RepRap.org Blog Archive

A History of RepRap Development (2012) [PDF]

A treasure of knowledge as posted on blog.reprap.org was collected by Gary Hogdson, which I host here as well for archival purposes:

Early research for

  • extruders, nozzels, heating blocks
  • printing material research ABS, PLA and other materials
  • slicing algorithms
  • deciding to use Arduino as motor controller

Notable Excerpts

RepRap Family Growth

Adrian Bowyer summarizes RepRap history April 18, 2011, in brackets the amount of RepRaps:

  • Spring 2007 – The first RepRap Darwin was finished. Its RP parts were made in a Stratasys Dimension. [1]
  • During that summer we made four or five sets of parts for the machine in the
    Stratasys and sent them to RepRap team members round the world.
  • September 30, 2007 – Vik Olliver in New Zealand finished the second Darwin. [3]
  • Around Christmas 2007 – A number of people start to make wooden and lasercut copies of Darwin. The Bath RepRap Lab also supplied a Stratasys-printed set of Darwin parts to Ian Adkins of Bits from Bytes, who created silicone moulds from them and started selling Darwin copies made by PU moulding. [8]
  • February 21, 2008 – Zach Smith (now also of MakerBot) gets his Darwin working. [20]
  • February 22, 2008 – Ponoko have a lasercut version of Darwin.
    Spring 2008 – Lots of the wooden and moulded Darwin-type Repstraps are working, and people start using them to print RepRaps.
  • April 2008 – Nophead starts printing Darwin parts on his Repstrap Hydraraptor. [60]
  • May 29, 2008 – Vik Olliver’s Darwin has made a full set of parts for another
    Darwin; these are assembled in New Zealand and finally tested when he visits at Bath University in the UK. This is the first true RepRap replication. [100]
  • Summer 2009 – RepRap Mendel introduced. [400]
    Around this time Nophead, I, and many others went into serious production
    selling reprapped sets of parts for RepRaps made in RepRap machines on Ebay etc. Summer 2010 [1500]
  • Spring 2011 – Nophead alone has made over 100 RepRaps for other people. I have made over 50. [4000]

Prusa Mendel Announcement

October 4, 2010 Josef Prusa announced his Prusa Mendel version with this post:

He eventually iterated to Prusa i3 May 2012, which became quasi standard for low-cost FDM 3D printers.

See also 3D Printer History.