I’ve read others writing about creating molds for pulleys and molded RepRap parts.  Is this something you do?  Several of the Mendel sets on ebay appear to be parts cast from molds.  This would seem to be a very cost effective and relatively quick way to replicate parts.

At the same time, I’m not sure just how useful it is.  The best thing about a RepRap/RepStrap is you can tell the robot to build you something while you go out for a beer or take a nap.  Casting molds (from the reprap.org link above) seems to be a more involved and detailed process require a fair bit of human intervention.

Given that a set of printed or molded parts are selling for upwards of $400, I have to wonder why no one has stepped up to create a huge mold with all the parts and just start stamping them out.

I also wonder – if everyone had all the plastic/reprap’ed parts they needed – what would the next bottleneck be?  Electronics?