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.

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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/)