RepRap At Work

[major_clanger]

In response to a comment to my earlier post asking how RepRap builds objects, here's a time-lapse video of it in action.

Darwin: Optoswitch bracket timelapse build from eD Sells on Vimeo.

(Or see here: http://www.vimeo.com/784217)

More videos.

Comments

[kake]

That's neat! What's it doing when the print head zips over to the left?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Clean cycle?

That's cool, but for sheer spectacle it's hard to beat the big Candyfab, which builds up layers of molten sugar by selective heating with a blowtorch.

[kake]

Clean cycle makes sense. I first thought of refuelling, but it doesn't make sense to refuel from the bottom up.

Some of my friends (Fotango people, if that means anything to you) were playing with a 3-D printer a few years ago — they made it out of Lego and it printed using chocolate. Most of the evidence has vanished from the interweb, but there's some stuff still floating around on web.archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040902035633/http://www.whoot.org/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070218145502/opensource.fotango.com/svn/trunk/3dPrinter/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20041014013328/www.twoshortplanks.com/temp/choc_printing/
http://web.archive.org/web/20050116153228/www.twoshortplanks.com/temp/3d/

[hatusu.livejournal.com]

Thanks for showing us the video.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Thought this might interest you....

http://www.akibanana.com/?q=node/959

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! That's a Z Corporation Z450, one of the cheaper professional RP systems on the market. 'Cheaper' is still relative though - you're still looking at the price of a car for one of these.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

So what's the main diffrence between that - and the one you showed us in the video?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

£10,000 (at least) vs £300 for RepRap.

BUT - the Z450 is off the shelf, the RepRap requires a lot of assembly.

The Z450s quality is also rather better at the moment, and it can assemble in colour. It also uses a slightly different form of rapid prototyping technology.

One way or another though we're going to see cheap rapid prototyping. Either the cost of professional products like the Z450 will keep on coming down or DIY machines like the RepRap will become more common.