Self-Replicating 3D printers

A good friend of mine, always says: “A printer that makes another 3D printer. You buy a 3D printer, you print a 3D printer, and you bring the printer back to the shop where you bought it.” The self-replicating 3D printer, a concept that exists for a very long time, since the very first 3D printer hit the market. 

But is this really the case of what my friend said. Can we 3D print a whole new 3D printer? Can we print everything at this moment? Well in the basics of the concept, the answer is no, not at this moment. We are not able to 3D print the whole 3D printer. What we can print now, are small parts, like: holders; motor mounts; parts for the gantry; front and back parts of the Y-axis base. Just to name a few parts. Parts such as motors; circuit boards; cables; washers; all those things you can’t 3D print at this moment, or is it?

We are at a time where 3D printing is evolving very fast and rapidly. Things that were not possible 10-15 years ago are now more realizable. Why? Because we are evolving more and more within the 3D printing of different materials, not only different kinds of plastics but other materials like metals, carbon, titanium, wood, cement, concretes, and even biologic materials. Yes, they can even print human tissues. But to keep this article about the Self-Replicating 3D printer, in some years to come, this self-replicating 3D printer is going to come. But in order to be able to do this, there needs to be a lot of improvement to be done, and human interference to take the parts of the printer, assemble the printer and even test it. 

Well, 3D printers are basically robots on a very small scale. Because the 3D printers are running on scripts, those scripts run strings of codes in order to move the stepper motor, to coordinate X. But how does this work? If you what to 3D print something, you need to slice a model or part you have designed or found on the internet. With this Slicing software, you are going to convert the file into a text which the 3D printer understands. This is called Gcode, a Gcode line can look like this(this is an example): 

G01 X57,346 Y55,605 Z10,101 E0,20373

But this is just some basics of a Gcode. one file, consists of a whole bunch of similar lines, sometimes into the hundreds of lines. By pressing some buttons you can tell the printer what it should do. 

Robots however they can replicate themselves, why? Because robots in a normal 5 or 6-axises shape can replicate themselves because they are bound to 1 place. If we are talking about a humanoid robot, the possibilities are endless. These robots can make new robots. But still, we have still electronics that need to be made and then installed in these robots. 3D printers have limits, these limits are caused by the building volume of the 3D printers. So in basic lines, if a 3D printer would be able to replicate themselves, they would be smaller and smaller. 

Prusa Research, for example, they are printing parts to build new 3D printers. people would gather those parts, and build new 3D printers. Prusa research does this in 2 ways: complete assembled and kit. Of course, the price tag is for the complete assembled is around $200,00 more than the kit. Here you can see that humans are needed to build a 3D printer. So in the case that a 3D printer prints parts, there you can add a robot to pick the materials up from the build plate after printing. Bring the finish parts to the assembly line and there, other robots will continue the process. In some 3D print farms, they are already testing this concept. A 6-axises robotic arm, picking up ready build plates, putting them on to a conveyor belt, and place a new one on the 3D printer. 

At this moment, motors and circuit boards are not printable, but there will be a time, where these kinds of things are more and more possible with the technology we have today and going to get in the future. So for the moment, we can only add them while assembling all the parts that create a 3D printer. 

And who knows which other materials are added to the list for 3D printed materials. Nowadays, people are 3D print houses and bigger buildings. With this idea, houses can be built within a very short time. A normal home can be printed in 1 day, excluded the setup time for the huge 3D printer. You need a big framework to let this 3D printer do its work. If you don’t mind the round shapes, they can set up an arm, and this arm 3D prints the house in a curved way. The print-head rotates in a horizontal manner to print the other wall, the inner wall, and the inner part of that wall. In this way, the air pockets can be filled with isolation to create very eco-friendly houses, without huge transport costs. These 3D printers for houses only need to be filled with concrete-like materials, besides the wood and windows. 

Big companies are thinking about it to use 3D printed houses on the Moon and even on Mars. They need to get these machines to the Moon or Mars, set it up, and let the 3D printers do their work. And the print materials are gathered on the Moon or on Mars, depending on which place they are. But also there, once we are on the Moon or on Mars, You’ll see that 3D printing of other needed machines is going to be done there as well. Just imagine that. Flying in the needed materials to the planet once, together with a few 3D printers, fill the printer with the needed materials for the desired machine or product, and let it print, by a press of a button. The machine to replicate itself, when shall we see it. 5 years, maybe 10 or 20 years? Who knows? But with the speed, we are at now, this can be achieved pretty soon. 

But to achieve these kinds of technologies, we need a lot of engineers and people that want to make some huge steps forward.