Whens RepRap likely to take off?

I have no problems is the economics of high volume production tilt in favour of factory made RepRaps. Given how the economics work, however, I doubt that that will be the case. The simplest analog is the inkjet printer. Companies like HP and Epson look at two revenue streams from their printers, the printer and the ink. They way they price things. They make far more money off of ink than they do the printer. Stratasys follows a similar model where they charge the Earth for their filament, viz, about $4.50/cubic inch. to make up for their low volume sales.

I somehow can't see an HP making a cheap 3D replicator that would use generic filament without voiding their warranty.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2007 11:12AM by Forrest Higgs.

Tom B Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It seems like there are two visions of "take off"
> here. One in which the device becomes readily
> available to people with basic technical knowledge
> as a hobby, and one in which the device becomes an
> appliance for widespread distribution of physical
> objects.

It's enough for it to become not only a toy, but a useful tool to the DIY community the same way Linux had become some time ago. Changes to the society at large can take years just like Internet access, which many people consider as essential as phone and far more useful than TV. Still many people have TV but not Internet.

> Frankly, it's difficult to envision the
> latter, even if repraps are given away for free,
> such that the cost of producing objects is reduced
> to the cost of material and the time required to
> print. It's just too easy and fast to mass
> produce plastic parts by injection molding, at
> unit costs (in time and money) barely more than
> the cost of plastic.

Yeah, but that's wholesale. Retail sells them 10x manufacturer price.
Take cellphone accessories for example.

> If you ask people to choose
> between RP'ing four plastic plates (in one color
> and not dishwasher safe) over six hours at a cost
> of $15/pound, and driving 15 minutes to WalMart to
> buy four plastic plates (in an attractive array of
> patterns) for $1.50 each, few people will have to
> think very hard. I can imagine greatly improved
> RP being useful for people in extremely isolated
> locations, where it might be convenient to
> stockpile raw material rather than specific
> parts.

Why do you think you can't do color stuff? It's too early to come to such conclusions. Also, "driving to Walmart" is actually far more than 15 minutes, time spent shopping is likely to exceed driving time.

> The former sense of "take off," to become widely
> availabe for hobbyists is much more reasonable.
> There are a lot of creative people out there, and
> the ability to share the fruits of that
> creativity, in ones or twos, is very powerful, and
> people will pay a premium in time or money for
> that creativity.

Exactly.

> $150, even $500, is not
> unreasonable as a hobbyist tool-your computer was
> more, it's the same range as hobbyist power tools,
> less than a lot of specialist machinery. There's
> always going to be a limit to the size of object
> that's practical to produce this way,

Buildings are not produced as a single object as well. Manufacturing of big and custom objects is extremely expensive anyway.

> though, and
> it's always going to be more expensive to produce
> 100,000 by RP than by conventional manufacturing.
> These fundamental limitations restrict in-house RP
> to fabrication of small-batch, small-size,
> probably customized parts.

But that's the future!

People love to personalize items. Mass manufaturing can offer only a certain level of customization which is already far behind the actual demand for it. People will pay premium (money or time) for this.

Also, as custom manufacturing starts to eat into the market share, mass manufacturing starts to get more expensive and less flexible due to shrinking volume.

Buildings are not made as a single piece, but some of those single pieces can be several yards/meters long on one dimension.


The way I see it, this will go in three/four stages.

Hobbyists, making it because it's cool.
Artists, making/getting it because it's useful to their rarefied interests.
Everyone, making/getting it because so many useful tasks that have been discovered by those who got them for other reasons. Replacement washer fluid caps? That's only the tip of the iceberg.
Most people don't NEED a printer, now, but try to tell them that.

Perhaps everyone will keep family busts on their desks.
Perhaps the general community will fall in love with customized, truly customized, shells for their consumer products, such that companies sell the guts in an easily removable form.
Maybe people will come to desire fitted objects. Not just a game controller, but one molded to the owners own hands, for that last little edge when gaming head to head.

Furthermore...

I'm thinking that with a few petri cloned tissue samples, something like a rep-rap could be used to grow complex organs. Okay, someone in england has made a bladder, but can he make a kidney?

I'm also thinking that with an edible, and nutritious, base, mixed with food coloring, artificial flavors, texture modifiers, (soda, to make it foam, perhaps,) and maybe separately addable nutrients, this could become the the "Star Trek" "Replicator" for groups that don't have the luxury of going shopping when the canned beans get monotonous. (Think a few food capable units installed in every military sub, and most smaller surface ships. Perhaps also in many, if not most, college dorms, just because it'd be cheaper than actually eating out while still not having to actually cook.)


