3D printed guns aren’t very compelling right now. Because of the vagaries of plastic and the methods used to manufacture weapons like the Liberator, your gun can turn itself into a hand grenade if you’re not careful. But engineer Michael Crumling might have a solution.

He’s created a new type of bullet that essentially uses the case as a barrel reinforcement. This means that the gun can be made out of shoddy plastic and, as long as you use one of these long bullets, the barrel and body will stay together shot after shot.

Crumling posted the plans for the new bullets, called the .314 Atlas, on his website. His work alternates between cool guitar designs and cool gun designs and the Atlas bullets are still in the very early stages although he has tested them extensively and found they work well.

Writes the engineer:

￼Here’s the designs for the .314 Atlas rounds. They should be more than safe up to about 23000 psi if they’re machined from 1018 cold rolled steel. I’m still developing a load for them so I really don’t have too much data yet, but there will be more once they develop further.

Crumling says that these bullets are essentially a “barrel integrated into a shell” which takes all of the pressure off of the actual gun and uses the plastic barrel as a very simple guide. As you can see from the image above, you’e not going to get much accuracy on this thing, but, I suspect, it’s the thought that counts.