The first metal 3D printed gun has been produced, according to this article. While plastic guns have been produced already, developing a metal version has proven to be more difficult. Upon initial inspection, I was not sure if I could trust this website, but after doing some research the site appears to be respectable and trustworthy. The article, written by Jeremy Hsu, was very interesting to me. Three of my blogs have been closely linked to 3D printing and the printing of guns is certainly a major event in the recent expansion of 3D printing technology. The article states that the gun was printed by a company in Texas, and was based off the 1911 Browning pistol. Below is a short video on the gun.

Up until now the only way to make guns was with a very elaborate setup and a permit to actually make firearms. Now almost any person with a 3D printer can print off their own right? Well, not exactly. In the article Solid Concepts, the Texas based company who built the gun, state that "industry-grade DMLS machines cost[ing] hundreds of thousands of dollars" would be necessary to produce the gun. So that eliminates most of the population from misusing this technology. But what about organized groups with much larger budgets?

As an industrial engineer this is a real tipping point for me. Most of what we do is aimed at making things cheaper and more accessible to the public. From a technical perspective this breakthrough is quite impressive. Most previous attempts to build a metal gun with 3D printing ended in dramatic failure, due mostly to parts that weren't strong enough. That is exactly what the Solid Concepts team set out to dispel. And dispel they did, the gun worked very well.

The technology behind this new gun is no doubt something to marvel at. Almost literally building something atom by atom is quite astonishing. However, I believe we need be very careful with this technology.  While it is impossible to stop all misuse of 3D printing, something needs to be done to make sure that tragedies are minimal. So while part of me is amazed that we have come to the point in technology where applications like this are possible, my instincts are that this could turn sour without some comprehensive regulation.

3D Printing Guns, an ethical perspective

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." this is what the second amendment of the constitution of the United States of America reads, an amendment that has been receiving much attention recently. Well, 3D printing has recently added even more confusion to this subject.  Now anyone with a 3D printer can theoretically print out their own guns. Obviously this could raise quite a few alarms for the federal government. Below is a picture of the parts of a gun manufactured with a 3D printer.

The Argument For

Under current law any person older than 18, who is not:

• currently under indictment for a crime punishable by more than a year in prison
• previously convicted of such a crime
• a fugitive
• a user of any controlled substance
• committed to a mental institution or deemed mentally defective
• an illegal alien
• dishonorably discharged from the military
• renounced his or her U.S. citizenship
• currently under a restraining order against him or her from an intimate partner or child of said partner
• been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor

can own a gun. If I'm allowed to own and purchase my own gun, why can't I build my own gun? In a country built on freedom, and a right to privacy of what goes on in your home, why shouldn’t I be able to make my own gun?

 The Argument Against

Imagine being able to download your own gun. No background check to go through, no licensing process, just download and print. Unregulated this means I could go home and print off whatever gun I wanted, with the proper equipment. This would make owning a gun even easier, in a country where we already have some of the most relaxed gun laws in the modern world. 

When the fathers of our nation wrote the Constitution, they could never have imagined the technology we would possess today. When the second amendment was drafted, the best guns of that day were muskets. Everyone had a musket because it was necessary to survive. In today's world having a gun is not a necessity to survive. Having a gun should be a privilege not an assumed right. As an engineer who would be responsible for manufacturing 3D printed guns, the fact that someone could steal my design and use it at home for their own printer is frightening. In recent times, gun shootings have become much more frequent. With the new ability to print firearms in your own home, this trend seems that it would only increase.

3D Printing

When I think of the foundation of the American dream, it all comes back to manufacturing. The real expansion of the U.S. happened during and immediately following World War II. What was the driving force behind that rapid expansion? Manufacturing. Because most of the rest of the developed world was in shambles after the war, the U.S. had a major advantage in manufacturing. If you needed something built you didn't have a choice but to have it built in the U.S.

