Form anyone who's done a form1 printed suppressor, did you use a washer, embedded strip, or metal base for engraving?

I was going to release some form1 drawings, but im not sure the best way to serialize them for form1. I think the metal base is probably the best way.

Any thoughts?

I'd make it part of the print.

I wouldn't release any designs though.  .gov might come after you.

I'd want metal threads, for several reasons. I'd put them there.

The one I built (actually still currently building) is a 3d printed core sandwiched in a metal enclosure, so I had the metal case engraved.

If I was just 3d printing an entire silencer, I would emboss directly into the plastic and not worry about any metal at all.

This is less about what I'm building and more of what would someone else doing a form1 use.

I use a metal band around the base for the ones I print, but that necessitates a change in the assembly process.

If it can be put right into the plastic I guess they can decide however they want. I'll just leave it as is.

Thanks guys!

Ive thought about this and it seems to make sense to me to use a metal tube and engrave that piece. Alternatively if you use a brass or SS heat insert for metal threads it seems like another good option.  

I'm still unsure if it's worth trying though, not sure one would last long -- maybe in nylonX or through a resin printer (for rimfire).

I gave up on trying a form1 build type. There's just no interest in anything polymer for center fire, and little interest in rim fire. I've found a very small niche in the 50m rimfire bench shooters that do like them for their tuneable accuracy.

I'm going to stick with the form4 builds.

I'd probably go the embedded strip route, I used 6mm x 35mm amazon engraving plates for serial plates in a couple printed form 1 lowers. I engraved the serial on the strip, and embossed the rest of my info directly into the print, I think I'd do the same on a can.

1/2x28 doesn't print that well, and you're going to want to dissipate the heat anyway. Consider using a more coarse thread and an adapter. An idea that was floated recently in a printing group that I really liked was printing with a recess for a plain 'ol A2 flashhider and epoxying the flashhider in as your mount. They're like $7 and would work as a good heat sink.






As of now, code is speech.

Well heres where I'm coming from.

Had an 07/02 for a long time. Been trying to make headway into printed suppressors for years. Came up with a patentable idea to make a simple polymer suppressor almost as indestructible as their metal counter parts for rim-fire, 9mm, and 300aac. No one cares, no one wants one, you can't sell them.

So I came up with an alternative method of manufacture that's close to what we do, but could be done as a form1. This would get more of these suppressors in use and maybe take the 'worry' out and we might actually get some salable order's.

Two problems arise:
1. The design of the parts has to be pretty specific. So I need to provide this as 'data' probably on an SD card or as a downloaded file. Some parts need to be included for assembly. They aren't suppressor parts and you cannot use them as suppressor parts, but it slowly becomes a 'kit'. Kind of like jig plates aren't firearms and never could be, but it's part of a kit.

2. In order for the pieces to go together and be as robust as the 'commercial' types, they needed some design changes. The bases are metal, and it's all built from there, but I needed a different base for form1s, and that's where moving the serial location comes in. I can't provide the base in the parts, or again it's a kit. So it had to be off the shelf bits, and there goes the serial location.

Ultimately we couldn't agree business wise how to proceed. It becomes a kit, which we know the atf won't approve for a form1 build. Since the stance by the atf is anything you intend to make into a suppressor is already a suppressor, theres a legality hurdle that consumers wont jump over. Plus the legal exposure of a business, not making suppressor parts, but still making suppressor parts. (Like diversified machine and others) Then it became a push to give consumers something they didn't even seem to want.

So, I abandoned it and it's now a dead idea. No form1s, and I'm staying in the rimfire world, and mostly target shooters. Maybe someday things will change, but for the moment there's no route forward.

I think target market is going to be a big problem here if you're not able to sell pre-printed cans. The tax stamp is a big barrier to entry for low priced cans: the thinking being "if I'm already paying $200 I don't want that stamp going to something cheap and breakable/disposable." it's the reason we don't have the ~$100 plastic Glock suppressors here.

I'd recommend taking a hard look at the way 3d printed arms are being done right now. FOSSCAD (Free And Open Source) has been a major philosophical foundation. There are tons of suppressor STLs and designs available and being shared openly and freely, and the 3d printing community isn't used to paying for designs. Further, there is an extremely anti-gun-control mindset within that community, which sees the free and open sharing of plans as an important bulwark against practical gun control. Because of this, the Venn diagram of 3d printers in the GunCad space and people who will file form 1s are pretty close to two separate circles.  I've caught flak for SBRing a couple printed builds, because to many "untraceable" is a core tenet of 3d printed guns.

I hope that doesn't come off as dismissive, because I absolutely don't mean it that way. I'm very interested in learning more about your design; I say the above to frame the vitally important question of: "what does your design do that others don't, and what makes the service that you'd provide in kits, designs, and materials valuable in a way that can't be found freely elsewhere."  It's a very DIY-centric crowd, so selling an engraved plate with an STL on a flash drive isn't going to cut it. OTOH, An engraved non-suppressor (legally) mount that's designed to integrate with a printed can in some novel way just might have legs.

What's the use of a plastic suppressor? Rimfire? Are there actually plastics strong enough to hold up to anything bigger than .22lr?

Yes. If done right.

Yep, and they're only going to get better with time/more advanced tech:

They have recently had great success by wrapping them in fiberglass. The last time I looked into it they had just over 1k rounds of standard velocity .308win through one. Making progress every day!!

Try 3d printed stainless steel and then have it sintered.

Wow that is impressive. Cool that you can see the muzzle flash through the tube walls on some of the shots. What are they printing with that doesn't just melt?

Melting isn't actually quite as big of an issue as you'd think; plastic isn't as good of a conductor for heat as metal. Erosion is an issue. The bigger engineering challenge is the interface between the gun's metal parts, that get hot quickly, and the printed parts. A direct thread 1/2x28 printed can will melt and sag at the muzzle, for example. Using a big thread adapter or muzzle device epoxied into the base of the printed can to act as a mount is the current trend.

PLA+ is reported to do acceptably, of course CF or GF filled nylons would be superior.

We spent a lot of years and money designing our printed models, but there's just not a commercial market outside of 22lr, and most of that is bench rest shooting.

I've successfully printed and tested these up to 1000 rounds on:
22lr, 17 hmr and wsm, fn5.7 (mostly p90s), 5.56(16"), 308 (18"), 300aac sub/super, 9mm, 45acp, 38 special (16"), 45 long colt (16"), .410, and 450 bushmaster.

The longest used suppressor is one of the early 22lr at over 100,000 rounds now. The shortest used was a 30cal on a 30-06, at 2 rounds. Avg is somewhere between 5k-8k shots, depending on caliber before it needs anything done to it. Typically it's erosion of the blast baffle. I've never done anything to the 22lr suppressors. I don't even clean them anymore, nothing sticks in there.