5 ms·

This article is nonsense. "The first such factory to be discovered in Spain also contained working 3D-printing equipment that could manufacture gun barrels in

This article is nonsense. "The first such factory to be discovered in Spain also contained working 3D-printing equipment that could manufacture gun barrels in only two minutes, Spain's National Police said in a statement." Either the author is an idiot and something is lost in translation or Spain's National Police are a bunch of idiots. You can't make anything in only two minutes with a 3D printer, and you can't make gun barrels at all. This is propaganda fear-mongering about 3D printers.

comodore_ 6y ago
You forgot the most obvious alternative, the police are deliberately lying. They found "nine ammunition magazines, two silencers, two pieces for rifle barrels". I consider this to be state propaganda disguised as news laundered through REUTERS.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  Yeah, it's kind of hilarious how little they claim to have found. And that's after trumping it up as much as possible, I'm sure.
VBprogrammer 6y ago
> could manufacture gun barrels One hopes this is more than the mere suggestion that it could be used to make gun barrels. Otherwise everyone from hobby machinists to CNC shops had better watch their backs.
- comodore_ 6y ago
  this is textbook law enforcement FUD.
roel_v 6y ago
The wording may be unfortunate and/or mangled through the Chinese whispers that press releases are, but you can most certainly 3d print jigs to ECM barrels. And yes, the ECM process takes 20 minutes not 2, but still. 3d printed weapons are here. Crude, maybe, and you still need quite a bit technical expertise; but give it another 5 years and everything will be much easier still. That said, there have always been 'home manufactured' of course. Arguably even Khyber pass guns could be designated 'home manufactured'. But I still think that the ease with which one can make guns with 3d printers today is unparalled with anything we've seen before. Also, ironically, I think Biden's ghost gun ban is only going to accellerate research into 3d printed gun manufacturing.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  The fundamental issue is that firearms are not very complicated, and so they're very difficult to regulate. I particularly see this in trying to regulate magazines...literally boxes with springs in them. You have no chance! Anyone who wants a bigger magazine can slap two smaller ones together with duct tape. An amateur working alone will probably be able to make better weapons given modern technology, but that's true of making anything at all.
  - roel_v 6y ago
    Well yes, but your original claim was that you cannot 3d print firearms, and you implied that 3d printers are not great tools that make it vastly easier to manufacture firearms by people who do not have years of metalworking experience. Both are (mostly) false. In other words, yes, 3d printers are a game changer when it comes to diy manufacturing of modern, semi-automatic (or even full auto) firearms. (let's not get into pedantry here like 'I can stuff black powder into metal tubing and make a blunderbuss in a few hours! haha you can't stop me from making weapons!' While technically true, you're not going to rob a convenience store (or stop an invading army) with a diy black powder blunderbuss. What you can do with modern 3d printers gives home users without any experience in manufacturing anything pretty much equivalent capabilities of commercial gun manufacturers of, say, 60 to 80 years ago, which is enough to produce highly sophisticated weapons. True, you cannot make complex ejector mechanisms with lugs on bolts or Glock style firing mechanisms with 3d printers (yet), but you can most certainly make straight blowback guns that reliably fire medium power cartridges like the 9mm. In my eyes, that is a quantum leap in capability, and a game changer as far as law enforcement is concerned).
    - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
      You make a lot of good points! I agree that 3D printing has lowered barriers. I would point out, however, that your viewpoint appears to be U.S.-centric. In the U.S., you can 3D print all the "easy" parts (pistol frame, rifle stock--parts that could be whittled out of a larger piece of plastic, molded from epoxy, or similar), but you can buy all of the "hard" parts without restriction since they're not legally the firearm (barrel, chamber parts, etc.). I bet that varies a lot country-by-country. And another idea I have: a lot of the "vastly easier" manufacturing you're describing is actually a product of the interconnection the internet has wrought, rather than 3D printers specifically. If I imagine a world where we didn't invent 3D printers, but we do have the internet, I bet we could've captured most of the manufacturing-ease gains other ways. For instance, just produce molds and then mold parts out of fiber-reinforced plastic. It makes iterating on designs harder, but we have a lot of people + the internet. So the process would be slower, but we would get there. Neat, huh?!
ur-whale 6y ago
> you can't make gun barrels at all I agree with you that the two minutes statement is ludicrous. However, you can print barrels (they're crappy and will fail after very few shots, but still): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fhBBipU3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fhBBipU3w
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  Yeah, you can make things with bullet-sized holes in them. Calling them "gun barrels" is I think a bit of a stretch ;-) The problem is that calling them "gun barrels" trades on readers' expectations of what a barrel is, so they end up thinking one can make "regular" or "pretty good" gun barrels on a 3D printer, which is false.
  - robthebrew 6y ago
    do you recommend ABS or ninja flex? LOL.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      I'd go with some fiber reinforced stuff for extra interesting fragmentation.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Well, technically, as long as they deliver a single shot they're plenty dangerous to others and afterwards they're dangerous to their owners/wielders.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
      Lol, I guess! I think most people who want a gun aren't on a single-shot suicide mission.
