I'll take my firearms made the old fashioned way. Forged, machined, proofed and hand finished.

We have used a similar technology at NASA in Huntsville in a department we call rapid prototyping. I don't really think it would be suitable for making high strength parts like a barrel, bolt, or receiver. There are a few different methods; one welds together stacks of thin metal sheets and cuts pulls off the metal that you don't need (this looks the most like the "printing" method), another method is taking metallic "powder" and using lasers to fuse it together into three dimensional shapes, a final one makes parts out of plastic by shining lasers on a liquid that solidifies when it comes into contact with certain wavelengths of light. All work in conjunction with computer drafting tools.

I'm not sure if it has been implemented, but there was discussion at NASA about sending up the powder type of machine to the space station to allow the astronauts there to make small replacement parts so they would not have to wait for the next shuttle delivery.

If you wanted to make guns on the cheap and fast, stamping sheet steel or aluminum would still be the way to go for things like receivers (a-la the AK47 or Uzi). Barrels and bolts would need to be of higher strength than you can get by the "printing" process, plus they would be pretty rough and would need a final machining. I would still go with a forging or billet machining.

The only parts I could think of that you would want to manufacture in this way would be side grips and backstraps on pistols or forearms on rifles and shotguns out of plastic. Then it would probably still be better to stick with injection molding or RTM fiberglass.

$15,000 is cheap compared to the late 80's when they went for closer to $250,000. With the drop in price has cone a major increase in accuracy as well. Most machines can hold tolerances of a couple of thousandths of an inch.

Converting the Euro to dolls on the first video, if your in a hurry, it's $178.193 and if not $20.9964 a real bargain for parts no longer made by a Manufacturer who went out of business or stop making the part centuries years ago!

As for 3D printing, had a flash how scary this can become. Take F&S "The Terminator of Gun Dogs"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ&feature=player_embedded

and think of this

Boston Dynamics PETMAN Prototype

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67CUudkjEG4

Now combine the technology down the road and we will have Star Trek "Data" doing our work and a virtual whatever you can think of. There will be a day you cannot tell the difference between a human and a robot.

Gives the movie The Terminator a new twist!

It seems that you would still need someone to program the machine to the specifications of the final product. That could take considerable time, unless you had a prototype for input, and even then, critical measurements would have to be taken and incorporated into the program.
It might be quicker and easier to make a mold from the prototype, and cast the part.

this technology is still in it's infancy,obviously. if the geeks fully grasp this science and run with it there's no telling how far it will go. bottom line drives new stuff. if there's a market, look out. no telling what's coming in the future.

If this new technology can provide a better firearm: accuracy, cost, reliability, maintainability,etc) I'm all for the new technology. Heck, if the manufacturing of guns had not evolved over the past 100 years we'd probably be paying 10x the price we are currently paying.

I'm all for it. Phil, I might help pay if you would get some of the mini faces that fit over the fingers if they were in the image of Dave. If they were not a great success as puppets at the F&S Christmas party, they would make great BB gun targets. How much?

Wired had a cool article about the coming revolution in garage manufacturing a while back:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/

I think it'll be a while before we can crank out a gun in the garage the way that you can a CNC-carved wood project today, but it's coming. Here's an interesting question: What will the government response be if people can make guns in their homes?

I am not a machinist, but I imagine at least a few readers here are. Can you already build a gun at home if you have a reasonably tooled shop? Sees like a decent lathe and a modest mill-drill would be all you need to make a simple revolver at home -- probably can be had for less than $10K, right?

I've heard of the Plastic goop and laser prototyping before, never knew it could be done with metal as well.

Used to need a garage full of tools to make a gun, pretty soon it will be a computer and a 'printer' and you are set for production. Amazing........

I see a future where most manufacturing is done at home or the commune and where gunmanufacture is restricted to the programming of the 3d printers so that noone prints out an usi and goes berserk :P

Print me a better job

Looks like a modified SLA (Stereo lithography) process. Been used for quite awhile to prototype mechanical assemblies. Also used in the medical world.

Thats awesome.

Ive heard of this before, I didn't know that they had already done it!