The 3D printing community continues to impress me by finding ways of making reliable, durable, and interesting homemade guns. IvanPrintsGuns is one of my favorite YouTube channels that focuses on 3D-printed firearms and in early March, Ivan showcased his latest working prototype – the Kleiner Freund or KF5. The KF5 is a 3D-printed MP5 that makes use of only the core of an MP5 and then combines it with improved 3D-printed parts to make the world’s most affordable MP5.

More Roller Delayed Blowback Goodness @ TFB:

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The Kleiner Freund (KF5): A 3D Printed MP5 by IvanPrintsGuns

This is the Kleiner Freund (KF5) – a 3D printable MP5 build that uses AR15 fire control parts.

This build is much cheaper than an MP5 (or even the knockoffs/clones), since it only uses the core parts of an MP5 and substitutes better, more reliable (and cheaper) parts for the rest. The scope used is a course far too large for an MP5, but all my red dots are tied up on other builds.

Anyway, in this initial testing, I’m using a 3D printed ejector – while it does work with OEM ones, OEM ejectors are very expensive and hard to find – I’m working to get steel ones made, but in the mean time, a 3D printed one does the trick.

Obviously, development is still ongoing – the magazine well needs tweaked, and the ejection port is massively oversized so that it can act as an inspection port (so that I can see the inner workings without taking the gun apart).

Right now you’d be hard-pressed to pick up any type of MP5 regardless of the manufacturer for much less than $1,800. However, by using a commonly available and affordable complete MP5 bolt group (about $400), a roughly $50 AR-15 lower parts kit, and the cost of some relatively inexpensive hardware and 3D printing filament, you can probably make one of these KF5s for about $500 to $600 without breaking a sweat. As seen in the video and mentioned above, the KF5 is still in its testing phase and during the video, we saw one malfunction which isn’t all that surprising given the complexity of manufacturing something like an MP5 at home.

As always, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think Ivan will be able to get his KF5 working as well as a regular HK MP5 works? What potential improvements or drawbacks can you see between the two different platforms? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!