Zardoz84 6y ago
I'm reading the same new from other sources in Spanish. I didn't saw anything about making weapons in 30 minutes. Instead I read that they have a lot of supremacist and fascist material, manuals about how make bombs, many chemical products that could be used for weapons, etc. https://www.google.com/amp/s/elpais.com/espana/2021-04-18/la-policia-desmantela-en-tenerife-el-primer-taller-ilegal-de-impresion-de-armas-3d-en-espana.html%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/elpais.com/espana/2021-04-18/la...
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  So it seems like we should blame Reuters for trying to exploit an uninformed audience for clicks, rather than blaming the Spanish National Police.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    What if Reuters is part of the uninformed public (on this topic/situation) and is being exploited by the police?
    - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
      It's possible, but I'd argue it's sort of their job to not be part of the uninformed public.
      - washadjeffmad 6y ago
        Reuters' job is to sell "news", which can be anything anyone* pays them to distribute. It's harmful to conflate clickbait and stories with journalism. *Only trusted corporate or political partners. They have some standards.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        In theory, I agree. I've seen plenty of mainstream media stories that have incorrect facts. Some of this might just be human - we all make occasional mistakes. Some of them seem to require being uninformed or intentional, especially when they decline to correct mistakes or they are critical to their central point.
officialchicken 6y ago
Yeah, something was lost. According to the police, the person was arrested for manufacturing weapons, possessing explosives, and other sorts of illegal activities. The National Police (similar to the FBI) were looking into terrorism charges and other criminal activities including to a trip/links to Germany. They confiscated plenty of illegal stuff including explosives, bullets, silencers, other gun manufacturing tooling, some partially/fully completed parts, and plenty of electronic documents - including some white nationalism and terror training guide. Two 3-d printers and 11 spools of filament were also confiscated.
wolfretcrap 6y ago
But a CNC mill can also make a gun barrel, whats so sensational about 3d printed barrel?
- christkv 6y ago
  Yeah this has always been my point. Why would you use a 3d plastic printer to make a gun when it's as easy to get a CNC machine and make actual guns.
  - roel_v 6y ago
    Have you ever tried using a lathe or mill, CNC or not? I have, and I did some summer jobs in metal working businesses, and I can tell you that making a metal part vs 3d printing one is nothing alike. You need highly specialized skills to operate a mill or lathe, even on CNC ones (the skills are a bit different but it's not 'easier' to become a CNC operator than it is to become a manual lathe operator). Becoming a sufficiently experienced 3d printer operator takes two weeks if you can spend an hour in the evenings tinkering with it, or a day if you spend a whole Saturday.
    - christkv 6y ago
      Jupp have done a bunch of CNC work and it does require a fair bit more knowledge than a 3d printer for sure. But then these kind of things have started showing up https://ghostgunner.net https://ghostgunner.net so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before anyone can buy something closer to a 3d printer in simplicity.
      - roel_v 6y ago
        Right, but a ghostgunner is not a CNC machine in the common meaning of that word. It was made specifically for cutting 80% lowers (even if the GG website claims it's a 'general purpose' CNC), and even then, only the lowers from GG themselves. And yes, there are initiatives like the GGFlex, but none of that takes away from the fact that it's vastly harder to machine a gun than it is to print one. Like, even with a GG you still need a premade barrel, FCG, magazine etc. In the US, you can buy those off the shelf (for now), but most places in the world you can't. Maybe someone some day will build a GG-like device that can cut all of those parts with the ease the GG can do it. But until then, there are 3d printed guns for those willing to take the risk.
cascom 6y ago
Like Biden’s proposed executive actions on “Ghost Guns” they sound scary, but it’s not as if anyone is using them, especially as there is no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun. Disclaimer: please don’t infer anything about my comment regarding the broader gun control debate
- nw05678 6y ago
  Article has nothing to do with the US. I am not even sure why anyone is bringing up the US at all.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    Lots of Americans here
  - nw05678 6y ago
    Yes and their comments lack any insight into the effect of having readily available guns in Europe. The points made are along the lines of this isn't a problem cause genuine guns are so easily available.
- vageli 6y ago
  > Like Biden’s proposed executive actions on “Ghost Guns” they sound scary, but it’s not as if anyone is using them, especially as there is no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun. A "ghost gun" is just a firearm without a serial. That would include 80% lowers too (which do not require any ID to purchase as they're just hunks of plastic or metal). Many people enjoy the hobby of building their own guns. To say there is "no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun" is simply untrue.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    I think parent meant to communicate that the vast majority of "uses" of guns in the U.S. are still serialized, mass-manufactured guns. Not that the market for non-serialized but legal guns is literally zero.
mgarfias 6y ago
You can make a mandrel in a few hours that can be used with other stuff to electrochemically rifle and chamber a barrel. But yeah, the article is nonsense.

comodore_ 6y ago

You forgot the most obvious alternative, the police are deliberately lying. They found "nine ammunition magazines, two silencers, two pieces for rifle barrels". I consider this to be state propaganda disguised as news laundered through REUTERS.

