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Over at http://reprap.org/ we're up to version 2 (Mendel) on our diy matter duplicator-like things, and we've had Mendel make plastic parts for daughter Mendels. Not stepper machines or microcontrollers, dontchayaknow, but 'matter duplicator' is what we're aiming for.

3D printers require a little less expertise to operate than lathes or mills, which what Popular Mechanics readers used to use to make the things in the plans, back in the day.

When I went to Staples to buy ink a couple weeks ago (yeah, I know, it was something of a printing emergency) the guy behind the counter was helpful in finding the ink I needed. And when he checked the price he said "You're probably better off buying a new printer." Refreshing honesty.

I did end up buying a new printer which fortunately was easy and trouble free to set up. (remember the rpinting emergency).

What to do with the old one? I've scavenged a lot of the parts out of it. Between it and another printer that I found on the sidewalk I have most of the parts I need to build a decent quality CNC machine. If I end up cycling through any more printers I'll start collecting parts for a 3D printer. (like RapRep or MakerBot.)

These are some ways to deal with increasing joblessness, even if our economy recovers for those who still have jobs or money, which will be explored in more depth over time:

• temporary measures like unemployment insurance and retraining funds, and when those fail, letting people live with relatives who still have jobs or be homeless (the USA now has one million homeless schoolchildren, an amount that has doubled in the last two years);
• government public works like in the 1930s (infrastructure, arts, research, medicine, etc.);
• a basic income for everyone, essentially Social Security and Medicaid for all with no means testing;
• improved local subsistence like with 3D printing and organic gardening;
• a p2p gift economy (like Wikipedia and Debian GNU/Linux);
• a shorter work week (like tried in France);
• rethinking work to be more fun so it is done as play;
• alternative currencies or other forms of exchange like barter or more formal rationing;
• increasing advertising to entice people into more debt (one cause of the current economic crisis as the debt bubble burst);
• intentionally producing shoddy merchandise or things with planned obsolescence, perhaps encouraged by promoting faddism in the culture;
• more prisons (employs guards and keeps people out of the labor pool);
• more schooling (employs guards/teachers and keeps people out of the labor pool) while suppressing true education; and
• more war (employs guards/soldiers, blows up and wastes abundance, and kills or disables workers to keep them out of the labor pool).

Likely we will see a mix of all those in the future, and in fact, a mix of all those is what we have now (not that the last five options of advertising, faddism, schooling, prison, and war are recommended, even as our society currently relies on them heavily to destroy abundance and create guarding jobs). This web site will go into the details of all this over time. That list is defining the landscape of a jobless recovery, showing connections between things that dont usually seem connected. Like for example, why President Obama just suggested the school year should be longer while our best educators say compulsory school as we know it should disappear entirely.

The important thing to remember is that joblessness is not necessarily a bad thing. It means people have more time for family, friends, hobbies, and volunteerism. What is bad about formal un

So, how long till people start downloading designs to print them out at home?

Not much longer, hopefully. IIRC, the reprap project is working on this for reprap version two - which seems to be much closer to release than last time I looked...

I'm reading Mark Twain's works (thanks, Project Gutenberg!), having finished Tom Sawyer and now about 60% through Huck Finn, and I have to say I much preferred the government of his day. I, too, am viewed as a "libertarian nutjob" (lower-L for me, having worked with several capital-L Libertarian groups that went nowhere). I'm also in favor of significantly higher taxes, IFF said taxes went 100% towards preserving citizens so that, once the Singularity hits, they will not have needed to have died. However, that's not at all what the healthcare debate is about; it's more about forcing citizens to pay for insurance they don't really need, instead of actually FIXING the issue. I know people in the industry who say they HAVE to bill higher amounts, because there's a maximum amount the insurance will cover, and if they try to be frugal and responsible, and bill less than that maximum, they'll only be reimbursed for the amount they billed -- in other words, the system is a game, and they (and everyone else playing!) know how to play it correctly.

Trouble is, convincing the legislators (and the public!) about the coming Singularity is a significantly uphill battle. They're fairly well convinced that nanotechnology will happen and is worth funding, but the elimination of money as the determination of wealth, well, that'll take some getting used to. (And, with the RepRap, a large amount of wealth can be printed for the cost of the plastic feedstock and electricity -- and an Internet connection, to download the blueprints.)

And perhaps it is all moot; we're in the middle of two wars, and earlier today the President verbally attacked Iran for their previously-undisclosed nuclear reactor. So, we might find ourselves in a third war, which may not be quite as expensive as the second one, since we have already moved a bunch of machinery into the theater, but even so it might bankrupt us -- causing us to enter a fourth war, against China, to destroy their banking records.

haha, I was thinking of the same thing...

