Partially self-replicating rapid prototyping machine

[Bruno]

I thought this was interesting. I'm putting it on my list for potential candidates for my senior project at school.

http://www.reprap.org


Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €400). That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can make another and give it to a friend...

The RepRap project became widely known after a large press coverage in March 2005, though the idea goes back to a paper on the web written by Adrian Bowyer on 2 February 2004.

We hope to announce self-replication this year - 2008 - though the machine that will do it - RepRap Version 1.0 "Darwin" - can be built now - see the Make RepRap Darwin link there or on the left

[Jasper]

A large version of this would be a maker's wet dream.  I wish the design interface was more innovative.  Maybe something involving motion sensors and holograms for freeform sculpting...

[Richter]

Wow.

Anyone ever read "Berserker" by Fred Saberhagen?

[Jasper]

Alarmist.  The thing is a cartesian squirtgun that makes plastic bits and bobs.

[e]

This is pretty neat.

I don't buy the "downfall of capitalism" bit though.  I just know the first thing people are going to do is start selling these to people who don't know it can build a copy of itself for free.

[Jasper]

Cost of parts and electricity and time to put it together, don't forget.

Also, I don't want every damn thing I own made of plastic. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.

We already have that - it's called teacups

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

Machines that can replicate themselves will be the end of the world.

Imagine a nanomachine whose only program is to break apart the matter surrounding it in order to create copies of itself with the same programming.  Give it some time and eventually the planet is nothing but a swiming sea of nanites floating in space.

[Jasper]

MY GOD YOU'RE RIGHT!

SINCE WE CAN IMAGINE IT-

IT MUST BE A THREAT

SOMEONE GET ME THE DHS!

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

They do have that new ImagineCrime unit.

[Jasper]

. .  .

Hold on, what?

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

. .  .

Hold on, what?

I was making up a branch of the DHS that would keep our imaginations from destroying America, in the spirit of your response.

[Golden Applesauce]

The RepRap 1.0 doesn't print circuit boards.  (there are rapid prototyping machines that do print circuit boards already.)
It has a circuit board in its design.

FAIL!!

(If 2.0 "Mendel" comes out, we'll talk.)

[Jasper]

I think the point is that the technology exists conceptually, and it's only a matter of time before it's a feasible thing.

[Golden Applesauce]

The technology exists actually, it's just that no one has put the pieces together in a single unit yet.  You think they build industrial robots by hand?  (Probably a little bit is, actually.)

The only issue is that the individual steps are very specialized - one machine to print the circuit, one machine to mold part A, one machine to forge part B.  (AFAIK) No one's built a single machine that fabs boards AND plastic doohickeys AND metal bits AND assembles them, but machines that do each task exist.  The point of the RepRap was to get it all into a single package, rather than renting a collection of industrial machines.  Except they left out everything but the plastic parts.  The RepRap doesn't replicate, it just builds the pieces of itself that hold the metal bits and electronic bits together.  It's like a K'nex machine that only builds the connectors and not the rods.  Neat, useful even, but not replicating.