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
Yeah, it's kind of hilarious how little they claim to have found. And that's after trumping it up as much as possible, I'm sure.

VBprogrammer 6y ago

> could manufacture gun barrels One hopes this is more than the mere suggestion that it could be used to make gun barrels. Otherwise everyone from hobby machinists to CNC shops had better watch their backs.

comodore_ 6y ago
this is textbook law enforcement FUD.

roel_v 6y ago

The wording may be unfortunate and/or mangled through the Chinese whispers that press releases are, but you can most certainly 3d print jigs to ECM barrels. And yes, the ECM process takes 20 minutes not 2, but still. 3d printed weapons are here. Crude, maybe, and you still need quite a bit technical expertise; but give it another 5 years and everything will be much easier still. That said, there have always been 'home manufactured' of course. Arguably even Khyber pass guns could be designated 'home manufactured'. But I still think that the ease with which one can make guns with 3d printers today is unparalled with anything we've seen before. Also, ironically, I think Biden's ghost gun ban is only going to accellerate research into 3d printed gun manufacturing.

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
The fundamental issue is that firearms are not very complicated, and so they're very difficult to regulate. I particularly see this in trying to regulate magazines...literally boxes with springs in them. You have no chance! Anyone who wants a bigger magazine can slap two smaller ones together with duct tape. An amateur working alone will probably be able to make better weapons given modern technology, but that's true of making anything at all.
- roel_v 6y ago
  Well yes, but your original claim was that you cannot 3d print firearms, and you implied that 3d printers are not great tools that make it vastly easier to manufacture firearms by people who do not have years of metalworking experience. Both are (mostly) false. In other words, yes, 3d printers are a game changer when it comes to diy manufacturing of modern, semi-automatic (or even full auto) firearms. (let's not get into pedantry here like 'I can stuff black powder into metal tubing and make a blunderbuss in a few hours! haha you can't stop me from making weapons!' While technically true, you're not going to rob a convenience store (or stop an invading army) with a diy black powder blunderbuss. What you can do with modern 3d printers gives home users without any experience in manufacturing anything pretty much equivalent capabilities of commercial gun manufacturers of, say, 60 to 80 years ago, which is enough to produce highly sophisticated weapons. True, you cannot make complex ejector mechanisms with lugs on bolts or Glock style firing mechanisms with 3d printers (yet), but you can most certainly make straight blowback guns that reliably fire medium power cartridges like the 9mm. In my eyes, that is a quantum leap in capability, and a game changer as far as law enforcement is concerned).
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    You make a lot of good points! I agree that 3D printing has lowered barriers. I would point out, however, that your viewpoint appears to be U.S.-centric. In the U.S., you can 3D print all the "easy" parts (pistol frame, rifle stock--parts that could be whittled out of a larger piece of plastic, molded from epoxy, or similar), but you can buy all of the "hard" parts without restriction since they're not legally the firearm (barrel, chamber parts, etc.). I bet that varies a lot country-by-country. And another idea I have: a lot of the "vastly easier" manufacturing you're describing is actually a product of the interconnection the internet has wrought, rather than 3D printers specifically. If I imagine a world where we didn't invent 3D printers, but we do have the internet, I bet we could've captured most of the manufacturing-ease gains other ways. For instance, just produce molds and then mold parts out of fiber-reinforced plastic. It makes iterating on designs harder, but we have a lot of people + the internet. So the process would be slower, but we would get there. Neat, huh?!

ur-whale 6y ago

> you can't make gun barrels at all I agree with you that the two minutes statement is ludicrous. However, you can print barrels (they're crappy and will fail after very few shots, but still): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fhBBipU3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fhBBipU3w

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
Yeah, you can make things with bullet-sized holes in them. Calling them "gun barrels" is I think a bit of a stretch ;-) The problem is that calling them "gun barrels" trades on readers' expectations of what a barrel is, so they end up thinking one can make "regular" or "pretty good" gun barrels on a 3D printer, which is false.
- robthebrew 6y ago
  do you recommend ABS or ninja flex? LOL.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I'd go with some fiber reinforced stuff for extra interesting fragmentation.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Well, technically, as long as they deliver a single shot they're plenty dangerous to others and afterwards they're dangerous to their owners/wielders.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    Lol, I guess! I think most people who want a gun aren't on a single-shot suicide mission.

