3D Printing Enthusiast Unveils Working Pepperbox Pistol


While news on the 3D-printed gun front has been sparse as of late, that's less a matter of stalled development than of the new technology already becoming old hat in this fast-moving world of ours. How else to explain the lack of coverage even as repeating pistols are knocked out on desktop equipment? Consider, for example, the Hexen pepperbox, which has stainless steel liners for its six barrels and is undergoing constant strengthening and improvement as discussed over in the DefCad forum. The video below shows the Hexen successfully fired (actually, it appears to be a related five-shot model), using 6mm Flobert (low-powered .22) ammunition.
The designer, Franco, even printed ammunition holders for the pepperbox, along with a tool for ejecting expended cases (both pictured above).
The video below shows an animated breakdown of the Hexen. You can see the inner workings of the gun, as well as the steel liners for the barrels.
In just a few short months, 3D printing of firearms has gone from a lower receiver, to a single-shot pistol to a rifle to a pepperbox repeater. All of this development has been pursued and achieved by activists and enthusiasts without institutional backing.
Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth by control freaks left in the dust commence.
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If I had a heart, it might be warmed by this development.
Now if we could find a way to do away with the steel liners...
I'd rather see bullet manufactures make bullets that are already contained in a steel liner.
You should replace them with tin.
Stainless Steel isn't ferromagnetic, which means it doesn't set off metal detectors. Theoretically.
There are more than one kind of metal detector. I'm pretty sure the security ones can detect things that are not ferromagnetic.
Currents can be induced in any conductive material. Electronic metal detectors can then sense the field generated by those currents.
Magnetic detectors detect magnetism. Stud detectors find wood using capacitance or something. It blows my fucking mind. I think there's even security detectors that can find ceramic and shit.
Watch the suit, Norwood.
How about some 3D printed body armor? Or at least 3D printed custom camouflage suits?
So these guns can fire into the third dimension? They're going to start a war between the dimensions that we cannot hope to win.
You're fucking cracked, man.
Keep it up.
Just as long as they don't start a temporal cold war we should be fine.
Dumbest. Enterprise plot decision. Evar. Well, wait, let me correct that. The dumbest thing about Enterprise was having Jolene Blalock on the show and then only allowing her to look her best in one or two episodes. The temporal cold was was almost as dumb, but not quite.
I never got past the first season. Did they ever resolve that plot line or did they just bury it without resolution?
I don't know, I never made it past the second season.
Do ANY of the inveterate dweebs in this place know the answer to my question?
Yeah, it got fixed eventually. Though I haven't actually watched the third season, which is where I think that happens. I have been watching reviews on it on SciFi Debris. I recommend that.
Not only did it get resolved, they used the resolution to hit the reset button for that timeline. Thanks for watching, assholes!
Like Newhart, without Bob Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette.
How the hell did any of you ever get passed the opening song?
Look, it's possible that the theme song could've sucked while the series was good. It's happened before.
Name one.
The Simpsons?
Janeway will make it right. She makes temporal plotlines her bitch.
They really should have just made the entire series about an Enterprise set in the Mirror Universe.
That would actually be a really fun show. If Abrams were smart, he would have run with that idea.
Right off the bat you'd have instant viewership because Jolene Blalock and Linda Park and others would be wearing the slutty Mirror Universe uniforms.
And goatees!
They could fly around week after week, raping and committing atrocities. An admittedly fresh take on the Trek Universe.
"Damn it Jim I'm a butcher, not a nurse."
They could fly around week after week, raping and committing atrocities. An admittedly fresh take on the Trek Universe.
I would watch that. Are the crew members attractive and scantily clad most of the time?
Are the crew members attractive and scantily clad most of the time?
Yes, but gay is the new red shirt.
"Ooooh Captain... I found something, you naughty bitch! Argh!"
Because that's how diversity works. You have now worked your way up the "black guy in a horror film" rung of societal acceptance. Diabetics are moving into the "sassy best gay friend" role.
Yes, but gay is the new red shirt.
That's fine, so long as they're sent to their inevitable doom attractive and scantily clad.
Diabetics are moving into the "sassy best gay friend" role.
Good luck filling these shoes.
I'm fabulous, bitch.
Good luck filling these shoes.
Heh, that's like a double pun - gay fashion sense *and* a reference to diabetics losing limbs.
Capt. Kirk: [referring to Uhura] What d'you do to her?
Nomad: That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.
Spock: That "unit" is a woman.
Nomad: A mass of conflicting impulses.
How about a Nomad series? He goes around the galaxy, finding illogic and. . .dealing with it.
