100,000 People Now Printing Out Their Own Handguns

Downloaders have successfully acquired at least 100,000 schematics for Defense Distributed's printable 3D handgun over the course of two days.

By comparison, the first episode of Game of Thrones clocked in at a million downloads per day.
Andy Greenberg of Forbes reports that company owner Cody Wilson teamed up with controversial Kim Dotcom to upload the gun's print plans to the website Mega.

Predictably, Greenberg notes, Americans have surged into the lead for the country with the most downloads, in front of Spain, Brazil, Germany and the U.K. And the plans are spreading. Read more >>

Meet “The Liberator”: The World’s First Fully 3D-Printed Firearm

3D-printing, like decentralized crypto currencies, have the potential to change the world in which we live in extraordinary ways. Ways that are almost inconceivable at this point given we are so early in the game.  More than anything else, these technologies can empower the individual like never before, and I think that is generally a very good thing.

I first covered the impact of 3D-printing on the firearms industry in January in my post 3D-Printing Meets the 2nd Amendment, where I discussed Defense Distributed’s success in printing magazines for semi-automatic weapons.  At the time, their next major goal was to print a fully functioning firearm. They have now done just that.  Read more >>

Could 3D printing save your life?

Andy Christensen is the president of Medical Modeling Inc. The company's focus is on creating three-dimensional X-rays, which can then be used to make  replacement body parts, including, for one, a “physical replica of someone’s hip.” In addition to often working better for the patient, creating a personalized replacement saves a lot of time and money in the surgical process.

There’s a whole other side of medical 3D printing as well: printing internal organs. This arm of the industry takes cultured cells and aims to create human tissue for organs such as livers and lungs. The days of saving a patient with a failing liver using their own cells aren’t here just yet but Keith Murphy, CEO of bioprinting firm Organovo, says someday this may be commonplace.

In the meantime, his firm is working on producing cells to help drug companies test and develop new medications. For instance, Organovo can produce a one-millimeter-thick layer of liver cells and then test new drugs for liver failure before they are ever introduced to a living human. In addition, the company can produce diseases in cells that allow doctors to develop new drugs without having to find a patient afflicted with the disease. Murphy hopes the technology his firm is developing can eventually be put into the hands of some of the world's leading medical researchers. Read more >>