Dinner at the DIY bomb factory
Pasta, wine and survival
A couple of my friends here in Zaporizhzhia have a 3D printer and build bombs in their living room. ‘Frodo’ chunters placidly away 24/7 while they work, sleep, and have people round for dinner.
This might seem like a startling hobby for arty vegetarian thirtysomethings. But to set the scene: we’re 20 miles from the front, where russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 10 to 1 in places; Ukraine’s allies have allowed it to run so low on air defence missiles that russian rockets are daily destroying the country’s civilian infrastructure; ammunition at the front is running equally short; and as a bonus to dinner in Zaporizhzhia you can go for a stroll on the river beach and contemplate the big chunk taken out of the local dam where the russians blew up a hydroelectric power station just last week, plus the resulting oil scum still floating down the Dnipro which is already four metres lower than it should be because they also blew up the Nova Kakhovka dam a year ago.
In my friends’ situation, you might invest in a 3D printer as well.
They don’t actually keep explosives in their flat, of course. They print plastic cases; soldiers at the front then dismantle large missiles and divide the explosives the missile contains into ten of these cases, which are then carried by drones. Thus one large, inaccurate missile is replaced by ten very accurate bombs. Though the drone bombs also, obviously, provide much smaller detonations. And dismantling missiles manually to make the contents go further is not military best practice.
It is, however, survival necessity practice.
I gave my friends £500; my own plus some privately collected money. This sum will provide Frodo the printer with 43kg of plastic, keeping it running for three months and producing about 400 cases. These will be distributed to military units who post their needs on Telegram. Demand outstrips supply by about three to one, and things move extremely fast.
Bombs printed in Zaporizhzhia today will be in the air above the frontline in Donetsk tomorrow.
It never occurred to me whenever I was watched a video with drones equipped with shells that the casings were plastic. Pretty resourceful.
I know a little about 3d printing, and hopefully they are using a 6mm nozzle and not the stock 4mm. The difference in throughput would be several hours.
Bamboo has a slightly more expensive printer (599 US dollars as of 04/12/24) and prints about 10 x as fast as a standard bed slinger. I bought one myself and it is freakishly fast. Before that printer, I had used Creality quite a bit. There is a huge user community for Creality. I guess Prusa is popular in Europe, but Bamboo is going to hurt their sales, as they say, big time. I think Prusa printers are overpriced too. I gave away my Prusa after I got my Bamboo printer...I think the engineering for evenly distributing the bed temperature was poor (it is an issue when one uses more advanced material like PETG). I imagine the Ukrainians are using PLA...so much easier to work with....
The only downside is that Bamboo seems to require that their units have access to the internet. I have suspicions that they are collecting information like M$ did in the early days with their co-pilot program as feedstock for their AI endeavors. I think they are hackable (and Ukrainians are tech savy) though AND it may be that Bamboo has changed their policy. Nevertheless, their 3d printers represent an evolutionary step, perhaps revolutionary.
In WWII it was Molotov cocktails, in 2024 it is drones equipped with such munitions. Very impressive...very, very impressive...
Anyhow, do you have a paypal account? I might have missed the link but I would like to help. I'm not rich, but I believe in the utility of what you reported.
I cannot say I am not conflicted, contributing to the manufacture of bombs. But I understand that survival needs are legitimate. I used to joke with myself that in case of an attack on my plot of land I would take out the old musket and shoot from windows like Grandma Duck. I have been lucky so far that I never needed to...