RepRap Morgan Receives $20,000 Gada Prize For Simplifying 3D-Printer

An anonymous reader writes "South African Quentin Harley has picked up the $20,000 Gada Uplift prize for making the open source RepRap 3D printer design easier to build, cheaper to construct, and — most importantly — capable of printing more of its own parts. Lots of background on Harley and his RepRap Morgan are available on his website." A further goal of the RepRap Morgan project is to replace the Prusa Mendel as the default RepRap model. And they are on track to hit less than $100 in parts, excluding the printing bed. You can grab the hardware design and the controller firmware over at Github.

Comments

Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how SkyNet becomes self sufficient. Take me to yuah tonah. Do eet now!

Re:Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[peragrin]

If the terminators are built of this kind of plastic then I am not afraid. all you have to do is tell your kids there is candy inside and they will be torn to shreds in seconds with no one hurt.

Seriously we are a long way from being able to do this with metal, or even circuit chips.

Heck all I want is to be able to do it with various types of rubber and silicone for gaskets, and other simple parts.

Re:Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck all I want is to be able to do it with various types of rubber and silicone for gaskets, and other simple parts.

You want sex toys. No sense in keeping up the charade.

Re:Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[Charliemopps]

As with all revolutions of this type, it's what we haven't thought of that will be the game changer. Someone, somewhere, will make something incredible using a device like this and then we'll all look back and wonder why the hell we hadn't thought of it ourselves.

Re:Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[dadelbunts]

What about a mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal!

Re:Self-replicating 3-D printers...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want sex toys.

*everyone* want sex toys!

You know..

[houbou]

when machines start building parts to repair themselves fully, it will be akin to humans procreating..

Re:You know..

[sribe]

when machines start building parts to repair themselves fully, it will be akin to humans procreating..

What are you trying to say? That soon 35% of internet traffic will be videos of machines building parts?

Re:You know..

[Anonymous Coward]

Another first for the slashdot crowd!

Re:You know..

[chromas]

They'll have non-functional, oversized plastic parts added on and will go through the motions without actually building anything—maybe even spurt some molten plastic or caulk here and there.

Re:You know..

[samsonaod]

What are you trying to say? That soon 35% of internet traffic will be videos of machines building parts?

Videos of machines building machines....... Machine Porn!

Re:You know..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the machines will just download the schematics ... if you catch my drift. ;)

Re:You know..

[Anonymous Coward]

No objections.

Re:You know..

[PuZZleDucK]

when machines start building parts to repair themselves fully, it will be akin to humans procreating..

No... that would be regeneration... what you describe is more like the "ability" to crap out a finger or arm.

Why Not Regular Printers?

[sycodon]

Why does it still take fucking drivers, patches, and voodoo to fucking hook up a regular printer and make it function?

Shit, I can plug in a VGA 13" or a 42" flat panel and the computer runs that just fine. Printers, I guess, are beyond the average PhD at Microsoft and Apple.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[ArcadeMan]

Yeah, Microsoft and Apple* make printers... :rolleyes:

* yes I know they did in the past, but not today.

I also can't understand why it's so complicated? Isn't PCL supposed to be standard?

We don't need drivers for keyboard, mouse and some webcams anymore, it's standardized. Why aren't printers and scanners the same way?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[ArcadeMan]

P.S.: VGA should have died years ago. We have digital video cards and digital monitors but we're still using analog signals like it's a frickin' TV from 1960.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[gl4ss]

P.S.: VGA should have died years ago. We have digital video cards and digital monitors but we're still using analog signals like it's a frickin' TV from 1960.

who is? unless your monitor is older than 10 years it's pretty likely you shouldn't be connecting it through vga..

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

On my IPS monitor, there was no noticable difference on video quality between VGA and HDMI input.
On my cheap ass TV, the VGA video is much better than the HDMI input because they don't mess around (aka "process") the video that comes from a PC. The color calibration, gamma, color temperature are all wrong, but at least those are semi-fixable.

There was no option to turn off all the cheap crap "processing" they put on the HDMI one as they make it look "good/vivid" for the Walmart target consumers.:(

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Hamsterdan]

What's even more ironic is that inexpensive monitors only have VGA. they would be even less expensive if they had DVI (or HDMI) since they could skip the A/D part. But they want you to buy the more expensive ones for digital inputs.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[triffid_98]

Probably for the exact same reason it still takes fucking drivers and patches and configuration settings to set up a regular video card and make it function?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

you know you'd think that. but Every single brand new Dell, HP and Ciso device that comes through our doors still have VGA. Some of the Dells will have displayport or a HDMI port.

