It looks like New York State is now contemplating new laws for 3D printers that could cripple the technology in that state.
Readers may recall a few weeks ago we ran a story about Washington State proposing new laws to control the sale and use of 3D printers. That state was, as most jurisdictions are, concerned about the increasing use of 3D printed weapons. Specifically, it’s the key registrable component of weapons that is being 3D printed, thus enabling perps to go around licensing laws.
Police forces are increasingly encountering these weapons and have asked lawmakers to do something.
Well, the folks in Washington State did by proposing that no 3D printers could be sold in the state without the use of “blocking software” that would somehow inspect print files and prevent the machines from printing the parts.
3D printer operators would immediately know that this is almost completely infeasible to implement and ineffective if done.
Now it seems that New York State has proposed a similar but perhaps even more far-reaching law. The proposed law, Senate Bill S9005, attempts to corral illegal weapons through a series of rules, including:
- Formal definitions of weapons covered
- Formal definition of 3D printers — and CNC machines
- Have a “working group” define minimum standards for “blocking technology”
- Maintain a state library of illegal firearm “blueprint” files
- Prevent the sale of any 3D printer (or CNC) that does not include the “blocking technology”
- Require all sales of 3D printers to be face-to-face, person to person (!)
If implemented as-is, this would be catastrophic for 3D printing in that state. Virtually all sales of 3D printers are done electronically these days, and that rule alone would effectively lower sales to a small fraction of today’s volume.
The blocking technology would require not only the 3D printers to be modified to perform some type of checking, but also slicing software would have to be modified. It is unclear whether any of the 3D printer manufacturers would be interested in doing this.
Many 3D printers are operated with open-source software, which is highly unlikely to incorporate any such checking. While these open-source projects would likely object to the rules, they also don’t really have the resources to make major changes: they are usually not companies but simply a collection of volunteers. No one would volunteer to make these changes.
What about offline 3D printers? The implication from the proposed law is that printers must connect to a central database of “blueprints” to do a check. You can’t do that if you are offline.
Many 3D printers are purposely offline for security reasons, and in some cases for legal reasons. Companies operating equipment in regulated industries, particularly the military, cannot be online. How is that going to work?
The proposed law does not seem to distinguish between a hobbyist running a 3D printer in a basement to a major manufacturer operating a fleet of Stratasys devices. In fact, the law’s definition of 3D printing is so wide it automatically captures all 3D print processes, including not only FFF, but also MSLA, SLA, DED, DMLS, SAF, MJF, FDM, LBPF, etc. I am quite sure that the companies buying those systems would not be very happy if this law were enacted as written.
If it were, I assume that most manufacturers using 3D printers would simply move to another state and set up operations. I don’t think the New York State Senate has considered the implications of their proposed law very carefully.
The “control the 3D printers” fever seems to have swept from Washington to now New York. Could it catch on in other states or even the entire US?
I cannot see that happening, as it would be so disruptive as to effectively shut down the industry.
Finally, there’s the question of effectiveness. Could a library of “blueprints” actually catch all the perps? Absolutely not. While you might have a list of STL files, how can you actually compare the geometry? That would take a considerable amount of compute power to do, and networking capacity to send gigantic files back and forth while doing so. Even if you could do that, how do you actually define a banned design? There are an infinite number of possible designs to provide a given function, and so detection can’t be handled in this way.
The New York State legislators likely mean well here, but they are woefully uninformed about what is feasible and the implications of their proposal.
But some voters will probably say, “that sounds good!”, so mission accomplished.
Via New York State
