Salon.com > 3d Printing

The Pirate Bay steps in to distribute 3-D gun designs

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:11:00 +0000

When the Clinton administration moved to limit the proliferation of encryption technologies with recourse to International Traffic in Arms Regulation, it didn't work too well. There was almost a Streisand Effect -- outside of government-approved channels, strong cryptography spread unabated until in 1997 ITAR lowered the classification of such software; there was no stopping the proliferation.

There's a lesson here for the State Department, which this week ordered that Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson take offline his design for the the 3-D-printable “Liberator” handgun to review the files for compliance with ITAR. It's a lesson libertarian Wilson seems to already know. Referring to the letter he received from the government ordering that his files be taken down, he told Forbes, "All such data should be removed from public access, the letter says. That might be an impossible standard."

State Dept. orders 3-D gun designs be taken offline

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:34:00 +0000

Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received an order from the State Department Thursday to take offline his design for the the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun, released earlier this week. As Forbes noted:

The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

Libertarian Wilson's design hardly risked the swift proliferation of 3-D-printed guns; there aren't that many 3-D printers around. However, the State Department's swift intervention indicates the government's wariness about how the growth of 3-D-printing technology might enable arms proliferation.

Wilson said his company will comply with the government's demands, but questions whether, as 3-D-printing spreads, such government interventions will work: "Is this a workable regulatory regime? Can there be defense trade control in the era of the Internet and 3D printing?” he asked. Via Forbes:

Is there anything 3-D printing can’t do?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:11:00 +0000

Just another Monday, and according to Twitter, by the end of the week, 3-D printers will be pumping out human organs, saving the world from climate change, and revolutionizing nanoscale micro-electronic manufacturing.

OK, "end of the week" might be a bit premature. Dig down deep on any of these news stories, and you will find a lot more in the way of "proof of concept" than actual 3-D manufactured reality. But it is still regularly amazing how fast the world of 3-D printing is moving. The "new hardware movement" is no joke. Advanced manufacturing technology is fast becoming a tool that can fit into any home or laboratory.

At Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, scientists have figured out how to "print" spheroids made of successive layers of embryonic stem cells using an "ink" that itself consists of stem cells.

The man with the 3-D-printed gun

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:37:00 +0000

Before I saw Cody Wilson, the University of Texas law student who wants to give everyone in the world the power to 3-D-print their own AR-15 assault rifles, I had him pegged as no more than a run-of-the-mill Texas gun nut. I'd watched some of the videos he had produced to promote his efforts to 3-D-print high-capacity ammo magazines, and found his provocations mostly juvenile.

But when I saw that he was speaking at SXSW I knew I had to see him. As I've written before, open-source 3-D gun printing is where the values of the information-sharing Maker community smack head on into the life-or-death political realities of gun control. When music became software, copying music became effectively impossible to stop. The same principle will hold true when guns become software.

In Austin, where hacker libertarian values flourish under the Texas sun, I figured Wilson's talk would be a hit that I couldn't miss. My first surprise: The huge Grand Ballroom on the sixth floor of the Hilton was only about one-third full. This might have had something to do with the inexplicable decision of the SXSW organizers to have Wilson speak at the same time as a panel on "The Future of 3D Printing." But the real surprise came later.

“How 3D printing changed my life”

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:08:00 +0000

John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, was in one big exhibit room talking about conscious capitalism. Guy Kawasaki, legendary Silicon Valley marketing whiz, was in another huge space, talking about the future of Google Search with an esteemed Google Fellow. Half an hour before the sessions were due to start, long lines to get into both presentations stretched like lazy serpents throughout the cavernous Austin Convention Center.

I skipped them both, and I'm glad I did. My favorite session yet was a 15-minute-long mini-talk by a guy named John Biehler: "How 3D printing changed my life."

Biehler is a hobbyist. He didn't have a company to pitch or a world-changing ideology to share. He just wanted to tell his story, how he ordered a kit to build a MakerBot 3D printer a couple of years ago, and became completely obsessed with making stuff.

The room he spoke in was small but packed with attentive, appreciative listeners. If there's anything that can reasonably be discerned as a theme of SXSWi 2013, it's that hardware is the new software and making real things is the bees knees.

