Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming semi-automatic weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America.
Since the best available firmware is open source I don’t see any way of imposing limits on it.
The printer itself doesn’t even know what it’s making since it’s reading directions one by one, so any limits would need to be implemented at a slicer level, which are also basically all open source (at least any worth using).
The only way I could see it working would be mandating that all printers sold in the US come with software checks against it and be non reflashable, but considering a new driver board that would be able to drive 95% of printers is about $25 it is nothing more than screaming into the void.
Since the best available firmware is open source I don’t see any way of imposing limits on it.
The printer itself doesn’t even know what it’s making since it’s reading directions one by one, so any limits would need to be implemented at a slicer level, which are also basically all open source (at least any worth using).
The only way I could see it working would be mandating that all printers sold in the US come with software checks against it and be non reflashable, but considering a new driver board that would be able to drive 95% of printers is about $25 it is nothing more than screaming into the void.
You can also build a 3d printer from scratch pretty easily. Would need to regulate random electronics and robotics components
Open source firmware doesn’t mean anything as long as tivoization is happening.
Which I don’t know whether it’s the case, but legislature might make this a requirement.