Hi Guys / Girls,
What’s your thoughts on the Reprap world & where its going. Do you think its dying a slow death or getting stronger ? reprap
I’d say it’s getting stronger in Indonesia, the newfound excitement for 3D printing is a hype, I don’t know about other but it’s going good here (although it’s doubtful that it’s going the course set out originally) but striking an interest to diy home made 3D printed object is a start to boost creativity in printing stuff, reprap gust new breeze to an otherwise unaffordable piece of technology, who knows what came sprout of it here…
The sucess of “desktop” 3d printing, is by and large thanks to , and with Reprap : there are new open source 3d printers every second now it seems, and all the commercial companies more or less respectfully “re using” that knowledge every day, so no death in sight 
I would argue that the project is so big now , so diverse, so omnipresent, that it will never die:)
If you do widen the original ‘self-replicating’ aspect of RepRap to an expanded - ‘self construct-able machine to make things’ - then it’s more alive than ever and still growing at an exponential rate. The lowering cost of components and higher quality parts still enables individual makers to construct a very high quality machine, capable of results better than the professional machines at 10x the cost.
And we still have so much more to do, even to make desktop 3D Printing / laser cutting and CNC a ‘nice’ and ‘easy’ experience.
We are probably at a point of awareness of what desktop 3D printing can actually do (rather than hype) so the people who have a genuine need or still want to play/experiment are now the core users. The casual ‘gadget fan’ has become bored of the tool-chain and print failures / constant tweaking of ‘everything’ to make it work well.
I do wonder if we will see a resurgence of next generation ‘self construction machine kits’ and less fully built machines as manufacturers struggle to compete and decide to focus on a niche area.
Perhaps it’s a reflection of where I’m at, personally, but I’ve spent less time iterating on printer design (IGentUS has been down for 2-3 months now, and new improvments have stalled), and I’m spending more time on having my working printer actually make stuff. There’s more that a little bit of pride in having built a machine that requires no tweaking to make a dimensionally accurate part.
I still need to babysit the first part of the first layer, but that hassle is low enough, I don’t see a need to keep tweaking on it.
I think our expectations have outgrown the original RepRap paradigm.
We are building machines with precision machined parts and migrating towards more complex electronics.
While you can still build a printer using printed parts, it is not a high priority when specifying a new machine’s characteristics.
There is also the case, and I include myself here, that good quality pre-built machines are becoming more popular.
I built my Mendel90 from a kit and have recently purchased a BCN3D Sigma but I still wish to make my next machine one of my own design.
Reprap, if defined as a machine that can make itself, has not yet addressed self-replicating the frame.
A quality machine needs a frame made of metal, like steel or aluminium, and there is not much to be seen regarding those materials. There are some PLA mixes that include metal particles, but they cannot make, as far as I can see, rigid structural beams.
No plastic or plastic mixture performs anything like structural steel or aluminium extrusions.
@Paul_Gross you do not need a “frame”: 3d printed parts work just fine for “structure” cf Reprap Simpson (and a lot of others): http://reprap.org/wiki/File:Simpson2013.jpg
Printed electronics and motors on the other hand, I am still hoping to see
My gripe is: as a hobbiest, I’m limited to the frame material. Had I a press brake and waterjet, my personal designs would be MUCH less complex and require MUCH less tweaking to calibrate. Alas, the tools I have done have the envelope needed to make the big parts of the printer.
3d printed frames? RepRap Snappy, Tantillus, Little and Big Red, Hollinger, ToyRep, etc. Just to get you started.
RepRap lives. But I think with some of the most exciting days behind us, it has left some of the original enthusiasts missing the thrill.
I started designing printers to achieve that goal of self-replicating machines. I still have parts I designed to make an all- plastic prusa-mendel… But I shifted focus to make a more affordable, accessible printer. Then it was about just scaling the company and surviving- because I really do love this stuff and wanted to keep doing it. Then it was a race to the bottom (that $299 Makers kit sold like crazy). Then I realized we need reliability and rigidity. Now I’m focused on better overall UX.
