RepRap’s Birthday

On this day 8 years ago was the first replication of RepRap.

On 29th May 2008 at 14:00 UTC Vik Olliver, eD Sells and Adrian Bowyer assembled the very first child RepRap from a parent which was made by a proprietary 3D printer. When it was switched on the child machine did not work. But that was nothing to do with the RepRap idea – they had cut one of the drive belts too long. They discovered that if they held a screwdriver against it, the child RepRap printed perfectly. So they designed a belt tensioner, held the screw driver on and had the child machine print it. Then they fitted it to the child and it worked from then on. So the child’s first action was to repair itself.

 

With self replication, self repair comes free.

 

 

As a small tribute we have been printing some pieces of the original Darwin design on Fisher. So the great grandchild was printing parts for its great grandparent.