Apparently I don't have enough hobbies.
So what do you do with something that sits in your living room and taunts your cats with movable arms and an almost endless supply of fresh string? You make more guns.....
I've fallen into a group that is designing new firearms in CAD. Some of these guys are pretty damn creative!
Now to answer one of the usual questions I've been hearing first. Virtually all of these designs are just redesigning current gun parts/receivers that you can currently purchase in various metals. Also even the guns that are almost fully 3D printed still need metal parts to function. The closest I've seen to a 100% printed gun was a something that looked like a two pipes sleeved together to make a slam-fire single shot and even it still used a metal nail as the firing pin.
What I started with, and what seems to be the most popular, is an AR15 lower receiver. This still needs all the FCG parts, buffer tubes and the like. It basically is just like finishing an 80% receiver on a drill press. However it's one that has been printed instead of milled.
First things first, we have to calibrate the machine.
It works like a hot glue gun mounted to a CNC machine. Only it's a hot glue gun spitting out lines of ABS plastic...
That's supposed to be a 10mm x 20mm box. It only came out to be 9.98mm x 19.94mm. I'd call that acceptable!
Next up we try out an AR lower receiver....
It just keeps getting taller and taller one X/Y horizontal layer at a time.
At this point we're about 12 hours into the print.
Now this first one didn't work out so well. The front of the magwell area started warping about 3/4 of the way through the print. So while I added a lower parts kit to it just to test fit things, this one will get broken up and pitched. The mag well is almost missing in this design. From a structural standpoint it's not really needed for the receiver to hold a mag and be functional.
So I started again with another design that had a bit more meat up front in the mag well area. I was hoping that this other design would be less likely to warp during printing. I also adjusted the angle at which it printed to move the magwell closer to the first layers.
Now this one turned out much better.... Still a little rough around the edges, but much more functional.
Now to add some metal to all this plastic...
Since the receiver is thicker than your standard aluminum version, clevis pins with hitch pins are used to secure the upper to the lower.
Anyway, I've been having fun getting started on this project. I figured you guys would be interested as well...
So what do you do with something that sits in your living room and taunts your cats with movable arms and an almost endless supply of fresh string? You make more guns.....
I've fallen into a group that is designing new firearms in CAD. Some of these guys are pretty damn creative!
Now to answer one of the usual questions I've been hearing first. Virtually all of these designs are just redesigning current gun parts/receivers that you can currently purchase in various metals. Also even the guns that are almost fully 3D printed still need metal parts to function. The closest I've seen to a 100% printed gun was a something that looked like a two pipes sleeved together to make a slam-fire single shot and even it still used a metal nail as the firing pin.
What I started with, and what seems to be the most popular, is an AR15 lower receiver. This still needs all the FCG parts, buffer tubes and the like. It basically is just like finishing an 80% receiver on a drill press. However it's one that has been printed instead of milled.
First things first, we have to calibrate the machine.
It works like a hot glue gun mounted to a CNC machine. Only it's a hot glue gun spitting out lines of ABS plastic...
That's supposed to be a 10mm x 20mm box. It only came out to be 9.98mm x 19.94mm. I'd call that acceptable!
Next up we try out an AR lower receiver....
It just keeps getting taller and taller one X/Y horizontal layer at a time.
At this point we're about 12 hours into the print.
Now this first one didn't work out so well. The front of the magwell area started warping about 3/4 of the way through the print. So while I added a lower parts kit to it just to test fit things, this one will get broken up and pitched. The mag well is almost missing in this design. From a structural standpoint it's not really needed for the receiver to hold a mag and be functional.
So I started again with another design that had a bit more meat up front in the mag well area. I was hoping that this other design would be less likely to warp during printing. I also adjusted the angle at which it printed to move the magwell closer to the first layers.
Now this one turned out much better.... Still a little rough around the edges, but much more functional.
Now to add some metal to all this plastic...
Since the receiver is thicker than your standard aluminum version, clevis pins with hitch pins are used to secure the upper to the lower.
Anyway, I've been having fun getting started on this project. I figured you guys would be interested as well...
