3D Printer Gun Project Sees Huge Demand for Designs

And plenty of government visitors, too

In December, a digital design sharing forum called Thingiverse, which is maintained by the manufacturer of the 3D printer Makerbot, removed all firearm-related designs. But some of these designs are not lost — they've simply moved to another website, which now reports seeing heavy traffic from around the world.

The digital blueprints for gun components to be made on 3D printers were collected and posted on a site maintained by Defense Distributed, the organization spearheading the Wiki-Weapons project that is creating a fully functional 3D printed gun and is posting designs for it on the Web as they go along. TheBlaze has reported on Wiki-Weapons several times before and noted that it is, in part, a project with the goal of protecting freedom of information on the Internet.

When gun designs were taken off by Thingiverse, an action Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson called censorship, he and his team pulled as many designs as they could onto a new website for the project call DEFCAD. Ever since creating the new digital design sharing site specifically for 3D printable firearms on Dec. 20, Wilson said the amount of traffic has been surprising.