RIP StumbleUpon

So, moving past the small arms application, the other larger and more lethal applications that they’re worried about are probably drones and light duty “missiles”. Ukraine has pretty effectively demonstrated that a basic quadcopter can drop grenades. I recall reading somewhere that they’re printing the latch mechanism and have probably played around printing stabilizer fins for said grenades.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to start printing chassis’ or parts for literally anything. Yeah you’d need to incorporate a much deeper design understanding of things like mechanical and aerospace engineering, but there are skilled engineers all around the world living in areas under ITAR export restrictions from the west. Give them a printer and some high performance raw materials and you’ve got yourself some control surfaces and a camera gimbal for a loitering munition.

Yes but a person of sufficient knowledge with mal intentions (or just a deeply rooted libertarian streak like Cody Wilson) could invest thousands of hours into developing it, then release the design and any necessary build/assembly instructions to the internet to be available for the rest of the existence of the internet. That’s the concern.

Plastic lowers are already a thing, and they tend to be fiber filled as you mentioned. With the right understanding of relevant materials, concepts, manufacturing techniques, and familiarity with a certain MSR platform, it wouldn’t take long for a competent individual to design a tactically relevant printed lower. Someone with a remedial understanding who already owned an upper/bcg/etc could probably iterate their way to something effective, assuming the first few attempts don’t fatally fail. If said individual was banned from owning firearms, that right there is the incentive to spend the time making one.

-another aerospace engineer who’s printed a lot of stuff