Can you print vitamins?

Is it possible to print the vitamin kit?
or is it necessary to use metal components?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2012 05:28PM by Penny Garfunkel.

Simple answer - metal components.

Longer answer:
there is a range of complexity in the Vitamins, e.g. Electronics and stepper motors at one end, and screws, nuts and rods at the other...

You can find references to people proposing some degree of "printedness" for almost all the components.
Things like extruding conductive material for PCBs,
various parts of a stepper motor,
rack and pinion to replace timing belts
PLA/ABS structural parts to replace rods

But they're mostly a long way from practical application, and you pretty much can't avoid things like screws & nuts

(although there are a few printed frameworks out there, from my POV the threaded rod frame was cheap, easy to build and adjust. It has it's downsides, but is likely the most used approach)

What if we printed the screws and nuts? Or designed new locking mechanisms that are printer friendly? To minimize the amount of physical hardware to a minimum electronics only if possible.

What I'm trying to get at -- How do we make a truly self-replicating printer?

It doesn't have to be the most accurate or best quality in the end I suppose, just functional to a point.

The defination of vitamins in regards to RepRap is the parts you can't print making the question an oxymoron

With a small nozzle and a well calibrated machine I'm sure you could print the larger nuts or screws. However they wouldn't be as strong, as cheap or as uniformed plus they'd need a lot of cleaning and take a while to print.

Overtime more and more parts are becoming printed parts, but the process takes a while as each change has to be tested, refined and documented.

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

With nut, bolts and washer being dirt cheap and easy to get hold of there is no motivation to print them. It only make sense to print things that are expensive or hard to find and when the printed part performs similarly.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]