It seems to me that this article is full of handwaving, but here goes - apparently, a doctor of Mechanical Engineering in the UK has come up with a self replicating rapid prototype machine, you know, the ones that can create anything by building up layers of plastic? His plans are to eventually market such a machine to developing nations to help create low cost products. Pictured is a robot that was created using the machine.

More interesting, is that, "To encourage that development, Bowyer plans to make the design of the RepRap available online and free to use … "

Slashdot coverage of the topic is here.