Here is the kicker, I buy a new Dell 380 i5 it comes with a DVI with VGA adapter and an HDMI port with a VGA converter to connect to a set of brand new Dell monitors that come with it. Go figure.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[slew]

Isn't PCL [wikipedia.org] supposed to be standard?

Although many printers support some variants of PCL6, it's actually a HP thing...

We don't need drivers for keyboard, mouse and some webcams anymore, it's standardized. Why aren't printers and scanners the same way?

Anytime there are new features involved, it takes a while to shake things down to a standard, sometimes that never happens. For example, you might ask why your IR remote for a TV isn't standardized yet. Fortunatly for most users many "universal" remotes have "drivers" for many of the TVs built-in to do the standard thing (e.g., channel up/down, volume), but of course any new feature can't be controlled with the universal remote unless you can "download" them into the (learning) remote. Similarly, nearly all printers and scanners can be run with the in-the-box OS driver, but you don't get to access any of the nifty new features that way. Even the mouse-scroll-wheel feature needed some driver TLC when it first came out...

There's very little incentive for companies to just come out with "standard" devices unless they are total crap. You can just look at the quality level of the "vanilla" keyboard, or the "vanilla" webcam that doesn't need drivers to see what is available in that category: cheaply made and barely functional. That's not to say that the companies that opt for a more premium market are much better (e.g., HP printers), but some manage to do okay (e.g, Canon printers).

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Printers are always a different story. You can install every goddamned driver under the sun, they will still have a 70% job failure rate. Whether it is a paper jam, needing yellow ink to print black text (broken by design), or just ignoring the print job altogether. I bought an HP Officejet 6600 about 8 months ago and have printed a grand total of 9 pages. It has already failed claiming some sort of "ink delivery problem." The only option is to send it in for repairs. I've never had a device fail that quickly. Something isn't right here. Printers suck. They have always sucked. When virtually everything is more reliable and longer lasting than it was in the past, printers are the exception.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy laser. Toner does not dry out, an unused ink cart does.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[peragrin]

I am at work right now using VGA. Dell is selling VGA only computers right now.

I got lucky we ordered mine with dual video outputs to run two monitors. one runs from HDMI to DVI, the other is straight VGA. Talk about a complicated setup with stupid adaptors. but if say thunderbolt were standard then it wouldn't be a problem. but vendors don't like making products better only more money at the products they sell.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A PhD hasn't meant shit for about 13 years now.

Is that when you got your Ph.D. in under-water basket weaving?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy laser. Toner does not dry out, an unused ink cart does.

I gave up on the ink cartridge scam years ago.

A toner cartridge will last until the last bit of toner is used, an ink cartridge will last ~ 3 months (until the ink dries). When I used ink, I had to replace the cartridge EVERY time I wanted to print because it would be dried out. After the cost of the printer and about 3 ink cartridges I realized for the same money I could get a laser printer and not have the problem. Now, I have had a printer for ~ 4 years with the original toner cartridge... It works perfectly every print... No, I don't print much but it sure is nice to have a reliable printer when I need it.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Khyber]

My 20+ year old Panasonic dot matrix printer still works just fine. Never a problem printing text.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[ArcadeMan]

I got an HP DeskJet 500 on the floor right here, ready to be taken apart for its smooth rods and stepper motors, parts that will be used to build a desktop CNC.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

oblig: http://xkcd.com/1052/

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

naw, at least that'd've been fun.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Cwix]

Interesting. I have been reading about these, do you have some plans you are following?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[WillAdams]

The ShapeOko is a well-documented, opensource and affordable hobby-levek CNC router:

http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anaerin]

And it's perfect to acclimatise your ears to the next heavy metal concert you attend, too.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[c0lo]

I got an HP DeskJet 500 on the floor right here, ready to be taken apart for its smooth rods and stepper motors, parts that will be used to build a desktop CNC.

