Blog

Welcome back to the DEFCAD Newsletter. Starting with some standard fare, HulkHoganHH has released the first remix of the 3DP90, the Polybius. Featuring reworked ergonomics and an opened magwell, HulkHoganHH has crafted an aggressive look suited to one of the world's most iconic weapon designs. The Polybius finds itself with integrated iron sights built right into the upper receiver, only needing a G36 optic insert as a final touch.

For makers and cypherpunks

Bear Arms N' Bitcoin is back and better than ever for the 4th year running, and DEFCAD is one of the primary sponsors. Join us for two full days of presentations and conversations with some of the brightest minds in the freedom technology world including Mr.Snow, Middleton Made, Jeffrod, and DannyMeatball.

Don't miss out on this chance to meet with luminaries in 3D printing and cryptocurrency and learn all about how to get involved with the hottest projects, or begin to commercialize your own. There are privacy options for the security-conscious when it comes to purchasing. We're calling it the World's Fair of 3D Guns.

Location and dates

Austin, TX during October 7-8, 2023

Register

beararmsnbitcoin.com

Our profile focus this week is with PotatoSociety and their Anderson Arms project series. The Anderson Firearms Model Submachine Gun is an almost entirely printable pistol caliber carbine with no design reference to other existing PCCs. Using a Glock 19 barrel, it has a faint similarity to the Sten MKII while still suggesting the various technical hurdles that other printable projects have to iterate around.

The third entry in PotatoSociety's "Fire" series, the Hellfire is a printable AR-15 lower which improves upon the earlier Wildfire design, and whose strength, reliability and ease of use have made it one of the most popular printable lower receivers available.

Unlike earlier Anderson designs, this model comes with a variant compatible with fully automatic parts. This feature was in fact the main design inspiration for the Hellfire, demonstrating there is no restriction which quality engineering cannot overcome.

FreeCAD intro

You may be surprised to learn that the Anderson Submachine Gun was built and assembled in FreeCAD, a valuable resource often overlooked in favor of more proprietary options. FreeCAD is a comprehensive, yet approachable open-source software package that allows you to sketch out your designs, create models from them, and even run stress simulations for those designs. With 20+ tool packages, and with a veritable fleet of community-created addons, its a great introduction to learning the elements of good CAD work.

If you're interested in designing your own projects, FreeCAD also has extensive community and developer-created documentation, maintained by both and hosted on a publicly-available wiki and in a suite of easily accessible videos online. Further, there are practice designs available created with the intent of expanding your skillset and honing what you already know, which all translate well across other CAD suites.

FreeCAD quick start

The easiest way to start is to read the "Getting started" section. This covers installation, exploring the interface, working with the PartDesign and Sketcher workbenches, scripting and much more.

FreeCAD downloads

Visit the FreeCAD Downloads page to download installers for Windows, Mac and Linux.

FreeCAD community

While Firearms and Accessories are the bread and butter of the DIY Defense space, there are quite a few other design paths that are just as useful and interesting. We're thinking of the smoke and concussion deployment devices that have been showing up online in the past few weeks.

Two such designs are based on applications from real world combat operations with the BN43, Croatian BIM and the Pira MKII. One of the best recent developers in this area, Laff's Technology, has not been resting on his laurels, and he has provided a new simple smoke grenade design in the form of the ARD-1. There is plenty of low-hanging fruit in the printable defense space, and it is always a pleasure to see developers helping themselves (and us) to it.

DEFCAD continues to be the primary home for 3D firearms reference content on the internet. An important step in the continued improvement of this space is being able to have full solid body parametric models of classic platforms. This week we are proud to present the Chiappa Rhino 60DS and the Sten Mark II.

The Rhino 60DS by Chiappa is a modernization of the design present in the Mateba 6 Unica, where the barrel is located at the bottom of the cylinder rather than the top. Combined with the integrated firing mechanism and the hexagonal cylinder, this is one of the most iconic revolvers ever invented.

The Sten Mark II is the most easily recognizable in the Sten family of firearms due to over two million being produced during WWII. This open bolt blowback-operated submachine gun is one of the simplest designs for both use and manufacture, and the MKII was designed to have a removable barrel as well as a catch to adjust the configuration of the magazine and ejection port.