Edit...I didn't realize how often I use the word "actually".

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2007 10:40PM by Sean Roach.

Roach_S Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Buildings are not made as a single piece, but some
> of those single pieces can be several yards/meters
> long on one dimension.

Please don't confuse pieces that have to be big and pieces that are made big since it's benefical to manufacturing/assembling. Buildings can easily be constructed from very small parts (even LEGO

But good luck making a submarine with even metal-printing RepRap.

> The way I see it, this will go in three/four
> stages.
>
> Hobbyists, making it because it's cool.
> Artists, making/getting it because it's useful to
> their rarefied interests.
> Everyone, making/getting it because so many useful
> tasks that have been discovered by those who got
> them for other reasons. Replacement washer fluid
> caps? That's only the tip of the iceberg.
> Most people don't NEED a printer, now, but try to
> tell them that.

> Perhaps everyone will keep family busts on their
> desks.
> Perhaps the general community will fall in love
> with customized, truly customized, shells for
> their consumer products, such that companies sell
> the guts in an easily removable form.
> Maybe people will come to desire fitted objects.
> Not just a game controller, but one molded to the
> owners own hands, for that last little edge when
> gaming head to head.

They already love this, but don't have access to such services.

> Furthermore...
>
> I'm thinking that with a few petri cloned tissue
> samples, something like a rep-rap could be used to
> grow complex organs. Okay, someone in england has
> made a bladder, but can he make a kidney?

"RepRap Surgeon v2.5 available for download. Changelog. Release Notes."


> I'm also thinking that with an edible, and
> nutritious, base, mixed with food coloring,
> artificial flavors, texture modifiers, (soda, to
> make it foam, perhaps,) and maybe separately
> addable nutrients, this could become the the "Star
> Trek" "Replicator" for groups that don't have the
> luxury of going shopping when the canned beans get
> monotonous. (Think a few food capable units
> installed in every military sub, and most smaller
> surface ships. Perhaps also in many, if not most,
> college dorms, just because it'd be cheaper than
> actually eating out while still not having to
> actually cook.)

Certainly a number of robotic arms, 3D vision(laser scanner or otherwise), some useful stuff on the outside like storage containers... These are a must.

The possibilities are mind-boggling, especially considering that this is in fact possible given our current physics knowledge.

Speaking of houses, I had seen somewhere a device that was almost exactly a giant rp, that was designed to lay concrete in a stream to make a wall. I just looked it up, and I found an article discussing it. It has a link to a video on youtube that shows it in action. The tool head they use is really interesting, and might be an inspiration to future heads for the reprap.

[www.cbsnews.com]

I'm not sure how they would do electrical and plumbing but it seemed like an interesting way to make a house quickly, and in a way very closely aligned with the reprap.

That's basically a retread of an idea that Ed Allen came up with back in the early 1970's when he was on the faculty of MIT. There's nothing very different except that Ed used a converted "hot stick" truck mounted man-carrying positioning platform instead of what looks like an enormous flat bed plotter which this guy proposes.

He held a little conference back then at MIT and published the proceedings as..

The Responsive House, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1973.

It the stupid way of many universities, MIT didn't think Ed was good enough to tenure, so Ed left the faculty and went on to write the most successful books in Architectural education history on construction.

[architecture.mit.edu]

My department head in Hong Kong was one of the guys that MIT DID tenure. Comparing the two, I got the distinct impression that vis a vis MIT's architecture department, at least, tenure decisions had nothing to do with how bright and creative you are.

As a newbie to this group and relative novice to this technology, I think that this it really will take off when NASA starts knocking on your door. Don't hold your breath (too long) but DO expect that call (zero-G applications anybody? Foam steel/alloys?).

Vending machines that make the cups/containers to order and then reuse the material is just one commercal application but when the nearest place to get a spare part is rather too far to walk (ok, it's only a few miles up but that last step's a killer); this is the indispensible technology for space. The basic recycling potential is also a real bonus.

The current drawbacks that I can see are that the stringing, blobby nature of the current resultant pieces don't match the machined blocks that hold Darwin together without a small degree of finishing. Other layering/scintering techniques (possibly coupled with CNC machining?) currently seem more advanced but I still feel that extrusion does have potential.

