AUSTIN, Tex -(Ammoland.com)- The Ghost Gunner 3 has gotten an upgrade allowing it to make optic cuts in pistol slides. The company that started the 3D-printed firearms craze has updated its flagship desktop CNC machine to be able to cut steel.
When the Ghost Gunner 3 launched, it allowed the home user to mill out AR-15 80% lower receivers, 1911 frames, Polymer80 frames, and AK47 80% receivers. Last January, the company announced its 0% lower, allowing a user to use a bolt-on system to mill out an AR-15 lower from a blank. The bottom lower and the upper lower are bolted on after milling the middle area of a lower receiver.
Certain states like California have tried to ban the desktop CNC machine because it allows gun owners to bypass background checks by milling out their own firearms. Defense Distributed, Ghost Gunner’s parent company, has teamed up with the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) to sue states like California for attempts to ban the Ghost Gunner and homemade firearms in general.
The new Ghost Gunner is not the long-awaited Ghost Gunner 4. It is more of a Ghost Gunner 3.5. The company calls the latest CNC machine the GG3-S. The “S” stands for steel. The update will increase the cutting power of the GG3-S by seventeen times across all spindles through a closed-loop spindle control firmware update. The ability to cut steal opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
The company quadrupled the rigidity of the GG3 base. The increased rigidity will improve the cuts and allow the Ghost Gunner to be more precise. This increase in power and precision will let the home user do their own optic cuts on their pistol slides.
The company will ship the GG3-S with cut codes for RMR footprint cuts for the Glock 17, 19, and 26. More firearms companies use Glock-compatible slides than any other pistol slide on the market, making the choice simple as to which slide cut code to launch the GGS-3 with, and the RMR is the most used optic pattern for pistols. The company will add doctor and RMS pattern cuts in the future. Ghost Gunner plans to keep pushing the limits of the machine by adding new codes in the future, expanding past just optics cuts.
“The home builder now has greater power than ever,” Cody Wilson, the founder of Ghost Gunner, told AmmoLand News. “Optic cuts are just a glimpse of the new levels of control and customization we’ve unlocked.”
The GG3-S uses G-code, the standard code for most CNC machines. Since it uses an off-the-shelf programming language, developers can design and prototype their own projects. Several talented designers are working on various projects using the Ghost Gunner. One example is a Ruger 10/22-like receiver designed by 3D printing expert Mr. Snow.
The GG3-S is available for $2500, which is the same price as the base GG3. Owners of the current GG3 can elect to upgrade their machines to the GG3-S standard for $299. The upgrade will include new firmware as well as the new required hardware.
More information can be found at https://ghostgunner.net/gg3-s/
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
The cost of this machine you could buy or build a much stronger version that could do a million other jobs, but yet it would be harder to hide in a trunk of car or goto house to house making them. I bet the ATF ends up saying they found one of these at a crime scene.
John Crump – In second paragraph you describe bolting on the “bottom lower” and the “upper lower” after milling the middle area of the lower receiver. Maybe I’m dense, but I’m not following this part.
Does Ghost Gunner make lower receiver in three parts? Did you mean that mill has three configurations which separately mill three areas on the lower receiver?
After your GG3 mills what looks like the part of the lower that houses the fire control, bolt & mag release, upper 1/2 of the mag well, you add (bolt on?) the “lower-lower” and the “buffer tower” which you can buy from Defense Distributed or possibly machine those parts as well. Info at ghostgunner.net