www.3ders.org

Jul.5, 2013

Quentin Harley has won the $20,000 Gada Prize for Interim Personal Manufacturing, for his 3D printer RepRap Morgan.

3D printers that print a significant fraction of their own parts currently have to be assembled by people and it becomes an increasingly restraining bottle-neck to their spread. The Gada Prize was set up to reward solutions to this problem.

The prize will be awarded to the inventor or team of inventors who create the 3D printer that can be assembled from its components to a fully working state most quickly by one person and that:

- Requires the least skill and experience from that assembly person,
- Has a low total one-off materials and parts cost,
- Has a high proportion of its own parts that it can print for itself,
- Requires a minimum of specialist parts that it doesn't make for itself,
- Has a low power requirement when running, and
- Is completely open-source.

RepRap Morgan is based on the SCARA concept, and is unique because of it's motor placement, and concentric drive shafts. Harley has been working on this project for a couple of years, and in February Harley released pictures showing off the build. The extruder of this Reprap Morgan 3D printer moves along the x and y axes and the bed itself moves along the Z axis. Its major parts, such as the arms, driving gears, pipe adapters are printed on a 3D printer.

"The problem is in South Africa you couldn't actually get any 3D parts. I want to make it easy for anyone in South Africa, or anywhere else in the world to build a 3D printer without needing exceedingly expensive materials, hard to find components, stuff that has to be shipped at sometimes more than the cost of the components, requiring advanced tools."

The prize will allow Harley to work on the development of Morgan's design further to make it affordable for everyone. Meanwhile Harley had done a few updates to Morgan, including:

• Front mounting clips for those that do not want to get 15mm pipe fixings at the hardware store
• DXF platform updated
• DXF universal bed-mounting plate added.

RepRap Morgan SCARA Arm 3D printer kit is available for pre-order. To build one yourself, you can find Morgan sources on github.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printers

 

 

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