Source podcast: Autoline After Hours I listen to them while driving to and from work. Sorry, no transcript but these folks are doing 3-d car printing: Home - Local Motors They use a carbon-fiber impregnated thermal plastic. This just made all, current light airplane construction moot. Bob Wilson
amazing! what do they do, print the body/chassis and then add mechanicals and electronics? maybe elon should have contacted them before building the mega factory.
From Bob's video thread - I found out that YES - relatively large drones are flying already, that are made out of 3D printers. Even some of the jet engine parts, in this case; In the world we live in - my first thought was, "(dread) this is was too big of an opportunity waiting to happen for Muslim (& other sorts of) terrorists". Yes, the tech will undoubtedly be needed to be heavily regulated - just like 3D printing the lion's share of of .223 auto & semi auto weapons. It's a sad & violent world society we live in, unfortunately. .
Lion's share? It that a lot? Hmmmm....interesting. The US never really has been good at noodling out what to do when other folks copy and improve on our tech, have we??? I think that this is going to be a national problem but I'm not bothered by technology. Civilian drones do not bother me much, nor do printed AR receivers. You can buy a metal AR lower receiver for $50, and it's completely legal for people to make them, if they have the technology to do so and if it's legal for them to own a weapon. There is a limit, IIRC of something like two weapons a year, and then you have to get a manufacturing license. This is such a huge problem in the US that nobody has ever been killed or even wounded by a home-brew military style weapon to the best of my knowledge. Same with drones. I have a shotgun for those, and when civilian drones become large and sophisticated enough to deliver steel on target in real time, then they're still going to be fairly spendy, which means that their use will be limited to fairly large criminal or political organizations or nation states. Not the kinda thing that should be keeping you up nights.... Technology meanwhile is solving many more problems than it's creating. ...at least IMHO.
i guess that quantity (wounded/killed) will forever remain in that "to my knowledge" state, since we'll never see #'s representative of victims who'd never report the shooting/injury - nor for that matter, are all bodies of shootings ever discovered - and since 3D printed lowers have no serial #'s much less whether or not the same barrel - when inquiry is made, who could realistically say. we've had multiple homes near glacier park Montana. I'd be afraid of hitting a moose before I worried about such things as guns. It wouldn't surprise me if the "Lion's-Share" of folks are packing up their. & no one cares. .