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Towards Self-Replicating Rapid Prototypers

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the tea-earl-grey-hot dept.

Neil Halelamien writes "Researchers at the University of Bath are developing a rapid prototyping machine capable of making copies of itself and other products, reminiscent of the Universal Constructor proposed by von Neumann. The so-called Replicating Rapid-Prototyper (or RepRap) would produce items from raw materials and small components like microchips. If successful, this could make rapid prototyping cheap enough for regular in-home usage, especially since the project's lead, Dr. Adrian Bowyer, will be releasing his project's designs under the GNU GPL. It's previously been proposed that a similar system would be useful for space exploration and industrialization."

4 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. This is interesting by Koiu+Lpoi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, I have always been interested in applying evolution to computer chips - the randomness and efficiency of evolution is going to find better ways of doing things than our current methods, and is also just damn cool to know your computer chip is analogous to a living 'species'.

  2. Huge economic change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A rapid prototyping machine that can reproduce itself is a kind of holy grail. When we get that, we have something that can bootstrap itself. This would be the Santa Claus machine that we have long dreamed of. One of the major proponents of this has been Don Lancaster. His site is the link below.

    www.tinaja.com/santa01.html

    Once everyone has a machine in their basement, the economy of the world will be turned on its ear. Consumer goods will cost only the price of their materials. The cheap labor advantage of India and China will vanish. The nature of products will change. Right now, it makes no sense to make something repairable. It is cheaper to build something that can't be fixed and throw it away. When we get very distributed manufacturing however, things will be built with only one or two raw materials. Things will be built so they are easy to assemble. It would make sense to build a new heating element for your coffee pot. Waste would go down. Recycling would become much more immediate and local. People would share designs the way we now share open source software. Quite a different world would result.

  3. Re:Great... by davburns · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And this just after Bruce Schnier posted a link to a how-to for destroying the Earth, which includes blackholes and von Neumann machines as methods.

  4. Not as close as the blub makes it seem. by PxM · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While the idea of a 3D printer cheap enough for personal use /is/ going to revolutionize the world by making certain real items as cheap as software, the part about it being a von Neumann machine is overrated. The article just mentions it in passing and there is no evidence that he's actually figured out how to do that. That's been one of the holy grails of engineering since it was proposed. The article doesn't mention whether the materials used will be recyclable. Since everyone and their grandmother will start spitting out objects if they have this and since it would probably be cheaper to build a new object rather than repairing an old one, mass use of UCs will produce tons of waste. Imagine if you could never delete any file on your computer but could create more easily. You would run out of space very quickly.

    BTW, for a good book on the social implications of cheap universal constructors, I suggest the Stephenson's book Diamond Age.

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