People have been making paper templates for a long time, I can’t see how plastic would have any real advantage. A plastic guide isn’t going to constrain a metal cutting tool, at best it just shows you where you need to drill the same as a paper template. If you wander outside the lines you’ll just mess up both the part and the jig.
If I were to set up a clandestine gun manufacurer I would try and design a product that could be made using mostly aluminum extrutions and paper jigs. That way it’s easy to compartmentalize each step, harder for one guy to flip on you, and fast/cheap. Plus if you get raided you don’t have a bunch of incriminating files cached on your CNC machine from previous runs.
PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This doesn’t track. You can do way better with a manual mill and, as the other poster mentioned, a 2d paper template with some spray glue will do fine in a pinch. Drilling steel will heat the bit up enough to melt plastic anyway. You could set drill bushings but they won’t be perfect and will drift a bit once they heat up.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The jigs in question are a lot more complicated than I think what you are imagining. If you look up on the topic (and possibly get added to a watchlist), it’s fairly sophisticated equipment being created to handle a lot more of the finesse work required to produce a ghost gun that can actually reliably hit targets its aimed at.
Thats what separates this sort of work out from your run of the mill DIY handcrafted stuff, the guns in question actually have a lot of accuracy as 3d printed rigs can have very high precision once they have been fine tuned, and unlike stuff like paper they can be produced in 3 dimensions, which means you’re working with a lot more than just following lines.
Think more like extremely augmented drill presses and routers and shit that can produce a lot of the parts you normally cant make yourself and have to buy.
PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I may be underestimating it since I’m a jig builder.
We’re talking about different things I think.