especially since the regulations on uh the atf is looking at they want to re--regulate powder and stuff. The way that it's stored and all kinds of crap. On top of that, the way they just changed their

rule on... Going into their rule changing is... They just changed the rule for paintball, like simulation, like flashbangs, smoke grenades, all that stuff. They just changed their ruling on it

or their opinion on it and now you have to get a you have to you have to get a permission slip in order to even get these things now uh and by the way on that note this is after they had already changed it once because there was a time when you could order the airsoft-like flashbangs and smoke grenades and everything free and clear. And then they were, if I recall correctly, they already got reclassified once. Because you had to have an explosive license from the ATF to get them. So that's what they just changed. Or is that what they just changed? Yeah, they just changed that. But that's the thing, though.

If you can sit there and 3D print something, or the new technology comes out to where you can create something that will make that smoke... If you make that smoke and then you can... Basically, it's not an explosive, but I don't know.

Chemical. I don't know. Pick your whatever it is. But there's going to be... My point is we're due for another step to revolutionize the industry. Oh, definitely. And I think we're going to see it within the next five to ten years, if not under five. Do a Google search for electronic flashbang. You'll thank me later. Somebody has already created, it's a little friggin' grenade-shaped thing,

and all it does is, with like an ear-bleeding volume, it reproduces the sound of a flashbang. So you're not going to, and it has a high-intensity strobe light on top of it. So you're not going to get like the pressure wave from a flashbang. But you get the noise, and you get the bright flashlight to disorient your target. Phil, do you think you could disorient someone with a set of speakers? I have disoriented someone with a set of speakers. It's not that small yet.

The technology is coming. That's the thing. Also bear in mind that you're making a reference to my car audio days. When you try to create a noise that loud with a very low frequency like a subwoofer it actually takes a tremendous amount more movement

in the speaker cone with very high pitch noises. It can be done fairly easily. If you're trying to make a noise that's anything over, like, 5,000 to 6,000 hertz, it's not really that hard to make it, like, 145, 150 decibels. You can do it with a pretty small speaker and not a tremendous amount of power. See, that's the thing.

You know, it would be a darn shame if, say, Deterrence Dispensed had already published 3D-printable grenade shells for smoke grenades. Oops. Right. They're already behind again. The other thing I want, well, and since we're talking about Defense Distributed, I did want to work in one other thing was like,

I remember when, okay, so the Ghost Gunner, for anybody that's not aware, and you should look it up, it's pretty cool. It's a simple enough piece of kit, but it's a cool application in my opinion. But literally all it does is it takes an 80% AR lower and it finishes it for you. So it does all the machining work, does it all for you. What I saw that company do when the ATF really was first starting to start chirping about the frames and receiver rules i saw defense distributed immediately start retooling the ghost gunner the next version of the ghost gunner to be

able to machine ar lowers from zero so yep you literally take a piece of billets now if i remember right i think you it basically it had to machine in two pieces, and they were almost like handgun slide rails to shove the two together. Yeah, to fit on the build platform in their first gen of that. Their newest one, it's a single monolithic piece. Yeah, but literally, insert piece of metal, press button, walk away, and fully machine AR lower than that. That product is basically a desktop CNC vertical milling center. Yeah, but I guess that's desktop CNC vertical milling center. Yeah.

But I guess that's what we're talking about here. You cannot stop innovation. You cannot regulate the knowledge of how to make firearms. You cannot do that. There is no way to stop this. Well, you could, but you'd have to imprison every single machinist, gunsmith, hobbyist. I mean, you could do it. It would require a...

There's going to be a lot of trees getting watered at that. It would require a relocation of peoples to like a Soviet era camp. It'd be easier to relocate all Congress. Buildings and all. Anyway. But like... Plus you cripple your economy. I wrote an article a long time ago that kind of gets into some of these principles, and I won't recount all of it here because if y'all are really that curious, y'all can go find it.

I mean, it's on mofpodcast.com. But it was talking about high-level legal principles like mala prohibida, mala in se. In other words, whether something is illegal because it's genuinely bad or just it's illegal because some politician passed a law. And I've always placed firearms in the mala prohibida pot, which basically says government said it's bad. Therefore, it's bad. But the people don't said it's bad therefore it's bad but the people don't and that's why you have this well but that's why you have this constant push back and forth between the regulations that are passed or rules that are interpreted or whatever other mechanism they use

and then the people who say i just found a way around your law i just found a way around your rule i just made something californian compliant i just figured out how to print it off of a 3D printer. I just figured out how to make it in my garage. You're always going to have this disagreement between the regulators and the people as long as people continue to consider firearms ownership a right, and therefore they do not consider it to be intrinsically evil. And I think that's, like like I think that you're right. As long as the trend of 3D printing continues to be that this becomes more mainstream, it goes into more homes, more people get their hands on it.

with the Second Amendment movement where we're pushing really hard to get younger shooters involved and get younger people involved in this because this cannot just be a hobby of 40-plus-year-old men or it's going to die. And let's call it what it is. My daughter is 11 years old. She probably knows more about the Reconstruction. Oh, I'm sure she does. And it would not surprise me if she's used them as much as some hobbyists that are very enthusiastic.

