Wednesday, May 23, 2007

 

Announcing the RepRap Research Foundation

I'm happy to bring you news today that we have gotten our incorporation papers back, and the RepRap Research Foundation (RRRF) is now an official non-profit corporation according to the United States of America. We are now working on the next stage, which is to achieve tax exemption. (If anyone is a lawyer or knows one that would like to help with this pro-bono, please have them contact us!)

So, what exactly is the RRRF? Well, it is an organization dedicated to helping researchers (you!) involved in the RepRap project. The goal is to play a support role by offering research parts for sale at low prices. They will remain separate entities, but will obviously maintain a close relationship.

The main way it will be doing this, is by providing an online store where researchers (yes, that means you!) can purchase various parts at low prices. Things such as PCB's, extruder nozzles / barrels, motors, and part kits that would otherwise be too expensive to order directly / individually. In essence, the RRRF will harness the economies of scale in order to make it easy (and cheap!) to get involved with the project. Also, since it is non-profit and run by volunteers (you/me!) the prices will be super low.

So, please come check us out!

Purchase parts at our online store: http://parts.rrrf.org
Visit the foundation homepage for detailed information: http://www.rrrf.org

Comments:
Wow, that is wonderful news! This will make RepRap much easier to distribute.
 
Excellent news. It'll certainly go a long way to solving what is probably the biggest barrier to widespread distribution of the technology, ie the fiddly nozzles.
 
Very cool!
 
The fiddly nozzles are now an acorn or dome nut with a hole drilled in them.

Vik :v)
 
Very nice! I'm looking forward to seeing parts kits available in the store. What can I say, I'm too lazy to gather the bits myself. :^)
 
A thought just occurred: Will the store be selling fabricated parts as well? Seems like this might be a way to distribute parts made by RepRap owners.

Something like: A customer buys a parts kit from the store, builds a RepRap, uses it to make plastic parts, sells the parts to the store, and the store adds the parts to a new kit. Basically, the retailer creates its own suppliers.
 
I love the idea of the store being set up to buy reprapped parts as well as sell them - that's going to be important when we are in that phase of development where quite a few people want to build machines - yet they aren't so commonplace that you'd have a friend who has one.

The main problem I could imagine with that would be quality control. What if the store buys a pile of parts from someone - and they are bad because...whatever?

Still - as-is this is a great service. It definitely brings the time when I'll be building my own reprap much closer.
 
The Hacker Foundation (http://hackerfoundation.org/) is offering to extend their non-profit status to hacker spaces as part of the Hacker Spaces Initiative. Even if that's not your bag, they have some experience with becoming a 501(c)(3) non-profit, so they may be able to help that way.
 
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