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Despite politicians lining up to regulate 3D printed guns, and a new directive from the U.S. State Department arguing that disseminating 3D files for such weapons may violate weapons export rules, some think that it may all be much ado about nothing.

On Thursday, Forbes reported, the State Department demanded that Defense Distributed, a nonprofit dedicated to creating 3D printed guns, take down a set of files that theoretically enable anyone to print their own firearm.

"The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in … Read more

With gun control battles raging among federal and state legislators, it was inevitable that the issue of 3D-printed handguns would come up, especially with such a gun now available.

California Senator Leland Yee announced Tuesday his plan to propose a law that would ban the technology used to create 3D-printed guns.

"While I am as impressed as anyone with 3-D printing technology and I believe it has amazing possibilities, we must ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences," Yee said in a statement. "I plan to introduce legislation that will … Read more

A Texas man has become the first person to successfully fire a real bullet from a gun created on a home 3D printer. Sound crazy? In fact, the blueprint for the pistol is available for free online for anyone to access. And it's legal.

University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, 25, released a video of a 3D-printed gun named the "Liberator" taking test shots over the weekend. The gun is mostly made of plastic, with the exception of two metal pieces: a metal firing pin and a 6-ounce piece of steel that's required by law under the Undetectable Firearms Act. Of course, the piece of steel that makes the weapon visible to metal detectors, and legal, can certainly be omitted by future hobbyists.

Wilson invited Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg to witness the trial. Greenberg reports that 15 of the gun's 16 pieces were printed by a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer -- the metal firing pin is the 16th piece. … Read more

NEW YORK--For months, a debate has raged in the media and on Capitol Hill about whether or not society (and the law) should allow 3D-printed guns.

After listening to Cody Wilson speak for a few minutes, one can't help but come away feeling that the national discussion is moot: 3D-printed firearms are inevitable.

Today at the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, Wilson, the founder and director of Defense Distributed, argued for an environment in which people can use 3D printers to make guns.

It's not that he doesn't recognize -- or care -- that there's … Read more

When I last spoke with Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed had just met its $20,000 funding goal, and he had taken delivery of his Stratasys uPrint SE 3D printer. Fast forward nine days and the outlook for his 3D printed firearm project looks less positive.

As reported here in September, Defense Distributed, a group headed by University of Texas graduate student Wilson, began navigating the uncharted material and regulatory waters around designing a gun to be printed from common plastic on a relatively low-cost 3D printer like the MakerBot Replicator.

Now, Wired's Robert Beckhusen reports that Stratasys has voided … Read more

Welcome to the dark side of 3D printing.

The hobby is best known for creating colorful toys and trinkets, but some enthusiasts are working on design files that would allow anyone to print a working gun. These don't exist yet, but some believe it's only a matter of time.

Why would a 3D-printed gun be appealing? For one, it could potentially be cheap. You can buy a preassembled 3D printer for about $500. A spool of ABS plastic to print with goes for $50. Depending on where you shop, you can buy .38 Special ammunition for 30 cents a round. The plans will undoubted be distributed free like so many MP3s. … Read more

One thing we can probably all agree on is that in the future, robots will be everywhere. But will they play the role of master or servant?

With luck, the latter will come to pass, and Cody, a concept robot from Georgia Tech, is an example of what we should hope for (or fear). Simply put, it's a sponge bath robot, three words I never thought I'd type in the same sentence.

The best part is it appears to do the job well, though it certainly takes all the sexiness out of the endeavor. The autonomous robot uses lasers--because, really, robots all have lasers, or at least should--to specify a body part that needs to be scrubbed.

A camera then feeds the information to a microprocessor which, in turn, commands the robot's arm to wipe the selected area, which it swabs first.

In tests conducted by Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab, Cody used image processing to determine the hue of the "debris" (which we're guessing includes dead skin cells--and possibly bedbugs and dignity) and thus ascertain how much remained on the arm after the robot completed its task. Cody effectively removed 96 percent of the stuff.

Fortunately, it performs its duties using "relatively low force"--less than three newtons, which is science speak for, "Oh, yeah, right there, baby."

So let's recap: If you're in the hospital of the future, instead of a sexy nurse or orderly giving you your daily sponge bath, you will get a sterile, unthinking robo-doc named Cody. Sometimes progress isn't all it's meant to be. And just so you know what's coming, there's a video of Cody in action below. … Read more

Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.

By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults "arrested for" certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory.

"We should … Read more

Every now and again, a free utility or application stands out from the crowd. CodySafe from Codyssey is just such a tool. It's a portable application that is a menu utility for other portable applications. From CodySafe, you can download, launch, and manage a wide range of portable applications, everything from simple multimedia players and editors to a comprehensive "Swiss Army" suite of system management tools that would be perfect for on-call techs and others who have to fix things on the fly. Codyssey claims you can use it to turn a USB flash drive into a &… Read more