A Texas-based company has printed the first 3D-printed metal pistol, a 45 caliber Model 1911.
A Texas-based company has printed the first 3D-printed metal pistol, a 45 caliber Model 1911.
Video below the fold. The gun clearly functions, though I noticed that in the video they never loaded more three rounds in a magazine, and that the gun seems to cycle weakly. I suspect that they had some feeding problems when they tried to fire a full loaded five round magazine.
Nonetheless, this achievement further illustrates that 3D printing is about to become a major method of manufacture.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A Texas-based company has printed the first 3D-printed metal pistol, a 45 caliber Model 1911.
Video below the fold. The gun clearly functions, though I noticed that in the video they never loaded more three rounds in a magazine, and that the gun seems to cycle weakly. I suspect that they had some feeding problems when they tried to fire a full loaded five round magazine.
Nonetheless, this achievement further illustrates that 3D printing is about to become a major method of manufacture.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It looks like it was sticking in the full back position. That is indicative of a weak main spring or bad fitting parts. Both easily fixed.
They did say that the beaver tail safety, the springs, the magazine and the barrel are all purchased parts and not made by them with their laser system.
Basically they made all the parts that could have been made out of polymer like on a Glock or M&P out of metal instead.
Nice proof of concept though. The gun even looked pretty good to.
Dr. John Lewis has been advocating for some time that space-based industry use 3-d Laser Chemical Vapor Deposition (LCVD) printing, with metal carbonyls as the stock material. They could use native Nickel/Iron bits as their starting point, and the Mond Process should make those into Iron Pentacarbonyl and Nickel Tetracarbonyl easily. Most larger carbonyl-sourced CVD pieces here on Earth are done with molds. The process can give nice dense strong solid pieces.It would be interesting to see an LCVD-produced gun, and compare them with the Laser-sintered from metal powder gun. LCVD *might* produce a good barrel, even. I understand that the problems with metal carbonyl toxicity restricts such applications here in an atmosphere, where the carbonyls can build up around the equipment using them as stock. I wonder if LCVD would have as many toxicity problems down here.
In the vacuum of Space that toxicity isn’t a problem, since escaping carbonyls will quickly crack into carbon monoxide and metal dust. LCVD in those situations could provide much of what is needed for many applications. I believe that it may provide an interesting composite as well. The Carbonaceous Chondrite asteroids can not only provide all the element combos needed for the Mond Process, but their Carbon can be used to make graphene. In simple graphene nano-platlets, graphene is being already experimented with for stiffening and strengthening both plastic and metal composites. Now that large graphene sheets can be produced, according to Columbia University’s team, with 90 percent of the strength of the platelets, that could make LCVD deposited metal matrix material for space structures with far better characteristics than we can make them here.
Hello, I’m quite interested in Laser Chemical Vapor Deposition (LCVD) 3D printer of metal carbonyls. I was just googling on this topic, and only meaningful page what I found was your post. Can you please give me some references (web page, paper DOI or something) on this topic?
Thank you