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- Hacker News
- Hope sanity prevails and printers stay free, don't give Europe ideas.by mickelsen
- Leave us out of this. Americans can deal with their own gun issues.by hananova
- At some point between this, age verification for the OS, and everything else, it starts to seem like a coordinated attack on computing.by LanceH
- They've been at it since 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSgby akersten
- I am curious which 3d printer manufacturers/developers are poised to take advantage of this.
What machines already have locked down (or partially locked down) slicers and communications to the boards? Have those companies made a statement?
Is there any opensource firmware which can comply?
This is a massive hit on the opensource community. As a vendor/dev of an opensource CNC control board (Smoothieboard) I will be forced to limit sales to any state with these laws (our board can easily be used to bypass these protections).
Having watched over the last 13 years how our boards have led to many other machines and innovations outside of the 3d printing community over the years (OpenPNP, Wazer, Opentrons, etc) I can only see this as stifling to development in every direction.
I wonder how companies like Machmotion and other retrofit CNC controls are viewing this as well. Since this also applies to all CNC.
I don't live in any of the states proposing these types of laws...but when it does come here I doubt it will be stopped. The simple act of making your own machine for art/design will make you a criminal.
"The more rules and regulations...the more thieves and robbers."
by Ccecil - > One of the most dangerous aspects of the bill is that it criminalizes individual users for common practices, like creating and using alternative open source programs with their 3D printer.
This is, by the way, very similar to attempts to curb down the right to repair, or more recently the age sniffing that also tries to destroy VPNs. Lobbyists are getting rich right now. It's amazing to see how corruption works in the USA here.
by shevy-java - guess what, the state of california on the printer bed, depicted in the article, looks close to the profile of an AR15 pistol grip.
im looking forward to the idea that the outline of Ca. may trigger false positives
by rolph - I had the same hunch when I saw it, which is either pure genius on the part of the author/publisher or pure lol meme magic.by throwawaytea
- If this becomes law, it will give rise to a fun new form or protest art in this vain. What is the cutest thing you can design that nobody would consider to be related to guns, but which gets flagged? An obvious example... a llama sitting on the ground, legs hidden, and head held high in the air, chewing its cud. Llamas can be really cute! Sell them on Etsy/eBay/etc., printed by an out-of-state 3D printing service. I just used the EFF form to promise my state senator in Sacramento that I'd send her (and reporters that cover her) one of them if the bill passes.by rented_mule
- It looks even closer to a California banned "large-capacity" magazine.
https://dpmsinc.com/media/catalog/product/cache/7217d38013ee...
- Better yet, design and popularize an AR grip that is the state of California
- Imagine if you couldn't buy a lathe unless it refused to make a baseball bat (which could be used for hitting people).
Or if you couldn't buy scissors (because they could cut brake lines).
Or if you couldn't buy a car (because it could be used to run someone over).
And if all of those checked with the government before functioning.
It's almost like maybe instead you should just ban the undesirable end action, enforce that law, and create societal conditions that don't nudge or force people into doing undesirable things.
by deet - We used to ban the undesirable action! Then DEFCAD got that ban overturned, convincing the federal government that they have a First Amendment right to publish 3D-printable firearm plans. So now our choices are to allow widespread 3D printed firearms (which I and many others won't accept) or restrict the means by which they can be made. I genuinely do wish the DEFCAD folks had made different choices that would not have led us here.
- by morkalork
- enforce that law
Califoria would not be a sanctuary state if they actually cared about enforcing laws.
by userbinator - You can make all of those things. First you pick up two sticks and rub them together real good (maybe use the inner bark of a hickory tree or similar to make some cordage s.t. you can make a bow drill and rub them even better.. you may find cottonwood to your liking but I did it with green maple when I was 11 so if you can't lmao look inwards). Using the little coal you've created, build a fire. Now pile a bunch of wood on it and starve it for oxygen. Great, you've created charcoal. Now skin a big animal and make bellows from its hide. Now build a big fire and blast it with the bellows to make it rull friggen hot. Put some rocks in it that have iron in them. Collect the iron from the bottom of the fire (exercise left to the reader) into a stone tub. Build a few forms using wood, sand, and wax in the shapes of the various parts a lathe. Melt the iron in the stone tub and pour it into the forms. Scrape the mating surfaces of the lathe parts flat and clean with a hard stone.
