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For those in the US with a combined interest in 3D-Printers, intersections of the 1st and 2nd Amendments, and legal precedents; Cody Wilson has been fighting the US Government for half a decade.
Short version: after Wilson uploaded his 3D pistol plans to his site, over 100,000 people downloaded it - this drew the attention of the US authorities, who tried to use the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to force a take-down.
The authorities argued that by posting the 3D printer plans for a firearm, Mr. Wilson was effectively exporting firearms, and subject to federal regulation. Eventually the Department of Justice dropped the case, paving the way for DIY'ers to publish such things freely.
The article cites 'promises' made by DoJ to move the regulations to another department.
Wired's article: A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns (archive)
Related: The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home
Japanese Gun Printer Goes to Jail
Suspected 3D-Printed Gun Parts and Plastic Knuckles Seized in Australia
FedEx Refuses to Ship Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner CNC Mill
Man Who Used CNC Mill to Manufacture AR-15 "Lowers" Sentenced to 41 Months
Ghost Gunner Software Update Allows the Milling of an M1911 Handgun
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday July 15 2018, @05:53AM
That's kind of a hack. If you were doing a production run you'd set up a jig that holds 5 or 6 parts in the 5 or 6 required orientations. Then you load it up and hit cycle start. The machine does it's thing and the light goes red at the end of the cycle. You walk over, pull out one finished part, move each unfinished part one jig to the right, and slide in a new billet on the first jig. Repeat.
A finished part comes out of the machine every n minutes, where n is largely dependent on the speed of the tool changer. The total material removed isn't huge, the whole billet is ~60 cubic inches. The slowest operations are plunge/spiral cutting in the internal pockets. If you have a fast tool changer, slots, and the HP to do it you can do the plunging with a large drill. That speeds up pocketing significantly.