Forgetting about the economy, what happens to all the people who need never work another day in their lives? What do you do with 5 billion people sitting around, bored, that doesn't involve them making another 2.5 billion people? That would be the real problem with a post-scarcity economy, I reckon... it would start getting mighty crowdedby Ru - General
QuoteIf you scan a part and use your scan files to generate CNC files to make replicas you're good to go. You might wanna run that one past someone with a nice legal background. I know in the copyright world, there is this concept of a derived work. This means (for example) that somewhere like openstreetmap.org cannot make public domain maps by tracing somebody else's copyrighted maps. Derivedby Ru - General
QuoteSince Ian showed Darwin can take a kilo, there is 0.5 kg leftover which could be used to add an extra 50 hours of granules for a weekend of unattended operation. It would not be complex to build an open top grain hopper attached to the extruder with a much larger hopper to one side of the fabricator with a dose dispenser. Just drive the extruder into one corner of the fabricator so it hitsby Ru - Mechanics
I'm surprised no-one has followed you up on this offer! So here's a 'ping' from me. As far as I'm concerned, the geometry code is the most important part of the host software, as all the rest is just interface stuff which any fule (ie, myself!) kno whilst the geometry stuff is rather more challenging to understand and translate.by Ru - RepRap Host
Of course, you could rip out all the control hardware, install your own filament spool and nail in a couple of arduinos... Warranty shmarranty.by Ru - General
Or do it in a country that isn't with the WTO, or wait patiently for the stratasys patent to expire. Shouldn't take too long...by Ru - General
I agree with much of the above Especially the bits about replicating workshops vs replicating machines (my take on this is that it would be better to have several repraps with different heads, rather than a complex, multiple head or interchangeable head do-it-all device). Constructing a lathe tough enough for metalwork would be the trickiest yet most useful bit at this point, though easier thanby Ru - General
I'm of the opinion that open source is rather more important for software than hardware for this sort of project; at least the core bits of software that actually make a replicator go. Without the ability to see and freely modify the source of the firmware or host software, improvement will be tricky. Use of less-than-free licenses (such as non-commercial, see cam.py for example) I guess would bby Ru - Controllers
I'm a patient guy, so I'll cope with long delivery lead times. I was thinking more of the shipping costs, which tend to be rather uneconomical for small orders. Obviously the ideal thing would be to do a bulk order, but I'm all to aware of the challenges involved in arranging enough people to make it worthwhile. Bitsfrombytes would be the sensible place to arrange such things... I'n fact, I seeby Ru - Controllers
I'm looking for a convenient source for the various control board pcbs. It is safe to assume that I don't have the facilities to print or carve them myself, though I'm happy to find and nail the components in afterwards. I'm UK based, so ideally somewhere in the UK would be best, but does such a place exist? Or would it be better just to order the complete set of boards from RRRF?by Ru - Controllers
I think the only real candidate in the open source manufacturing arena is probably EMC, given that it is pretty widely used and contains significant amounts of magic for handling multi-axis devices or ones with more exotic geometries... trying to replicate that level of functionality would be silly as they already do it very well I guess there's nothing to stop you speaking to the stepper contrby Ru - RepRap Host
Having been pondering the control software for a little while, following another discussion thread and reading a slightly grumpy blog post at (98% of a carriage), I decided I should actually dive in and take a look. Cue mild arrogance and software-engineer-nerd mode! There are indeed a whole bunch of fairly fundamental problems, and it occurs to me that *something* needs to be done I'm incby Ru - RepRap Host
I just looked at the OpenRP site, and was initially full of hope, until I got to this little section... Quote"If we made the source code and algorithms public, then the security of the RP file format would be compromised. Anyone with a little bit of programming knowledge would be able to write a program to bypass the password in a RP file. The OpenRP solution gives you all the tools you need toby Ru - RepRap Host
Forgive me for being a bit of an ignorant newbie here... I can't quite afford to assemble my own restrap quite yet Is it practical for an object to be part-fabricated, left to cool, and then be completed? Or would the layers not adhere together correctly? Lets ignore various issues here like the sorts of stresses the completed part is going to be put under. I'm pondering a few software thingsby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
