A new type of hand-made bullet could be the key to the reusability of often-fragile 3D-printed firearms.
Twenty-five-year-old machinist Michael Crumling of York, Pennsylvania has pioneered a means of producing hand-made lead bullets encased in steel shells, which when fired, contain the force of the blast inside the bullet, safeguarding the frame of the weapon.
“It’s a really simple concept: It’s kind of a barrel integrated into the shell, so to speak,” Crumling said in a Wednesday Wired report. “Basically it removes all the stresses and pressures from the 3-D printed parts. You should be able to fire an unlimited number of shots through the gun without replacing any parts other than the shell.”
Crumling’s “.314 Atlas” rounds take an hour per round to produce from 27-cents worth of material. The innovator has no plans to sell the rounds, but is making their design available online.
The ammo is Crumling’s first step toward designing 3D-printable semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons.
“This is a building block for the future of 3-D printed firearms that will enable people to develop semi-automatic and—if you had the proper legal paperwork—even fully automatic weapons,” Crumling said.
Crumling’s “unlimited” rounds could also mean unlimited headaches for law enforcement, who have cited the unreliability of 3D-printed firearms in their campaigns against the production and use of such weapons.
“No matter what end of this gun you can be on, you could die,” New South Wales, Australia police commissioner Andrew Scipione said after the department blew up a Liberator — the first 3D-printed weapon — during a test firing last year. (RELATED: This $1,200 Machine Can Make Semi-Automatic Rifles Anywhere)
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