A University of Bath academic [Adrian Bowyer], 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.

Here's our email interview with Dr. Bowyer.

3D printers, sometimes called Fab Labs, will revolutionize the manufacturing and delivering of material goods the same way that iTunes has revolutionized the distribution of music and movies.

The Reprap's self-replication is not 100% perfect. There are some parts - a few circuit boards and some other metal pieces - that will have to be purchased. Interested hackers can join the RepRap Foundation and buy the nonprintable parts at cost.

The RepRap is probably the simplest possible design for a fab lab, but the fact that it can self-reproduce (and the software to run it is free) means that it will be delivered to the world through the same sort of exponential reproduction that is seen when a living creature is introduced into an ecosystem. It is also expected to evolve as it is adapted by its users to meet certain needs.

RepRap version 1.0 is named Darwin.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Steve Burgess has written an interesting essay for KurzweilAI on "The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance." You'll want to read the whole thing.

I agree with Burgess that personal manufacturing (first by fab labs, later by molecular manufacturing) will bring incredible abundance. I also agree that this abundance will be very disruptive to society as it is organized today. I don't think that fact, as Burgess argues, is going to necessitate incentives on the part of existing business to allow these technologies to be adopted.

Today's retailers and manufacturers will have as much success in stopping the trend toward personal manufacturing as record companies have had in stopping the rise of digital media outlets like iTunes. Which is: no success at all.

Even if Congress were to outlaw personal manufacturing completely - not a popular move - it would be embraced legally elsewhere and illegally here anyway. It's far too powerful of a force to stop or even slow effectively.

Burgess adds:

War is largely fought over scarce resources. Widespread wealth (through universal distribution of PNs) would remove the apparent fuel for most wars.

Well, most wars are fought over resources. Many wars, including the war that we are currently fighting, is over ideology - competing views of how the world should work. The September 11 highjackers weren't poor or down and out. They were, for the most part, middle-class. It wasn't a lack of material possessions that fueled their rage - it was a viral ideology.

Perhaps the societies that have succumbed to this viral meme would improve with universal wealth. If the populations that currently produce terrorists get busy loving the good life, maybe their desire to kill infidels will slack off. I certainly hope so.

The problem is whether wealth from personal manufacturing would be universal - or limited to those already in power. Oil wealth hasn't been widely distributed in Muslim countries. Can we expect a better distribution of wealth from personal manufacturing?

We have reason to be optimistic. Oil requires massive infrastructure that is easily controlled by a central bureaucracy. But if you let a single self-replicating fab lab get smuggled into the Kingdom, the kleptocracy is over.

UPDATE: Don't miss Will Brown's response at The Warrior Class Blog.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

• Medical Fab, Part 1

• Medical Fab, Part 2

Scientists in London have developed a new way to print biological structures smaller than the ink jet needles they use in the printer.

The problem was that the smallest ink jet needles are currently 500 microns - larger than what is needed to lay down cells with the kind of precision necessary to make the smallest biological structures with fine features. But by using a new technique they are calling "electrohydrodynamic jetting" they can do much better. They send living cells at a controlled flow rate into the ink jet needle, but then add an electric charge.

The advantage of this method compared to conventional ink-jet technology is that it can create droplets as small as just a few microns across from needles with diameters as large as hundreds of microns. Until now, however, researchers were unsure if the high voltages required for this technique would damage living cells. Jayasinghe and co-workers have demonstrated that cells can be processed at electric fields as high as 30 kilovolts without being harmed.

Imagine microsurgery where the surgeon (or, more likely, a computer under supervision), literally rebuilds a damaged or worn out organ.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last January it was reported that a group of researchers in the U.K. was busy trying to beat competitors in Japan and the United States in the "printing" of body tissue.

This week Wired reported on progress in the U.S.

Led by University of Missouri-Columbia biological physics professor Gabor Forgacs and aided by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant, researchers at three universities have developed bio-ink and bio-paper that could make so-called organ printing a reality.

So far, they've made tubes similar to human blood vessels and sheets of heart muscle cells, printed in three dimensions on a special printer.

