RepRap
[1] Due to the ability of these machines to make some of their own parts, authors envisioned the possibility of cheap RepRap units, enabling the manufacture of complex products without the need for extensive industrial infrastructure.
On 14 April 2008, RepRap made an end-user item: a clamp to hold an iPod to the dashboard of a Ford Fiesta car.
On 27 January 2010, the Foresight Institute announced the "Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize" for the design and construction of an improved RepRap.
[13][14] As an open source project, designers are free to make modifications and substitutions, but they must allow any of their potential improvements to be reused by others.
RepRaps print objects from ABS, Polylactic acid (PLA), Nylon (possibly not all extruders can), HDPE, TPE and similar thermoplastics.
The mechanical properties of RepRap-printed PLA and ABS have been tested and are equivalent to the tensile strengths of parts made by proprietary printers.
[17] Unlike with most commercial machines, RepRap users are encouraged to experiment with materials and methods, and to publish their results.
In addition, several RecycleBots have been designed and fabricated to convert waste plastic, such as shampoo containers and milk jugs, into inexpensive RepRap filament.
For example, from the onset of the project, the RepRap team has explored a variety of approaches to integrating electrically-conductive media into the product.
Variations in the nature of the extruded, electrically-conductive media could produce electrical components with different functions from pure conductive traces, similar to the 1940s sprayed-circuit process Electronic Circuit Making Equipment (ECME), by John Sargrove.
[30] The "Core team" of the project[31] has included: The stated goal of the RepRap project is to produce a pure self-replicating device not for its own sake, but rather to put in the hands of individuals anywhere on the planet, for a minimal outlay of capital, a desktop manufacturing system that would enable the individual to manufacture many of the artifacts used in everyday life.
[5] From a theoretical viewpoint, the project aims to prove the hypothesis that "rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann universal constructor".
[39] The evidence comes from both the low cost of rapid prototyping by students, and the fabrication of low-cost high-quality scientific equipment from open hardware designs forming open-source labs.