I say all this because RepRap has always had a very talented group of problem solvers as its core and lots of interesting problems to solve. But the main challenges of building a printer have, largely, been solved. Problem solvers who have no big challenges either find other problems or lose interest. I think there has been some of that.
Looking at the community, I think there are some extremely interesting problems out there and great work being done! Some of it does seem obscure to onlookers, I suppose. You can call it niches, but that doesn’t mean they are unimportant- specialists have emerged. I am thinking about resin printing, deltas, extrusion, dlp, lasers, large format, hotends, software… All areas that some extremely talented people have migrated towards to focus on.
So I do think RepRap lives, just spread across a lot of real estate and less connected with each other perhaps. Perhaps less focused on the self replicating goal and honing in on very specific problems.
I do also think it’s puzzling for some that RepRap has fueled profitable companies - like my own. And some contributors who haven’t earned a dime - or even lost money- struggle with that in some ways. It’s complicated. And add to that the kickstarter projects, etc, that were opportunists (at worst) and left RepRap / 3D printing with some black eyes and wounds.
I really hope that some of the coming breakthroughs don’t get gobbled up by patents and put out of reach so the world doesn’t benefit. That killed the spread of 3D printing for years.
I hope that the RepRap community experiences a resurgence, but I think it needs a new focus- or a re-focus. Not as a criticism, but as an observation- without laser focus, people won’t be able to identify the problem and join the cause.
I love the RepRap community and want to see it grow.
@Brook_Drumm Smart people are pretty common, Business savvy people are pretty common. Finding someone successful at both? Not so common.
I’m happy that my day job pays infinitely more than I could make selling printers, because I’m not very business savvy.
RepRap has stalled. The market is becoming flooded with “me too” products with no improvements (in fact many are a step backwards), lack on innovation, and closed source.
There is no central council or guide for the RepRap project. It’s missing a hit list and top goals. There are no rewards for people who develop towards those goals. At the same time there are plenty of rewards for companies to develop a printer as cheap and useless as possible. We’ve seen dozens of such companies make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling poorly designed products that are made for the sole purpose of making a quick buck. All of these companies build their fortunes on the backbones of the RepRap developers who have not made a single cent on their developments.
This frustrates the developers, as all of their work is being abused - thus development slows from those doing the actual innovation. The RepRap name becomes convoluted and misused. The goals become “make it cheap and sell lots of units to make money” instead of “change the world”. Sure, a lower price helps, but without innovation of features then 3D printers will not reach the broad audience and become an easier to use tool. For example, there are countless open loops and safety features that have not been closed.
@Stephanie_A
Interesting point that I totally see.
a: Cheap stuff that don’t work well… requires veteran Reprappers to use/fix/mod them correctly… so even though the price is accessible, the ease of use is not.
b: Being rewarded for innovation is tough… and with all the Kickstarters that have a tough time delivering, non-reprappers don’t want to pay for it anymore. I have VERY technical friends that ended up buying Micro3d (M3D) printers, and they were turned off from the hobby… they didn’t want to mod or build better machines. Sad.
@Brook_Drumm
I think a decent indicator is the lack of new articles on the Reprap.org wiki… I haven’t seen anything really new there for a long while… And truthfully the only “new” things I’m seeing are from universities because college students need projects for their capstones or something,
I think we are just at the beginning of the RepRap idea/movement- depending on what you think RepRap means- but generally speaking open-source 3D printing. We on this listserv are mostly a little experienced with 3D printing- but there are hundreds of thousands of young people who are just starting to explore 3D printing- and probably most are some what poor people and they are probably all buying cheap Prusa i3 printers for $300 and just starting to get their feet wet with 3D printing. If you look at aliexpress and ebay you can see that open-source 3D printing is clearly in full low cost mass production- and that is a clear indication that the RepRap/Open-source DIY 3D printing movement is just now taking hold and taking off into a much-more massive future I think.
Just adding that- having built 2 RepRap Mendels and now 1 Eustathios Spider 2, personally I think the Y-axis moving bed design is not nearly as good as a non-moving, and/or Z-axis moving bed design- there are a lot of pluses to the non-moving/Z-moving versus the Y-moving design including more build space, more accuracy, and smaller printer size.
