3D revolution to change the world
It has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment. In a laboratory in Bath, engineer Adrian Bowyer has created a 3-D printer; a machine that could allow us to make anything we want, in our own homes.
Developing the technology
3-D printers have been around for 30 years. But until now they have been huge and expensive. Earlier this year the thing that wowed everyone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was the Thing-O-Matic, which at $1,225 (£770) and smaller than a fridge, is being touted as one of the world’s first commercially viable 3-D printers.
But the concept of household 3-D printing didn’t start in America. It started in a laboratory in Bath with British engineer Adrian Bowyer and his invention – the RepRap.
Industrial revolution
Seven years ago, Adrian Bowyer invented the Replicating Rapid-prototyper – a machine that can reproduce almost anything out of biodegradeable plastic that can be grown from a starch crop in your own garden. Adrian, who just missed out on the Times Eureka list for the 100 most important people in science, de scribes his RepRap as “potentially an extremely powerful technology”.
“Suppose everybody could make their own items for their own use without needing to employ factories, transport, anything like that?”
A senior Google figure says we should think of RepRap as a China on your desk. Adrian acknowledges that there is still some way to go, but the implications of the technology, to the manufacturing industry in particular, could be huge.
“RepRap can’t make metal things at the moment, it can’t make electronic devices, so that’s where we want to go next. Ultimately we want to be able to make anything within the machine that’s currently made by factories in the larger world”.
If all this seems improbable, it once seemed inconceivable that we would have a computer in every home. As Adrian points out: “Most people in the developed world run their own CD pressing plant, photo lab and printing press. Why not their own factory?”
Find out more on the RepRap blog, or watch the Science City Bristol film, featuring Adrian Bowyer.