They cannot take this shit away. It's futile.
by jcgrillo - In fact, right up front in TFA they point out that California already bans manufacturing firearms without a license. This 3D printer regulation is entirely duplicative and unnecessary.by SoftTalker
- If some people want to make their own gun, then some people will also make their own 3D printer.
This joke of a law isn't going to stop any 3D printed handguns from getting made, it will only add one more relatively easy step.
Then what, ban stepper motors?
by leptons - Vorons are great! https://www.vorondesign.com
You've come a long way, RepRap.
by samatman - > Then what, ban stepper motors?
Don't give them ideas.
But seriously, given that the 3D printer movement started out with people building their own printers from scratch and there continues to be a healthy open-source hardware ecosystem within the community, I can't see this stopping anyone.
Unless you also make it illegal for 3D printers to print 3D printer parts...
by tjohns - The Take Action link only took 30 seconds: https://www.eff.org/3DPrintCA
(did choose to edit the letter but otherwise really, it autofills and takes no time)
by Barbing - Also, if you have a couple extra minutes to spare, consider handing the letter and the name of your senator to an LLM (I used Deepseek V4 Pro) with instructions to research your representative and tailor the message to them specifically.by wyrdcurt
- thanks, done. i did handwrite a message since it seems more personal/effective to meby k__o
- I share your hopeful optimism, but here's the reality of the mass-email campaigns targeting congress:
[email received 6/18/26 from the office of Steve Scalise, majority leader in the house, who is one of my representatives. I have trimmed for brevity.]
>> Due to advancements in technology, many third-party organizations use their mailing lists to send advocacy letters like this on your behalf. With the increased volume of third-party letters being sent to my office, I want to be sure that I am able to more appropriately address your thoughts and concerns.
I will be sure to consider the views you have sent me, but if you have any additional thoughts on this issue, or need other assistance with a federal agency, please contact my office directly through my website scalise.house.gov or by calling (202) 225-3015
-----------
In case it is not clear to anyone reading, this is kosher political speak for "I am ignoring automated emails. Consider this your notice."
Honestly, I am surprised it took this long, although I'm quite certain it has been going on for a lot longer and generally they simply do not provide the courtesy of telling you they are ignoring you.
by brianleb - We're bombing Iran to suppress technology form the 40s. We're suppressing advanced AI. We're suppressing 3d printer technology. Then there are the encryption wars. Control of advanced technology, not just weapons, is a larger and larger battle every year. When the robots get here, you'll need the governments ok to do anything at all with a robot. Mark Andreessen's comments that government regulators told him that they've suppressed whole branches of physics is ominous in that regard. Technology suppression is a whole separate narrative of history practically.by narrator
- Mark Andreessen has joined the FUD party, he's knowingly regurgitating a fake narrative.by kgwxd
- Looks even more draconian than the New York law. For example, it seems to mandate proprietary, locked down slicers from the printer manufacturer.
--
For integrated preprint software [slicer] design, guidance for how vendors shall demonstrate that printers will accept print jobs exclusively through authorized and validated software systems and will not accept print jobs from unauthorized software pathways, including attempts by users seeking to evade a detection algorithm.
- Over the last few years, I’ve felt as though I’ve been living in a feverish dream all the time. Laws, regulations and general changes in the world are so detached from reality and so far removed from the reality they are meant to serve. And this is yet another example.by __natty__
- California voters, write to your state senator. I'm in San Francisco, and I wrote to Scott Wiener, who recently voted to pass this out of committee.
Before that when it was still in the assembly, I wrote to Matt Haney, which didn't do much good because he voted for it both in committee and for passage.
But, I feel like bay area legislators need to know many of their constituents know this bill is misguided and are paying attention. The tech capital of the world shouldn't have artificially impaired tools.
by asveikau - When Wiener ignores these messages, will you vote against him in the next election, even if that means voting republican? Because if not, you can expect more laws like this one.
If you want different laws, you need to elect different politicians.
by chroma