How many of those cheap 300$ printers include sources. How many of those contributed to the RepRap project? it’s fragmented. Those cheap printers can either inspire or completely turn off people new to 3D printing, as @Francis_Lee pointed out.
My own developments have been taken by numerous companies and the derivatives are not released - and the updated versions are ignored (economies of scale make for slow changes, and there is no direct contact with these companies that are based in China, I have tried in the past to contact them with zero results).
Personally I have new developments, but zero funding to follow through so they remain in the design phase until I obtain enough of my own money to test and release. There is no method for the RepRap project to obtain funds and pay out bounties. I’ve had to put in thousands of my own dollars to develop and test - all for those developments to be used by companies to make a profit from, while I stay in the red and my only compensation is an inflated sense of self worth. This is new for open source hardware, as open source software is difficult to be sold for a profit - the business model has changed.
My own developments are selfish, for myself, because why would I develop a piece of hardware only for others to make a profit from it. And I can’t tell you how many times I have pointed out bad designs, only for the next “developer” or company to make the same bad design. It’s this endless cycle of “why don’t we build it like this?”, and answering the same question over and over again, because the problem was found and solved over 5 years ago, but people keep bringing it back.
So many problems today are from a lack of and blockage on freedom of information- we are moving into a massive free info age - and so when some body finds a bad design- many millions will be instantly in the know- and that well-informed feedback loop is a major engine of mass producing the best designs- because those designs become the most popular.
Unfortunately, it is true that most of the open-source projects we see like Rep-rap, RAMPS, Marlin, etc. are all probably self-funded by inspired and motivated people - but I think we are (albeit mind-numbingly very slowly) entering into a more enlightened age where the mistaken beliefs of the past are probably going to fall to a new honest and real-science approach- where those inspired and motivated makers will be seen and funded.
I hope that new developments will bring a little resurgence to the RepRap world. It probably needs a new name- replicating rapid prototypers was always a bit too specific. Perhaps rappro or some such thing… We are really all developing 3D printers used for more than prototyping. Perhaps a new group will emerge that offers leadership and a clearer vision. Or perhaps, several groups with focus on a smaller subset of goals.
People here have referenced new developments and goals that have yet to be achieved. What are these things? What do we need to accomplish to “change the world”?
A couple of my projects are to bring new life to Marlin… To bring a better UX to printers… To build a large and cheap printer that opens up new possibilities.
It’s worth mentioning that these do not directly relate to making money. They are necessities that the community needs to see further growth. They are all open source projects and will be available for all. If they don’t get adoption, maybe they will at least point the way for others to take even further. This is an amazing technology and it can’t lag behind patent-protected companies with deep pockets to just run away with and keep it from the larger global community.
I realize that talk of future plans, or future releases, is disconcerting. I agree with those that say "show me the code or files, or it didn’t happen. We will. But until then… Answer that question:
What should we focus on to move things forward?
Brook
Aside from a few die-hards making one-off showpieces, the idea of making as much of the printer as possible from printed parts is dead. That paradigm significantly under-performs using widely-available metal components, in both cost and print quality. For great examples of the way the community is going, look at the Prusa i3 variants, Kossel 25000 stamped metal vertices, and increasing availability of maker-centric metal parts like OpenBeam. The community has overwhelmingly come down in favor of scale-manufactured pre-fab components where they help to ensure machine stability and precision.
A critical design requirement for a true RepRap that most people forget is that child machines must have equal or better print quality compared to their parent machines. Preferably without super-user expert tuning. Mostly-printed designs almost universally fail this requirement. The very few mostly-printed printers that HAVE been proven capable of multi-generation self-replication have such complex designs that they don’t evolve much or achieve any kind of significant adoption.
In my opinion, use of low-cost and widely-available parts from online vendors DOES meet the “hardware store” spirit of RepRapping – we’ve just developed better and better “vitamins” than Dr Bowyer had available at the time.