3D printed gun, single shot pistol, barrel length 55 mm / 2.2 in and calibre 9 mm / 0.35 in, by Yleisradio, Finland, 2013
The design of this gun was created by Defence Distributed – a non-profit digital organisation and placed, open source, on their website so anyone could freely download and share it. Ville Vaarnes, a journalist in Finland, did just that and had the design printed in a university lab using a high-quality 3D printer. He then put it together with the help of a gun maker and fired it. The gun broke into several pieces, shattering the gun barrel.
From an engineering point of view, the gun isn’t particularly special, but it allows us to start a conversation around how the limitless possibilities of free access to information, combined with new manufacturing techniques, like 3D printing, will impact on our lives. The gun represents the limitless, freely available objects you could print, but also the possible desire or need for regulations to limit our access to this information or the tools to produce them.
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