A friend who I share a forum with that deals with the Oshonsoft BASIC IDE that I use for my firmware just passed this along to me.
I think that the rest of you might want to take a look. It comes from EngineeringTalk, a UK newsletter.
*****************************************************
This one brings a lot of Engineeringtalk favourite topics together:
domestic rapid prototyping, collaborative open-source design ...it's
all here.
The prospect of the average person having the equipment to
manufacture stuff in their own homes has fascinated a lot of us for a
long time. Is it really that great a leap to draw parallels between
the current state of rapid prototyping (or "3D printers") and the
fledgling, home-brew early PCs from 30 years ago? With PCs back then,
industry had no idea that there would ever be a demand for computers
in the home, while enthusiasts just got on with it and built their
own regardless. And now it's happening with rapid prototyping
equipment, only this time with the aid of the internet.
RepRap [
www.reprap.org] and Fab@home [
www.fabathome.org]
are two projects which aim to bring rapid prototyping to the masses
and use the masses to help do it. The concept of the RepRap is
wonderful: to design a machine which is capable of making all the
components which go into that machine, and therefore allow itself to
be replicated exponentially. Fab@home aims to simply use the web to
accelerate the type of collaborative work which resulted in the first
home computers, and refine a design for a rapid prototyping machine
which anyone can build for themselves.
Few people have even begun to think about where this could all end up
one day. How would the world of manufacturing be affected if buyers
made their own parts? The more you think about it, the more you
realise the world of commerce would be turned on its head. We'd only
have to buy the plans, never the product. But then again, to use
another analogy, hasn't that already happened with downloadable
music? We still like our CDs, but we roll our own most of the time.
Let me know where you think this is all going to end up at
[
www.engineeringtalk.com]
I hope you find this issue of our weekly newsletter useful. In
addition to the new products, news and ideas featured here, there are
hundreds more on our website and dozens more being added daily, so do
take a look if you can. Alternatively, the full stories behind all
the summaries and headlines in this newsletter can be retrieved by
email alone: see details below.
In the meantime, if you have any suggestions as to how we might make
the site or the newsletter better, email me directly.
Best wishes
Chris Rand, Editor
mailto:
[email protected]
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2007 03:37PM by Forrest Higgs.
