The Bath University RepRap project (to build a rapid-prototyping tool that can make copies of itself) is coming on with all due speed, and I especially like their latest test part, a natty Linux penguin. Which is fitting for a project that’s all open-source. Back when they got started, Phil Hunt of Cabalamat Journal posed the fascinating question of what happens when every workshop in the DRC can make surface-to-air missiles.
DefenceTech is nearly there, discussing the spread of cheap CNC machine tools and the US Army’s mobile parts hospital, a workshop in a shipping container that can run off parts for almost anything they use. It’s not true RepRapping, but it’s close, especially as the RepRap team has discussed using signmakers’ CNC plastic jigs to multiply first-generation RepRaps.