I mean, a lot of schools have been bringing them in they're a perfect way to introduce kids to to rapid prototyping and manufacturing technologies to cad systems i mean let's be honest here what do you need to get started 3d printing okay you need the printer start 150 to a thousand dollars depending on the size you want you need a couple hundred dollar laptop you probably already have one at home or your pc and you need a either in a solid model created by somebody else an stl file or one of the other varieties of files or you need 3d modeling software and willingness to learn how to use it fusion 360 is free for hobbyists let me tell you

guys fusion 360 is what i use at work for full simultaneous 4-axis programming on a vertical milling center. That software is pretty powerful. Is it the best? Yeah, probably not. But it doesn't cost $15,000 a seat either. You want to pay for the full version? It's about $500 a year. But if you're a hobbyist and you make less than $100,000 a year, it's free.

It has full native 3d printing so you take your fusion 360 you no longer need a slicer software now because it's got an inbuilt slicer if you pull you design up your model or pull in your model pick your 3d printer from a lineup of machines that it's already pre-programmed to work with, which it's most of them. Hit go, generates the G-code, walk that over to your machine, slide it in, hit go. If you have all your tweaking done right as far as your bed leveling, which a lot of the new printers do for you, if you have your filament temperatures set right, which most manufacturers recommendations now are pretty darn good, you come back in anywhere from 30 minutes to two days, and you've got whatever you asked for. It's simple.

I suddenly had an ADHD moment and wondered if I could run a 3D printer on my Jackery while it charges from the sun. They take some power. That's one big downside to them. They need a consistent power supply because you've got to, especially the FDMs, because if that hot end cools down

or the bed cools down, it can pop off the bed or it can clog. You can run them off a generator. I've seen people running them off a generator. It's not super cost effective. If you had a solar setup with a big battery pack, I mean, it just depends on how long you're printing really is what it's going to come down to. So for an emergency situation, is it ideal? No, not yet.

Absolutely not yet. our power storage technology gets better and our implementation of solar energy gets better or say localized miniature nuclear reactors start getting put in which is really what they should do if they want to save the environment we could eliminate all carbon output from our from our uh power production and give everybody reliable power at the same time at lower cost then yeah it'll be great you know in a grid down situation your 3d printer is going to be basically useless unfortunately unless you have a pretty badass generator or a really big solar setup it wasn't a serious thought it was just just an ADHD. You probably could, though. That's the thing. It's only 120.

It takes a 120 outlet. So it's not like it's drawing that much power. I mean, if you put a meter on it, you can figure out what it's going to draw. It's probably going to be as much as, well, let's see. Well, the less thing about it is if it's running off of a standard 110 outlet, it's got to be capped at 10 amps. That depends on which printer you get. I mean, if it's running on 110.

A single outlet. It could be up to 20, I think, on a single outlet. But I don't know about the 3D printers. Let me take a look, Corey. Now that I have totally, completely sideboard the conversation for my own purposes. 0.12 kilowatts per hour is its average power consumption.

So 253 watts peak consumption. 253 watts? No, it's not awful. You can build a solar setup that'll handle that i'm i'm sure there are some people in the patreon group that are already running the math yeah 250 watts that's two and a half amps 2.2 amps no it's not really not bad at all i really there are there are months where i run my 3d printer pretty much constantly and i don't notice an appreciable difference in my power consumption at home.

Not really. 0.12 kilowatt hours is less than a decent sized refrigerator pulls. Your chest freezer is pulling a lot more. I know mine is. Well, Nick, that's

I don't know. The knowledge that you have with printers is crazy. Like that's, I mean, it makes me want one. Definitely because of what you could build and all that stuff. It's crazy. But I'm really curious to see where the industry goes. It's going to go, I think it's only going to go up. And especially with the space exploration kind of aspect of it, pushing that I think we're,

we're in for a treat for the next many years to see where things go. It's going to be a while before we get replicator level technology. It's going to be an awful long while, but there are people that are, that are working on multi-material printers that can print circuit boards conductive circuit boards already so it's coming it's coming fast yeah awesome well cool um my after we should have you i know you don't have very much spare time but uh you should i can make we can get you to write up an article uh on how to get started

uh with some maybe some recommendations and stuff like that we could put that on the website i could probably work on that probably after after the holidays here oh yeah oh my wife yeah no that'd be cool jesus yeah that time again yeah it's right around the corner so but no that'd be cool uh because i know a lot of people would be if they're interested it's right around the corner so but no that'd be cool uh because i know a lot of people would be if they're interested it's like okay well where do i begin yeah and if anybody if before i get that done anybody's got questions find me in the facebook group find me in the patreon chat i'm in there awesome so now i just have to figure out how i can smooth over buying a 3d printer i'll tell your wife it's for your daughter's education and enrichment.

Nick, you are an instigator of poor financial decisions. I like that in you. I've been known to enable. Well, you have some work to do to beat the king enabler. I didn't do nothing. We're not going to talk about that.

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure it was your wife that made that purchase. Yeah, so that's not me. But no, thanks for coming on, Nick. Look forward to talking to you more. I'll have to get you on again here and talk more about this kind of stuff and all that.

Glad I could help you guys. Let me know when. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for coming on man like it this is one of those subjects where like i know it in the broad strokes from like 50 000 feet but i don't know like you do so i appreciate you coming on and talking to everybody about it now hopefully we have uh instigated more financial tomfoolery among the listeners, and if anybody gets into 3D printing as a result of hearing this or is curious more about it, reach out to me and I can put you in touch with Nick and you might have to become part of the regular conversation.

But we all have dinner to eat. Turkey Day is fast approaching. Everybody please take care of yourselves, and if you can't be good be good at it. Matter of fact it's going out the door. Bye everybody. See ya. Bye. Thank you.