Daniel Defense To Manufacture 3D Printed Wave Silencer
Silencer news nerds unite! A recent leak making the rounds on social media shows what appears to be a yet-to-be-announced 3D Printed suppressor from Daniel Defense. The DD Wave, a name registered by Daniel Defense earlier this year, looks like a quick disconnect rifle suppressor. As of this writing, I have confirmed that at least one major distributor already has the Wave on order.
The expansion of additive manufacturing into all facets of the firearms industry should come as little surprise to most “gunsumers” (#gunsumers trademark pending: TFB_Pete). As technology advances and industrial processes become less costly, more companies will be able to utilize techniques that were once reserved for advanced engineering firms.
My review of the Delta P Brevis II Ultra 3D Printed silencer is my most read review to date. As I said before, it is a unique silencer with unique applications. But there was some heated controversy in the comments section, with a few readers stating that additive manufacturing is not ready to contain the harsh forces of a rifle’s muzzle blast and that the process is best left to prototyping.
So now that power house rifle maker Daniel Defense is jumping into the 3D Printed silencer game, will the critics change their tune? Is this the beginning of a “mainstream” silencer manufacturing evolution? And at a reported MSRP of ~$1100, are you a buyer?
Let’s hear it all in the comments below.
The Daniel Defense Wave 3D Printed rifle silencer:
So, why the name ‘Wave’? Does it refer to the appearance of the baffle stack or some part of the manufacturing process? Let’s see what the next few days brings us.
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I assume the Wave name is a reference to internal baffle geometry that can only be manufactured via an additive manufacturing (3D printing) process. Computational fluid dynamics has come a long way lately and can now model transonic, supersonic, hypersonic and turbulent flow to a much greater extent than was previously possible, but a suppressor operates with impulses as opposed to the much more steady state flow that CFD is designed to calculate, so suppressors, muzzle brakes and compensators are a bit more of a trial and error process. 3D printing is ideal for exploring engineering intuition, testing and developing new products. Basically, 3D print a design that you think will work better and test it. If it's better, keep the design. If not, toss it. Repeat until you are happy with the results. Additive machining has the potential to create more effective suppressors than could be made with conventionally machine baffle designs.
The STL files for the DD Wave should be available for the rest of us to print in ABS and wrap in Kevlar for single use suppressors. :-)
look up Oceania Defense, they've been printing Titanium suppressors since 2013 released their QD version 18 months ago and have patents for it. i've got a 556 and a QD 308 can and the 556 is at 8600 rounds the 308 has had 3000 since October :)