Making sense out of SXSW chaos

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:03:00 +0000

SXSW is chaotic, too big for its britches, confusing, and overwhelming. There are long lines for everything. There's no possible way to grasp the entirety of the thing: at every juncture, multiple competing events scream out to be must-attends. When the crowds spill onto the streets after dark to assault the bars, it feels a bit more Lord of the Flies than meeting of minds.

So if you are fond of the contemplative life by Walden Pond, it's not for you. But if you like bright lights and the big city, and are willing to submerge yourself in the flow, like a salmon swimming upstream against the rapids into the rush of a snow-melt-fed mountain river downpour, you'll be fine.

With any event that metastasizes to this level, there's always an undercurrent of naysayers whispering sellout. This is not wrong. The corporate entanglement that reaches through every nook and cranny of SXSW makes the gathering seem like the second coming of COMDEX, the legendary computer expo that used to be the 800-pound gorilla of the tech sector social season. When you see bicycle-powered pedicabs rolling by with ads for Game of Thrones and Google and Oreo, or venture into one of the huge tents in which watered down drinks are handed out in exchange for the opportunity to mingle with a bunch of corporate communication specialists, it can be a little dispiriting.

What 3D printing can do for your bored toddler

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:17:00 +0000

Ok, that was cool.

Bre Pettis, the founder and CEO of MakerBot, a Brooklyn-based manufacturer of inexpensive 3D printers, gave the opening remarks at SXSW Interactive. He was a natural choice to kick off the festival. Social media is old news -- 3D printing is every geek's favorite technology-of-the-moment.

Pettis said all the usual things you might expect of someone preaching his own start-up's gospel. Thanks to cheap 3D printers, "creativity is more accessible in the thing world."

"3D printing is ushering in a new industrial revolution."

"3D printing is awesome." He said that more than once.

But then he showed a slide, in which a custom-printed plastic part connected a set of Brio wooden train track pieces to a Duplo brick. And every parent in the audience who had once entertained his or toddlers with a big pile of Duplo and Brio tracks simultaneously went: "oh, wow, I wish I'd had that, back in the day."

3D design, at the click of a button

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:00:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — As 3D printing creeps into more and more projects, making product production more accessible, I’ve always wondered how we can make product design more accessible. How can the average person take advantage of the plethora of resources out there for creating new objects? While open-source tools like Audacity and Open Office have made music and word processing easier and more affordable to engage with, the resources surrounding 3D printing and design are steadily growing.

Enter Tinkercad, which calls itself the world’s first browser-based CAD. (CAD stands for computer-aided design, and is shorthand for the software that engineers use for drafting 3D models.) What does this mean for the user? For just a low subscription rate, anyone with a web browser can embrace the world of 3D product design. Tinkercad comes with a host of interactive shapes and modeling tools. Designs can be ported directly to Tinkercad’s partner 3D printing services that can print and then ship your work to you. Browsers have to be WebGL-enabled, so that means only Chrome or Firefox at this time.

Will computers kill gun control?

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

"How's that national conversation going?" sneers Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, an organization dedicated to making it easy for anyone to 3-D print their own gun. It's the opening line of a video showcasing Defense Distributed's successful employment of a 3-D printer to manufacture a plastic high-capacity ammo clip for an AR-15 rifle.

Wilson is namechecking Democratic House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's call for a "new conversation" on gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Wilson follows up his question by firing off a few rounds of ammunition, giving his handiwork an admiring look, and declaring: "Welcome to the age of the printed magazine." The screen flashes a message: "Download your mag today."

Coming eventually: Print your own organs

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Chris Anderson left his sweet job as editor in chief of Wired because he believes 3-D printing is going to be "bigger than the Web."

So far the technology, which enables desktop-size machines to "print" objects out of materials as diverse as recycled plastics and chocolate, is mainly the domain of professional designers, who have used it for years, and a growing band of early adopters. The machines tend to be slow and while prices have dropped, there's still not a killer app that has compelled mass interest in a $2,000-plus machine. The "filament" -- that is to say, ink -- isn't cheap either.

But the still small industry is betting that the ability to manufacture whatever you want whenever you want it is too compelling not to catch on. Just start to imagine the possibilities. And the implications. And now here's something you probably didn't get to: printing bodily organs.