 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet, 3D printing |
| Parent | Defense Distributed |
| Website | www |
DEFCAD, Inc. is an American startup that has created a search engine and web portal for designers and hobbyists to find and develop 3D printable and other CAD models online.
When Makerbot Industries removed firearms-related 3D Printable files at the public repository Thingiverse in December 2012, open-source software entrepreneurs Cody Wilson and Ashley Tyson launched DEFCAD as a companion site to publicly host the removed files. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Public and community submissions to DEFCAD rose quickly, and by March 2013, at the SXSW Interactive festival, DEFCAD announced a repurposed and expanded site that would serve as a 3D search engine and development publication platform. [7] [8] [9] [10]
DEFCAD has been called "The Pirate Bay of 3D Printing" and "the anti-Makerbot". [11] [10]
DEFCAD began as a repository where users could upload and download CAD models, but quickly became a community with the addition of an IRC channel and public forums. The site has had over 2,500 community users and offered access to over 100,000 models in its history. [12]
In August 2013, DEFCAD released the public alpha of its 3D search engine, which indexes public object repositories and allows users to add their own objects. The site soon closed down due to pressure from the United States State Department, claiming that distributing certain files online violates US Arms Export ITAR regulations.
From 2013 to 2018, DEFCAD remained offline, pending resolution to the legal case Defense Distributed brought against the U.S. State Department, namely that ITAR regulations placed a prior restraint on Defense Distributed's free speech, particularly since the speech in question regarded another constitutionally protected right: firearms. [13] While the legal argument was not resolved in federal court, in a surprise reversal, the State Department agreed to settled its case with DEFCAD in 2018. Therefore, for a brief period in late 2018, DEFCAD was once again publicly available online.
Shortly thereafter, 20 states and Washington DC sued the State Department, in order to prevent DEFCAD from remaining online. [14] At its core, this new suit cited a procedural error: the proper notice had not been given prior to enacting the change in how ITAR applied to small arms. As such, DEFCAD was once again taken offline, pending the State Department providing proper notice via the Federal Register.
In March 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that DEFCAD had once again became publicly available online. The site implemented a new model to comply with arms export law in which users would be charged $50 and vetted to ensure they were located within the United States and that they were citizens or legal residents. [15]
In firearms terminology and at law, the firearm frame or receiver is the part of a firearm which integrates other components by providing housing for internal action components such as the hammer, bolt or breechblock, firing pin and extractor, and has threaded interfaces for externally attaching ("receiving") components such as the barrel, stock, trigger mechanism and iron/optical sights. Some firearm designs, such as the AR-15 platform, feature receivers that have 2 separate sub-assemblies called the upper receiver which houses the barrel/trunnion, bolt components etc and the lower receiver that holds the fire control group, pistol grip, selector, stock etc.
Improvised firearms are firearms manufactured by an entity other than a registered firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith. Improvised firearms are typically constructed by adapting existing materials to the purpose. They range in quality, from crude weapons that are as much a danger to the user as the target, to high-quality arms produced by cottage industries using salvaged and repurposed materials.
MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.
Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. Providing primarily free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributors to select a user license type for the designs that they share. 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines and many other technologies can be used to physically create the files shared by the users on Thingiverse.
Defense Distributed is an online, open-source hardware and software organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among the organization's goals is to develop and freely publish firearms-related design schematics that can be downloaded and reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer or milling machine, facilitating the popular production of homemade firearms.
Cody Rutledge Wilson is an American gun rights activist and crypto-anarchist. He started Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization which develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "wiki weapons" created by 3D printing and digital manufacture. Defense Distributed gained international notoriety in 2013 when it published plans online for the Liberator, the first widely available functioning 3D-printed pistol.
The Liberator is a 3D-printable single-shot handgun, the first such printable firearm design made widely available online. The open source firm Defense Distributed designed the gun and released the plans on the Internet on May 6, 2013. The plans were downloaded over 100,000 times in the two days before the United States Department of State demanded that Defense Distributed retract the plans.
The DEFCAD Charon is an open source 3D-printable AR-15 lower receiver project that was partially inspired by the Fabrique Nationale P90. It began as a design exercise by a DEFCAD user to explore FDM additive manufacturing technology as a means of integrating the P90's ergonomics into a stock for the AR-15, resulting in the WarFairy P-15 stock set.
A 3D-printed firearm is a firearm that is partially or primarily produced with a 3D printer. While plastic printed firearms are associated with improvised firearms, or the politics of gun control, digitally-produced metal firearms are more associated with commercial manufacturing or experiments in traditional firearms design.
A 3D printing marketplace is a website where users buy, sell and freely share digital 3D printable files for use on 3D printers. They sometimes also offer the ability to print the models and ship them to customers.
A recyclebot is an open-source hardware device for converting waste plastic into filament for open-source 3D printers like the RepRap. Making DIY 3D printer filament at home is both less costly and better for the environment than purchasing conventional 3D printer filament. In following the RepRap tradition there are recyclebot designs that use mostly 3-D printable parts.
The Cuomo Mag is a 3D printed AR-15 magazine named after the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who signed the NY SAFE Act into law banning magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It was created by Defense Distributed and made public around January 2013
Pinshape Inc. is an online 3D printing community and marketplace with headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It allows designers to share and sell their 3D printable designs. People with 3D printers can print those designs on their own printers.
InMoov is a humanoid robot, constructed out of 3D printable plastic body components, and controlled by Arduino microcontrollers.
Cults is a 3D printing marketplace allowing designers, makers and other users to share free and paid models meant for 3D printing. It is also a social network where 3D printing enthusiasts can interact. In March 2023, the Cults community had nearly 8.2 million members, including nearly 123,000 designers and 1.2 million 3D models to download for 3D printing, laser cutting or CNC machining.
The FGC-9 is a 3D-printable, semi-automatic, pistol-caliber carbine. The firearm was first designed and manufactured between 2018 and 2020 by Jacob Duygu, a Kurdish German gun designer known by the pseudonym "JStark1809". In April 2021, a "MkII" revision was released. As of 2024, the FGC-9 is "by far" the world's most common 3-D printed gun, used by insurgents, militia members, terrorists, and drug traffickers in at least 15 countries. The gun's most prominent promoter is "Ivan The Troll," a man identified as John Elik in legal documents.
Deterrence Dispensed (DetDisp) is a decentralized, online collective that promotes and distributes designs for open-source 3D-printed firearms, gun parts, and handloaded cartridges. The group describes itself as aligned with the freedom of speech and anti-copyright movements.
Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free is an autobiographical book written by American gun rights activist, author and crypto-anarchist, Cody Wilson in 2016.
The Urutau is a physible, 3D-printable, semi-automatic, bullpup, pistol-caliber carbine. The firearm was designed and manufactured between 2021 and 2024 by a gun designer known by the pseudonyms "Joseph The Parrot" and "Zé Carioca."
