RepLab

This page is a work in progress. I am in the process of merging several pages that were on the wiki previously, so apologies if it is just a messy spool of words for now --Conor 22:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

See corresponding blog post - http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1254

What RepLab is

RepLab is a proposed digital fabrication workshop. It would be a room with computer-controlled tools that could mould metal into any shape, mould plastic into any shape, print circuit boards, scan 3D shapes, melt down metal to pour it into moulds and do a few other basic tasks in a highly flexible way, with the result that the workshop could be used to make any electronic or mechanical device. In goes scrap metal, plastic and silicon - out come bicycles, saucepans, tractors, medical equipment, mobile phones, laptop computers, sculptures, robots and whatever else you can imagine. And one of the things it would be able to make would be another RepLab, allowing them to multiply like rabbits.

A RepLab in a third world village could rapidly alleviate poverty by enabling people to solve their own problems, using their own skills and creating local economic activity. Humanity faces significant shortages of medical equipment, agricultural equipment, housing and things like that; a network of RepLabs, growing in numbers exponentially, could greatly alleviate this poverty.

Information is the main ingredient in digital fabrication. People using RepLab would be able to use, produce and share open-source hardware using repositories like SKDB, Smari's work, Thingiverse and Google 3D warehouse.

We expect 15 tools would do the job. We have open-source designs of a few of these already.

• 3D printer

Proposed collaboration

• Hackerspaces
• Fab Labs
• Economic development organizations (1^st and 3^rd world)
• Other libre and open source, universal constructor programs
• Universities

PR, Resource Development

1. 1. Website and funding basket
   2. Donation strategy - based on use of FeF facilities for low-cost replication

1. 1. Required PR materials
2. Inventory of Existing Hackerspace Equipment
   1. FeF collaboratory equipment inventory
   2. Available Fab Lab facilities and equipment
   3. Hackerspaces
3. Available design and engineering resources
   1. Encyclopedias - Fabripedia, mechanisms, industrial processes, chemical processes, food processing, agricultural equipment, equipment design, how things work (collections of mechanisms)
   2. Engineering and formula handbooks in all fields
   3. Available free software
   4. List and Evaluation of collaborative engineering platforms
   5. OSE Dedicated Project Visits
      1. Nature of visits
      2. Infrastructure development
4. Organizational Team
5. Summary

Fabulous Friends

Fabulous Friends Smari, Kyrah, Olle, Erik, Edmund, Henri, and James X. Jones:

1. Who else should we recruit for the organizational team?
2. Who and how to contact others to find more collaborators?
3. How much time could you devote to this?
4. Can you serve on the organizational team?
5. Can you set up a website for this?
6. How can we enlist communicators, PR people?
7. Besides the crowds, who can we tap for funding?
8. Etc, etc.

The facts are that we are likely to get 10-fold cost reduction over the standard Fab Lab price of $100k. We've already proven 10-fold cost reduction with The Liberator (CEB press), and the same could be done with the MIT Fab Lab – which would include laser cutting at 100W, an induction furnace (20kW, 300 lb metal melt per hour), metal casting and rolling, plus heavy machining (mill, drill, press with 20 hp interchangeable hydraulic motor), metal press (also shears and punches holes). To top it off, let's add a robotic arm. Also, include technologically-recursive development of OS high power supplies for welder, induction furnace, and plasma cutter. Here's a summary of the tools included in the OSFL, their description, and their Bill of Materials (not including labor). This strategy involves a hydraulic power source for high torque and power applications, and 20kW of shop power.

These tools can get you from melting scrap steel, casting and rolling for parts, cutting, machining, lasing, routing, 3D printing, metal working, and circuit fabrication. This gets to all electromechanical devices known to humans, and can get us to just about all technology up to about 1980 or so. Combined with Arduino, it gives you automated control of CNC fabrication. The goal here is all the capacity of the MIT Fab Lab - plus much more: metal melting from scrap, heavy duty fabrication, and robotics. This is just a suggested approch. If OS, I don't see trouble getting to the prices mentioned.

Funding

We can assume that the demand for digital fabrication tools represents a multi-billion dollar market that is also growing rapidly. As such, the money to fund development is out there. If RepLab is ten times cheaper than any existing fabrication tools, it opens up a massive new market. We should be able to capture at least a few percent of the global digital fabrication market.

