Apparently they used an etch resistant pen in the reprap to draw the design directly on to single surface copper plated board, and the reprap will drill the board as well.

The little boards in between the sandwich boards are 'pololu' stepper drivers.

http://www.pololu.com/catalog/category/11

RepRap is making good progress, but this is (yet another) pretty misleading headline. It looks like the RepRap performed 5-10% of the manufacturing steps.

Yeah, the process seems to roughly be:

  1. Mount special pen to RepRap
  2. Plot traces on PCB multiple times
  3. Correct errors by hand with pen and scalpel
  4. Immerse in chemical solution that dissolves copper around traces
  5. Remove pen ink with acetone
  6. Drill holes with drill press
  7. Apply solder on top of all traces
  8. Solder in components

Step 2 is the only automated part. Considering all the CAD work you also have to do, it seems like it would be easier to just draw the traces by hand in the first place.

I helped a friend build a Mendel and I can tell you that it is a TON of work, inevitably requiring much ingenuity and overhead expense. I'm still very excited about the potential of the whole thing though.

Yep - but all the steps will fall to simple incremental improvements pretty quickly, would think.

I am really excited about RepRap. I hope I'll be able to play with one next week, therthere are a few up here in Sweden!

One would think that one would be seeing more and more them!

Full self-reproduction seems to be getting closer and closer.

The next step after self-reproduction is self-improvement: make smaller, stronger and faster self-reproducing machines. The possibilities, uh, seem to multiply here.

And RepRap is just open source 3D printer. MakerBot is another.

Yes, it all sounds pretty exciting.