Yarr
From todays trawl:
Fab@Home: Immensely cool open source home fabricator, for about £1200. Make any plastic components you want using this and CAD software… whether they’re copyrighted or not.
Fabbers (a.k.a 3D Printers or rapid prototyping machines) are a relatively new form of manufacturing that builds 3D objects by carefuly depositing materials drop by drop, layer by layer. Slowly but surely, with the right set of materials and a geometric blueprint, you can fabricate complex objects that would normally take special resources, tools and skills if produced using conventional manufacturing techniques. A fabber can allow you explore new designs, email physical objects to other fabber owners, and most importantly – set your ideas free. Just like MP3s, iPods and the Internet have freed musical talent, we hope that blueprints and fabbers will democratize innovation.
They’re ambitious:
While several commercial systems are available, their price range – tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of dollars – is typically well beyond what an average home user can afford. Furthermore, commercial systems do not usually allow or encourage experimentation with new materials and processes. But more importantly, most – if not all – commercial system are geared towards making passive parts out of a single material. Our goal is to explore the potential of universal fabrication: Machines that can use multiple materials to fabricate complete, active systems.
Also, the Pirate Bay are trying to buy Sealand. If they get enough money, I have pessimistic expectations for the ongoing existence of the place.
(via, respectively, Beyond the Beyond and John Robb)
January 12th, 2007 at 17:51
If you find fab@home impressive you might also want to take at look at the RepRap project out of the University of Bath in the UK…
http://reprap.org
Their soon-to-be released machine is also open source, has a proper plastics extruder presently qualified for polycapralactone which can make usuable, hard objects. Whereas the fab@home machine costs $2,400 for parts, the RepRap Darwin is on track to cost no more than $400.
A spinoff of the RepRap project, Tommelise, is focussed on the American parts environment and uses somewhat different technology and a different control strategy. It’s open source specification will let anybody with a few hand tools and primitive woodworking skills bootstrap themselves into 3D fabrication for about $150. Tommelise’s extruder is qualified for polycapralactone and is presently being qualified as well for both high density polypropylene (HDPE, the stuff your plastic cutting board is made of) and polypropylene (HPP, the stuff your coffee maker and plastic electric kettle is made of). You can keep an eye on the Tommelise project at…
http://3dReplicators.com
Have fun!
January 13th, 2007 at 15:02
Thanks :)
(Reading this stuff feels like standing on the edge of a precipice).