Re: [rp-ml] RepRap

From: Bo Atkinson <boa1_at_pivot.net>
Date: Wed Jun 11 2008 - 20:58:52 EEST

Glad to see your work! I flunked an advanced biology course in 1965,
largely because i challenged the academic "definition of life". That
definition was heavily based on self replication, at that time and my
school thought robotics was fantasy, apparently. I said if a factory
produced self replicating factories, wouldn't that fit the then
"current definition" of life. The teacher thought it extremely rude
and immature to think of that. Oh well, such is life. ;-)

On Jun 4, 2008, at 6:55 PM, Adrian Bowyer wrote:

> I hope that the list will forgive a little self-publicity.
>
> The RepRap machine has just achieved self-replication - details on
> the website at
>
> http://reprap.org,
>
> and on the blog at
>
> http://blog.reprap.org/2008/06/reprap-achieves-replication.html
>
> I now expect all those who said here when we started that it
> couldn't be done to start eating hats or whatever other self-
> abasement they then rashly promised :-)
>
> Also, reprapper nophead is working on part quality*. The list may
> care to
> look at what he's doing at
>
> http://blog.reprap.org/2008/05/abs-door-handle.html
>
> --
>
> *Which, interestingly, we have discovered we don't much need for
> replication, though it's obviously desirable for other engineering
> and aesthetic reasons. We need neither precision, nor
> repeatability, nor even much reliability for successful
> replication. We just need geometric complexity. I suspect that
> this will surprise engineers, but not biologists.
>
>
> Best wishes
>
> Adrian
>
> Dr Adrian Bowyer
> http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
> http://reprap.org
>
>
>
Received on Wed Jun 11 19:10:06 2008

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