The Foresight Institute has announced its Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize to design and build a better RepRap. There is an interim prize of $20,000, and a grand prize of $80,000. They consulted with the core RepRap team before the announcement and we were initially concerned that the prizes might drive developers to secrecy in order to give themselves a competitive edge. As you will see they have addressed those concerns by making it a condition of winning the prize that solutions should be pre-published and made available under a free licence. For ourselves and on your behalf, we would like to thank the Institute for the enthusiasm that these prizes demonstrate for the RepRap project and for their magnificent generosity.
The interim prize will be awarded December 31, 2012 and the grand prize will be awarded 3 years later.The requirements to win are quite formidable — to get the interim prize alone, hackers have to radically reshape the current technology:
The winner of the PM interim prize will be the inventor who can make a 3-D printer that can demonstrate the following:
- Print at least three different materials, including one that is usefully electrically conductive.
- The ability to print electronic circuit boards.
- Print beds must be of a material which may be reused with minimal refurbishment for at least 20 print cycles.
- Maintain a total materials and parts cost under $200 and that 90% of the volume of the printer parts be printed.
- Demonstrate a build volume of the printer above 300x300x100mm in order to insure that items daily utility can be printed.
- The capacity to print a full set of parts for a complete replica of itself within 10 days unattended save for clearing no more than one printer head jam.
- The ability to print autonomously without a PC attached.
- Uses no more than 60 watts of electrical power.
Good luck hackers! This will not be an easy prize to win. What do you think, readers? [via RepRap.org]
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