RepRap reproducing?

The idea of a 3d printer that can duplicate itself is lovely. But clearly this cant do that exactly; granted the goal is eventually to be able to do that. Once this machine could truely duplicate itself I would have to assume the costs should drop dramaticly.

Hyperbole about the machine duplicating itself is great for headlines in science journals but how far away is the ability to actually have the machine duplicate itself minus the electric motors(which obviously cant be fab'd)? So basicly is there an itemized list of things that could potentially be fabbed in the future and things that cant be?

Apparently bitsfrombytes sells mechanical kits for 300-400 pounds. Im not sure how much that is in canadian dollars - probably $600-800 canadian. So thats a kit for the mechanical but does anyone sell an electronics kit with all of the required parts, ie pcb's, motors, hardware, everything? When a company or group assembles a kit for sale they generally fingure out a way to reduce costs opposed to buying all the parts individually. bitsfrombytes seems to be figuring out how to streamline. Cant someone do that with the rest of the parts?

You can get parts from the reprap research foundation. They're listed on the website, handily under the 'obtain parts' bit!

[reprap.org]

I think, but I could be wrong, that the bitsfrombytes kits include steppers.

Hey Tom, yes, clearly this is not a proper clanking replicator in the science fiction sense. Yet. But, it's getting closer, and the salient point is that it can make the parts that you can't easily find elsewhere. The rest is just nuts and bolts and electronics, the ubiquitous parts you can get anywhere with Digikey and Mouser.

Economies of scale are great, but they don't work the same for everyone everywhere. Bits from Byte is great - I'm using their cast parts right now, and they are buiding up perfectly, but I'm in Canada and it doesn't make sense for me to ship 20 kg of stainless steel rods and bolts when I can find that stuff locally - the shipping costs more than the parts!

Interestingly, some folks are already working on printing out circuit boards, and motors may be fabbed a lot sooner than you might guess. Automatic armature winding anyone? But in the meantime, I'm pretty stoked to be building a limited replicator, such as it is. It's only going to get better!

Look me up in a month or so if you decide to get started - I might have some Canadian child parts ready by then. In the meantime, check out the parts lister and RRRF - I think Zach just put together a comprehensive electronics kit, and he's got steppers too. I used his circuit boards and ordered my electrical components from Mouser using the parts lister's automated BOM, but ended up paying a fair bit in customs to Canada.

Also, it looks like Bits from Bytes has a new kit out - I'd hazard a guess that the cast parts were too labor intensive for the demand they're suddenly seeing. It'll be interesting to see how long before we get a large enough and fast enough fleet to get parts out there. Eventually it won't be an issue.