Save your time and hear my 3 words: "The office" movie.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[WillAdams]

Yeah, 'cause no thesis contributes anything to human knowledge --- here's a better guide:

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[HornWumpus]

You can buy a Chinese made X-Y table with actual screw drive for about $200. Save your effort, belt drive is double plus ungood. Especially when combined with stepper motors and no-feedback. You 'table' will be hammering on the zeros to reset the count like an old floppy drive.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[WillAdams]

Got a link for that? I've been considering a second smaller machine for metal-working.

Screw drive machines aren't easily expanded to 1.2m x 1.2m --- it only cost ~$60 to extend my Y-axis to 1m, and double up the MakerSlide on the X-axis --- much more solid, but admittedly, still a bit fiddly, but for the price, it meets my needs thus far.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"heavy metal concert"? How did you post from 1985?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Khyber]

Actually, my guitar gets WAY louder. I've got an amp that can pump up to about 110dB.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Khyber]

I guess you haven't seen the Big 4 tour that was going on a couple years ago.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret is to install the software and then plug it in.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

My HP880c is still going strong after 13+ years, and the replacement cartridges are much cheaper now than they were when it was new. It was packed away in a box for a 1 year but the print heads didn't gum up. Good simple reliable printer. Don't know if it still has Windows 7/8 driver support but it's still supported in Linux.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[maxwell demon]

Well, my graphics card has digital out, and my monitor has digital in, but I still run it with VGA. Why? Because the format of the digital out (DVI) doesn't fit with the format of the digital in (HDMI). Yes, I guess I could pay a premium for an adapter, but hey, why do so if the VGA connection works?

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Rich0]

Ditto. I print a fair bit more so occasionally need to buy toner, but for me the reliability and quality are the biggest things (not to mention reduced cost). The last time I owned an inkjet it seemed like anytime anybody needed to print something I got a call to help them clean the heads and such, and of course that burns through tons of ink. Printout was never optimal - 99% of the time you were printing text and it just wasn't sharp. Sure, you could print photos, if you don't mind paying 3x as much as the local Walmart for a photo that would have slight defects.

I moved to a color laster and told everybody to just get their prints at Walmart. Way cheaper overall, and it always just works. I do refills but if I wanted to get cartridges it would take all of 2min to change them once every 1-2 years. Every page looks as nice as when the printer was brand new, and I never get phone calls at work to talk somebody through tinkering with the thing. It is networked so the whole house can use it, and it is way faster than an inkjet. Plus my current one is Postscript, so it just works on anything without fussing with drivers (at most I install a PPD file - even on Linux).

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[Shark]

You were lucky. There quite a few printers come with toner cartridges containing an e-fuse. They start counting how many pages you've printed and refuse to print more unless you change it (or fake another e-fuse destruction).

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[PuZZleDucK]

Why does it still take fucking drivers, patches, and voodoo to fucking hook up a regular printer and make it function?

You don't run Linux do you... your right, it sounds like a nightmare over there in WindowLand.

Re:Why Not Regular Printers?

[tlhIngan]

Why does it still take fucking drivers, patches, and voodoo to fucking hook up a regular printer and make it function?

Because printer manufacturers want it to be this way. Although there's also a tone of stuff that's not standardized - e.g., computer-printer communication protocol (e.g., how is a printer supposed to announce its capabilities? Remember that the old parallel interface (emulated by USB) consists of 8 data lines and 5 return status lines. It was assumed back then that printer drivers knew everything. It's also why printers have a set of "defaults" that exist in the printer driver and on the printer itself.

I also can't understand why it's so complicated? Isn't PCL supposed to be standard?

PCL is a page description language and a bit of printer control protocol. A page description language describes how to put things on paper, while a printer control protocol describes how the printer should work.

The former describes what's on the page, the latter how the pages are laid out. So something like duplexing, paper type, which tray, color settings, color correction, etc., are printer control while things like what font to use and how to rasterize it are page description.

It's only recently have full two-way communications between computer and printer been available that let us query printers for capabilities and such and actually lead us to one universal driver because printer control is typically a two-way protocol while page description is one-way.

In fact, Apple's been trying to push driverless printing through AirPrint to allow devices to print to printers directly (if they support AirPrint) or through an intermediary (legacy printers).

It looks like it's actually a modified version of CUPS since Linux can support it natively.

