3-D Printed Magazines with $200 Commercial Printer

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  • Kirk Freeman

    Grandmaster
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    Mar 9, 2008
    47,969
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    Lafayette, Indiana
    The revolution is coming, and it will not be televised, but will be streaming.

    Printing Glock magazines on $200 printer.

    7D16D0E0-D58D-4723-81DE-315C09D200C1.jpeg


    https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/07/19/3d-printed-glock-magazines/
     

    russc2542

    Master
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    Oct 24, 2015
    2,111
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    Columbus
    Would you trust your life with one of these mags? Just curious.

    I dabbled with some extended base plates. They worked but didn't like being dropped on hard ground.

    That being said, material and settings make a HUGE difference. From someone better at setting it up and out of some of the better materials, wouldn't stake my life on them willingly but wouldn't be afraid to make use of them.
     

    Kutnupe14

    Troll Emeritus
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    Jan 13, 2011
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    I dabbled with some extended base plates. They worked but didn't like being dropped on hard ground.

    That being said, material and settings make a HUGE difference. From someone better at setting it up and out of some of the better materials, wouldn't stake my life on them willingly but wouldn't be afraid to make use of them.

    I was wondering more along the lines if the tech has gotten to that level of reliability yet. I'm meaning at a low price, as I'm sure the higher end stuff is probably pretty legit.
     

    russc2542

    Master
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    24   0   0
    Oct 24, 2015
    2,111
    83
    Columbus
    I was wondering more along the lines if the tech has gotten to that level of reliability yet. I'm meaning at a low price, as I'm sure the higher end stuff is probably pretty legit.

    I don't know how familiar you are with 3d printers so back to basics... A good/reliable/sturdy print has roughly 3 components:
    1. machine needs to be capable (pretty easy to accomplish. price yields additional features, print volume, longevity but much like current cars have few engine problems and mostly electrical problems because engines are mature tech, the mechanical printer parts are ridiculously simple)
    2. material being printed needs to have the desired physical properties... I use cheap stuff because most of my prints aren't structural (and cause I'm not good enough at reading the prints to set them up better). Nylon's pretty tough and you can even get fiberglass or carbon fiber reinforced nylon and other materials that are approaching the strength of Aluminum.
    3. The hard part: the nut behind the wheel. The best machine and material mean jack if the user gets the settings wrong. There's a huge range here from prints fail before they're done on one end, a wide spectrum from functional but ugly to very good, and perfect prints on the other end. I'm somewhere in the middle.

    #3 is the part that matters more than the printer itself at this point. Guides, bearings, stepper motors are all mature tech. Electronics are the hard part but that's been exploding in the last 10-15 years with all the arduinos and similar. The electronics are scaleable and the most basic and high end machines can run the same or very similar software. If you get into pro stuff they come with nice UIs and more settings already set and locked in for the machine and better longevity of the parts (and a help support number!).
     
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