The correct prize for this sort of endeavour is of course 'prestige'. I'll stand by above comment... I don't think povray *is* a suitable tool. But if you can actually make use of it, good for you I'm grabbing the JDK now, and I'm going to have a peek at the reprap host stuff. I'm not feeling confident... the recent blog posting (I don't recall who from, but I'm sure you'll all remember) aboutby Ru - RepRap Host
As people more aware of the problem have already said, slicing isn't complex. The advantage of serious ray tracing systems is that they can do various geometric operations extremely efficiently, and therefore a little faster than an amateur renderer. Using povray as anything other than a visualisation tool seems rather baffling to me. Tracing a path onto a slice is a far more interesting and comby Ru - RepRap Host
I think this nicely demonstrates that any machine that can make lego can make *anything*. Lego repraps are clearly the way of the future.by Ru - Reprappers
Ooh, whilst I think of it, Ken MacCleod's 'Fall Revolution' series is rather good. The second and third books, Stone Canal and Cassini Division look at two very different post-scarcity societies. He makes an interesting point (probably in Cassini Division) that there was precious little difference between mining and farming on this new planet... all you did was plant a replicator, and it would tby Ru - General
If it makes you feel any better, the CAT6 will be useful for (re)wriring your home computer network... it does a better job of carrying gigabit than CAT5e does. And I don't know how quickly you go through cable, but I've had a 1000ft reel of 5e for a looooong time, and it still doesn't show any sign of running outby Ru - Controllers
Fiction... It occurs to me that quite a few of those books you mentioned might be more general 'quality scifi' than material that applies to the topic of replicators, though I suppose the whole 'post scarcity' thing does count Definite ++ to The Diamond Age though, and a slightly smaller + to All Tomorrow's Parties. I can recommend Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, which deals with the introdby Ru - General
I'll stand by my multiple-fabricators argument If nothing else, some of those are going to have power or weight-supporting requirements that massively dwarf the needs of other toolheads. Metal extrusion (I'm curious, how practical is that anyway?), cutting lasers, heavy-duty milling, and so on. Food extrusion is best done in a somewhat cleaner environment than one you might use for more generaby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Interestingly, the guy I work for now has developed a nifty stereo webcam, which could potentially be used for this sort of job. One of the next projects I may be working on involves isolating a (human) subject from a noisy background, and identifying things like gestures, or whether they are actually looking at the camera. The API is .net though, and I'm not sure how much of the code is releaseby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
How many heads do you expect to need? I get the impression that if the answer is something like 'lots!' or 'as many as I feel like!' then you're probably trying to make something that does *everything*, and that is rapidly going to become far more trouble than it is worth. Consider a fairly simple tool palette... say a polymer extruder, a support material syringe and perhaps one more such as aby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Sourceforge seems to be getting rather old, slow and clunky nowadays. I also tend to associate it with huge numbers of dead projects, but that's just a personal negative view I've not heard of Savane or LibreSource before, but GForge hasn't ever looked particularly enticing to me. Perhaps having seen various places use it, badly, has not made the good impression that it deserves. I'm personallby Ru - Administration, Announcements, Policy
I suspect this is one of those problems which seems intially simple but ends up being rather complex. The easiest way to auto-detect the connection of a memory stick, pull off useful data from it and pass it to something else is to use a computer with a general purpose operating system. Of course, I come from a PC background rather than an electronics one, so perhaps there are sensibly priced anby Ru - RepRap Host
Patents should be non-obvious, but obviousness is a tricky thing to define. Furthermore, just because something is simple, and seems to obvious *in retrospect*, doesn't mean that it didn't require an intuitive leap for someone to create the thing in the first place. You'll probably find a lot of patents on drilling, as it happens... mining, tunelling and oil drilling are big business, and makingby Ru - General
Justa couple of small points... for a slideshow, there's an awful lot of text on some of the slides. I'd be tempted to break them up into smaller ones. If nothing else, for those of us with less than enormous screens, the font size is rather small! Secondly, if you're going to use flash, are you going to make it flashy? If you're not giving me fancy animations and intractive thingies, I'd muchby Ru - Reprappers