News AI can track 3D printed parts back to specific machine that made them

[Admin]

Could it be used to find the origin of 3D-printed guns?

AI can track 3D printed parts back to specific machine that made them : Read more

 

[pointa2b]

(laughs in vapor smoothing)

 

[hotaru251]

headline sounds cool, but actual context is full of holes.
given how people mod their printers a lot of the "default" that would be in results of this would make it have a much greater error rate.

 

[Rob1C]

Seems legit, but it took 400 days of training: https://github.com/wpklab/fingerprinting

As for vapor smoothing, 2D ink printers can be found the same way if used for counterfeiting, much as filing the serial numbers off of a gun may not avoid proper forensic techniques:

 

[Velloska]

How much does the wear of parts alter the signature of the printer? What about using different slicers or materials for that printer? I feel there are a lot of things that could be changed both physically and within your gcode to change the fingerprint of your printer that would make it next to impossible to trace someone making illicit parts that doesn't want to be found.

 

[BFG-9000]

2D ink printers can be found the same way

Both laser and inkjet printers have firmware to print microscopic markers onto every page, known as tracking dots or machine identification codes. If 3D printer firmware in the future is required to embed serial numbers or other identification into the prints in the same way, then AI would not be needed, only a microscope.

Similarly, explosives may contain taggants to identify the manufacturer and type of explosive, + while the Clinton administration attempted to require them in gunpowder, it did not prove to be feasible to do so. Not that that always helps--California passed a law to require microstamping of the gun's serial number onto the cartridge at the moment of firing by Jan 1, 2028 despite a similar proposal being withdrawn a decade before because it was considered technically impossible to reliably do so. This is seen as a backdoor way to ban all weapons because none can meet the standard.

Be glad that 3D printers are still available despite the attempts to restrict the availability of files for them so far being futile.

In the United States it is perfectly legal to make your own firearm the old fashioned way with a lathe + other machine tools, and no serial number is required. These cannot be sold or moved across state lines (or the Interstate Commerce Clause allows the Feds to regulate). The fear with 3D printed guns is they are too easy to make, in much the same way that Twitter makes it all too easy to publish your thoughts worldwide in ways the founders never considered, therefore they "must have" meant to allow censoring that. If rights are supposed to be difficult to exercise, then requiring a poll tax and being a landowner to vote must be OK too.

 

[Wildbillnye]

How much does the wear of parts alter the signature of the printer? What about using different slicers or materials for that printer? I feel there are a lot of things that could be changed both physically and within your gcode to change the fingerprint of your printer that would make it next to impossible to trace someone making illicit parts that doesn't want to be found.

exactly, how much is doubling retraction from 1mm to 2mm and increasing linear speed 20% going to change a printers "signature"? nozzle swap? tighten belts? hardly going to be useful forensically.

 

[Rob1C]

Both laser and inkjet printers have firmware to print microscopic markers onto every page, known as tracking dots or machine identification codes. If 3D printer firmware in the future is required to embed serial numbers or other identification into the prints in the same way, then AI would not be needed, only a microscope.

... and some money has a EURion Constellation.

But you can download firmware and reflash your printer/copier allowing it to print anything without markers or outputting a warning page (Canon) that says it suspects that you tried to copy currency; and it leaves a note for the service technician.

Thus falling back on what I said.

 

[BFG-9000]

Constellation is a way to both help tell if a note is genuine and so copiers (or software like Photoshop) can determine if the user is attempting to copy things like currency or edit title documents, but probably doesn't have much to do with forensics to tell authorities what printer printed them. They know what printers used them because they own some of them, at the mint! And presumably any counterfeiter would not need to know what the symbols mean but only try to duplicate them as faithfully as possible.

The tracking dots are for that, and explains the continuing trope of using pasted-together cut-out letters from newspapers and magazines to write ransom notes and such on TV (in the olden days they would use slight defects in typewriter hammers to identify if a document was typed on a particular typewriter, or of course handwriting analysis). As it happens I have working printers from the 1980s which are too old to include such a system but alas, have no reason to print such notes!

Over here we don't have anything standard like Constellation on checks (only a VOID pantograph message that appears if copied), but if you want to print checks yourself you have to use either MICR magnetic toner or preprinted pages of checks already printed with that. I don't think that has anything to do with forgery/counterfeiting though but only to make the checks more machine-readable, since there are also specified MICR fonts.

Even our currency only features traditional anti-forgery techniques such as fine detail, raised ink from special presses (I heard North Korea bought the same intaglio presses that we use, specifically to counterfeit US currency and it may be the only thing keeping their economy afloat) and now special paper with embedded red and blue lint, a single clear thread and for $100 bills a blue 3D plastic ribbon with holograms printed on it kind of like on the Euro. They also went to color-shifting ink on some areas, also used on the Euro. The lint sounds dumb but apparently it's really difficult to print a realistic image that resembles them embedded at varying depths so that may be considered effective enough without having to force every printer and software maker to embed security features.