Date: Wednesday 6 June 2007, 10:00
Venue: EM 2.33
Name: Prof. Adrian Bowyer, University of Bath
Look at your computer setup. Imagine if you hooked up a 3D printer.
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 make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.
This talk will be abut RepRap - the Replicating Rapid-prototyper. This 3D printer will make components using fused-deposition Rapid Prototyping, which builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would set you back £15,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself.
So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs will be about £300). We are distributing the RepRap machine entirely free to everyone using open-source - so, if you have one, you can make another and give it to a friend...