The RepRap project hopes to build a universal constructor; a machine that can replicate itself and make a number of useful products. The machine is open source and uses fused deposition modeling (FDM) to layer melted material into parts. One of the key technologies in self-replication is the ability to lay conductive circuit paths. The RepRap machine is able to lay down conductive material and an insulator. For a conductor they are using Wood’s metal, a fusible alloy that has a melting point of 158degF. To demonstrate this conductor laying ability they built the FDM head pictured in a commercial FDM machine. The project makes some reasonable compromises; it doesn’t attempt to make common items like brass bushings, microcontrollers, stepper motors, self-tapping screws, and power supplies.

I had seen the link for Jonathan Westhues’s original proximity card spoofer floating around recently and decided to check out the site to see if anything had changed since we originally covered the story. Well, he’s got a brand new version. This one has far more features than the original, mostly because of the extra processing power provided by an Atmel AT91. The new spoofer can handle multiple modulation schemes; which means it is capable of copying almost any 125kHz or 13.56GHz ID-only card. Although it can’t clone cryptographic cards, it does have a full feature set for communicating with them. By connecting the USB port to a computer you can see an “oscilloscope view” of the signal from the card to assist in writing demodulation code. If you are serious about doing RFID research this hardware is a must-have. You could buy a standard reader, but that would tell you nothing about the protocol. This is definitely a clever tool and certainly impressive for something smaller than a business card.

UPDATE: Jonathan Westhue’s work was mentioned in a CNN story Feb 14th. You can watch the video here. [thanks David]

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