Your argument is convincing, but I think it doesn't capture the whole picture. You make a good argument for the importance of automated self-replication, but of course the degree of recursion matters too. For example, a type 3 commercial printer might be able to automatically print and bind books without human intervention. But the farthest it will get toward self-replication is to print and binby jbayless - General
Thanks, this is what I was concerned about. I hope that there will be enough interest from other members! Jacobby jbayless - General
Thanks, that's very generous! How much would you charge for the heater barrels and nozzles? We'll probably just be looking for one or, at most two extruder barrels - is that a sufficient quantity?by jbayless - General
The initial poster was discussing chocolate as a support material. I was watching a TED video (http://www.ted.com/talks/ross_lovegrove_shares_organic_designs.html), where Ross Lovegrove says this around 6:50 : "This is a meringue... A meringue is made exactly the same way, in my estimation, as a bone. It's made from polysaccharides and proteins. If you pour water on that, it dissolves. Could weby jbayless - General
Hey Brian, My team is currently looking at options for our extruder, and this is one we're considering. Are you planning to make the parts yourself, or are you ordering them from a company? Also, when would you likely be running them? We're planning to assemble everything in late December (around Christmas). Is it likely that the parts would be ready and shipped by then? Thanks! Jacobby jbayless - General
Interesting; I was just thinking about the same thing last night. Perhaps I've misunderstood your idea of a 'cable-pull'... Ropes do require tension because they stretch. If you have a long rope, and you're trying to get quick accelerations on a heavy mass at the end of it, cable stretch becomes significant. And the longer the cable, the more significant it is. The stiffness of the cable is inveby jbayless - Reprappers
I could try to draw the Mendel parts. It's not too difficult with SolidWorks. (Let me know if you prefer Letter [8.5"x11"] or A4 paper, by the way. This is letter) Here's a test file.by jbayless - RepRap Host
Hooray! I'm glad that worked.by jbayless - RepRap Host
Sorry, please ignore this post!by jbayless - RepRap Host
"I think it has always been understood that you could mass produce a Reprap machine considerably cheaper than you could locally produce one. The question for me has always been whether the mass-produced machine plus shipping from China would actually be cheaper and, perhaps more importantly, could a mass produced machine be evolved in capabilities and materials used as quickly as a printed one."by jbayless - Reprappers
Also, this should probably be in the software forum.by jbayless - Controllers
Whose credit card number should we program it to use..?by jbayless - General
Can you give more information about the program you used to slice an STL file to produce an SVG? This would be an extremely significant help for the project that I'm working on. Thanks! Jacobby jbayless - Controllers
I wonder how the economics would be if they were to switch to a full mass-production model (injection molding, etc).by jbayless - Reprappers
You might want to consider PLA instead of ABS. From what I understand, it is much less prone to thermal warping:by jbayless - Reprappers
In Japan, every single plastic scrap is labeled with the type for recycling purposes. Bread clips here are labeled as polystyrene.by jbayless - General
Hm... I can't open the file, since I'm not an MIT student.by jbayless - General
Hi Tony, I also believe that open-source engineering has a great potential to help developing countries. Have you looked into the multimachine? (Definitely a different direction than you're talking about, but an interesting project with a similar goal). Aside from servos, how are you planning to make your design cheaper than the Reprap? Also, don't servos have limited travel? Jacobby jbayless - General
Round interior corners are always good to avoid stress concentrations... What material is that you're printing with, by the way?by jbayless - Mechanics
Hello, Just to send the word out to everyone who might be in the area! My name is Jacob Bayless, and I'm a member of a group of UBC Engineering Physics students. We're looking to build a Reprap and add (very) novel functionality to it as our APSC 459 project course next winter. If anyone else is interested in ordering components with us (or has a working reprap and will print them), then pleaseby jbayless - Canada, Vancouver RepRap User Group
This link (from the main wiki documentation page: "Host Controller API - details on how the host software is programmed") does not go anywhere. Please try to fix it soon! It sounds like a really useful reference for those of us who will be tinkering with the source codeby jbayless - RepRap Host
That's only the installation instructions to use the software, not to edit the source code. It's alright; I've figured it out, and I'll be happy to write a wiki page about the Windows procedure if one doesn't already exist.by jbayless - RepRap Host
That would be industrial hemp, right?by jbayless - RepLab Working Group
Apologies for the double-post. In Windows, I've gotten as far as this: ---- You will have to add lib/system-dependent/linux-i386 under the installation directory to the path that the system uses to search for library files. Type the following to run eclipse: $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/workspace/Reprap/lib/system-dependent/linux-i386 $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH $ eclipse ---- Is therby jbayless - RepRap Host
Hello, My name is Jacob; I'm a member of a team of university engineering students. For a project course, we're considering the addition of new (and of course open-source) hardware functionality to the RepRap. Of course, any functionality that we add will need to have software control components, so I'd like to modify the RepRap source code for our project. As my group members are all Windows uby jbayless - RepRap Host
Mylar is not too hard to find. You might be able to use those aluminized emergency blankets (although I can't remember if they're made of mylar or polyester). These are very cheap and easy to find. An unflatable cylindrical spar is an interesting idea, but they tend to 'kink' under load, unless the cylinder is fat or the pressure is very high. You might consider investigating the principle ofby jbayless - RepLab Working Group