TECH

3D-printed weapons will be monitored by an algorithm

3D printers have become very popular products in recent years. Its possibilities are being exploited in different sectors, from the creation of toys to the manufacture of medical or engineering tools. Unfortunately, some have used them to produce weapons.The situation begins to worry organizations and authorities, as it is very simple to develop a weapon with a 3D printer. At any moment you can be in the wrong hands and cause a misfortune. That is why researchers at the University of Buffalo were given the task of finding a method that allows them to track the printed weapons.According to their research, every printer in the market is unique by its operation. Academicians point out that all printed objects include imperfections, so small that they can not be distinguished by the naked eye. They call them "fill patterns" and are caused by the model of the printer, the brand, the nozzles and other types of components that intervene in the final result.They discovered that these patterns are never repeated. The imperfections are not the same even if the same printer model is used. Wenyao Xu, a professor of computational science and engineering at the University of Buffalo, said: "3D printers are designed to be the same, but there are slight variations in their hardware during the manufacturing process that lead to unique patterns in order to check their findings, the researchers printed a total of five keys on 14 different printers.When scanning the objects and making a digital model they were able to observe their different patterns.According to the data obtained, they formulated an algorithm capable of calculating any type of variation in the keys. allowed them to define that the alterations of each object could be associated with the printer used, its accuracy was 99.8%, that algorithm can be applied perfectly to the weapons or pieces that make them.
Scholars see their discovery as the "fingerprint" of 3D printers. It is a great advance to be able to associate a weapon (and any object) with the printer used. Manufacturers are likely to require manufacturers to register printers in the future. In this way it would be easier to find out the source of the weapons.
At present, 3D-weaponry is not a major problem, but a little later it could get out of control if no regulation is done. In the United States, the authorities banned the free distribution of weapons plans on the Internet. However, many measures remain to be taken, especially in other regions of the world.


H. T.