Back when I read about people claiming a RepRap can reproduce itself, I felt like the claim implied it would build the electronics of the new RepRap from scratch as well and was confused since obviously a 3D printer can’t double as a chip fab. The gold standard for a self-replicating machine for me is something like plants, which can turn high-entropy raw materials like soil and ores into itself given a source of energy. I guess you could talk about autotrophic self-reproducing machines that can do their thing given a barren planet and sunlight, and heterotrophic self-reproducing machines that have selling machined components over the internet and using the income to buy CPU chips and hire workers to assemble the skeleton of a new automated workshop as a valid strategy.
Back when I read about people claiming a RepRap can reproduce itself, I felt like the claim implied it would build the electronics of the new RepRap from scratch as well and was confused since obviously a 3D printer can’t double as a chip fab. The gold standard for a self-replicating machine for me is something like plants, which can turn high-entropy raw materials like soil and ores into itself given a source of energy. I guess you could talk about autotrophic self-reproducing machines that can do their thing given a barren planet and sunlight, and heterotrophic self-reproducing machines that have selling machined components over the internet and using the income to buy CPU chips and hire workers to assemble the skeleton of a new automated workshop as a valid strategy.
There is also Project Quine, which is a newer attempt to build a self-replicating 3D printer