On Thursday, March 2nd we welcomed Dr. Adrian Bowyer, the founder of RepRap Ltd (3D Printers), to our club.
RepRap, the REPlicating RAPid Prototyper was the invention of Adrian whilst he was a senior academic in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Bath University. His invention was the birth of low-cost 3D printers, started the open-source 3D printing revolution and the RepRap has been described as the invention which will start a second industrial revolution.
Adrian started the company in 2009 and finally retired from academic life in 2012. During his time at Bath, he invented (at the same time as David Watson), the Algorithm for the computation of Voronoi diagrams – this became known as the Bowyer-Watson Algorithm.
Adrian brought along one of his 3D Printers to demo spoke of some of his experiments on 3D printing Printed Circuit Boards.
Home construction has always been close to the heart of amateur radio and with many radio hams still enjoying this aspect of the hobby, 3D printers will doubtless feature more and more within the home constructors workshops. The possibilities are endless – from making small project boxes, knobs, bespoke parts etc. to replicating those hard to find parts for the restoration of older equipment.