 As I stated in my previous blog, a major area of employment for industrial engineers is manufacturing. Manufacturing is the process of taking raw materials and turning them in to finished products. Most processes for machining, with current technology, are subtractive in nature. Subtractive processes remove material from a larger starting block to form the desired product. Some forms of subtractive machining are cutting, milling, turning, and drilling. While subtractive machining has been the norm since the industrial revolution, it has many limitations. Machining the insides of parts becomes increasingly difficult with subtractive machining.

Another way to build things is additive machining. Additive processes are generally simpler to carry out. Building a brick wall is an additive process. Perhaps a more useful example would be the layering of plastic to form complex shapes. The limitations of additive processes are generally more related to structural stability, i.e. the overall strength. 

So what does an engineer with a complex part, and not willing to compromise on structural stability, do? Well, 3D printing may be an option. 3D printing works very similarly to your standard 2D printer. A 3D printer reads a diagram from a computer program and, just like a 2D printer, prints out the desired object. 

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering, how can you just print something out in three dimensions with no support system? 3D printing is an additive process, similar to the additive processes discussed earlier. However, 3D printing has fewer limitations than the previous forms of additive manufacturing.  Below is an example of how metal 3D printing works. 

As you can see from the above video this process takes quite a while. However, this additive process is much faster than any other processes to make a similar product. It can be reasoned then that a much simpler product can be made much faster.

This brings me back to my opening paragraph. Manufacturing made the U.S. into the world power that it is. However, with recent developments in manufacturing, that grip is starting to slip. With the rise of robotics in industry, many labor jobs simply aren’t needed anymore. Many of the jobs where labor is needed are being outsourced to countries with cheaper labor rates. This change has brought our country to a turning point, and with the help of 3D printing maybe we can become that manufacturing super power we once were.

What is an Industrial Engineer?

People often ask me what it means to be an Industrial Engineer, and I find that my answer gets more complicated each time. If you search for a definition on the Internet, you will soon discover that there is no commonly accepted definition. When I first started pursuing my Industrial Engineering degree my answer would be something like, "an Industrial engineer works in manufacturing and production." However, now that I am in my third year, have been to a few seminars and am on pace to graduate next year, that answer has changed drastically.

Being an industrial engineer can mean much more than manufacturing. Industrial engineers can be found in all sorts of places. I’ll bet you never guessed that Disney World employs many Industrial engineers. The most common areas that Industrial Engineers are associated with are manufacturing, shipping, and now healthcare. This has led me to a new way of defining what an Industrial Engineer is. To me an Industrial engineer could be called a variety of names, such as a Logistics engineer, efficiency engineer, or manufacturing engineer. 

If one chooses to use logistics in place of industrial, you would likely be referring to someone working in a shipping company. Industrial engineers working in logistics are working on ways to get the product, or goods being shipped, to the customer in the fastest and cheapest way. 

Working in the healthcare field one could consider themselves as an efficiency engineer. Engineers working with healthcare aim to cut down wait times, and increase patient satisfaction. That could mean using colored tape on the floor as pathways to different areas in the hospital, or re-writing data entry systems to speed up "20 questions" game with the nurse beforehand. 

Probably the most common form of employment for industrial engineers would be manufacturing. Manufacturing engineers take products, be it a crankshaft for a motor, a plastic bottle for shampoo, or something as simple as packaging for batteries, and build them in the cheapest and most efficient way. Manufacturing engineers, sometimes called process engineers, take a process and break it down into its most basic steps, then analyze each step and see what can be done to improve efficiency. 

Using these three synonyms as examples, a couple common themes can be seen. All of these occupations require a very broad knowledge spectrum. Industrial engineers have to know a little bit of everything. Another theme is "faster and cheaper." A major focus of what Industrial engineers do is cutting costs for producers and consumers. 

With such a broad definition of what it means to be an Industrial engineer, it is easy to see why I struggled with defining it earlier. The number of different titles an Industrial engineer could have is almost never ending. In many respects that is how this discipline got the name Industrial. The root word for industrial is industry, and that is exactly where an Industrial engineer can find employment, virtually any industry. I've come to find that the best way to describe an Industrial engineer is to borrow an old English term, and the subsequent title of this blog, the jack of all trades.