There is some hesitation from the scientists involved to speculate how far this technology could go. But one participate offered this:

"I think this is going to be a biggie," said Glenn D. Prestwich, the University of Utah professor who developed the bio-paper. "A lot of things are going to be a pain in the butt to print, but I think we can do livers and kidneys as well."

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week my wife came home excited about the key machine at our local Wal-Mart. "This thing makes practically perfect copies because its computer controlled." Sure enough, the three keys we had made for our van all worked perfectly. Having had limited success with keys made by hand, I took note and decided this is how I'll have keys made from now on.

So when my mother asked about getting some keys made, I directed her to Wal-Mart and told her why. "It's all done by computer, Mom, there's little chance of human error creeping in."

This morning, I got a call from my mother, "I asked for the computer-controlled key machine and they laughed at me."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Let me call you right back." I called my wife and confirmed that I had sent my mother to the right store.

Then I called my mother back; "You have the key machine operator there?"

"Yes."

"Could you put him on the phone?"

"O.K."

"Hello?" It was the key machine operator.

"I need to ask you about your key machine. Do you have to hand-grind the keys?"

"No, it's all automatic. I put the key and the blank in one side and it spits out the copied key on the other. This lady was asking if it was computer controlled. There's no computer screen or anything."

"Thank you. Let me visit again with my mother."

"Hello."

"Mom, you've got the right store and the right machine. Give your key to that clerk and he'll stick it in the automatic key machine that's controlled by the magical Wal-Mart pixies."

"Heh."

I swear to Glenn she actually said "heh."

Anyway, it just goes to show that computers really are disappearing into everyday machines (to the point that even the operators may not know they are present). AND simple, specialized computer controlled fabrication is already here and doing jobs too mundane to make headlines.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I somehow missed pointing to last week's CNN article about Adrian Bowyer and his RepRap project.

In this interview Dr. Bowyer compared the RepRap to agriculture. This is a good reminder that self-replication isn't magic. It's not something for nothing. Energy, raw materials, and information are essential to the process - just like agriculture.

Also, his goal is a little more modest than a perfectly self-replicating machine.

Bowyer said the target of the project was to create a range of devices that could be assembled for around $500 using additional components commonly and cheaply available in hardware stores.

Which is practically free for a machine that can make almost any kind of electronic gadget. $500 certainly beats the current price of a prototyping machine - $45,000.

Then Dr. Bowyer made his case to environmentalists.

If the machine can copy itself, it can make its own recycler. When you break something you can just feed it into the recycler and break it down to its raw materials and re-build it.

The key ecological point is that it cuts down on the transportation necessary both to manufacture products and to dispose of them. Every household would have its own recycling set-up.

I hate to brag but (Well, that's not true at all. I love to brag! I must have been thinking of somebody else.) back in March I speculated that:

[Too much stuff] would probably be a problem at first. We have these fab labs that can make us anything we want...and so we begin filling our house with this stuff.

Pretty soon we'd realize that more than the stuff, we need space to walk. At that point - particularly if fab labs had become reasonably fast in operation - we might start living a "Just In Time" lifestyle.

If we need something we'd fabricate it, use it, and then toss it in the fab recycle bin where the basic materials could be used again to fab something else.

A smart fab lab could even keep an inventory of the bin. If you asked it to fab something already in the bin it could ask: "That item has been fabricated and is awaiting recycling, are you sure you'd like to refab?"

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adrian Bowyer continues to make progress with RepRap. Once operational his RepRap machine will be a self-replicating universal constructor capable of making almost anything that it's given plans for - including itself.

This is a picture of the metal deposition head. It is made almost entirely from rapid prototyped parts. The first version of the RepRap will not be a perfect self-replicator. It will be able to replicate most of its own parts, but electric motors and other small parts like screws will have to be bought elsewhere.

Even with imperfect self-replication these machines will be subject to exponential distribution and fast evolutionary development.

Of course I was quite excited when Dr. Bowyer responded to my interview request:

For the benefit of those who've never heard of a Rapid-Prototyper, what exactly are you working on?

