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Is Google using your brain as you browse? »

Self-replicating, open source 3D printers

This…is…awesome: image

The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) printer can replicate and update itself. It can print its own parts, including updates. The 3D printer works by building components up in layers of plastic, mainly polylactic acid (PLA), which is a bio-degradable polymer made from lactic acid

3D printer tech already exists, y’see – these guys want to make it available to anyone around the world, infinitely copyable (though I wonder where the natural resources will come from?)

It wants to make the machine available to anybody — including small communities in the developing world, as well as people in the developed world, says Olliver. Accordingly, the RepRap machine is distributed, at no cost, under the GNU (General Public Licence).

In the true spirit of open-source, it’s envisaged as perpetual beta

RepRap’s open-source project aims to keep on improving the machine. “So it can do what people want it to do”, says Olliver. Improvements will go back to users and, in this way, the machine as a whole evolves, he says. The idea of evolution is important, he adds. The device Olliver is creating now will probably bear very little resemblance to the device that will appear on everybody’s desks in the future, he says.

They’re making impressive steps forward. Mixing materials is the next frontier:

New features include, for example, heads that can be changed for different kinds of plastic. A head that deposits low melting-point metal is in development, he says. The metal melts at a lower temperature than that at which plastic melts, which means the metal can be put inside plastic, says Olliver. “That means, in theory, we could build structures like motors.”
RepRap also allows people to build circuits in 3D, as well as various shapes, with the result that objects, such as a cell phone, don’t have to be flat, he says.

Being able to design objects and print out prototypes anywhere around the world means you can email your friends/coworkers physical objects! But I’m more excited in its more revolutionary role, just hinted at by one of this amazing international group of engineers:

When Computerworld talked to him, Olliver had just printed out a small part to fix his blender.

Not only will this make it much easier for us to repair our devices (key to sustainable, eco living), but it changes the world we live in – it makes it a read/write world – one in which you learn how to build, to repair, to truly own your objects and appliances. It’s the world of the hobbyist, the do-it-all; it’s the death of professional segregation, exclusion, and knowledge silos. With this and the read-write, open, collaborative, sharing web (Wikipedia etc), it’s Ivan Illich‘s wet dream, and he can rest content in his grave.

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Related:

The Fred Wilson effect (a.k.a: social networking dividend of an open, public conversation)
Last week made my head spin. As I continue with my biochemistry degree, I spectate the new media sphere as it twists and turns; I occasionally pass comment on it, either on this blog, on twitter, or in some other forum, for example, the comments sections of other sites. I happened to leave a couple [...]...
Is Google using your brain as you browse?
I just stumbled across a research paper published by a Google employee and a Microsoft employee entitled “A Case for Usage Tracking to Relate Digital Objects“. I have no idea who Elin Rønby Pedersen is but she’s published both on this and on Google’s much vaunted foray into organising your health data. The paper highlights [...]...

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 12:43 am and is filed under Culture bucket, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Ethan Bauley
    Hey mang

    I thought your comment on AVC in which you compared Umair Haque to "a snake oil salesman" was one of the funniest things I've ever read. Really, really hilarious.

    Sarcasm aside, you should peep Bruce Sterling's "Shaping Things" if you haven't already:

    http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10603

    "The future will see a new kind of object that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term "spime" for them, these future manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system."

    Marinate on that last bit for a sec...and then:

    "Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production."

    www.spimeco.com

    ;-)

    (btw, Umair is intentionally opaque, it's part of this whole "thing")
  • Philippe Bradley
    It was unfair of me to be so critical - Umair does make some very good points occasionally, and does substantiate them with logic sometimes - guess I was just having a bad day. Glad the only consequence was to make you laugh, and not start a vendetta!

    I'll definitely check out that book. If I may return the favour, read Ivan Illich's "Tools for Conviviality" - it's not long but it's incredible stuff given how long ago it was written - predicting the internet/wikipedia, freedom of the amateur from his reliance on professionals, etc
  • Ethan Bauley
    Cool, I was just teasin' ;-)

    I goog'd illich when I saw another of your references to him...adding to the ever-lengthening AMZ list now...

    But ya, you should really peep "ST"...it's amazing and very short...more of a long essay...but a useful [and often hilarious] framework
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