The gunmen who shot Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, may have used guns from 3D printing, but it is relatively difficult to make ammunition, and the source is a mystery. On the day of the incident, the search popularity of words such as "3D printing" rose sharply in Japan. Can 3D printing really print guns? Widely used 3D printing It is understood that 3D printing is a technology based on digital model files, using powdered metal or plastic and other bindable materials to construct objects by printing layer by layer. (Industrial 3D printing can use a variety of consumables, including metal. Screenshot of a 3D printing manufacturer) Different from carving, cutting and other processes, 3D printing adopts the method of stacking layer by layer to create physical products consistent with the digital analog design. The accumulated materials include plastics, ceramics, metals, etc. Compared with traditional manufacturing technology, 3D printing can reduce complex technological processes and produce objects with special shapes or complex internal structures. At present, 3D printing technology is mainly used in education, medical treatment, automobile, aerospace, industry and other fields. With the development of 3D printing technology, 3D printing is more and more widely used. There are media reports that food and human organs can be printed in 3D. Recently, Nanjing San dieji Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. announced on its official website that its first 3D printing drug product T19 has been approved by the National Drug Administration for drug clinical trials (ind). The principle of the 3D printing drug is: directly process the powdered raw and auxiliary materials into softened or melted semi-solid, then precisely extrude them, print them layer by layer, and prepare the pre designed three-dimensional structure drug preparation. In the field of consumption, some users sun out 3D printed shoes, car models, badminton, small fans, etc. there are all kinds of printed things, but they are mainly used to print puppets, hand-made, etc. According to the report released by the consulting and Research Institute Zhongyan Puhua, the world 3D printing market will be about US $15.4 billion in 2020, and the 3D printing market in China will be about US $4.4 billion. It is expected that the world 3D printing market will reach US $34.9 billion in 2023. The question is whether everything can be 3D printed? Can guns also be 3D printed? According to the CCTV news client on June 15, an 18-year-old Australian man was charged with 3D printing the whole gun at home. As long as the trigger was pulled, the gun could fire 15 rounds in a row. Police said it took only two days to build the 3D printing gun, and the material cost was less than 40 Australian dollars (about $28). Is there a threshold for 3D printing? In the industrial field, due to the limitations of printing materials and printing accuracy, the mainstream view is that 3D printing is not everything can be printed, especially for products with some composite materials, 3D printing technology is stretched. In addition, compared with the traditional molding process or assembly line, 3D printing will reduce the production efficiency due to monomer production, which is not suitable for mass production. At present, it is also applied to some customized products in most cases. Moreover, if high-precision 3D printing is required, the cost will rise and the printing efficiency will decline again. For consumption level 3D printing, not every consumer can "play well". A digital blogger Zeng Kepu said that playing 3D printing requires a certain degree of programming or modeling expertise. The cost of printer is also a threshold for high-precision printing. (the price of 3D printers sold on e-commerce platforms ranges from several hundred yuan to several million yuan) China news finance reporters have seen on many e-commerce platforms that 3D printers range from hundreds to millions of yuan. A professional 3D printer manufacturer told Zhongxin finance and economics that 3D printers with consumables as metal, for example, range from thousands of yuan to tens of millions of yuan, mainly depending on the purpose. The 3D printer manufacturer also said that there is professional modeling software for printing what needs to establish relevant 3D models. This software is different from programming, mainly drawing. "We also have a model library, which is a model mall. If you can't model yourself, you can buy the model you want directly." "If you simply want metal texture, you don't need the performance of this metal. In fact, you can choose other materials, such as wire, etc. it has added some metal powder, and the texture is more like metal, but it doesn't have that strength." The above manufacturers said. (Xinhua News Agency)