Today’s 3D printers are finely tuned instruments able to print detailed models in a variety of colors and exotic materials. If you own a 3D printer, you’re very familiar with its capabilities and limitations. On the other hand, the general public views 3D printers as an early version of a Star Trek replicator. As far as they know, all you need is the right file and you can print anything.

I remember seeing a show several years ago where the hero was able to print an exact duplicate of the villain’s gun overnight. That was probably when I was scraping plastic spaghetti off my build plate. Not sure the show got past the pilot.

In reality we have to juggle a number of factors just to get working models printed, plastic type, fill ratio, skins, shrinkage, build plate adhesion… Still the hobby is full of very talented people able to produce some amazing prints.

Unfortunately, some of those very talented people have tried and succeeded to make guns on our 3D printers. Not good guns, not reliable guns, but sometimes just barely functional ones, on a good day, with a tailwind, and a bit of luck. They can also print frames and parts to skirt local ordinances. Never mind that both are illegal; some people are going to do it anyway. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Let me be clear: I’m talking about plastic filament printers. Yes, metal printers exist, but they start around $50,000 and go up fast, well beyond what any typical household is going to park next to the coffee maker. Unfortunately, to a politician, a $300 hobby printer and a $100,000 industrial machine are basically the same thing. Details are apparently optional.

I’m not even going to get into how effective, or how dangerously ineffective, 3D-printed guns can be. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that politicians think we’re cranking them out like pancakes at a diner. And when a few people ignore the law, the standard response is to write more laws, because that’s worked out so well historically.

Predictably, the proposed fix is to require software in printers to block the printing of guns or components. This sounds impressive right up until you understand how printing actually works. The printer doesn’t read a “gun file”, it follows G-code generated by a slicer. That distinction matters. Unfortunately, understanding it is apparently optional.

Washington state has already proposed a law making it illegal to sell a 3D printer without software that prevents printing guns after 2027. Right, we all know how well that will work. The current class of 3D printer controllers are specifically designed as controllers. Even a high end home computer would have a difficult time identifying a gun. It’s not that easy, I once spent an extra hour in an airport because the X-ray operator thought a screwdriver with a Tee-grip was a gun.

Of course, that means cloud based AI. Your g-code files will have to be scanned for semblance to a gun before you can print. Logically it would follow that the scan will also have to be looking for gun components in case you decide not to print a gun in one piece, I told you they have no idea. These technical details haven’t stopped other states from looking at similar restrictions.

So now we get remote AI scanning our G-code before every print, looking for something that “resembles” a gun. And if printing a whole gun is blocked, then obviously it has to detect parts too, because somebody might decide to split the model into individual parts. Now we have a huge universe of banned shapes. This is what happens when policy is written without having even a passing familiarity with the technology.

Manufacturers will play it safe, which means false positives, lots of them. Perfectly harmless prints will get flagged and refused. It might slow down bad actors for about five minutes, right up until they tweak their designs to slip past the filters. Meanwhile, the rest of us get the privilege of redesigning legitimate parts so they don’t trip some overzealous algorithm. Progress.

I won’t belabor the point, but this is the kind of poorly thought-out solution that accomplishes very little while making life noticeably worse for everyone else. And once the door is open, it won’t stop there.

We’ve already been fighting “right to repair” battles. One of the great advantages of 3D printing is that we’re no longer completely dependent on manufacturers for parts. Something breaks, and you can often print a replacement in a few hours. If you’re lucky, someone’s already uploaded the model. If not, you design it yourself, and if you do, please do everyone a favor and share it.

Now imagine that same ecosystem with an AI gatekeeper watching every file. It won’t take long before manufacturers start insisting their parts be blocked too. Then come the patent trolls, I can hardly wait until I see, “This is covered by patent 0123456789, printing will cost you $0.16 plus a $5.00 transaction fee.”

I hope none of this actually happens. It’s hard to imagine a faster way to choke off the innovation that’s made 3D printing such a powerful tool for hobbyists and professionals alike. But here we are, laws being written by people who don’t understand the technology and, worse, don’t seem interested in learning.

We need better-informed politicians. At some point, “I don’t really care about politics” stops being harmless and starts becoming part of the problem. Because politics, whether we like it or not, clearly has no intention of ignoring us.

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And of course, today’s song from Songer… Printocalypse Now!

 

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