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.?