This is an amazing device: The RepRap (short for "Replicating Rapid-prototyper"), an open-source printer developed at the University of Bath. It was built using Linux, and all of the project's software and hardware components fall under the GNU General Public License. It's cheap to use, and can even replicate most of its own parts. Most of this article is an interview with the technical lead, plus there are links on the first page to videos and sample parts and objects made with the RepRap.
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Smegzor
5 years 11 weeks 2 days 20 hours ago
These are neat
A member of the local users group is building one of these.
Crazy and neat at the same time :)
motters
5 years 11 weeks 2 days 3 hours ago
Free hardware
I've been following the development of reprap for the last few years. This stuff isn't ready for prime time yet, but there has been steady progress. Once these machines can make most of their own parts that's when the fun will begin, because it will cost someone with an existing machine almost nothing to make a kit for someone else to build the same machine. It's a similar idea to free software, but applied to hardware.
bogdanbiv
5 years 11 weeks 9 hours 48 min ago
Amazing idea
Oh, yeah amazing idea! This is something I hoped for years to appear.
I am no hacker, but I would like to sponsor one to get one of these. I'll see what I can do about it.
Hope they do take into account hardware patents, though.
I wouldn't like it if someone would buy a "self replicating kit" and patent it to end its' copyleft principle.
hoeken
5 years 10 weeks 3 days 48 min ago
hi
yo, member of the team here.
we dont worry about patents too much. we publish all our work online and we're fairly confident that it will serve as prior art should any issues arise.
if you want to help support the cause, the non-profit RepRap Research Foundation is in its early stages and could really use the support: http://www.rrrf.org
viva free software/hardware!
General Fabb
5 years 9 weeks 5 days 19 hours ago
For More Info
If you're interested in 3D printing tech, you might want to take a look at our 3D fab blog at http://fabbaloo.com
Peterson123
3 years 43 weeks 6 days 9 hours ago
It’s an 18 minute
It’s an 18 minute slide-show presentation about how cool a self-replicating technology is. Yet, by his own admission, the device is not even self-replicating. I would have preferred to see the device actually perform rather than just talk about the implications if such a device existed.