Lou Amadio has provided an update on his quest to design and build his own inexpensive 3D printer. Lou has chosen to bypass the RepRap and fab@home projects and go his own way, and a key design element is to use off-the-shelf parts only. We’ve covered Lou’s adventure before, twice.
In this update, Lou indicates that issues he’s uncovered have evidently also been encountered by the RepRap project, causing them to take on similar solutions. Correspondingly, Fabr is becoming a little bit closer to RepRap so that Lou can “better leverage the software and firmware from the RepRap team.”
In fact, Lou believes the two projects are so close in design now that he says: “In essence, Fabr is a RepRap.”
Maybe there are only a few ways to do this?
Via OoeyGUI
There are a bunch of ways to create a 3D positioning system. If the graphic shown represents how he’s going about it, he’s taken the route chosen for Reprap’s Darwin system. Given that, we shouldn’t be surprised that he is running into the same issues that Reprappers working on Darwin are or that he’s finding it easier to simply adopt and/or adapt Reprap software to get where he wants to go.
as a member of the RepRap project, i’d have to agree with ooeygui’s comments. we are working together to use shared software and electronics, and while we would term his machine a ‘RepStrap’ rather than a RepRap machine, its more semantics than anything.
there are certainly shared problems among the 3D printing community, and its definitely important that we work together. seeing other projects as ‘competition’ in an open source world is bizarre to say the least.
he’s building a cheap 3D printing machine and if he wants to call it a RepRap, its fine by me. =)