While searching up a link to the eD’s first sketch for the Mendel I realized that post is about a year and a half old. That made me wonder how long I’ve been interested in the RepRap projected. I first read about it in a SlashDot article back in April 2008. I remember thinking that a DIY level 3d printer was just a fantasy.
Now, I’ve got one sitting in the next room and objected printed with it all throughout my home. (Several window latches, a sugar packet holder, various little toys, etc).
What’s even funnier is realizing that I’ve been boring my friends and family with RepRap talk for more than a year and a half as I enthusiastically gushed about the possibilities of printing ANYTHING on a homemade printer than can make copies of itself.
I know what you mean, I remember watching Adrian’s presentation about the RepRap a few years ago and it’s amazing where we are today. Take the heated build platforms for example, several people started experimenting with them not very long ago and now people are fitting them to their machines left right and centre. I love how fast things go from an idea or experiment to a real thing in this community. The Kapton tape is another example, it wasn’t that long ago I remember everyone struggling with the fire cement and similar materials to build an extruder.
Open source software development can move pretty fast. That isn’t meant to diminish the efforts of those participating, but the innovation in a product like WordPress or OpenOffice versus something proprietary is amazing. Seeing open source hardware in action is even more amazing in many ways.
Look at the Cupcake CNC – it’s just now barely over a year old. (Their first post was on 3/15/2009!) However, it went from super small initial batches of 22 machines to batches of … what… 150? More? And with each batch more and more little improvements are being added on.
Don’t get me started on the MakerBot heated build platforms. We’ve gone from threaded nichrome to a Cylon-electronic board heated platform in probably a matter of months.