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Welcome to the November issue of the DEFCAD Newsletter. Strap in for new project announcements, and feel free to download. We start with one of the few true experiments in DIY Defense: a completely DIY holographic sight system called the FOSSDot by BluePrintzTactical. Using off-the-shelf electronics and optical lenses (even allowing the use of a pair of cheap sunglasses), this project lets anyone use their existing picatinny rails to hold a fully functional optical system with whatever crosshairs may suit you. Your new FOSSDot, thanks to the ESP32, can even be connected with Bluetooth!

Next up is the Decker .380 Carbine from Black Lotus Coalition. BLC has released quite a few exciting projects lately, and this one is a banger. The devs went back to basics and actually reviewed what exactly would work best for FDM printing without requiring expensive parts kits or overly-complicated assemblies. A firearm is in essence a bullet delivery device, so their choice of caliber allowed them to make an extraordinarily simple and cheap platform (around $100 USD) while still retaining function. The Decker has minimal bolts, includes a hex key for speedy takedown, and sports an FRT-style trigger group. It's unfamiliar, alien, and as a platform represents the lineal evolution of the old Liberator vision of 3D guns. Spooky AF.

While the Decker is an example of having a stripped down BOM, its not outdone in this regard by current parts kit systems. Take the example of The Decimator by Decimal Dot, which melds the Ruger 10/22 platform with an AR-15 fire control goup to yield an excellent plinker that won't break the bank.

This month's special mention would have to be the integrally-suppressed Rogue-9, designed by ImmortalRevolt and released, with much public and documented administration, by The Gatalog. While it has not changed the essential nature of the FGC line of PCCs, it is a major refinement which displays the most current thinking in this design space.

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Hosted in Orlando, GatalogU is a multi-week showcase of the finest acts of internalized system thinking in 3D2A. Though I am the only accredited professor, my teaching assistants will include CtrlPew, Yzy, and many (many) more of your favorite names in GunCAD.

 

GatalogU is a cram school. In just 21 days, you can become a legal expert in ITAR, EAR and the federal RICO statute. Even after ignoring the law for years! Our curriculum includes:

*** Bathtub HRT, Bootleg GLP-1, How to Get Made Doing What You Love, It's Not Racketeering When *WE* Do It, Stealth Editing Your Site, and, by popular demand, "How To Kill Friends and Influence People." ***

Because its a Very Black Friday at GatalogU, we'd like to remind you that we're a for-profit university, and that this semester's enrollment is closing fast. If you're interested in attending, just post one time in this Rocketchat and MAGLOCLEN will do the rest.

This Black Friday, LEGIO members enjoy 10% off annual memberships.

Support Defense Distributed's legal efforts, and access the DEFCAD file repo, the world's largest repository of 3D-printed firearms. 

DEFCAD memberships support individuals, businesses and instituions. Ours is the only legal platform for accessing 3D firearm frames and assemblies in the United States, and its our only sale of the year.

Can you feel it? There's been a major change in the GunCAD scene over the past few months. Of the thousands of files created over the past ten years in furtherance of the cause of DIY Defense, most were created using versions of SolidWorks, a fully-featured parametric design suite meant for industrial application.

 

But this soon changed with the popularization of FDM 3D Printing. With that came the advent of dozens of "CAD" programs, and since the classic slicer could make do with mesh-based files there was no norm for making STEP files for 3D2A. Unforuntately, this meant the majority of the man-hours devoted to popular 3D2A have produced non-parametric files.

 

Parametric design, the true mathematical definition of a CAD project, allows for simple manipulation of past works as well as reliable dimensional extraction of the originals. Mesh files are, at best, a loose set of triangles that can be printed. At last, we can report the majority of the 3D2A design groups ensure their projects include STEP files. At last this norm has become a rule even observed by r/FOSSCAD.

 

As Unseenkiller demonstrated with his BLOCK series, you can make generalized STEPs for people to afterwards use for artistic or functional remixes. The Not-A-Glock project was also adamant about STEP as release standard with their V1.1 including these files as the largest change. Creating STEP files means actually using a dedicated parametric studio rather than trying to run a mesh conversion script, as we have seen with the low-quality STEPs included in the FOSSDot's recent revision.

 

There are benefits to designing with and in mesh, but for clear integral geometries, especially for reference, we must design ina paramteric manner so that others can actually use and build on our designs. The spirit of Open Source dictates providing a way to use and change the underlying project in any way a creator sees fit, and its great to see that 3D2A gets it.

 

This newsletter likes to highlight alternative manufacturing techniques for DIY Defense, but that doesn't mean we won't mention commercial advances in Big Printing. With the enthusiasm for printers like the Bambu X1-Carbon, a new space for high-end filaments also became available. Z-Polymers has just released a new material to bridge the gap between consumer and industrial-grade materials with its Tullomer filament.

When it comes to designing and actually making do-it-yourself firearms, we have to be good students of material(s) science(s). PLA+ and PE-CF have been the King and Queen for at least the past two years, but both have considerable issues when it comes to managing strength, temperature, and water absorption. Tullomer actually competes with PEEK (Polyether Ether Ketone), which tends to only be available for industrial printers since it requires a high heat across the entire manufacturing process to allow the proper crystallization.

Tullomers have no glass or carbon support, do not require post processing with sulfuric acid, do not easily absorb water or lend themselves to electrical conductivity (as most carbon fiber filaments do), and have sheer strengths comparable to metals while having half the specific weight of aluminum. This material might open up an entirely new chapter of FDM gun printing.

Or not! Notably, Tullomer materials are still around $500 USD for a regular roll of filament. For budgetary and materials reasons, 3D2A has always had to make certain embarassing compromises with its political ambitions. Over the next five years, Tullomers or their successors may drop enough in price that we will no longer have the convenience of calling our work a "hobby."