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

It seems crazy, but what happens when something like this is powerful enough to create anything from a small piece of electronics to even a car. I'm not sure what the ratio of car cost is between manufacture/raw materials and design.

I could see the same problem occur in anything where the main (or, in the case of music, only) cost of production is in the design and marketing.

As an engineer, I can selfishly say that at that age you don't was to teach them science, you want to teach them engineering. You want them to take a small piece of science and do something physical and visual. Something they can touch. something they can make or change, and then see how they're changes affect it. But the key difference between that and a lab exercise, is that you have to let them play.

Another suggestion, let them make things. I recommend checking out something like RepRap. For $500 have the kids build a rapid prototyping machine, let them make parts, try different build materials, show them how it ticks. Here's a 1-page description of the RepRap concept (fully GPL i believe) http://reprap.org/pub/Main/WebHome/one-page.pdf Another similar project is Fab@Home, but that will run you $2-3000.

As an engineer, I can selfishly say that at that age you don't was to teach them science, you want to teach them engineering. You want them to take a small piece of science and do something physical and visual. Something they can touch. something they can make or change, and then see how they're changes affect it. But the key difference between that and a lab exercise, is that you have to let them play.

Another suggestion, let them make things. I recommend checking out something like RepRap. For $500 have the kids build a rapid prototyping machine, let them make parts, try different build materials, show them how it ticks. Here's a 1-page description of the RepRap concept (fully GPL i believe) http://reprap.org/pub/Main/WebHome/one-page.pdf Another similar project is Fab@Home, but that will run you $2-3000.

Have a Nano factory in your garage(call it a replicator for you Star Trek fans) where you can download the latest gadget and it is produced before your eyes.

RepRap.
It's not nano, but you just described it fairly well. Better still, it's open source.
http://www.reprap.org

The RepRap is interesting here - not just as an open source hardware project in itself, but in that the ability to easily reproduce arbitrary shaped plastic widgets could make other "open source" hardware a bit less clunky.

That is why RepStrap exists.
Or you can purchase an inexpensive kit from Bits from Bytes

The article says that "the cheapest three dimensional printers cost $20,000", so I might as well mention the hacker's alternative:

http://blog.reprap.org/
http://www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

The article says that "the cheapest three dimensional printers cost $20,000", so I might as well mention the hacker's alternative:

http://blog.reprap.org/
http://www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Sell custom reprap manufactured parts.

He wrote that in 1994, and it was based on even earlier research, so that part may be out of date these days, even as the general crisis in science has grown worse. His theme also conflates US corporate imperial dominance, and ignores many high performing "US" scientists were imported from Nazi Germany (Einstein or von Braun) or also from the USSR later.

I'm not as pessimistic as Goodstein is, since I do see the world transcending eventually to an economy of abundance where all people have more time for doing science (or other creative things) as a hobby. See for example:
    "TEDTalks : New insights on poverty and life around the world - Hans Rosling (2007)"
    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
"Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing."
Or:
    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper."
    http://www.reprap.org/

The parts I need to build this.

There was the RepRap, until the TSA defeated it in the war on terror: http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap-child.html

Try Reprap. That still has a way to go though.

These guys are working on it, and apparently have made a lot of progress.

An interesting thought: The more technologically inclined a person is, the more likely they are to pirate something. Of the techs and coders that I know, none of them can honestly say they haven't copied *something*. To be completely honest, I don't know a single person who hasn't copied at least one song, or printed at least one copyrighted work, but the techies are more likely to have huge collections of "media of dubious origins". What are they going to do, arrest the entire internet?

Speaking of "the entire internet", if we aren't "rampantly pirating", we aren't keeping up with the global economy. Hate to drag this back out into the light, but China was Public Enemy #1 as recently as a few weeks ago, because of their "rampant piracy". This same story seems so familiar to many of us, because a few years back, the USA's government was freaking out about European countries not paying attention to our IP laws. Evidently, we here in the USA are slow learners. The countries with lax IP laws are proceeding in leaps and bounds, while those crippled by "respect" for IP laws are pedalling in circles. It should be our patriotic duty to commit piracy! Increase the store and flow of information for the greater good, and all that.

With the advance of technology, copyrights are no longer an impediment to creativity; those who want to simply ignore them. This is much bigger than the VHS/Betamax wars of two decades ago. The devices exist, the methods are ubiquitous, end of discussion. Not only can we copy music, movies, television, books, or any other (digital) object with our evil piratical computer devices (don't forget, you can rip mp3s with Windows Media Player!), there is now technology that allows us to copy physical objects, as well. The world is changing, and it's a simple fact of life that during major societal changes, older and less effectual methods become obsolete. The Music And Film Industries of America need to get with the program, and stop paying our government to keep them on life support.

