NOTE: This is a guide for 3D printing of unregulated parts, such as magazines. Certain parts are regulated, and illegal to manufacture without proper licensing.
The ability to manufacture firearm parts at home has always existed, but
traditionally required hands-on skills that have grown rare in the
United States. Modern manufacturing techniques are rapidly changing the
skills story. It is now possible for anyone to buy a 3D printer to
create a wide range of firearm parts and accessories with little to no
hands-on skills for building or repairing physical goods. Adequate barrels are made
using electrochemical machining without requiring serious machining
skills. Remaining components, outside of those that are regulated, can be printed. Printed components are
reinforced with metal rails where necessary. This text briefly overviews
3D printing firearms and firearm accessories, focusing specifically on
magazines. Magazines are easily printed and require no special effort to
achieve adequate durability in many cases (e.g. no rails required).
What do you need to 3D print firearm magazines?
- A 3D printer. There are many on the market, but this is a category
where you get what you pay for. Fortunately, even a high quality 3D
printer is less than the cost of a high-end firearm. For the busy,
narrow your search to two options:
-- Budget: The Creality Ender 3 is a popular budget printer than can be
purchased for $200 or less. While the printer generally works well, it
provides less automation and convenience out of the box than the premium
option and is more likely to suffer problems that require tinkering to
fix. Fortunately, this printer has a large, supportive online community
for troubleshooting printing problems.
-- Premium: Prusa (https://www.prusaprinters.org/) is widely considered
to be the best manufacturer for non-industrial 3D printers. Their
current-model printers (the MK3S is recommended as of this writing) are
highly reliable, automate many tasks that are manual with cheaper
printers, produce high quality prints right away with little effort, are
easy to use, and come with high-end support when something does go
wrong. Including shipping, the printer kit, which you must assemble into
a printer yourself, runs about $850. You can buy a fully assembled
printer that comes ready to print for a few hundred dollars more.
However, assembling the kit is easy enough for even a keyboard jockey to
finish the job in about 10 hours, and the understanding of how the
printer mechanically works gained by doing so is worth it. There is one
common but easily fixed problem with this printer: The grub screw
holding the gear on the extruder motor's shaft often vibrates loose
unless you use a thread locker (purple Loctite is recommended for this).
You can diagnose this problem easily because your printer will be
"printing" in the air, with no material actually coming out of the
extruder, yet there will be no clog.
Fair warning. Prusa is a Czech company, which explains the price of
shipping. However, you do receive the printer very quickly. With the DHL
option, ordering on Saturday is sufficient to receive the printer the
following Thursday in the US. Some banks assume a charge to an Eastern
European company is fraud and will automatically block it and lock your
card. Call them ahead of time to tell them you are making the purchase
and it is not fraud.
This text focuses on the premium option. Anyone with the budget doesn't
really need to look any further, just buy the Prusa. You'll love it.
- Filament. A spool of filament provides the raw material your printer
will use to create the object you're printing. There are many, many
materials on the market (Amazon is a convenient place to buy). When
getting into firearm printing, there are three worth focusing on initially:
-- PLA: Cheap, very commonly used, and super easy to print with.
-- PETG: Stronger than PLA, but can be a bit more finnicky.
-- Nylon: Stronger than PETG but more finnicky than PETG.
Practice printing magazines with PLA to get the hang of the process,
then switch to PETG. When you're ready for very tough magazines, switch
to Nylon. Again, you get what you pay for, so buy quality if you can
afford it. Fortunately, quality PLA and PETG spools can be purchased for
about $30 each and the same company that makes the premium printer makes
premium filament available on Amazon.
- Filament storage. Filament is hydrophillic, meaning it absorbs water
from the atmosphere. Once enough water is absorbed, you will have to dry
the filament on the spool in your oven or using a food dehydrator to get
quality prints with it. To avoid this issue, or at least delay the need
to dry filament, a dry box is handy. Get a storage box with a gasketed
lid, some indicating dessicant, and throw the filament and dessicant in
the box. Keep the box closed unless adding or removing a spool of
filament and keep the filament in your box unless actively using it.
- A textured print surface. The premium printer comes with a smooth
steel sheet as a printing surface. This works well for PLA, but PETG
will not adhere to it unless the surface is prepared with a glue stick
or similar coating. With the textured sheet you can print PETG without
extra effort. It's worth it if you plan to print with a lot of PETG. The
printer has to be calibrated for the different kinds of sheets (this is
super simple, the instructions walk you through it), but the calibration
settings are easily stored and switched between with the premium
printer. This makes it easy to switch between the smooth sheet when
printing with PLA and other materials that adhere well on that surface,
while switching to the textured sheet for other materials.
- 3D models to print. Most public firearm-related models can be found in
the FOSSCAD package. You can access it on GitHub, but this option is
likely to disappear from the Internet eventually since big companies
tend to love censorship: https://github.com/maduce/fosscad-repo.