Zardoz84 6y ago

I'm reading the same new from other sources in Spanish. I didn't saw anything about making weapons in 30 minutes. Instead I read that they have a lot of supremacist and fascist material, manuals about how make bombs, many chemical products that could be used for weapons, etc. https://www.google.com/amp/s/elpais.com/espana/2021-04-18/la-policia-desmantela-en-tenerife-el-primer-taller-ilegal-de-impresion-de-armas-3d-en-espana.html%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/elpais.com/espana/2021-04-18/la...

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
So it seems like we should blame Reuters for trying to exploit an uninformed audience for clicks, rather than blaming the Spanish National Police.
- giantg2 6y ago
  What if Reuters is part of the uninformed public (on this topic/situation) and is being exploited by the police?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    It's possible, but I'd argue it's sort of their job to not be part of the uninformed public.
    - washadjeffmad 6y ago
      Reuters' job is to sell "news", which can be anything anyone* pays them to distribute. It's harmful to conflate clickbait and stories with journalism. *Only trusted corporate or political partners. They have some standards.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      In theory, I agree. I've seen plenty of mainstream media stories that have incorrect facts. Some of this might just be human - we all make occasional mistakes. Some of them seem to require being uninformed or intentional, especially when they decline to correct mistakes or they are critical to their central point.

officialchicken 6y ago

Yeah, something was lost. According to the police, the person was arrested for manufacturing weapons, possessing explosives, and other sorts of illegal activities. The National Police (similar to the FBI) were looking into terrorism charges and other criminal activities including to a trip/links to Germany. They confiscated plenty of illegal stuff including explosives, bullets, silencers, other gun manufacturing tooling, some partially/fully completed parts, and plenty of electronic documents - including some white nationalism and terror training guide. Two 3-d printers and 11 spools of filament were also confiscated.

wolfretcrap 6y ago

But a CNC mill can also make a gun barrel, whats so sensational about 3d printed barrel?

christkv 6y ago
Yeah this has always been my point. Why would you use a 3d plastic printer to make a gun when it's as easy to get a CNC machine and make actual guns.
- roel_v 6y ago
  Have you ever tried using a lathe or mill, CNC or not? I have, and I did some summer jobs in metal working businesses, and I can tell you that making a metal part vs 3d printing one is nothing alike. You need highly specialized skills to operate a mill or lathe, even on CNC ones (the skills are a bit different but it's not 'easier' to become a CNC operator than it is to become a manual lathe operator). Becoming a sufficiently experienced 3d printer operator takes two weeks if you can spend an hour in the evenings tinkering with it, or a day if you spend a whole Saturday.
  - christkv 6y ago
    Jupp have done a bunch of CNC work and it does require a fair bit more knowledge than a 3d printer for sure. But then these kind of things have started showing up https://ghostgunner.net https://ghostgunner.net so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before anyone can buy something closer to a 3d printer in simplicity.
    - roel_v 6y ago
      Right, but a ghostgunner is not a CNC machine in the common meaning of that word. It was made specifically for cutting 80% lowers (even if the GG website claims it's a 'general purpose' CNC), and even then, only the lowers from GG themselves. And yes, there are initiatives like the GGFlex, but none of that takes away from the fact that it's vastly harder to machine a gun than it is to print one. Like, even with a GG you still need a premade barrel, FCG, magazine etc. In the US, you can buy those off the shelf (for now), but most places in the world you can't. Maybe someone some day will build a GG-like device that can cut all of those parts with the ease the GG can do it. But until then, there are 3d printed guns for those willing to take the risk.

cascom 6y ago

Like Biden’s proposed executive actions on “Ghost Guns” they sound scary, but it’s not as if anyone is using them, especially as there is no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun. Disclaimer: please don’t infer anything about my comment regarding the broader gun control debate

nw05678 6y ago
Article has nothing to do with the US. I am not even sure why anyone is bringing up the US at all.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  Lots of Americans here
- nw05678 6y ago
  Yes and their comments lack any insight into the effect of having readily available guns in Europe. The points made are along the lines of this isn't a problem cause genuine guns are so easily available.
vageli 6y ago
> Like Biden’s proposed executive actions on “Ghost Guns” they sound scary, but it’s not as if anyone is using them, especially as there is no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun. A "ghost gun" is just a firearm without a serial. That would include 80% lowers too (which do not require any ID to purchase as they're just hunks of plastic or metal). Many people enjoy the hobby of building their own guns. To say there is "no market demand in the US given the ease of getting a regular gun" is simply untrue.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  I think parent meant to communicate that the vast majority of "uses" of guns in the U.S. are still serialized, mass-manufactured guns. Not that the market for non-serialized but legal guns is literally zero.

mgarfias 6y ago

You can make a mandrel in a few hours that can be used with other stuff to electrochemically rifle and chamber a barrel. But yeah, the article is nonsense.