Private Enterprise- To mars

Self-replicating robots, which shocked even C-3PO, himself a robot, have become a reality on Earth in the form of Fabbers, printers that can create virtually any object and even clone themselves. We first introduced you to Fabbers about a year ago so it's time we revisit these machines that bring the power of printing into the third dimension.

The people behind Fabbers, mostly academics and hobbyists at this point, believe that digital fabricators have the potential to become one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st century. Eventually the concepts behind the current and somewhat primitive Fabbers will facilitate breakthroughs in medicine, such as nano-Fabbers, and space travel. Eventually, futurists predict the arrival of, a Universal Fabber, which can reproduce almost anything, including itself.

While Z Corp already produces expensive industrial machines to pump out prototypes for big corporations, the Fabber movement brings the open-source, do-it-yourself mentality of the early personal computer era to 3-D printing.

The RepRap Research Foundation, which took shape in 2004 when University of Bath Professor Adrian Bowyer published Wealth Without Money: The Background to the Bath Replicating Rapid Prototyper Project, offering his Fabber blueprint for free, with the goal of making the machines cheap enough for everyone to enjoy. A model that replicates itself has already been built, but the timetable for making it remain unclear (later this year we hope).

RepRap members believe that Fabbing technology represents something larger than a breakthrough in printing. They hope Fabbing will become a disruptive technology that will replace existing means of production, and, perhaps even make society less dependent on money.