As time progresses, the less finishing will be required until the point where the completed build can be just picked up and slotted into place.

That's the time that I think it will really take off.

Taking the analogy of the computer revolution; we're only at the stage of the electronics hobbiest and the Altair, (as mentioned earlier), has just been released (Fab@Home). Mainframe manufacturers are looking strong (SLS technologies) but the market is still wide open.
The next stage (AppleII/Pet) will probably come with the next person who can offer a complete kit of parts (some assembly required); the IBM PC will have to be the first device that is made by itself and is pre-assembled; after that, expect one on every desktop.

Something that struck me was that due to the nature of the deposition of material from nozzles, the layering technique should more resemble that of insect construction (eg bees) rather than consecutive layers (like stacked Lego bricks).
Just an idea; probably being discussed elswhere, but I'm new to the site and haven't found that thread yet.


--Simon

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2007 04:23PM by Beartech.

I'm of a similar mind. Rapid Prototyping will allow displaced communities to keep up technologically, and thus allow communities to become displaced without the drawbacks that have hounded every colonization since probably Columbus. The tendency to find that you don't have the means to reproduce for yourself what you've grown accustomed to having.

There is a guy who wants to take one to Antarctica. His article is asking for a fellow reprapper in Wisconsin.

Hmmm... just think of the possibilities of a space probe with a fabrication device - as designs are imagined or updated here, it could then be sent to the probe and fabbed at a lesurly pace for deployment on arrival. Zero (or low) G means support is not required (although some form of cohesion is needed) and the nature of the fabrication menas that each unit would ship a **potential** of devices instead of a fixed set of actual devices for each kilo sent (presuming that we can make electrical devices in the fab process). Long mission duration could be turned to an advantage since the more precise the extrusion; the smaller the nozzle aperture and the slower the volume of material laid-down (Reprap controlling a scanning tunneling electron-microscope could be used to fab nano-devices but it would be SLOWWWWWW). The phenomenon of plastics to vacuum weld may also be have an interesting use in context.

I'd imagine that the first tests would be rather messy.... (hey, isn't that why we fund the ISS's cleaning bill?)

I think the analogy that was made to the Altair is probably the most correct analogy, assuming that this all is a success. When I think about why I'm interested in this, I can only say stuff that sounds like Steve Wozniak explaining why he wanted an Altair to own(I remember him saying people asked him what you can do with a computer, he would say that that was completely the wrong sort of question to ask). We all know right now that the main thing we want to make with our rep-raps is another rep-rap.

On the topic of analogies, assuming a good level of success, I see rep-rap being something akin to the home distro's of linux. They are designed and developed together with the commercial server versions. Both are technically free, but in reality the commercial versions development pushes alot of the big size developments that is shared by both sides. Meanwhile, the home version makes a very efficient test-bed and quicky bug fixer and minor feature improvement area that means that development is accelerated by everyone.

Onto killer aps or abilities...if somehow within 5 years we get one of three things done it'll be a good kick-starter. Listed in terms of more likely to less likely as I see them:

-I think that as soon as some form of electronics can be perfected that can be used within objects built by the system, then it will start to take off.This includes simply designing a printable on/off button and other stuff like that.(. Although really the electronics actually could be limited to include some sort of universal connection slot for slotting in printed circuits. It won't help with the ability to be self-building though, and is just as workable for stuff like fab@home(printed circuitry by ink jet/laser printers is something that is being developed very quickly apparently, and I think it is more likely as a source of complex electronics over actual von-Neumann type designs at least in the next 5-10 years.)

-Metal products that can be made relatively cheaply.

-some sort of alternative to chemical vapor deposition could be used to make extremely cheap solar cells (at least 5% efficient) then the whole NASA scenario would be fixed. This I find extremely unlikely though.

Why? I heard, anecdotally, something about making solar cells as paint. It does mean a new, specialized, feedstock, though. Point one probably does as well.

Metal products...might be easier, in my opinion.

Conductive silicone (as found on a zillion keypads) is possible with the existing tooling (not exactly electrically efficient as copper or gold), now all we need to do is figure out how to build a simple transistor (size is not the issue here, only functionality). I can vaguely remember how to do it (from the VSLI design course at University - I still have the chips) but it was 20 years ago and, although things have progressed somewhat, the transistor fabrication technology is fundermentally the same. I have some pretty exotic (read - deranged) ideas as to how the that tech could be applied to RepRap but I doubt that I would be capable of getting it to work.

