http://reprap.org
The RepRap Project

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-Prototyper.

This is the homepage of the open-source
Replicating Rapid-Prototyper Project
in the
Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technology & IMRC
at
Bath University and around the world.



"[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment..." - James Randerson writing in The Guardian on November 25, 2006.
first part
At 10:10 pm Central European Summer Time on 13 September 2006 in Vienna
Vik Olliver's RepRap machine made the first part for itself - the ringed component
shown working above.  This is a small but significant step: if we can make that,
we can make almost all the other parts too...


Look at your computer setup. Imagine if you hooked up a 3D printer (called a rapid prototyper in engineer-speak). Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust these parts are, think of Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to put together another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

We are developing and giving away to the world the designs for such a machine so you can have one yourself and also make copies of it for your friends in turn.

A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer.

A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products.  Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.

The project described in these pages is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away under the GNU General Public Licence to allow all people to have free access to the technology.

In addition to giving everyone everywhere the means to create their own goods and wealth, we are also trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor.

For more details, click on the links on the left.