Looking around for trackers that do stl files and/or other stuff for 3d printing. Specifically I’m hoping for rpg minis and the like but if I can find a tracker that does printable objects, I’m happy to help start a mini community.
Looking around for trackers that do stl files and/or other stuff for 3d printing. Specifically I’m hoping for rpg minis and the like but if I can find a tracker that does printable objects, I’m happy to help start a mini community.
You can’t find them on printables / thangs / thingiverse?
I don’t even have a 3d printer yet so I don’t have a horse in this race, but given how countries are clamping down on 3d printers and such, like that thing I saw from lawmakers in new york (usa) where they want people to pass a background check or such to buy a 3d printer,
wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a tracker that does 3d print stuff? Does the thingiverse etc have print files for copyrighted objects and components that breach patents and such? Or dare I say it, weapons and that side of things (which I don’t support but it’s a thing)?
I think a proper, free from national control resource is the best way. I hope such a thing exists. I can see myself one day needing to replace a part in my coffee machine or something, and thingiverse/etc not having the part file because it breaks the patent/intellectual property of the coffee machine company to host it, you know?
3D printers are ubiquitous in the maker community already. They have also already become a staple of small industry too. The various attempts at regulation will go nowhere. There’s no support from anyone who understands the tech.
This is compounded by the fact that a number of elements are unwanted in the community. The guys trying to push gun designs etc are like the guys who turn up to a kids party wearing body armour and carrying an assult rifle. They might have the right to do it, but they can’t then complain that the other parents want nothing to do with them. The community seems to self police remarkably well.
The big issue with 3D print designs isn’t the big companies protecting parts. They don’t seem to bother. The issue is that parts are not standardized. A particular part in, say, a dishwasher, will change slightly, from model to model. It also takes a reasonable skill baseline to reverse engineer a broken part to a 3D printable design. The results are also often also a hacky bodge job. I’ve done it before, and my goal is to fix the issue and move on. This creates a lack of models available, in the first place, paid or free.
On top of this, most paid model makers are small time artists selling their own design. With piracy, it’s the difference between stealing a TV from Walmart, and stealing it from a guy down the street, trying to save money to take his kids on holiday.
There are a few exceptions. Games Workshop are a big one. They are very hot on defending their copyright on model designs. Their business model relies on selling a few, high profit items, rather than a lot of cheap ones. 3D printers can undercut that significantly.
On the whole, however, the 3D printing community is extremely functional. This makes piracy quite a niche thing. There’s a lot of free designs already, and those that are charging, aren’t being unreasonable. It might change with time, but for now it’s working well.
In your coffee machine example I can see 2 options
The coffee machine company released it and let’s you print it at home.
They didn’t release it, so a home jobber sketched it themselves and then they print it. No law against reverse engineering a part.
But interesting idea… I just wonder if torrents is the answer to the problem. Github, gitlab, gittea.
Spitballing.
I just learned about this bill for 3D printer background checks. What a joke. Making your own plastic parts in the shape of a gun is not at all the same thing as actually building one from scratch. Yet another case of legislators knowing zero about the actual issues at hand, or purposefully avoiding them
I would recommend watching a few videos/documentaries on “Ghost Guns”. Vice had a really good one, if memory serves.
It isn’t JUST “hit print, rack the slide, bust a cap”. But with a properly calibrated printer and filament other than cheap PLA, it is real close. Download the STLs, start the build, and then head to the local hardware store for a few small springs and the (REDACTED) that becomes a firing pin. Then spend an hour or two screwing stuff together and filing down a few defects.
But also? Additive manufacturing is a vital part of so many industries at this point that I would not expect a crackdown on the STL files. Probably something similar to how DMCA is used with media files (which artists and engineers would generally tolerate, if not prefer, due to threads like this…). But all the drill bit holders and gunpla mods and the like aren’t going to go away.
Whether we start needing background checks/licenses for the printers themselves is still up in the air. But expect massive lobbying against that since “maker spaces” and even just a printer at the library are a big part of the industry and this is something where The West already do not have any meaningful advantage.
To put it in context. With a decent CNC mill, you can make a straight up “real” gun in a few days for probably less than 500 bucks worth of stock (although, I would not be surprised if aluminum block prices have skyrocketed). But those cost thousands of dollars. A decent 3d printer costs less than 500 for the tool and you need less than 100 dollars of filament for the gun. We don’t ban mills and lathes from private ownership. But I can definitely see something similar to medium sized drones where you need to fill out a form to legally own 3d printers of a certain size/quality
My point was that all of the important parts are metal
Not really, actually.
At an intentionally vague high level: The main components of a firearm are:
1 and 2 are 100% able to be made with plastic. And that is increasingly becoming a selling point for a lot of firearms because of “weight”
4 is trivial to pick up at any hardware store and isn’t even conspicuous.
Which leaves 3 and 5. Plastic/polymer barrels are not an issue for small caliber ammunition (e.g. pistol rounds). You just don’t want to use dirt cheap PLA for that. And probably futz with the infill settings a bit.
The firing pin: Most engineering analyses I have seen say that is the one part that needs to be “real” (and, thus, is a traceable purchase). But I’ve seen a few resources tiptoe around how this could be easily improvised from stuff you buy at the local hardware store. And if I cared enough to check The Dark Web, I am certain I could find step by step instructions on how to do exactly that.
And there are youtubers like Emily the Engineer who have made it a point to show how ridiculously strong 3d printed stuff is. She doesn’t do firearms (mostly because it would get her demonetized…) but 3d printed machetes, lawnmower blades, jacks for pick up trucks, etc are pretty trivial. And I would be pretty shocked if someone who was had a particularly well configured printer and some of the good plastic couldn’t make a (mostly, if not entirely) polymer firing pin (I actually have no idea how modern ammunition works. I THINK it is just compression of the charge which means no metal needed. But if you still need a spark of some form, that is a metal tip instead of a metal pin).
I’m struggling to think of a time, where a thought popped into my head of something I’d like to print, that I went to printables/thingiverse and something wasn’t there. Literally never. And I’ve thought of some pretty random shit…