Dead ringers

Researchers at the University of Bath have unveiled ambitious plans to take manufacturing technology into a new phase by developing an ‘evolutionary’ blueprint that they claim could eventually enable rapid prototyping machines to produce versions of themselves.

Dr Adrian Bowyer of the university’s biomimetics centre is currently working on a design for a rapid prototyping device that would enable it to self-replicate by making the majority of its own components.

The underlying concept is that once one machine has been designed and built, there will be an exponential growth as each system could manufacture its own parts. According to the Bath team, it could eventually lead to households using their own rapid prototyping device to produce many everyday domestic goods.

‘It occurred to me a little over a year ago that rapid prototyping machines were an ideal vehicle to try and realise a device that was invented theoretically in the middle of the 20th century by John von Neumann,’ explained Bowyer.