Rapid prototypers are machines that allow the direct manufacture of objects from geometrical descriptions of them in a computer. The objects are usually made from various plastics, but some machines work with metals and other materials.

We are trying to make a rapid prototyper that can manufacture the majority of its own component parts (it wouldn't be able to do integrated circuits, for example, but it would be able to do all its mechanical parts and circuitry). A person would then assemble and commission the new machine and so have created a copy.

It would also be able to make a very large number of other useful objects.

At your website "reprap.org" there is a slogan "Wealth without money..." Do you foresee self-replicating manufacturing machines like the RepRap changing the world? How?

First let me say that the most probable impact of this research project is zero. That is for the simple reason that the most probable impact of every research project is zero. However, the self-copying nature of the results mean that - if it does take off - it will grow fast.

The interesting thing about a widespread takeup of this technology is the way it would bypass conventional finance. The machines would be creating great wealth, but would be almost valueless themselves. To see why this is so, suppose you had one and decided to copy it and to sell the copy. You think that if you charge $1000 that would be reasonable, and would give you a decent profit. But the person to whom you sell it can copy his or her machine and sell the copies for $900. Very quickly the cost drops to the point where the profit is shaved to the bone.

A manufacturing machine that can copy itself can create goods like no other technology we have - it is the only way to do so with exponential growth, for example. But by that very fact, both the machine and those goods have a value that, as the technology spreads, asymptotically approaches the value of the raw materials used. If you like to put it this way, the technology kills the idea of added value in material goods. Information is another matter.

There are other groups working on related projects - Paul Calvert at MIT was mentioned recently in your listserv. How is your project unique?

Lots of people are working on RP; rather fewer are working on universal constructors. I think I was the first person

1. To put the two together,

2. To realise that if you let people do the assembly and the machines make the parts you can progress much faster, and

3. To decide to give it all away free.

What technologies - software and hardware - must be available to assemble the first RepRap v. 1.0?

We need a decent free CAD system - at the moment we're looking at Blender. We need control software to drive the machine, but that's pretty low level and we can do that ourselves, we need cheap chips, electric motors, and a few other mechanical components (like self-tapping screws) that are so plentiful and low-cost already that it's not worth bothering to try to replace them initially.

Of the technologies that you need, what do you have and what do you lack?

We've pretty much identified everything that we need, and - if our grant application is successful - we will have access to it all.

Can you estimate how long until you have a working prototype?

Four years.

One work-in-progress picture shows that you may initially use some parts that won't be fabricated by the machine. There were screws and a syringe in one photo. Is your ultimate goal to create a RepRap that is capable of 100% self-replication? Or will you leave that to experimenting users once you release your first version?

The later. The machine will evolve as the people who download it improve it. One of the many roads to improvement will be reducing bought-in parts.

Do you expect that the RepRap concept will be resisted by manufacturing, distribution, and retail interests? What do you think will be the ultimate outcome of this fight (if there is one)?

I am checking out the legal situation, which looks very interesting and positive. When my consultations are complete I'll put a page on the site about that. I expect RepRap will be resisted by many industries, but I'm far too old and uninterested in that aspect of the world to take on any fights. If the idea works the resistance is bound to fail, if not the resistance will have been pointless.

So the year is 2009 (or whenever the RepRap becomes available) and I need a pocket AM/FM radio or a cell phone or a toothbrush, etc. How do I get one?

You download a design from the web (free or paid for), buy a few chips, and set your RepRap machine to work. Next day you plug in the chips, add a battery, and tune in to Grieg or Green Day, according to preference. Or maybe you just clean your teeth...

Heh. :-)

Thank you Dr. Bowyer for your thoughtful interview.

Adrian Bowyer is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Bath. He works with the Biomimetics Research Group. Biomimetics is the branch of science that "takes ideas from nature and implements them in another technology such as engineering, design, or computing." The RepRap concept is of interest to Biomimetics researchers because it is a machine that is predicted to grow and evolve much like life.

Be sure to visit the RepRap website and Dr. Bowyer's blog.

Here's a previous post on Dr. Bowyer's work, and another on why I think these machines will change the world.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)