3d printing

Download this bong: 3D printer templates for getting your buzz on

Mar 062013

3D printers are gaining in popularity, with uses spanning the spectrum from moon bases to firearms, but there’s another area where the ability to construct complex shapes is beginning to provide benefits: getting high.

Online magazine Motherboard has published the story about the slow but inevitable rise of 3D-printed bongs. MakerBot’s Thingiverse site returns almost two dozen template results when searching for “bong,” all of which are downloadable in STL format and printable on tons of different 3D printers.

Common resin-based 3D printers can’t create glass, so a water pipe produced from these templates wouldn’t be entirely print-n-toke, but most appear to be ready to go as soon as glass pipes are added. The descriptions for many of the pipes indicate that they should be printed with PLA, which the Ice Bong creator notes “is biodegradable and poses no health risk and also has no smell.”

The world’s first 3D-printed gun

Design, Tech News 374 Responses »

Jul 272012

An American gunsmith has become the first person to construct and shoot a pistol partly made out of plastic, 3D-printed parts. The creator, user HaveBlue from the AR-15 forum, has reportedly fired 200 rounds with his part-plastic pistol without any sign of wear and tear.

HaveBlue’s custom creation is a .22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper. In other words, the main body of the gun is plastic, while the chamber — where the bullets are actually struck — is solid metal.

The lower receiver was created using a fairly old school Stratasys 3D printer, using a normal plastic resin. HaveBlue estimates that it cost around $30 of resin to create the lower receiver, but “Makerbots and the other low cost printers exploding onto the market would bring the cost down to perhaps $10.” Commercial, off-the-shelf assault rifle lower receivers are a lot more expensive. If you want to print your own AR-15 lower receiver, HaveBlue has uploaded the schematic to Thingiverse.

MORE: The world’s first 3D-printed gun | ExtremeTech.