The fact that RepLab would be self-replicating would mean that, though the first one would cost about $15,000, the second one would cost only the price of recycled scrap metal and plastic. When you consider that machines with a market value of thousands of dollars could be made in the workshop on a weekly basis, the economically disruptive nature of this project becomes clear.

I am hoping we could fund it by crowdsourcing from those who gain access to the designs. We can motivate donations by offering use of the developed equipment for making copies of the machines at ridiculously low costs. I would support this myself if I were to gain access to fabrication facilities and training.

The tools

TOOL	DESCRIPTION AND DEPLOYMENT STRATEGY	WT	COST ($)
3D printer	RepRap printer in plastic; plans available; self-replicating for all of its joints and plastic parts; head interchangeable for a small router for circuit fabrication	1 m3, 50 lb	300
3D scanner	MakerScanner webcam-based device for turning 3D objects into CAD files. Combined with a 3D printer, allows you to "clone" plastic objects		less than 50
CNC torch table, router	RepTab prototype available – results indicate that it can be scaled successfully to router applications with 280 lbs of moving torque by using 4 stepper motors on the x and y axis; high power router can use hydraulic motor (3000 RPM, 10-20 hp); self-replicating for all structural parts; use RepRap motor drivers and controls	300 lb	1500 for 280 lb torque version
Drill-mill-lathe	Interchangeable hydraulic motor (0-650 rpm, 20 hp, $250); off-shelf chuck ($150) and off-shelf x-y table ($200); off-shelf spindle and collet ($200); true drill press – hydraulic cylinder ($100) moves spindle up and down; large motor can handle drilling up to 1.5”; mill funcionality via x-y table; CNC drive can be retrofitted onto x-y table; use RepTab motor drivers and controls	500 lb (welding table serves as base for added wt)	1100 plus CNC
Welding table	Sheet of 1/2”, 4x8' mild steel	640 lb	300
MIG Welder	This involves opensourcing the power supply, and using a commercial gun/wire feeder	200 lb	400
Plasma Cutter	This involves opensourcing the power supply, and using a commercial gun	50 lb	300
Induction Furnace	20 kW, water-cooled coils; involves opensourcing the power supply; the rest is a melting container, pouring mechanism, and insulation	1000 lb	2000
Metal casting, rolling	Casting involves simple molds; rolling involves high power rollers, using 20 hp hydraulic motors above; start by rolling bars from hot billet	1000 lb	2000
CNC laser cutter	Utilize existing x-y table, and use a stationary laser; build a laser from a $500 CO2 laser engraver tube of 80W; sufficient to cut ¼ inch wood and acrylic, and thin metal – perhaps up to 1/8” in a large number of passes; larger laser may be built from scratch by creating a tube at later phases of recursion	300 lb	2000
Metal press, shear, and hole puncher	Up to 1” holes in 1” metal; shears 3” wide 1” metal; relies on a large cylinder ($260)	1000 lb	1000
Cold cut metal saw	Uses existing hydraulic motor	100 lb	100 plus blade
oscilloscope	Develop OS computer oscilloscope	10 lb	50
Robotic arm	6 degree of freedom robotic arm for welding or other applications; use hydrauilic motors ($900) with encoders	500 lb	2000
Spectroscope	Microwave/X-Ray spectroscopy tool	?	?
TOTAL		5500 lb	$13,100

One note – the laser seems like the most difficult item here. However, given access to laser tubes from laser engravers, this is not that difficult. Many amateurs even blow glass to make their own tubes. On the robotic arm – I haven't searched yet – but there must be tons of people knowledgeable and interested in it.

Other model tool sets:

• ultimate tool buying guide
• electronics workbench
• fablab inventory
• techshop inventory
• emachineshop inventory

Team

NYC Resistor response

• contact@nycresistor.com
• date Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:45 PM

We are not currently working on an opensource laser cutter. Some of our members are active with open source 3D printing, namely the RepRap and the Makerbot.

I do know that hacklab.to rebuilt a broken epilog and then taught it to sing (http://hacklab.to/archives/another-musical-variation/). They might have a couple of folks interested in opensourcing a laser cutter design.

Best, Max

Comments

Comment here. Click edit on top.

• Q:What happened to using the Multimachine design?
• A:What design? Those are concepts, and valuable ones, bu not particular implementations. If you can point me to an actual, doucumented design that is in any way replicable, we'll be glad to assess it.

