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RepRap

Viktor Olliver is telling us about his Replicating Rapid Prototyper, a discussion which involves weapons, drug paraphernalia & kittens.

Well... he is from KiwiLand, where they have odd things like Kia, Moa, & so on.

This includes making its own parts, so of course a RepRap can build more RepRaps... which presents a problem for competitors, because the more of them you have, the more of them you can have.

Oh, yes, & there are aspects to this little gadget like the ability to help in making the drugs to which the paraphernalia apply: making them for your personal use does not involve paying any royalties or the like. Or in other words, drugs you make for yourself are essentially free. The... implications... are kind of interesting.

It took about 18 months to develop from scratch to the point where it was able to self-make parts, & 24 months to ramp up to building an extruder which could extrude another extruder, so at the current rate of improvement, & noting that the basic device is at the point where others have cloned it, the concept is rapidly approaching critical mass.

If you have seen what steady, significant leaplets & boundlings people are already making with something as high-tech as an OLPC, the future of the less subtle, less delicate RepRap is going to be interesting even in a philosophical sense.

<digression>

On a completely unrelated topic, if you’ve been trying to ring me today, I stuck the ’phone on its charger when I woke up this morning... & it’s still there.

</digression>

Comments

Anonymous said…
The moa is very hard to spot in NZ, you need to search in out-of-the-way places. It's similar to finding the Tasmanian tiger. I lived there for years and never saw one.

The other could be kea, a parrot, not kia as in kia ora?
31 January, 2008 18:04
Leon RJ Brooks said…
Yah, kea. Smallish, black parrot with a devastating bite. Likes consuming door-seals or the like from cars.

Not as much fun as a galah.
01 February, 2008 22:12
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