I got a chance to check out the new Daniel Defense DDWAVE at the American Suppressor Association Media Day here at the NRA Annual Meeting 2017.

Pete just posted an article announcing this new suppressor from Daniel Defense.

It is a 3D printed Suppressor rated for up to .300 Win Mag.

The can is 3D printed using a laser sintering process. According to the DD representative, their build tray can fit 30 cans and takes one week to simultaneously print thirty cans.

The serialized part of the DDWAVE is the QD locking ring at the back of the suppressor.

Upon looking into the suppressor I can see that it has a very long blast chamber. Approximately the same length as the ridges you see running along side the exeterior of the can.

Daniel Defense had the can mounted onto a 5.56 rifle and performed as well as a regular suppressor.

The DDWAVE is neat but I wouldn’t say it was revolutionary. The baffle design is still a mystery until we get to see a dissected version. The noise reduction was pretty standard but we were under a roof and that might have added to the noise level.

While this Suppressor did not wow me as much, the concept does. 3D Printing is a fad with regards to suppressor manufacturing. Sure it is handy for rapid prototyping a design. It is cheaper to print a prototype and somewhat faster to a certain degree. To a certain point mass manufacturing with 3D printers plateaus and it gets more expensive and time consuming. Look at this particular product. It takes them a week to just print 30 cans. That is not including assembly and any other post processing work needed to be done with these. 30 cans in just 1 week is terrible. You could make 3 cans in probably a couple hours with conventional machining. Now of course there are pros and cons to both. But on the face of it, 3D printing a final product is not fast nor cheap which is why I think this won’t last long for this application.

However it does offer some interesting opportunities. You can print an object with different geometry that you could not make using traditional manufacturing methods. Hopefully Daniel Defense takes advantage of this technology and pushes the limits that can only be realized through 3D printing.