Researcher Discovers Way to Trace 3D-Printed Guns

[jdege]

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a23798428/tracing-3d-printed-guns/
Researcher Discovers Way to Trace 3D-Printed Guns—With a Few Caveats
Regulating guns that aren't traditionally manufactured won't be easy.

Guns assembled from digital files come without traditional safeguards like serial numbers (just like perfectly legal home-built firearms), but a researcher from the University of Buffalo claims to have developed a new method for tracing the weapons.

Wenyao Xu, a professor in the University of Buffalo's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, calls the technology "PrinTracker." Xu's research pertains to 3D-printing, rather than the minutiae of 3D-printed guns. In a press release, he explains that even devoid of a serial number, identifying markers are already embedded in the firearms similar to birthmarks left from the 3D-printing process.

He claims a high success rate, but after how long?

Can he match an item to a machine, years later, after things of prints, hundreds of spool changes, etc.?

[yukonjasper]

The never ending pursuit of controlling everything....he can expect a huge grant to "perfect " his process.....

[jdege]

The never ending pursuit of controlling everything....he can expect a huge grant to "perfect " his process.....

There was a long period when the BATF crime labs thought that they could indentify bullets to the lot by the close examination of the trace isotope levels - until someone did some tests that demonstrated that the trace ratios differed within a single ingot, as heavier metals settled, and that the difference within any given ingot was greater than the differences BATF was claiming could be used to identify the specific ingot used.

In other words, junk science. Just because you're playing around with expensive scientific instruments doesn't mean your doing science.

Didn't keep it from being used to put a lot of innocent people in prison.