Open-Source Search Engine for 3D Printing
- 46 backers
- $12,925 of $100,000
- 29 days left
We're building a search engine for 3D printing. Without the censorship.
Fund DEFCAD Today Access 3D printable firearms. And more.
The DEFCAD files have been downloaded more than 400,000 times. Our next step is defcad.com: an open-source search engine for all 3D printable files, not just innocuous trinkets and garden gnomes.
Get the Offline Cache:
A DEFCAD USB dogtag.
Reserve a DEFCAD startup package now to get the Offline Cache: a USB key with every DEFCAD 3D model. Once the site gets going, we'll provide help and tutorials for printing your own 3D parts. Open Source. Open Data. Freedom Wants to be Free.
The defcad.com search engine source will be released on github under the AGPL license. Like Wikipedia, nightly database mirrors will also be made available via BitTorrent. Our goal is not profit maximization, it is an end to the artificial scarcity of copyright, IP, and regulation.DEFCAD purchases fund Anonymous and Veterans.
Hackers are persecuted by federal prosecutors while the basic needs of veterans go unmet. All purchases mediated by the defcad.com search engine will be rounded up to the nearest dollar; 50% of the proceeds will be donated to the VFW, and 50% will be donated to 4chan to support free speech on the internet.-
Google can't
Google's done a lot for free speech. But they made an early decision to disallow promotion of firearms, have gone on the record opposing the AGPL, and have a closed search index and codebase. Their fear of copyright infringement suits is why Youtube passed Google Video and their risk aversion on social is why they're playing catch up with Facebook. They can't be the pioneers here, because the future of 3D printing is dependent on radically open access to object files.
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Makerbot won't
Makerbot is perfectly competent at hardware. And their software is fine too, especially Thingiview. But they caved to censorship, and they don't seem to realize that printed hands and pharmaceuticals are anathema to the FDA and Roche, printed cars will be opposed by the NHTSA and Ford, and printed drones will be fought by the FAA and Boeing. Makerbot won't fight those battles, which is why Thingiverse is going to be a home for trinkets and garden gnomes.
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Politicians say don't
Politicians always want new regulations, patent lawyers always want to sue, and presidents want to feel important. But the mechanisms by which they impose their will are centralized structures dating from a centralized century. Once it's not a few dozen manufacturers under the thumb of the state but tens of millions of decentralized acts of civil disobedience — a patient printing artificially expensive pharmaceuticals, a South Asian woman printing to defend herself — there won't be enough jail cells in the land to hold all the thoughtcriminals.
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We will
Laws were changed and political parties founded over Napster, Bittorrent, and The Pirate Bay...over music and movies. But with 3D printed firearms, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, drones, and medical devices, the stakes will suddenly get much higher. Because 3DP is not about reviving manufacturing jobs or competing with assembly lines on cost. It is not about disrupting manufacturing. It is about disrupting copyright, IP, and regulation. It is about printing items whose prices have been set to infinity. It is about disrupting man-made forms of artificial scarcity. It is about DEFCAD.
We're building a search engine for 3D printing.
Without the censorship.
Fund DEFCAD Today Frequently Asked Questions
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No. DEFCAD is neither a firearms manufacturer nor a 3D printing company. It is a software company building a search engine for 3D models. And we believe that Freedom wants to be Free.
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We begin from the premise that more than 100 million people were intentionally murdered by their own governments within living memory. This number dwarfs crimes and accidents. Our goal is to make it a logistical impossibility to strip individuals of their right to self-defense; with the ability to find and print anything via an internet connection, tyrannical governments will never again have such an advantage over individual citizens.
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Search engines are a proven business model. We will derive referral revenue from items bought through our site. We will also develop an enterprise version of the software suitable for running in a VM behind a firewall, such that it can hook into a custom ERP backend.
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Yes. Our mission is to 3D scan every part in existence. This includes everything from hammers and shovels to firearms and pharmaceuticals. Over time, we anticipate that our efforts will move the frontiers of 3D printing forward, as the requirements of real products will produce rapid improvements in 3D printing speed and material quality.
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Yes. All 3D models on defcad.com will be freely downloadable and searchable. Indeed, we will generate a daily torrent with all 3D models built to date. Moreover, models will be open source and version controlled such that end users can fork and create their own.
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DEFCAD (defcad.com) is an open-source search engine for 3D printable parts. Defense Distributed is a nonprofit applying for 501(c)(3) status. They share some personnel but are otherwise unrelated entities.
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In the fullness of time, likely to be a modern full stack Javascript site. Given our application domain, we'll be making heavy use of WebGL, WebRTC, and related HTML5 APIs, and the size of the 3D models will mean nontrivial engineering around bandwidth, CDNs, and the like.
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The initial search index will be relatively easy to build, as there are far fewer high quality 3D models today than web pages — though we expect this to change rapidly, particularly once cellphones include depthcams. But even with a relatively small initial index, any new dataset presents fascinating new search problems, and 3D scans are particularly interesting in this regard. Moreover, our work will advance the state of the art in 3D printing and draw heavily on physics and materials science. For example, a 3D scan of a metal object will work reasonably well at first when 3D printed, but will give in under stress. Heuristic solutions to this problem have worked well for us so far, but ultimately we will want to develop physically-guided machine learning algorithms to infer optimal material deposition for 3D printed equivalents of metal originals. One can pose this as a sophisticated file conversion problem, from metal to plastic forms, with scans and CAD models as the intermediate. This is just one of many technical issues we'll need to face as we move 3D printing out of the realm of Thingiverse trinkets and into something real.
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Perhaps. We're inundated at the moment. Send email to press@defcad.com with a few of your most relevant clips.
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Yes. Email jobs@defcad.com with your github and/or LinkedIn profiles. We're looking for people with expertise in software and/or 3D printing at this stage. Support for the DEFCAD project is a must. Veterans welcome.
Further Resources
http://defcad.org/defcad-mega-pack/
DEFCAD MEGA PACK
You can now download a zip of all the CAD files we host.
Version:
3.8 (Winston) 03/08/2013
Changelog:
+ lightning-link.iges
+ AR-15_lower_shadowkitfox_version.stl
+ practice_gun.stl
+ 22_electric_v3.zip
+ auditor_wrist_gun.zip
+ 22_electric_v3.zip
Download:
mega.co.nz (fast)
Direct download
Torrent
The island of misfit objects
Welcome to DEFCAD, operated by Defense Distributed.
This site is a makeshift response to Makerbot Industries' decision to
censor files uploaded in good faith at Thingiverse, specifically
firearms-related files. We are hosting as many of the pulled files as
we can find. Check the news section for updates.
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Printed Reinforced AR Lower Review
| [CAD SOFTWARE] | Any good tutorials out there for a beginner by calinb | Today at 02:43:04 AM |
| [CAD SOFTWARE] | What is the best free 3D CAD program to use by calinb | Today at 02:38:04 AM |
| [CAD MODEL REQUESTS] | CAD Suggestion: Glock Stock Adapter by nobody_important | Today at 01:50:36 AM |
| [GENERAL DISCUSSION] | AR 50 by mooface | Today at 01:39:00 AM |
| [INTRODUCTIONS] | long time gunsmith exploring 3d printing by mooface | March 11, 2013, 09:18:40 PM |
| [GENERAL DISCUSSION] | Non Lethal Weapon. by mooface | March 11, 2013, 09:07:51 PM |
| [GENERAL DISCUSSION] | Attn gov agents and their media lackeys... by mooface | March 11, 2013, 08:12:52 PM |
| [GENERAL DISCUSSION] | 3D printed metal storm shotgun? by mooface | March 11, 2013, 08:10:56 PM |
