RepRap support

[Christiaan]

A little way off yet, but my bet is that it's a revolution in the making:

http://reprap.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprap

I've been watching their blog for a while now and progress appears relentless. On the software side of things they're building on a Java software package called AOI (Art of Illusion); it would be great if VectorWorks supported the system directly, so we could model in VectorWorks and print straight to this self-replicating rapid prototyper. Dunno what this would require on the part of VectorWorks developers but something to keep in mind.

[P Retondo]

Christiaan, this is just another of the many 3d modeling technologies that have been out there for more than 10 years. File formats such as .sla have been developed to communicate with equipment of this type, and it is currently possible to get a VW 3d model to be fabricated on such equipment - but it would take major tweaking because of interface difficulties. I've never gotten beyond the initial discussion phase in such an effort because the cost is just too high. But, someday . . .

Bear in mind with the "RepRap" idea that "it would still require an external supply of several currently non-replicable components such as sensors, stepper motors, cameras, or microcontrollers," per the apparently self-authored Wikipedia article. Not too many people are going to want to build one of these in their home workshop.

[Christiaan]

This isn't just another 3D modelling technology Pete. The philosophy behind this open design project is to deprive for-profit organisations from owning the technology. The idea of a very cheap, open source, self-replicating rapid prototyper boggles the mind frankly. Of course there are limitations now but "cheap, open source and self-replicating" ensures that advances will compound extremely quickly as more and more people around the world use and improve the design.

P.S. there website was down; seems to be back up now.

[P Retondo]

Christiaan, I appreciate the sentiment and the vision, but the technology of the device is not an innovation, and has already been patented. The concept of sharing files so that the device can create some of it's own parts is interesting, but doesn't create the kind of ground-breaking advance of the first 3d printer (stereolithography). CAD/CAM software for driving these machines is well advanced.

I'm not as up on the literature as I was five years ago, but if you are really interested in this field I would look at Paul Jacobs' "Stereolithography and Other RP&M Techologies" (1996) for a very interesting firsthand account of the first freeform fabrication systems.

[Christiaan]

Pete, have a read of this to get a better idea of what I meant by my previous comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/christmas2006/story/0,,1956793,00.html

The ingredients that make it potentially revolutionary is the low capital cost and the fact that they're giving away their design once it's completed; they've taken out no patents.

As it turns out VectorWorks is already compatible with RepRap, as they simply use STL files.

[P Retondo]

But Christiaan, fused deposition modeling, the basic technology of their machine, was invented in the 1980s and is used fairly widely by a number of manufacturers. There may be some aspects of the RepRap equipment that represent potentially patentable ideas, which it is good of them to contribute to the public domain - but regarding the core technology, the cows left the barn a long time ago. Besides that, only a subset of potential parts for manufactured things can be created by such a machine, so their claim to be able to go into the garage and create a "Buzz Lightyear" with such equipment anytime soon is not credible.

Luckily for us, though, architectural models are the sort of thing that FDM might be able to do! When you've finished your FDM 3d printer, let me know! I want to play.

[Christiaan]

regarding the core technology, the cows left the barn a long time ago.

Not for $300 they haven't.

[Christiaan]

Got to the point where they're extruding at half the speed of the Stratasys FDM:

http://blog.reprap.org/2008/01/on-road-to-replication.html

And are halfway to replication:

http://blog.reprap.org/2008/02/half-way-to-replication.html

[Christiaan]

They've achieved replication:

http://blog.reprap.org/2008/06/reprap-achieves-replication.html