TCT Focus: Adrian Bowyer

When you hear about a professor who is building a universal constructor-a machine capable of building itself save for a few components needed to get things going such as screws, grease, standard electronic chips, and a low-voltage power source-your first instinct may be to look around for Gilligan and the Skipper. But Dr. Adrian Bowyer is a well respected senior instructor (the equivalent to a U.S. university professor) at the University of Bath in England, and RepRap, short for Replicating Rapid-Prototyper, is a serious project with a noble goal: "We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann* Universal Constructor."

TCT: Why build a machine that can replicate itself?

Dr. Bowyer: A self-copying machine will allow people to manufacture for themselves many of the things they want, including the machine that does the manufacturing. I have no need to buy a spare part for my broken vacuum cleaner when I can download one from the Web; indeed, I can download the entire vacuum cleaner. Nor do I need a shop or an Internet mail-order warehouse to supply me with these things. I just need to be able to buy standard parts and materials at the supermarket alongside my weekly groceries.

The self-copying rapid-prototyping machine will allow people to manufacture for themselves many of the things they want, including the machine that does the manufacturing. It is the first technology that we can have that will simultaneously make people more wealthy [while] reducing the need for industrial production.

TCT: When did you begin RepRap and when do you expect your universal constructor to be completed?

Dr. Bowyer: On 1 February, 2004 I broke some tooling in the lathe I have at home. The break didn't stop the lathe working completely, and I managed to use it to repair itself. This got me thinking about machines that can make parts for themselves. I very quickly discovered that John von Neumann had had the same idea (but as a mathematical abstraction) back in the 1950s-the Universal Constructor. I started to work on the project in the summer of 2004. I expect to have our first fully-working RepRap in about two and a half years.

TCT: Is RepRap a one-man project?

Dr. Bowyer: No, there are eight of us on the project at the moment: my students Ed Sells, James Low, and me; then there's Vik Olliver and Simon McAuliffe in New Zealand; and Brett Bellmore, Forrest Higgs, and Zach Smith in the U.S.A. Most of us have never met, or even spoken-the entire project is run on the Web. And the RepRappers in New Zealand and the U.S.A. are marvelous guys-unpaid volunteers who are doing the work pro bono.

The Bath end of the project has had grants from the Nuffield Foundation, the Bath University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre, and the U.K.'s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. I would like to thank them, too, and the kind people who donate on the Web to support the volunteers.

TCT: Do you think the constructor will be used in the real world or is it simply an academic exercise?

Dr. Bowyer: I hope it is, and will be, both; so I think that is a false dichotomy. As a research engineer I am interested in finding out one thing: is rapid prototyping a sufficiently versatile technology to make a practical universal constructor? But all researchers should publish their results in sufficient detail to allow others to reproduce them. That is a fundamental principle of good science. As we do that (and we're doing it under a free license on the Web, like Linux), then others will be able to use the technology themselves and-because it is self-copying-give it to their friends, too.

Not everyone is fan of the project. An Internet journalist writes in his blog that RepRap is not what it purports to be. "It's merely a prototyper," he complains, "not a mass production device & not a factory." Adrian Bowyer, who is equal part teacher, scientist and optimist had this reply: "And a seed is not a field of crops."

For more information and for updates on RepRap's progress toward building a universal constructor, visit http://reprap.org.