You can
also torrent the entire package, which is far less likely to suffer
permanent censorship. Here is a magnet link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:359050EC1608F8FD8B0D9FBF66FFE7DC02672ACC&dn=%5Bmonova.org%5D+FOSSCAD+MEGA+PACK+v4.8+%28Ishikawa%29+%5BZIPPED%5D&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969.
- Magazine springs. There are basically three options for buying springs:
-- If you're just buying one set of springs, buy Wolff springs on eBay
where the shipping will be free.
-- If you're buying multiple sets of springs, especially across multiple
firearm models, buy Wolff springs directly from the manufacturer:
https://www.gunsprings.com/.
-- If you're attempting to produce in mass quantities (1000+) or find
20-30 people to go in on a group buy with, you can get springs from
China for pennies each starting with just a CAD design for the spring
from alibaba.com.
If you're adventurous, there are jigs and instructions for making
springs in the FOSSCAD package. This process takes several hours and a
bit of patience.
How do I print a magazine?
Before trying to print magazines, try printing some simple items first
to get the hang of the process. With the premium printer you can print
each magazine in 4-12 hours depending on your settings and the magazine.
However, it's easier to learn the ropes with smaller prints that can be
done in a few hours at most. This allows you to quickly see the process
end-to-end before switching to longer prints. Try printing something
super easy in PLA, like a beverage coaster, first (there are tons of
neat gun ones on https://www.thingiverse.com/). From there, try printing
a small animal figurine to practice using supports (again, tons on
https://www.thingiverse.com/, try your favorite dog breed, a moose, or
horse). Supports are printed with the item to provide a surface to print
the item on when a surface of the item would otherwise float in the air
(think of a dog's underside when it is standing). These are easily
pulled off of the item after printing.
Acquire the 3D models you want to print. There are several formats in
this order or preference, but in reverse order of popularity:
- 3MF. While not quite popular yet, models in this format contain plenty
of metadata (e.g. pre-configured settings) and can contain multiple
models in one file. These are the most likely to import in a manner that
is immediately ready to print.
- OBJ. More popular than 3MF, but not nearly as common as the most
popular option. Models in this format often contain dimensional data not
available in the most popular format to prevent wonky scaling.
- STL. By far the most popular format in 3D printing, not because it's
the best but because it's the oldest and therefore has inertia. Some
firearm and accessory models, particularly from DEFCAD, are scaled down
dramatically and have to be re-scaled to print if using STL. Scaling is
easily done in a slicer.
Once you have the models you want to print, open them in a slicer. For
the premium printer the slicer to use is an easy to use graphical tool
called PrusaSlicer. You'll open the model in the slicer, where you can
view it and arrange the component (or components if you open multiple
models) on a digital version of the print surface. If printing multiple
models at once, use the arrange feature, which will automatically
arrange the items on the print surface for maximum space utilization.
From there you can configure the print. Recommended settings for
printing magazines:
- Enable a brim to ensure adequate adhesion early on.
- Set infill to 100%
- If using Prusa's PETG, increase the bed and extruder temperatures by 5
degrees for the first layer. Magazines don't seem to work out with the
default PETG settings.
Don't be shy about exploring the tool and switching it to Advanced from
Simple mode right away. For computer literate individuals, this tool is
extremely easy to learn and use. The Simple mode is only necessary for
people who are uncomfortable with technology. It tends to work out
nicely to print all of the parts at once, just right click the follower
(typically the only component that requires supports) to manually add a
support enforcer. Ensure you enable supports only for enforcers in the
slicer.
Finally, slice the model and export the gcode to the SD card that came
with the printer. You can now pop the SD card into your printer and
start printing. Once finished, simply lift the sheet you printed on off
of the printer, flex it, and the parts will pop right off.
How do I make magazine models?
You will need the magazine you want to model, CAD software to create the
model, and calipers to accurately measure part dimensions. There are
many CAD options, but parametric CAD software is your best bet. Unless
you already have software you like, check out Fusion 360 or FreeCAD.
FreeCAD works just fine and can be learned in less than an hour if you
stick to the Part designer. There are a wide range of cheap calipers
that will get the job done on Amazon. If you want nice calipers that
will last for years, can be used for high precision applications where
it matters (e.g. reloading), and from a brand that can be counted on,
buy a pair of Mitutoyo calipers directly from Amazon (Mitutoyo
counterfeits are common from other sellers on Amazon). This blog post is
a helpful guide to getting started reverse engineering physical
products:
https://hackaday.com/2018/03/27/how-to-reverse-engineer-mechanical-designs-for-3d-modeling/.
Many magazines have quite a few complicated features you can simply
ignore when modeling while still producing a working magazine.
Think carefully about how you layout and orient the parts you design.
Generally, only the follower should require supports when printed.
Where do I learn more?
There is an active community working on new homemade gun designs in
general, but with a focus on 3D printable firearms. Check out Deterrence
Dispensed at:
https://keybase.io/team/det_disp (encrypted group chat)
https://spee.ch/@Deterrence-Dispensed:2 (hosted files)
http://deterrencedispensed.com/ (more information to on 3D printing guns)
https://gunstreamer.com/@IvanTheTroll (videos from Deterrence
Dispensed's figure head)
