Popular Science News | Print a Gun

Popular Science News – Print a gun! Don’t be ridiculous! How can you attach a PC to a printer and then print a gun capable of firing a real bullet? Well the manufacturers of the uPrint SE 3D printer prevented University of Austin law student, Cody Wilson, from finding out. The student had leased the printer, capable of printing machine parts, and was creating a blueprint to print a gun. They terminated his lease for the machine and took it back.

The student argued that he was only creating a blueprint, not a gun, but evidence existed that this was untrue. Worse than this was that the material used by the printer would not survive the 1000 degrees created when a bullet was fired. Currently a machine capable of handling the material to make a gun would cost around $500,000 but like everything these prices will fall. There could be a situation where the police would be asked to seek out these gun blueprints and remove them from the internet, just like it isn’t working for illegal music and film downloads. [New Scientist 6 Oct 2012]

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