What's even more ironic is that inexpensive monitors only have VGA. they would be even less expensive if they had DVI (or HDMI) since they could skip the A/D part. But they want you to buy the more expensive ones for digital inputs.

Except it's generally an all-in-one chip that does it all - A/D, scaling, and panel interfacing.

Also, DVI gets complicated with stuff like HDCP (which requires keys and such) and layout (DVI does require high-speed layout since the bits are coming at it fairly fast). VGA can be fairly tolerant as long as the three lines reach the chip at around the same time.

Still a long way to go

[WillAdams]

I tried to put together a B.O.M. @ kitbom.com: http://kitbom.com/WillAdams/reprap-morgan and it currently prices out @ $274.26, not including the 3D printed parts and some things we've not found good sources for.

Also, free software for 3D CAD/CAM still needs a lot of work --- I've listed everything I could find here:

http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/CAD
http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/CAM

and people still over-whelmingly choose commercial software:

3D CAD 9/15 --- http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1783
3D CAM 19/37 --- http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1785

(by way of comparison the commercial stuff is listed here: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Commercial_Software )

Please tell me I missed a fabulous opensource solution, or some much less expensive parts....

Re:Still a long way to go

[gl4ss]

pretty much everyone uses eitehr slic3r or skeinforge as the CAM portion of the sw for reprap/oss home 3d printing.
you might shave off 10-15 bucks by going j-head for the hot end.

also, are you missing the atmega for the electronics? you need that in addition to the shield.

btw some of the parts are available through dealextreme nowadays.. like the ramps shield, atmega, stepsticks..

Simpson (2nd place) is also very cool

[WillAdams]

A Delta-based printer: http://reprap.org/wiki/Simpson

I'd really like to see the best of both worlds (the Simpson build instructions are quite nice, while Morgan's is a wall of text...)

Re: Simpson (2nd place) is also very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

A wall of text is preferable to insufficient information.

Re:Simpson (2nd place) is also very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this a lot better! IIRC there is a limitation in revolute joints: their precision varies with distance from axis of rotation. The nice thing about the delta design is that the arms complement each other: when the print head moves away from one joint, it gets closer to another.

Re: Simpson (2nd place) is also very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

A very well indexed wall of text is best of all

Can Print its own parts?

[microcars]

Awesome! But how does it print the part you need if it is broken and you need that part to make it work?

Re:Can Print its own parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

3D printing is the future. Don't ask any questions, just accept that fact. Luddite.

Re:Can Print its own parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two options:

1. Pre-emptive printing of spare parts;
2. Ask a friend to print it on his RepRap, and buy him a beer;

Woosh, right? :)

Re:Can Print its own parts?

[lxs]

Some parts like gears are best printed in advance, the less critical parts can be held together with tape and glue for the duration of the replacement print.

Congrats!

[csumpi]

This is a great and worthy project especially since 3d printing is turning into a complete ripoff/get rich quick business everywhere else.

There are 3d printer projects popping up on kickstarter every day that never deliver, sites are selling power resistors for $5 ($0.7 on digikey), $100 hotends that don't work, printers that cost at most a couple hundred dollars to manufacture are sold for multiple thousands. And we thought Apple's markup was outrageous...

The reprap core team has to correct course.

What's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lathes are used to make lathe parts, each stage incrementing the precision. Oh wait, it involves the internet, so patent it already.

Re:What's new?

[gl4ss]

Lathes are used to make lathe parts, each stage incrementing the precision. Oh wait, it involves the internet, so patent it already.

it doesn't exactly involve the internet and it's not under patent..

the big deal that it's a ready design if you want to build a scara arm robot.

Code of the Lifemaker by JP Hogan

[Paul Fernhout]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_Lifemaker
"Code of the Lifemaker (ISBN 0-345-30549-3) is a 1983 novel by science fiction author James P. Hogan. NASA's Advance Automation for Space Missions was the direct inspiration for this novel detailing first contact between Earth explorers and the Taloids, clanking replicators who have colonized Saturn's moon Titan."

VGA

[RatanGharami]

Why does it still take fucking drivers, patches, and voodoo to fucking hook up a regular printer and make it function? Shit, I can plug in a VGA 13" or a 42" flat panel and the computer runs that just fine. Printers, I guess, are beyond the average PhD at Microsoft and Apple.http://bastcomputer.blogspot.com/">please visit it