Layering NPN or PNP substraits with the appropriate connections is basically what is required - the only thing is has materials science advanced sufficiently for these to be "squeezed out of a tube" forming the desired boundary doping levels (p'haps extruding them into a bath of liquid/bombarded during extrusion)? If there were something out there that would form the appropriate doping boundaries as a process of the cohesion to the previously laid material; we would be able to create basic transistors and THAT would really make the project viable.

[en.wikipedia.org]

I think there are more than a few University representatives here that will be better able to let us know the current state of play on such tech.

--Simon

[edited]wrong wiki link[/edited]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2007 05:17AM by Beartech.

I've thought a lot myself about ways to extend the reprap's functionality, allowing it to reproduce more of itself. About layering transistors, I've begun to wonder whether that's really such a good idea after all. Yes, you could fabricate all of the chips and logic required, such as the pics, but they would be very large, and impossibly slow. And would probably cost more than just ordering a manufactured pic and using pick and place to assemble it.

Does anyone have any good thoughts on the advantages of learning how to fabricate all our own pieces, such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors, vs. just ordering them cheaply as if they were a "raw material"?

I've thought of a lot of interesting ways to make those things, but I'm still not convinced that it's actually a good idea. It seems that just the capability of printing circuit boards is all that's really necessary, plus pick-and-place.

both are interesting ideas, worth pursuing.

practically speaking, off the shelf components + pick and place look like the best solution, short term. proven technology, and is really not too complicated once you have an accurate 3d positioning system. there was a guy that made a pick + place with his cnc machine and a syringe of some sort on hackaday. great video.

however, long-term wise, as well as self replication wise, being able to make electronic parts with the machine itself has some obvious benefits (and cool factor), and also leads to a machine that is more capable of self-replicating.

That would be worthy of whole new technologies that are currently being pursued academically and industrially. Just producing the circuit boards and some motors would be a real good start and that will still take a lot of figuring out. I love the idea of printing parts but we will need lots more precision and control. Something to look forward to down the road.

I'm very interested myself in having a reprap capable of making custom ic's, but it seems that it will be hard to have a good reason to fab our own resistors, etc. My reasons being that the materials required are going to be diverse, used in small quantities, and especially in the case of the transistor, hard to find or expensive.

I think that the reprap should probably just consider tape reels of surface mount components as raw material. Motors, screws, and metal rods should be a definite goal, maybe even ic's, if we can get small enough transistors. But for the most part, basic parts would best be done via pick and place. Both faster and cheaper that way, unless something new comes up.

Note that I don't want to bash any good ideas on how to make them. I've been doing a lot of thinking about that myself. A laser seems like a very promising way of doubling the capability of the reprap. And the cost, it would seem.

How's this for a prediction of when the reprap will take off: when it can make its own laser and optics system. Who can resist the power of a laser?

I've long daydreamed of, well, a super rep-rap.

Granted, this is WAY in the future, but something like enzyme assembled buckytubes with integrated circuits inside as a feedstock. Produced in a separate process that is itself reprappable, or even rep-strappable by a glassblower, using gen-engineered yeasts, bacteria and molds to produce the enzymes.


More likely in the not-so-distant future.
Your idea of circuits on tape? How about circuit transfers on corrector ribbon?

lofty goals no doubt, but so was the computer one day long ago.

as for tape circuits, i think he was referencing electronic components that come bulk packaged attached to tape... they are intended for use by a machine =)

I know. I think that's what's shown in the opening credits of "Short Circuit", although I doubt they are that large now-a-days, not having seen many consumer electronics that weren't composed mostly of surface mount circuits.

I was carrying it a step further. If the circuits can be "printed" upside down on transfer tape, then they can probably be made finer than off a spool of circuits taped together by their leads, since there'd be no handling except when it was attached to the ribbon.

I don't know. Perhaps that's how the things work.

I think these posts all have good points.

Personally, I think we will "take-off" not so much at X % self-replication level (although this is an important long term fundamental), but rather once we have the ability to print ancillary circuits into plastic. ie. "The ability to print supporting conductive schematics into the plastic, such that you can make a 'slot' in your shot glass for an off the shelf chip like a microcontroller, 555 timer, SD card, etc."

savecore

Come to think of this .. (while driving around)

What is to prevent the current technology from being adapter to extrude low temperature electronic solder, which can be embedded into the plastic>?

savecore

Metal alloys could be made to melt at the low temperatures that a RepRap machine uses (crack open a pop-up turkey thermometer some time). The problem is that electronics sometimes get hot during use.

