Victor,
Thanks for posting that -- interesting.
That machine reminds me somewhat of the hexapod router -- in that the tool travels to the material, instead of the reverse. If the registration issues could be worked out, this general approach might let a small machine create a larger child, that could (in turn) build still a larger child.... up to pyramid-extruding machine!
Imagine the roll of plastic welding rod *that* gizmo would use ;-)
Looking at that webpage (at the components) reminded me of the (spindle of the) Stewart-platform "Octahedral hexapod" machine tool at NIST: [
www.nist.gov]
I wonder whether the company you cited was the source of the spindle; the overall machine was developed by some other comany. (Ingersoll, I think. I don't know whether these became much of a commerical hit, may not have made it out of the research stage.)
A bit re how small the tech world can be:
one of the guys at NIST (FYI, Fred Proctor) who did some work on related machines, if not that exact one at NIST, contributed to the (IMHO very good work) on the Enhanced Machine tool: www.LinuxCNC.org
Thus tying back to the EMC Based RepStrap...
-- Larry
