We got started making repraps but decided to move away from the focus of self replication and start our own thing with the focus of bringing 3D printing to the masses by making a printer that's cheap, uses as many off the shelf parts as possible, and that we could produce with tools we had. We had a lasercutter at NYCResistor and I sat in front of that thing for weeks making the first few hundred MakerBots. We still strive to make our stuff compatible with RepRap machines so that folks who don't want to build the whole thing from scratch can get an extruder or electronics from us and hack it into their built from scratch machine.