The Printer that Prints (60% of) Itself

I think this is the third time I see this posted on HN. I'm glad it's not presented as a "self-replicating" machine anymore.

Currently the project remains some way short of that holy grail. Bowyer estimates that Darwin can replicate about 60% of itself, and he even extends the Darwinian evolutionary metaphor to this figure. According to the RepRap website, "this is an interesting coincidence: we can make 60% of our proteins."

Sadly I couldn't find a reference.

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome#Replication , second paragraph in the "Replication" section.

I wasn't doubting the accuracy of the article in claiming the statement was on the reprap site. I was doubting the accuracy of the statement.

I don't believe we're unable to manufacture 40% of our proteins.

60% is pretty good, but even if it was up to 100% it would still have this problem

"the RepRap can replicate the majority of its components at low cost but needs human intervention to assemble them into a working device"

But that's not that big of a problem on earth

I was surprised to realize recently that DNA isn't really self replicating. It requires the infrastructure of a cell, RNA, proteins, etc in order to be replicated.