Erik de Bruijn works with the RepRap foundation as a developer and promoter. This interest in and access to the forefront of home brew personal fabrication provides fodder for anyone interested in 3D printing. His blog touches on everything related to home fabbing, from the utopian vision of how distributed manufacturing would change commerce to the technical minutiae of building a spooling mechanism for the RepRap.
If you are at all interested in the technical aspects of 3D printing Erik’s blog is a great one to read. There is no fluff and you get a 2 year view into the future of the RepRap project and by extension MakerBot. The RepRap project is sufficently advanced that it also acts as a proxy for the challenges facing a company like Stratasys. E.g. One common complaint about the FDM printing process is the uneven texture of the printed parts. Erik figured out a way to smooth the parts. It isn’t the same quality as injection molding, but is a huge step forward.
Another advance is the use of multiple materials when printing. Most commercial 3D printers have a print head to deposit a “build” material for the part you designed and a “support” material to provide a scaffold to create the part you want. This enables more complex shapes to be printed. The RepRap doesn’t currently support multi-material printing. However, you can track the progress of its implementation at Erik’s blog.
It is a real treat to read about the technical and philosophical sides of personal fabrication from the perspective of someone who is getting their hands dirty with the technology. I look forward to the next chapter and encourage you to subscribe.
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