Maybe something more along the lines of dental amalgam, which begins as a paste, then reacts and solidifies. This has the disadvantage of requiring mercury as a component.

The idea of embedding low temperature solder is a part of the plan from memory. There was a guy in the 40's who worked it out and developed a radio which was made from injecting some type of solder into a Bakelite base blank template. It's referenced somewhere on the site (or maybe on wikipedia).

I think that the main advantage of the system for useful things will come with the development and minimizing the solder injection section. As I've said before, I think that medium term home-made electronics will be from printed circuits that get slotted in(of course that tech is still 1-2 years away from even limited availability). Since it's much easier to use the rep rap to create some sort of common port (analogous to USB ports (or more likely the simple parallel port) which are small and weirdly shaped but based on normal size wires which hook into them through pins on the motherboard)

Plus, looking at the thread about being a newbie, I'm thinking that if you can minimize the amount of soldering needed, it will lead to an increase.

So... we'll save the world when we develop a head-set that can do image recognition (part selection, placement verification), routing, drilling, soldering (solder paste dispensing + point heating, maybe area heating too), and part selection (vac pickup tool)? It's not unheard of, Just a little overboard at this time, and it would probably require a stiffer machine than Darwin.

One issue with additive building of circuits is that most low temperature metals is that they really aren't the greatest conductors versus copper. They're not bad, but common lead-free solders are 5-10x higher resistance. More head and power loss, especially critical in motor drive applications.

Another is fragility. Solder lines are like solid metal. Stranded copper will shift and bend, as will PCBs somewhat. However, we'd be embedding these in plastic, so something that doesn't upset the plastic (say, dropping) has a much higher chance of the plastic deformation breaking the circuit. This is a theory, and time will tell.

That's a good point. Copper is cheap and abundant.

But from others have mention, copper may have some stumbling blocks...

I will be dedicating my focus to the semiconductor extrusion problem. Even if we can only fabricate simple ancillary circuits (internal wiring, resistors or caps), this really opens things up in terms of technology. I did notice the circuit made with silver, but perhaps the route to take there is via silver polymer techology.

This is a decent background article:
[www.bell-labs.com]


And an abstract:

S. P. Li, D. M. Russell, C. J. Newsome, and T. Kugler
Cambridge Research Laboratory of Epson, 9a Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0FE, United Kingdom

T. Shimoda
Technology Platform Research Centre, Seiko-Epson Corporation, 281 Fujimi, Nagano 399-0293, Japan

(Received 10 April 2006; accepted 20 July 2006; published online 18 September 2006)


And also:
[scitation.aip.org]

In this letter the authors describe the fabrication of high performance polymer thin film transistors using an aqueous based silver colloid to form source and drain electrodes patterned by brush painting. The electrode dimensions were controlled by a surface energy pattern defined by soft contact printing of a self-assembled monolayer 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyl-trichlorosilane on a SiO2 surface which acted as a dewetting layer for the painted silver particle suspension. Another self-assembled monolayer of 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanethiol was also used to increase the work function of the patterned silver electrodes in order to decrease the barrier for charge injection into the polymer semiconductor. The field-effect mobility of the thin film transistors fabricated by this method approached 0.02 cm2 V

PP/PE capacitors are probably a good possiblity. I've been personally thinking of using an HDPE backplate and a micro-silver deposition (inkjet method) to build the basis of an active electrode (I have interests in EOG systems).

We have a lot of research to go through...

I just got a call. I'm getting my copper powder delivered this week.
I will be making some mixing tests with an acrylic varnish and copper powder and see what the resistance is.
Now i just need to find the copper sulfate to do some electro-plating on the thing and we'll be rolling!
It's sure going to be fun

From what I have read on this board, catalytic electroplating looks like a promising technique. There are lots of possibilities ... the real breakthrough would be embedding junctions into the polymers! I will have to look into these PP/PE technologies... do they have to be low density?

savecore

Hmm. If you apply a current across it while it's still "wet", could you get it to self-organize? Could you paint on the copper, then condition it as it dried by applying a small current across it, or would that do anything?

I have to say I am impressed with the momentum the RepRap seems to be generating. As a Rapid prototyping service provider its exciting to see the technology growing in the open source area. Kudos to those providing such a rich contribution to this project. The progress made so far is amazing!

Bill Bounds
Alpha Prototypes