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Viruses are so powerful because they are self replicating. Networks also make their concerted efforts a debilitating force. Now some ingenious people are trying to do the same thing with fabrication. The Reprap (replicating rapid-prototyper) project aims to bring fused deposition modeling (FDM) to the desktop. Their reprap machine would allow you to do 3d printing of plastic designs. In fact, there are already a few simple design files out there, including a shot glass. This wouldn’t be a hugely novel idea, because there are 3d printers out there. But the fun doesn’t stop there.
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Developers of the reprap project are going a step further. They are making a self replicating fabricator. This would allow for a truly viral type machine. And the software to build designs and communicate with the fabricator are all open source. Now things are getting really good.� The materials were designed to be highly available to wide portions of the world.� Soon, loads of people will be swapping design files for things they want.� It will be peer to peer for material good fabrication.� That’s a mind blowing concept.� There are other fabrication models out there going along too besides reprap.� The main hindrance seems to be the initial cost of these machines.� The inventors of the reprap machine are aiming at a build cost of no more than 500 EUR.� That’s impressive considering that most commercial ones cost around 10,000-20,000.
I’m sure there are object scanners out there.� This will allow 3d modeling of current objects.� Then you could back up your possessions.� Instead of data recovery, we will have object recovery.� And I’m sure companies are already looking of ways to block this type of technology.� It could spell really bad news for producers and manufacturers in the future.� The reprap is only doing plastic material fabrication right now.� But that will change in the future to include metals.� And how long before we can fabricate our own alternative fuel car?
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“I’m sure there are object scanners out there. This will allow 3d modeling of current objects.”
You will be happy to know that there are several well-developed DIY 3D scanner projects that let you build for yourself out of a laser pointer and web cam. One is…
http://www.cs.tu-bs.de/rob/david.html
Another which is written in Python and which is open source as well is…
http://www.splinescan.co.uk/index.php
This is an interesting site in that they originally wrote the program in VB (they say it is slow) and offer that to you as well.
Which is free but not open source code.
My own replicator, a spinoff of the RepRap project called Tommelise, is focussed on the American parts environment and uses somewhat different technology and a different control strategy. It’s also an open source specification will let anybody with a few hand tools and primitive woodworking skills bootstrap themselves into 3D fabrication for about $150. Tommelise’s extruder is qualified for polycapralactone and is presently being qualified as well for both high density polypropylene (HDPE, the stuff your plastic cutting board is made of) and polypropylene (HPP, the stuff your coffee maker and plastic electric kettle is made of). You can keep an eye on the Tommelise project at…
http://3dReplicators.com
Have fun!
erratum…
The passage…
“This is an interesting site in that they originally wrote the program in VB (they say it is slow) and offer that to you as well.
Which is free but not open source code.”
Should be trimmed to…
This is an interesting site in that they originally wrote the program in VB (they say it is slow) and offer that to you as well.
Forrest, thanx for the links and update. I’m glad you added the info about your Tommelise project. I had looked at it and forgot to include that info. Btw, that’s a nice price!
[…] the biggest eye opener of the last year, at least for me, was the RepRap project. As the previous post notes, the RepRap project aims to develop an open source fabrication […]
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