Donations to weaponeer.net for our monthly hosting fee's had been just good enough to pay the hosting fee's for the last couple months mainly just from a couple kind souls and two automated $20 monthly donation's. (which is greatly helpful)

As you all know, I'm a 51 year old impoverished Disabled Veteran in declining health, and I can no longer pay the hosting fees for weaponeer.net, and therefor I'm forced to rely on the membership and viewers of weaponeer.net to make donations to make our $100 monthly hosting payment.

THIS MONTHS DONATIONS ARE NOT REMOTELY ENOUGH TO PAY THE HOSTING FEE'S DUE IN JUST 6 DAY'S !  And without the donations weaponeer.net will unfortunately be shut down for good, which would be a great loss to the shooting, gunsmithing and firearm building community. Gunsmithing is a dying art, right at the point when gun ownership is at an new all time high, and technology such as CAD, CNC and 3D printing are enabling new Builders/Makers/Home Gunsmiths to design and build accessories, especially for the modular AR Series Rifles.

I am NOT talking about Printing a firearm, and showing the world that you can make a plastic handgun and starting the hysteria all over again that polymer guns in general caused, because non-shooters just imagined that they would pass through metal detectors. the hysteria was so bad with the Glock that they forced Glock to imprint their SN on a steel tag embedded in the polymer frame just so it had metal in it. Granted the Avg person does not know anything about guns, and the fact that the Glock still has a metal slide, barrel, Magazine, FCG etc. and all they really did was to make the handgun Lighter, not invisible to metal detectors.  As professionals, builder's and those just starting out and do not yet know anything about guns.  it's our actions that others see online. and building a gun online is a VERY bad image that we do not want the public to see or hear about. don't do it... your damaging our sport and hobby, right when people are starting to get comfortable with guns.

Now 3D printing will become integral with gun manufacturing in the future, due to rapid prototyping.  this allows  you to print a grip, BUIS, Rail Covers, even Rails and lower receivers for AR's and handguns, and then do the resulting refinishing work on those prints which tends to require heating them to smooth them, sanding them, so the surface is as good as you would expect from a wood butt stock. 

The most common polymer's typically used in 3D printers is PLA.  which is a great 3D printing material for early stage prototyping on simple geometry parts, made out of biodegradable corn starch.
The other most common material is ABS.  Check out this link for improving the surface of PLA (we are talking about the LINES) http://tinyurl.com/y7kuy83q

For high Resilution printing try Nylon, VERO, Transparent, ABS-Like, Rubber-Like, and VISICLEAR. (there are many others, with more showing up everyday.

Keep in mind the 3D printed parts is mainly for Prototypes to check fitting ect. you would then print in a better material  and max resolution that that will give you the perfect finish. those parts then would be used to mold better parts. in some cases the parts are used in Lost PLA Casting in the same way Wax was used.. heat it up (much higher Temp for PLA) to remove it from the mold, and then the mold is filled with the material you intend to use in the end product.  you don't use PLA to make an AR15 lower, you use the PLA as part of the process to create a proper mold, so you could use it to make the product out of the correct material.

Obviously I don't have a 3d printer, much less a quality 3D printer for showing the whole process here on weaponeer.  the donations would have to be a LOT higher for me to be able to show the community the proper tools such as 3d printing etc. here, and it was part of my To-Do List. But if we don't bring in the funds to pay for the monthly hosting fee's, I'll never be able to take things to the next level.

Next month I intended on announcing to the membership about me Hosting a Shoot here in Wisconsin this summer to include shooting clinic for handguns and rifles.  back in 2010 I announced a Camp N Shoot, where we taught some basic skills such as fire starting with fire steel's etc. at night, and during the day, driving a few miles to the range for a days worth of shooting.  only locals attended back then, but we had one hack of a good time.  so much so that we had a camp N shoot every month during the summer.  if there was interest in trying that once again, I have no problem with it being a weaponeer hosted event"  If weaponeer is still around". 

So it's up to the membership, if weaponeer.net dies this month for good, or weaponeer.net sticks around.

DONATE to keep weaponeer.net online as a great resource, or don't donate and weaponeer.net ends it's 16 year run in 6 days.

 
Please donate what you can when you can, because every little bit helps a great deal.  especially if more than a couple people donate

To donate, you can simply click the PLEASE DONATE NOW below, or use the following link http://tinyurl.com/pv8ufrc to go directly to PayPal to make a donation or just go you http://www.paypal.com and make a donation out to boss@weaponeer.net for weaponeer.net's hosting fee's.  

Please don't leave it up to someone else to donate. any and every amount helps to keep the friendliest gunsmithing website and membership alive.