RepLab

= aims to create a suite of machines for general-purpose production of designs in most of the materials we take for granted: metal, plastics, wood, ceramics, and ultimately glass and thread as well.

URL = http://www.replab.org/

Description

Sam Putnam:

"RepLab, as the portmanteau would suggest, draws from both the FabLab idea of a laboratory where you can build anything, and the RepRap project’s dream of a self-replicating desktop factory. We aim to design and build a suite of machines for general-purpose production of designs in most of the materials we take for granted: metal, plastics, wood, ceramics, and ultimately glass and thread as well.

The project is practical in emphasis. The call to action for RepRap was penned by Marcin Jacubowski, a visionary builder working to create resilient, high-technology community at the agrarian village level. His concept of permafacture combines the agricultural sustainability of permaculture with a high-tech open source ecology of technologies which can be replicated on a scale of about a hundred people, anywhere in the world. His lab and home, Factor e Farm, has produced impressive results, including an open-source compressed earth block press, an open-source modular tractor for cultivation and construction, and a computer controlled table that cuts steel with plasma.

The last project, called RepTab, is being adopted and modified as one of the first RepLab projects. The table is made mostly of angle steel, which can be cut and drilled with the plasma torch head of a RepTab. The RepTab can make most of its structural pieces, automatically. That’s a recursive machine, and it’s the very beginning of what RepLab is all about.

We’re trying to be fairly precise about our goals, so that we’ll know when we’ve achieved them. For example, we avoid the term ’self-replication’ in reference to our machines. Self-replication, as practiced by cells, includes self-assembly. This is a hard problem, and not a project goal.

We speak instead of recursive manufacture, and general replicators. Recursive manufacture is simple: it is building a widget using the widget. It is important, but not particularly impressive in and of itself. An example is a kiln, which is simply a pile of bricks and a fire. Since bricks are made in a kiln, and trees grow themselves, a kiln next to a forest and a vein of clay is a fully recursive technology. It is also manual, arduous, time-consuming work.

Recursive manufacture is the rule, not the exception. Everything is made on machines, including the machines that make things. In fact, the traditional factory is split between the production floor, where machines make products, and the machine shop, where machines make tools for making products." (http://mnemnion.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/replab-machines-making-machines/)

Discussion

The plans so far, by Sam Putnam:

"The RepLab project has big ambitions and an open-ended project list, but we’ve already whittled down to a few promising and existing technologies to adapt and pursue.

The first one is a RepRap type printer, with similar function and different design goals. The RepRap aims to make a small printer for 3-d plastic objects, which can make as much of its chassis as possible. Our printer will be based on the RepRap extrusion platform and source code, but modified to be robust and automatic, so it can print plastic parts, one after another, for weeks at a time, with someone stopping by from time to time to empty the hopper and feed it another roll of plastic filament. Recursive manufacture is a goal for the whole RepLab, not each of the machines in it; we will use printed plastic where it makes sense in the design, and other approaches elsewhere.

The second one is based on the plasma cutting RepTab described before, but modified to be capable, with modular improvements, of routing, plasma cutting, and possibly laser and water jet cutting. Add a feed for 4×8 sheets of metal, wood and foam, and an automatic hold-down, and you have a robot that can make almost anything that’s flat, with a minimum of adult supervision.

The third goal is to combine the work of the CandyFab project with that of Open3dp to produce an open-source powder-bed printer. With some development, this machine will be able to make ceramic and opaque glass objects and bind metal powder for heat sintering. Combined with a simple furnace/kiln, and there are shelves full of free designs for those, this offers the promise of a RepLab that can print everything AND the kitchen sink! Plus molds for metal casting, thermal insulators, and many other useful and wonderful things." (http://mnemnion.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/replab-machines-making-machines/)