I've always liked that idea, but the one problem with the mirror universe is that it's a little unbelievable as a stable society. Not an insurmountable obstacle to make it work, of course.
Maybe have a Federation ship lost in the mirror universe, forced to fake being an imperial ship?
Sort of like mirror universe Obama coming here and trying to sell us a war.
The point is for them to be evil, ProL. A Federation ship faking it isn't. You fail at understanding the attraction of the Mirror Universe.
Faking it a lot. So much that the lines get blurred. Then. . .betrayal.
Kind of like Breaking Bad in space.
Dr. McCoy: [looking at an isometric drawing of the NOMAD probe] Well, that's not the same.
Spock: Essentially, it is, Doctor. I believe that more happened to it than just damage in the meteor collision. It mentioned "the other." The unanswered question is: the other WHAT?
SPACE WARTY!
It was incredibly dumb. Probably the single thing that doomed the show. Once they got rid of that albatross, the show started improving, but too late for poor Enterprise.
Oh, we forgot one other thing: the theme song.
Hey, the crappy opening sequence did provide the really awesome opening sequence for the mirror episode.
Yeah, what were thinking when they chose that? Were they too lazy to hire someone to compose original music?
I don't know. Why would you hire Blalock and then only really let her go all out in one or two episodes? Why would you have such an unbelievably shitty theme song? Why would you right away go into "time travel war" as your main plotline? Why would you hire Jeffrey Combs and then make him a goofy Andorian?
There are many questions, to which the only clear answer is "because they were retarded".
Yes, good point. I was a little taken aback by the song when I watched the first episode.
A little? I hulked out and smashed my iPad.
Well, I thought, "Shitty theme song, let's see what the show is like."
As much as I like the scifi genre, it really needs to drop the idea of time travel in TV series, unless they are just going to straight up say "screw logic" and go Dr. Who on the rules.
I actually thought 'Lost' handled time travel well, at least in a way that was different.
Obviously you can never avoid paradoxes in time travel, but I liked the idea that 'whatever happened, happened' and you can't change anything no matter how hard you try.
The best thing about Lost's time travel is that it wasn't easy and the characters did not have control over it.
The other day I saw a story that scientists think they've discovered a planet with that is so hot and so turbulent that the planet has glass tsunamis. It supposedly rains glass.
I have no idea how they would know this from god knows how far away, and I personally take the claim with a major grain of salt. It did get me thinking though, that there is really crazy shit going on in the universe. We also don't even know about almost all of the crazy stuff that is happening. Given that, why do sci-fi shows always fall back on the same sort of story lines and the same sort of episodes? It seems like a genre that should be capable of going absolutely anywhere, yet it continually retreads the same ground.
I want my ship's crew flying their ship through glass rain, goddammit, not traveling through time and hanging out with aliens that all speak English.
SFTV hasn't even caught up with 1950s written SF. The appeal to a mass audience is always going to dumb everything down.
Elitism here at reason? Well now I've seen everything.
IT'S NOT ELITISM TO WANT QUALITY!
Why do all the aliens speak languages that are comprehensible to humans? Why not have aliens that can only communicate through some sort of computer code? Why not have aliens that are totally incomprehensible and actually alien, so that human beings have no hope of communicating or even understanding what they want? There are so many possibilities and they never explore any of them.
Or aliens that communicate on the order of millennia or nano-seconds?
Or even, I don't know, aliens that aren't bipedal?
Or even, I don't know, aliens that aren't bipedal?
You may not acknowledge the Crystalline Entity, GBN, but the Crystalline Entity loves you.
Everything you describe can be found in scifi literature. But that stuff is probably considered too risky by the showrunner and producers.
Remember that Star Trek shows after TOS have all been completely formulaic, and that's worked out really, really well for their bottom line. So: print money, or take a risk on some really esoteric science fiction? You do the math.
I think Diaspora would make an excellent, and salable, teevee show or movie.
I think Diaspora would make an excellent, and salable, teevee show or movie.
The problem with a posthuman, virtual future? Every episode is a holodeck episode.
There are a lot of scifi books/series that would make for some really good TV, but they're all risky. I mean, I would love to see The Laundry series on, say, HBO, but it's a risk. Game of Thrones was a risk too, though I think anyone who has read the books would agree that it was a good risk to take.
I hereby rescind my call for a Ringworld movie and demand that HBO do it as a series instead.
Why must you other the Horta, Irish?
Actually, that sounds a little similar to the Voyager episode "Blink of an Eye" which was apparently based on Dragon's Egg.
