No no, I think yours and @anon32019413 's comments on the potential use of chip tracking were enlightening, so thanks. My comment was a bit flippant, but the point was police aren’t using chip serial numbers to track phones back to owners. I think that is mostly the case, but due to the info you both provided it is clear that one COULD use it to at least partially track and possibly fully track who previously owned a broken phone based on the serial numbers. I still disagree with the practicality of taking this method to individual rounds of ammunition, but appreciate the exchange of information.
And that’s fair. What I’m really against is continuing to do nothing. I would like to see serious investigation into ideas that have a good payback versus effort.
Long term I don’t think control of firearms is practical. It will soon be too easy for amateurs to construct practical firearms. Reloading is easy but rarely done by criminals today, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t start if we started tracking ammo purchases.
Forming lead is super easy. Making your own brass cases is still quite difficult, perhaps someone will figure out how to make them out of plastic, but until then reloaders will still be buying manufactured brass or recycling it. It’s still a bit hard to mix up your own smokeless powders, mostly it’s the chemistry for the propellants that is kind of a pain to do at home safely. Getting the proper additives and grain size for the application is also tough (pistol powder is different than rifle powder).
Requiring a simple license for reloaders to do their hobby would be unpopular but a reasonable restriction in my opinion. Control and serialization of reloading presses would help. Competition shooters still need custom hand loads, unless we intend to stop participating in the winter Olympics.
Restricting ammo does have problems. Having huge 1000 rd cases of ammo seems excessive to some, but as someone who does shoot for sport I save a lot of money buying ammo in bulk. I’m all ears if there is a way to retain my sport while drastically reducing the number of people hurt by firearms.
Was a plastics and composites machinist for 3 years. Machined some pretty exotic stuff, from graphite impregnated PEEK, Ultem, Pure Teflon, and many others, glass filled nylon often.
Did not know that glass filled nylon was printable yet but I suppose it doesn’t surprise me. Every time I turn around there is a new filament material.
One thing to know though about glass filled nylon is that it’s actually somewhat brittle, and very abrasive to tooling. I would be surprised if a gun made from it if 3D printed didn’t immediately shatter after the bullet goes off.
Oil filled delrin might be a better choice. Standard acetal (delrin is a proprietary Dupont acetal that seems more durable and easy to machine) would probably explode.
I’ve machined a lot of odd materials, odd is my specialty
Most of what I’ve read have determined that Glock’s polymer is a formulation of mostly nylon 66 and a few others plus about 35% fiberglass. It’s hard to say for certain since they don’t reveal their trade secrets, but I think if you play with formulations you’ll get
I only machine plastics as a hobby, and while I used to work in an iron foundry I wasn’t a pattern maker.
PS - you can’t (afaik) use filament printing with glass filled nylon. but you can get powder that you laser sinter. I’m confident you’d ruin a hotend if you pushed glass through it at 250°C
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.