Showing posts with label Stratasys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stratasys. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Can an equipment vendor reclaim its leased press from your shop if it objects to what you're printing?



Further to my post of 29 April/13 ( http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/04/3d-printed-weapons-producer-says-hes.html ), it seems that, besides issues of gun control and civil rights, Cody Wilson’s use of 3D-printing technology to manufacture firearms also raises an issue of censorship.  

The background here is that, when Mr. Wilson's organization, Defense Distributed, first started using 3D printers to make gun parts, the 3D-printer manufacturer Stratasys cancelled Mr. Wilson’s lease on one of their machines.

So does this scenario mean that if:
  1. you’re a manufacturer of printing presses, and
  2. I’m a printer, and
  3. you don’t happen to like the content of a particular job I’m running on a press that I’ve leased from you or you think the content is illegal:
Then you automatically have the legal right to pull your press out of my shop?

What does everybody think?

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Gun enthusiast uses 3D printer to make working M16 assault rifle


In one of the latest dramatic developments in the series of experiments to uncover the capabilities of 3D printers, Michael Guslick, a firearm enthusiast who goes by the screen name HaveBlue, has printed and successfully fired part of an M16 assault rifle, using a decade-old Stratasys printer and materials costing between $30 and $50.  Sync.ca blogger Rhonda Callow reports the details she derived from a forum on the firearm-resource Web site AR15.com in her July-28th post, entitled "Oh great, now your friendly neighbourhood psycho can print his own guns".

Besides generating plenty of on-line discussion, both pro and con, Callow’s post provides an interesting link to Shapeways.com--a Web site enabling its members to sell products made by 3D printing, as well as learn how to design and make them.  
http://www.shapeways.com/