• Q: Have you looked at the Gingery books? The lathe and shaper can replace most of a machine shop either with or without CNC capabilities. They are small machines, but sufficient for lots of needs, including bootstrapping.

Have you decided on a target skill level? RepRap produces snap together objects from CAD drawings, but most of the machines you're talking about require skill/training to setup and run. That's fine but it doesn't change the manufacturing paradigm. We need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve. How about this: The RepLab will be a facility capable of manufacturing 90% of it's own parts when directed by a skilled user. It will be able to manufacture 80% of items used on a large farmstead when used by a patron who has only minimal skills or receiving brief training and moderate assistance. Such skills might include: Soldering, mechanical assembly, 3D CAD modeling, measuring, aligning and clamping.

Also I wonder about the need for an induction furnace; aluminum/bronze foundry practice is pretty Open and incredibly versatile. I would focus more on automating safety than finding new ways to generate heat. An OS furnace which could pour without removing the crucible, and into a locked-in-place mold would make casting much more attractive to the general public as well as vastly safer. I am also not clear on the reasons for the rolling mill, oscilloscope, robotic arm and spectroscope.

Another offspring from the MIT is the Machines That Make project. Example projects are the under $100 Mantis 3-axis CNC milling machine Mantis and the Fab In A Box a multipurpose computer-controlled fabrication machine.

Laser cutter

There are instructions for a homemade laser cutter here.

Some more self build or repaired laser cutters on BuildLog.Net

Lasersaur. Not yet finished (Oct 2010) but seems to be coming along well

Open-source oscilloscopes

• Pocket-sized oscilloscope
• 40 MSPS oscilloscope. This looks good.

3D scanners

Several open-source ones already exist. See 3D scanner

Level 1

Open Source FabLab. Approach in a modular fashion of developing technology 'primitives' that can be used as modules in many applications. Just a plain old opensourcing effort.

Level 2

Economic significance of RepLab tools comes from the ability of developers to engage in their production. This must be a central feature, as it allows for people to develop free enterprise. The supporters sought should be targeted explicitly for their desire to engage in free enterprise.

Level 3

The deeper level of economic significance comes from designing free products that can be produced with the available tools. Free business models are a part of that, and link directly into creation of post-scarcity resilient communities.

Strategy

We can motivate funding of the above via low-cost replicability of the whole package. If we include metal melting in the process for generating steel or aluminum from scrap, then we can talk about people investing in productive capacity at negligible cost.

This means, if we develop all the tools, including metal melt from scrap and hot and cold metal processing - and put them under one roof - then developers can capture significant value from this. As such, they are motivated to fund and support development.

Therefore, I propose that we motivate funding by access to the most amazing hackerspace in the world. I propose we build that at 43 cents per square foot at Factor e Farm, or anywhere else, and populate it with tools.

People can redeem their investment into the project with the redemption of their contribution at $50 per day usage of the entire RepLab. I would propose a generous redemption rate, such as 5, 10-, or lifetime membership to the RepLab based on their level of contribution. The $50 figure is just a first guess. Access to full training and education materials would be given, and the development of this could be a collaborative effort with existing projects.

For example, a person contributed $1000 to the project. For that cash, they could melt metal, generate steel, build a tractor with steam engine and hydraulic system for that price.

The assumption is that the designs and tooling is available. With about $1M investment, there is no question that this could be done. The entire equipment base can be built for $500k. The R&D for product design would be a dedicated year effort by 10 people, for items of key interest, at $50k/person.

Thus, investment would require 1000 donors at $1000 each. The facility should fit about 20 investors at a time, for a powerhouse development center of open technology. Redemption time per person would be 1 day per $1000, or 3 full years to redeem value of all investors. This is an acceptable return on investement period, and the entire lab can be built in 1 year from the point of availability of funds.

Challenges

The number one challenge is people believing that the above is remotely feasible. There is no easy remedy for this point.

The challenge of selecting specifications is addressed by the 'transcend and include' approach proposed by Bildr.org - where all specifications are accounted for by virtue of designing modules for each specification.

The challenge of allocating results of prototyping/building is addressed by giving the fruits to everybody. This happens by all developers gaining access to the facility, and the capacity to reproduce the same at the cost of scrap steel.