Prototype of machine that copies itself goes on show

[flashl]

(Nanowerk News) Granted, this is not nanotechnology yet, but quite an interesting development nevertheless:

A University of Bath academic, who oversees a global effort to develop an open-source machine that ‘prints’ three-dimensional objects, is celebrating after the prototype machine succeeded in making a set of its own printed parts. The machine, named RepRap, will be exhibited publicly at the Cheltenham Science Festival (June 4-8, 2008).

RepRap is short for replicating rapid-prototyper; it employs a technique called ‘additive fabrication’. The machine works a bit like a printer, but, rather than squirting ink onto paper, it puts down thin layers of molten plastic which solidify. These layers are built up to make useful 3D objects.

RepRap has, so far, been capable of making everyday plastic goods such as door handles, sandals and coat hooks. Now, the machine has also succeeded in copying all its own 3D-printed parts.

These parts have been printed and assembled by RepRap team member, Vik Olliver, in Auckland, New Zealand, into a new RepRap machine that can replicate the same set of parts for yet another RepRap machine and so on ad infinitum. While 3D printers have been available commercially for about 25 years, RepRap is the first that can essentially print itself.

Nanowerk News

Would someone be so kind to explain why RepRap printing its parts is big news?

[BlooInBloo]

1. I'm not sure that appearing in "Nanowerk News" qualifies as "big news".

[mike_c]

2. it's "big news" because it's another step toward self-replicating...

...von Neuman machines. To date, the only such existing machines (that we know about) are carbon based life forms, all of which share that one essential property: they carry their own assembly instructions and replicants self assemble according to those instructions.

[Clovis Sangrail]

3. price? /nt

[Posteritatis]

8. $600 or thereabouts, going from other articles on this. (nt)

[Clovis Sangrail]

9. I was saying the low price is what makes it news /nt

[Hydra]

4. Actually, there's a direct application you might be interested in

I saw this on the science channel last year- machines like this that can "print" body organs.

Hearts
Livers
kidneys

Transplant items formed from the body's own cells. No bio-rejection, no donors required, built in hours at the hospital ready to transplant

Cool, huh?

[DCKit]

5. Or, such a machine could be sent to the Moon or Mars....

replicate itself a few times then build the equipment that builds a permanent base.

Then the Republics can have their own homeworld.

[FiveGoodMen]

6. If you're sending the pukes there, don't bother building a base.

For that matter, there's no need to send them all the way to the moon or Mars. Anywhere outside the atmosphere will do.

[unpossibles]

10. I think they'd be more comfortable on the sun nt

[krispos42]

7. This is how we could do a lot of space stuff

A fully robotic work center that can completely replicate itself. Make motors and bearings and wiring and integrated circuits and other machined parts. It could make a hundred copies of itself, then stop making copies and start mass-producing things we could need to colonice the Moon or Mars.

Imagine: we land a big capusule on the Moon. Out comes the first work center system, complete with a fully-automated mining car/ore carrier. It sets itself up and starts mining minerals and chemicals from the soil.

It first makes more mining cars, then it makes a copy of itself. Then it makes more mining cars, and a few more copies of itself. Then it starts making more mining machinery. Drills and excavators and whatever else. Dump trucks, perhaps.

Then it starts making the raw materials for a colony. I-beams and steel plating and bar stock and round stock and spools of wire and sheet steel and mills and lathes and punches and presses. And it excavates an underground space for us to habitate.

We just go there and assemble it!

[mzteris]

11. um - something similiar from 2000

August 2, 2000
NC State Engineers Developing Desktop 3-D Laser Printer

". . . Here's how the Cormier-Taylor-West prototype process works: Although the image that a conventional laser printer produces appears to be flat, the toner deposited on the paper has a measurable thickness. If images are repeatedly printed one on top of the other, then the image gradually gets thicker and thicker, resulting in a solid piece of plastic. Instead of using a paper tray, the prototype 3-D laser printer includes a platform to support the object. One bonus is that the product could be printed in full color by simply using a color laser printer engine, something that is prohibitively expensive using currently available rapid prototyping methods. Customers would buy the printer hardware and NC State-developed software, which tells the customers' CAD program how to configure the object as the toner is applied to the build platform . . ."


http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/news_articles/cormier.html