A working plastic gun has been printed using a self-assembled 3D printer, a nail and some household screws.
The gun, based on blueprints made available online by Defense Distributed last month, cost just $25 (£16) to make and has already successfully fired nine .38 caliber shots by the Wisconsin engineer who built it.
Up until now, the blueprints for the 'Liberator' gun have been mainly printed using industrial-grade 3D printers that cost around £5,250 ($8,000).
This latest gun is one of the first to be 3D printed using the much cheaper Lulzbot A0-101 3D printer - a printer that can be bought online, assembled at home and costs £1,136 ($1,725).
Because of the use of the Lulzbot, the engineer behind the cheap gun known only as Joe, has called it the Lulz Liberator.
In a video posted to YouTube, Joe is shown firing the printed gun which was pre-loaded with .380 caliber rounds.
Eight shots were fired using the original printed plastic barrel.
The barrel was then damaged, so it was replaced and Joe used it to fire one more shot.
Joe told Forbes he believed it could have shot even more.
The video was filmed by fellow Wisconsin engineer Michael Guslick.
The Lulz Liberator is slightly different from the original plans because it has a rifled barrel and uses screws to hold it together, rather than printed plastic pins.
It took two days to print the gun and Joe used generic ABS materials and household items that cost a total of $25 (£16).
The blueprints for the first-ever plastic gun produced on a 3D printer were released online, for free, by Defense Distributed (DD) in March.
The company's founder, 25-year-old Cody Wilson, spent a year working on the plans before successfully testing the designs.
The first models based on DD's designs were printed in April.
Earlier this month, DD announced the plans had been downloaded over 100,000 times and this led to the U.S. State Department ordering the website to take down the plans, on the basis they could violate export regulations.
Because the original gun is made entirely from plastic it makes it possible to carry the gun through airport security metal detectors, for example, without being found out.
Earlier this month, the Mail On Sunday tested this theory by smuggling a version of the Liberator gun onto a Eurostar train.
Two reporters passed completely unchallenged through strict airport-style security to carry the gun on to a London to Paris service in the weekend rush-hour, alongside hundreds of unsuspecting travellers.
The pistol was produced in under 36 hours using a £1,700 machine, bought online, to ‘print’ its components.
Reporter Simon Murphy carried the plastic gun on to a London to Paris service in the weekend rush-hour
The train operator began an urgent investigation into the security breach following the expose, as experts called for airports and public buildings to review their procedures in light of our revelations.
The Mail on Sunday pieced together the 16-part Liberator after downloading the designs.
An American university student has proved earlier the same week that the designs worked, by successfully firing a bullet on a shooting range.
To test the procedures at St Pancras International Station, the gun produced by the MoS was split into three pieces and concealed in the clothing of two reporters who bought standard class tickets to Paris.
The reporters then walked through the usual security procedures, manned by UK Border officials.
They placed their luggage and metal objects, including loose change and watches, in plastic trays which were then passed through airport scanners.
But although they were carrying parts of a potentially deadly weapon, they were able to walk through a metal detector without triggering the alarm.
While some passengers were patted down by security guards, they said they proceeded unchallenged to passport control, manned by French police.
Once on board the packed 5.31pm Eurostar train on Friday, the reporters were able to assemble the pieces to create a fully functional firearm in just 30 seconds, and pose for pictures close to unsuspecting passengers.
The two reporters said they did not attempt to smuggle the firing pin or bullet for safety and legal reasons, but claimed small metal items could be easily concealed.
Following the expose, security experts and politicians said they were horrified at the implications of the investigation.
Lord West, the former Labour security Minister, called for a review to see how the ‘extremely dangerous’ weapons could be better detected.
But he said he was ‘not surprised’ that Eurostar checks had failed to spot the weapon because they were so hard to detect. He said: ‘What we need is a review of how we can look at these things and how we can discover them more easily. That will take work and it will cost money.
‘These weapons are extremely dangerous because they are very difficult to detect with the methods we normally use. This is going to be a real problem, no doubt about it. People are going to have to rethink whether we need more checks.’
A Eurostar spokeswoman said: ‘Eurostar has a high level of security, with a number of checks as specified by the authorities in order to protect the integrity of the Channel Tunnel.
We take any issue relating to security very seriously. We will be investigating immediately to fully understand the nature of this issue with our security partner which carries out checks on our behalf at St Pancras. We will also investigate the matter with the Department for Transport, who oversee our security operation, and specify the checks that need to be undertaken.’
The Transport Department said the UK had ‘one of the strictest transport security regimes in the world’ and added: ‘This is kept under constant review in response to new or emerging threats, but we do not comment on specifics for obvious reasons.’
Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas spent the last year designing the weapon.
A self-styled libertarian, he argues that everyone should have access to guns, and said last week: ‘I recognise the tool might be used to harm other people ... it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason not to do it.’
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