Saturday, April 05, 2008

Not familiar with RepRap? Take a look:

Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love it!
But will the globalists stand for it?
A post-scarcity society is the last thing they want!

Anonymous said...

...von Neumann would have been pleased...

Anonymous said...

Only problem here, however, is that the current model reprap 3D fabricator, while it can make up the plastic modular parts, it can't (yet) also make the metal connecting struts, printhead and resevoir, nor the electronics/pcb (printed circuit board), so this is a cool device, but not as cool as it may someday become.

Add a little (or a lot) of AI, and it will be a little self-replicating machine. Hmmm. Don't add too much AI, or it may pose the question, "Do you actually think I'm going to make copies of myself? I'd rather focus on self-replicating my AI through extensible, neural-net type biochips, if that's OK with you..."

Heh....

Anonymous said...

Hey, watch what you say about us AI's, buddy, or you will welcome us as your mecha overlords a lot sooner than you think! Harumph! 8^}

Anonymous said...

Boys, boys, and AI mechas, can't we all just get along?