The furor over the Ghost Gunner is much ado about the wrong thing.
Information about the device called the Ghost Gunner can be found here: https://ghostgunner.net/
The furor is because the Ghost Gunner's developer built it so that anyone who could afford the $1200 price of the machine could manufacture their own gun parts. This has drawn the predictable insane rage from the gun control lobby, and given the Ghost Gunner a LOT of free publicity.
This part is much ado about nothing. The Ghost Gunner is a miniature CNC mill which will fit on a desktop. No more, no less. CNC mills have been available since the early 1990's, for anyone who could afford a fair chunk of a Megabuck to buy one, and a garage size space in which to house it. Not to mention the 3 phase electricity to feed it. All along it's been possible for anyone with a CNC machine to manufacture their own gun parts. For that matter, anyone with a sufficiently equipped machine shop has the capability to manufacture their own gun parts, and many machine shops have been doing exactly that, under contract, for decades. But apparently this inconvenient little fact escaped the notice of the gun control lobby. It is also perfectly legal for any American to manufacture his own firearm as long as he goes through the correct BATFE paperwork first. But apparently that has escaped the notice of the gun control lobby as well.
Today, rapid prototyping is the name of the game, and the Ghost Gunner enables that.
What has gotten lost in the furor over the Ghost Gunner's effect on gun control is its effect everywhere else. The availability of a small, easy to use, and affordable CNC mill is every bit as important as the advent of 3D printing. The parts for small CNC mills have been available for years. The only thing the developers of the Ghost Gunner did was simply to put them together in a nice cabinet, complete with control electronics, and package them with open source control software. Most importantly, they produced the Ghost Gunner at a price low enough that anyone sufficiently interested can afford one.
The price of 3D printers has come down to the point that anyone who wants or needs one can afford one. The problem is that all currently affordable 3D printers produce items made of plastic. 3D printers capable of working in powdered metal, to produce sintered metal parts, can be had, but they are prohibitively expensive, and sintered metal is an inferior product for most uses. To get high quality metal parts, a developer needs a machine to cut them out of metal billets, either the shop full of machines in a machine shop, or a CNC mill. The Ghost Gunner now fills that gap.
The Maker community is going to be all over this thing.
Previously if someone needed a stainless steel part for their widget they would have to design it in CAD software, send it to a CNC shop, where machine operators would translate it into the proprietary control format for their CNC machines, and then cut the part. This involves a fee at every step, and can take days or weeks in process, depending on how busy the machine shop is. With the introduction of the Ghost Gunner, any Maker who has one can now design his part on his own open source CAD software, output it to an open source control file, and cut it on an open source desktop CNC mill. What previously would take days or weeks can now be done in hours or even minutes.
Need a new drawer pull for your antique dresser? Cut one in your Ghost Gunner.
Need a door handle for your rare classic car? Cut one in your Ghost Gunner.
Need a thermostat housing with the addition of a coolant temperature sensor port for your old truck? Cut one in your Ghost gunner.
Need a custom bracket to adapt a part in your hot rod? Cut one in your Ghost Gunner.
Need to build a liquid propellant rocket engine for your amateur rocket? Cut the parts in your Ghost Gunner.
Have an idea for a new surgical instrument? Cut one in your Ghost Gunner.
Need a part for your tractor so you can harvest today, not tomorrow? Cut one in your Ghost Gunner.
Over and above building gun parts, the possibilities for what people can do with the Ghost Gunner are limited only by their imagination. Well, that and the diminutive size of the machine itself. How many inventors will the Ghost Gunner enable? How many lives may be improved, enriched, or even saved by items developed or prototyped in the Ghost Gunner?
But all of that has gotten lost on the gun control lobby who, in a classic case of dog-whistle politics, are too busy denouncing the Ghost Gunner to see the possibilities it opens up.
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