We're going to be explicit. The RepRap Project is not a mere harbinger of the future. It is the future, pure and simple. Imagine being able to print out three-dimensional objects on your computer, created in a 3-D rendering program like Dream Weaver, right in your own home. Dr. Adrian Bowyer imagined it, and now you can actually do it yourself. Dr. Bowyer, a senior lecturer of mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, devised the idea of the first proletariat rapid prototyping machine and started a blog dedicated to the idea in March 2005. For the curious, RepRap is an abbreviation for a device for the rapid reproduction of physical parts.
He and other dedicated engineers wanted the machine to be inexpensive, efficient and utilitarian, and should be able to manufacture the parts necessary to produce copies of itself. Because he wanted the technology to be available to everyone, complete blueprints and kits containing the relevant electrical parts are freely available online, and the software necessary to program the device is also being offered for free. The machine is comprised of a mechanical arm guided by the computer that squeezes out tiny layers of plastic according to a pre-conceived blueprint, until the desired object is fully fabricated. And while this admittedly takes quite some time - up to several hours to make something as simple as a shot glass - the technology has the same capacity for revolutionary capability as the dot-matrix printer showed before the introduction of the Laser.
The RepRap team envisions that this technology will enable people living in rural or out-of-the-way areas to one day become more self-sufficient, as they would not have to rely on imported hardware and materials, because they could simply print out their own. And because each machine has the capacity to print out the parts necessary to make a copy of itself, once one RepRap is established in a given community, its proliferation will continue on in an exponential fashion. This project has the potential to reinvent life as we know it, as individual households would theoretically no longer have to rely on professional manufacturing companies for hard goods. In future generations, the RepRap will supposedly be able to recycle plastic for use as a medium and will have the potential to lay wiring. Citizens will be able to purchase plans for sophisticated materials online for a much cheaper cost than the finished project, and manufacture it themselves for a fraction of the cost. Somebody should have suggested this to the Rutgers administration - maybe it would have reduced the cost of the stadium expansion.
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