(This was in response that that elitist SF's comment.)
(This was in response that that elitist SF's comment.)
In the future, all sub-cultures will be degraded for 15 minutes.
1) It's safer to go with tried-and-true.
2) These shows tend to have shitty writers who immediately fall back on formula and cliche.
3) These subjects are known to be popular with the audience, as based on other shows.
4) Imagination is not a plentiful resource among B-grade TV scifi writers.
5) Really creative shit could get expensive.
They are just making shit up. They know (roughly) the mass of the planet and how close it is to its star and maybe a little bit of spectroscopic data which might say a little bit about the composition. Then someone makes up a scenario that could happen within those parameters.
@Irish
I agree. I think we should make a finer distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Fantasy being space dramas that give guys the excuse to watch soap operas.
Why not have aliens that are totally incomprehensible and actually alien, so that human beings have no hope of communicating or even understanding what they want?
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
So we have the Horta, Tamarians, and the Prophets/Pa'Wraiths. Care to walk that back, Irish?
NO WALK BACK I
Hoist on his own Picard.
Given that, why do sci-fi shows always fall back on the same sort of story lines and the same sort of episodes?
Because Adventures from Known Space isnt a TV show?
Unless you're going to do something totally novel, please no time travel. It's a massive headache that science fiction doesn't need.
I really liked Asimov's End of Eternity, which took time travel in a totally different direction.
Unless you're going to do something totally novel, please no time travel. It's a massive headache that science fiction doesn't need.
HEY!
That's not science fiction. That's porn fantasy.
[grumble]
Well, certainly your totally implausible "Warty Hugeman" is Robert E. Howard-derived. That has to be true, because I read it in The New York Times book review article on your latest installment.
I say there's a huge audience for a sexy STARZ style cable Trek.
Look, HBO series. Gritty, TOS period, not set in Starfleet at all. A brothel, run by Orion slave girls. Gritty. HBO.
I have a script where Voyager gets stuck in a timewarp and Jeri Ryan and Blalock take a shower together.
Star Trek: Innerthighs?
Or, better still, Enterthighs.
Star Trek: The SEXED Generation
This reminds me of an old Urkobold series:
All of you all should stop watching gay shit.
nerd alert.
I want one. I can't wait to read some of the comments at the huffington post when they finally learn about this.
There will be pants crapping.
Oooh! That would explain it, Oh dear me, this chatting away wears me out.
I want one. I can't wait to read some of the comments at the huffington post when they finally learn about this.
You are the Grover Cleveland of double posting.
You know, I once asked Grover Cleveland to be a pall bearer at my funeral.
That's what he gets for commenting during the Red Hour.
I want to print out a Tiger Tank.
You know who else wished he could have printed out Tiger tanks?
Roy Horn?
OddJob in Kelly's Heroes?
[prints out Sherman. loads paint round]
I want to print Episiarch.
Bile is very expensive to use as printer stock.
Make an army of me, Hugh! Take over the world! Or just play the Bjork song, if you don't want to do that.
Problem is: he's a one dimensional character.
hey-o! Try your waitresses and tip the veal, ladies and germs.
You take that back! I like thin crust pizza and original series Star Trek! That's two dimensions! Oh no! I need a third!
Uh...uh...thinking...
Hey he has two dimensions! he can quote Adult Swim and Star Trek!
He is intelligent, but not experienced. His patterns indicate two-dimensional thinking.
Now what we need is a 3d printed dog... you know, something the cops can shoot at instead of the real dog.
Yeah but cops wouldn't just shoot a dog that wasn't moving and posed no credible threat to them, would they?
Now you see the genius of a 3d printed dog.
What we need to do is force all cops to wear augmented reality visors (like cop-centric Google Glass), and then hack the visors so that all fellow cops appear to be dogs.
Imagine the slaughter...
OT: The new "Curveball" fired for lying on her resume. I'm sure she's completely trustworthy in everything else she says though (eyeball roll to the ceiling).
Star Trek Enterprise was also the series that revealed that mind-melding is apparently the Vulcan equivalent of sodomy. So Spock Vulcan-sodomized McCoy at the end of Wrath of Khan. Think about that.
Not to mention a grieving Kirk at the end of Requiem for Methuselah and The Paradise Syndrome.
Spock was a serial rapist. Must have been that human half that drove him to it.
"Forget. . .that I mind-raped you?" Vulcans suck.
Not a single play on the name Hexen? The fantasy themed version of Doom. Little imps, big beakers of health, blue mana dots, massive square pixels?
Does anyone know the name of that funky track playing in the 51 sec long video? I want.