Goals
The stated goal of the RepRap project is to produce a pure self-replicating device not for its own sake, but rather to put in the hands of individuals anywhere on the planet, for a minimal outlay of capital, a desktop manufacturing system that would enable the individual to manufacture many of the artifacts used in everyday life. From a theoretical viewpoint, the project is attempting to prove the hypothesis that "Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor".
The self-replicating nature of RepRap could also facilitate its viral dissemination and may well facilitate a major paradigm shift in the design and manufacture of consumer products from one of factory production of patented products to one of personal production of un-patented products with open specifications. Opening up product design and manufacturing capabilities to the individual should greatly reduce the cycle time for improvements to products and support a far larger diversity of niche products than the factory production run size can support.
Read more about this topic: Rep Rap Project
Famous quotes containing the word goals:
“Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that “all of our problems” come from such goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)