There is a new wave of technology and manufacturing slowly sweeping across the world, it is under the radar and most people are only starting to realize it exists, let alone understand it. Hopefully this situation improves, because I am very excited by this technology and I think it will in time revolutionize the way we think about manufacturing and supply lines.
The technology is rapid-prototyping, specifically what is known as 3D printing. If you are unfamiliar, the basic concept is a cartesian robot (a device that can move to any point in a three-dimensional space) coupled with a plastic extruder, which is basically a precision glue-gun for plastics.
These machines use a process called Fused Filament Fabrication to build functional plastic objects.
The way they do this is by taking the 3D form of an object on a computer, and slicing it into thin layers. Each layer is then printed by extruding molten plastic where there is solid material in each slice. Each subsequent layer is printed on top of the previous layer, building up a full dimensional object out of plastic.
The technology and various methods of achieving this has existed at least since the early to mid 1980’s, however only professional engineers and University’s had the kind of funding to make use of it, with machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars not including consumable materials.
This expensive and inaccessibility is where RepRap has changed things. The concept of RepRap is simple yet far reaching. I am paraphrasing, but the general goal of RepRap is to create a machine that is capable of re-creating itself. Self replication, a key facet of nature, but in a machine. The implications are stagering, when you consider that such a device would eventually cost no more than the raw materials and can spread easily. Once a device is built and working in an area with sufficient raw materials, it can make more of itself.
So, let us for a moment consider a starting point for a self-replicating machine – where to begin? 3D printing and rapid-fabrication technologies is the logical choice – after all, we already have robots that can combine parts and build things. Most consumer electronics, appliances and automobiles are largely assembled by robots and have been for a while. What if those robots where programmed to build themselves? With just the initial investment in one complete robot, you could build a factory of robots provided you had the parts for the first one to use.
If those robots could also proces the raw materials to create the parts they assembled, then every robot after the first one is reduced in cost to the price of it’s raw materials and energy consumed by the robot itself.
There are several immediate implications that come to mind with this concept. Factories can be deployed for much less outfitting cost. The technology itself would spread in a virus-like fashion, because once the initial robots are deployed and expand their numbers it becomes easier to obtain one due to the increasing number of robots that can build them. The exponential implications are staggering, however fully self-replicating factory robots are still a dream, as it was when I first read about the concept in a robots book as a child. However, it’s not as distant a dream as it was before.
Closer to the RepRap concept is the home-use of such a robot. Imagine you had a small machine in your home that could reproduce common household objects. Such a machine would likely print multiple materials and would be reloaded much like a common inkjet printer. Instead of going to the store to get an item, you would download it from the designer’s website and print it. In current manufacturing systems the item would be produced at a large volume, with little variation and at a volume predicted to sell.
With this new technology, product creators would not have to deal with inventory and related losses, and the number of copies made would exactly meet demand since only people who wanted the item would make it in their replicator.
I see this as a large win scenario – by distributing the manufacturing to the individual, losses from overstock and the associated transportation and storage costs would be eliminated. Waste created by over production would practically be removed as well.
Shipping would change. The need for sending a physical object slowly around the globe would be limited. Instead, you would send a data file containing computer instructions to print the item nearly instantaneously to anywhere. Shipping would be largely reduced to moving raw materials in a consumer form, taking less volume.
So that is the basic concept in a nutshell. Revolutionary and elegantly simple in overview, with far reaching implications which I have only barely touched upon. With that basic run description, lets dive in to the real state of things and what this web site is about.
Currently home printers of this sort are still in their infancy, and there is much room for improvement and innovation. There are decent pre-made printers, based off of RepRap designs for $2,000 or less, depending on how geeky you want to get.
I have many ideas I would like to contribute to this field, and I decided after several years of research and consideration, the best way to get involved is to build a printer and dive in!
After much consideration of the available consumer printers, I settled on the more hacker oriented RepRap Prusa Mendel printer. This essentially consists of a lot of nuts, threaded rod and printed plastic parts, and a lot of custom engineering to make it all work together as intended. There is no print-right-out-of-the-box immediate satisfaction with a printer of this design, but there is a whole lot of I-built-a-3d-printer-out-of-nothing satisfaction that I feel outweighs the former.
At the time of this writing I have a functioning printer, capable of creating small parts – it even has a couple of parts assembled on it that it has printed for itself! As fun and exciting as that is, getting to larger parts and more precision is my next challenge. As I progress, I will update this site with build designs, pictures, prints and my thoughts about where this is all going. I took many pictures during my build process which I will be providing here with as much info as I can, particularly where my build varies from the stock Prusa Mendel – and it does in many ways.
