3D printing is "hot search" in Japan, can you really even shoot a gun?

　　China News Service, July 10th

　　China-Singapore Finance reporter Wu Tao

　　According to Japanese media reports, the guns used by the gunman who shot former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be 3D printed, but it is relatively difficult to make ammunition, and the source is a mystery.

On the day of the incident, searches for words such as "3D printing" in Japan surged.

Can 3D printing really print guns?

3D printing for a wide range of applications

　　It is understood that 3D printing is a technology that builds objects by layer-by-layer printing based on digital model files, using bondable materials such as powdered metal or plastic.

Industrial-grade 3D printing can use a variety of consumables, including metals.

Screenshot of a 3D printing manufacturer's introduction

　　Different from engraving, cutting and other processes, 3D printing uses a layer-by-layer method to create physical products that are consistent with the digital and analog design.

The accumulated materials are plastics, ceramics, metals, etc.

　　Compared with traditional manufacturing techniques, 3D printing can reduce the complex process and produce objects with special shapes or complex internal structures.

　　At present, 3D printing technology is mainly used in education, medical, automotive, aerospace, industry and other fields.

With the development of 3D printing technology, the application of 3D printing is becoming more and more extensive.

There are media reports that food, human organs, etc. can be 3D printed.

　　Recently, Nanjing Triassic Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. announced on its official website that the company's first 3D printed drug product, T19, has been approved by the National Drug Administration's Drug Clinical Trial (IND).

　　The principle of the 3D printing drug is: directly process the powdered raw and auxiliary materials into softened or melted semi-solids, then precisely extrude them, and print them layer by layer to prepare a pre-designed three-dimensional structure drug preparation.

　　In the field of consumption, some users have posted 3D printed shoes, car models, badminton, small fans, etc. There are all kinds of things printed, but they are mainly used to print dolls.

　　According to a report released by China Research Institute, a consulting research institute, the world 3D printing market size in 2020 is about 15.4 billion US dollars, and the Chinese 3D printing scale is about 4.4 billion US dollars.

　　The question is, can everything be 3D printed?

Are guns also 3D printable?

　　According to a CCTV news client report on June 15, an 18-year-old man in Australia was charged with 3D printing a whole gun at home. As long as the trigger was pulled, the gun could fire 15 bullets in a row.

The 3D-printed gun took just two days to build and cost less than 40 Australian dollars (about $28) in materials, police said.

Is there a threshold for 3D printing?

　　In the industrial field, due to the limitation of printing materials and printing accuracy, the mainstream view is that 3D printing is not everything that can be printed, especially for products that use some composite materials, 3D printing technology appears to be stretched.

　　In addition, compared with the traditional molding process or assembly line, 3D printing will reduce the production efficiency due to single production, and is not suitable for mass production. At present, it is also applied to some customized products in most cases.

And if high-precision 3D printing is required, the cost will rise, and the printing efficiency will drop again.

　　And for consumer-level 3D printing, not every consumer can "play around".

A digital blogger Zeng Science 3D Printing said that playing 3D printing requires certain programming or modeling expertise, and high-precision printing, the cost of the printer is also a threshold.

The price of 3D printers sold on e-commerce platforms ranges from a few hundred yuan to several million yuan.

screenshot

　　Zhongxin Finance and Economics reporters have seen on many e-commerce platforms that 3D printers range from a few hundred yuan to several million yuan.

A professional 3D printer manufacturer told Zhongxin Finance that taking metal 3D printers as an example, they range from a few thousand yuan to tens of millions of yuan, depending on the application.

　　The 3D printer manufacturer also said that what needs to be printed needs to create a relevant 3D model, and there is professional modeling software. This software is still different from programming, mainly for drawing.

"We also have a model library, which is a model store. If you don't know how to model, you can directly buy the model you want."

　　"If you simply want a metallic texture, you don't need the properties of the metal. In fact, you can choose other materials, such as wire, etc., which have some metal powder added, and the texture is more like metal, that is It doesn't have that strength," said the manufacturer.

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