It's an age-old maxim, and it applies just as well here: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

The RepRap is a truly awesome piece of equipment. For those who are not able to expend the time or energy to check it out, I'll explain it here as briefly as I can. It's kinda like a 3D printer; It generates physical objects by extruding a polymer resin, based on a 3-dimensional model (think CAD/CAM). You can use it to make things, including making another one, and it's completely open source.

The free government project looks pretty neat, although I only gave it a quick once-over. I've bookmarked it for later perusal, when I have more time. Open-source governance is a great concept, I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of it.

The idea of mesh networking is still in its infancy, but is another wonderful concept. Basically, it takes the idea of the internet, and rips off all the ugly wiring. This gives us a reliable, global, mobile structure of communication anywhere, everywhere, whenever. Imagine every electrical device being a wireless access point. The basic framework for supporting mesh networking was added to the linux kernel in the latest release, so this may actually have enough steam to start getting underway.

The surveillance state is already the here and now. Releasing that information to the public at large is the only way to make certain it is not abused, and I like where you were headed with that.

In short, sign me up.

The plastic can be melted and reused. Lego themselves are melting scraps left from the molds' channels and feeding it back to the machines.

And there are whole community dedicated at building funny stuff using molten plastic and open design cartesian robot.

The only problem is that most countries lack a proper public plan to recycle plastics (mostly only a couple of type of plastics used in some bottle, like PET and PEHD - but not ABS which is what legos are made from)

The main problem we have is getting mass from into space which takes a whole lot of energy. That's why it's so important that we do the right thing with every molecule we have put up there.

The next logical step for the ISS is develop the capability for it to repair itself. That means being able to fabricate replacement parts, repair what breaks, and to build new things by intelligently scrapping and remodeling the old and useless. Convert those labs into mini-factories. They'll definitely need one of these.

for the RepRap I'm trying to put together in the near future.

I mean seriously : although there are very few of them, there are geeks here around who are into all this rapid prototyping. Be it with reprap or fab@home, or bigger facilities available in their universities (Z-Corp...)

These are the perfect audience for all the recently released CAD files (OpenMoko's Neo Freerunner, ASUS' EEE PC, etc.)

Who says the Singularity is reliant on ARTIFICIAL Intelligence?

AUGMENTED Intelligence is actually within our grasp: for example, look at the number of people who know how to Google / Wiki any information they don't know to get caught up with whatever subject is at hand? "Well, Damn, don't know much about RAID, better Wiki it... oh, I get it!"

How long until we figure out how to make pills to make people think faster, or remember better?

How long until we get PDAs in the form of sunglasses that will allow you to automatically get the definition of words as you hear / read them?

Or Contact Lense-displays that connect to a PDA that you control using your brain?

The Singularity is not going to be an all at once WHAMMO thing, we're not going to wake up with benevolent robotic overlords announcing that the Rapture of the Geeks is at hand. It will be gradual, and those of us on the techy side will likely not even notice it.

Computers will get faster, and as we learn how to augment ourselves, we will to. Eventually we'll be able to communicate with a PC/PDA directly. Meanwhile, things like RepRap will change our world in ways we're not quite ready for. (For example, I have no dobut that a functional RepRap would be a beautiful, amazing thing in the hands of Slashdot or the OSS Community. At the same time, the idea of 4Chan getting ahold of one fills me with Dread.)

why not take on some big project and build something like that: http://reprap.org/ after completing that you will prolly have understanding of: stepper motor controllers, programmable logic controllers, automation systems, amplifiers, more soldering than you want, mechanics, differences and work principles for dc and stepper motors, heating and temperature control etc

Yes. Yes, it does (well, the host PC software anyway).

And yes, you do.

See http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapGPLLicence

Reprap could print our a generator and harness ambient energy: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,11789

I did a little research and found part count numbers from a year ago.

Including fasteners - 14%
Not including fasteners - 55%

This was a year ago remember, I don't know what the numbers are today.

linky

If you go to the RepRap Website, you can see some of the items it has made and how long they took. It seems to lay down about 1 cc of plastic per hour, which isn't going to put it in any factories anytime soon. Definitely a hobbyist/do-it-yourselfer type of tool.

http://dev.www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapGPLLicence

The RepRap blog announced replication several days ago. This is the first time that the machine has been capable of doing this.

Congratulations on getting into production. It's a first brick in the wall of shifting the free software philosophy across to hardware.

The proprietary FPGA tool chain is an interesting problem for free hardware. The effort in reverse engineering and writing a free design flow for existing FPGAs would probably be more than building an FPGA from scratch.

For this reason I've always thought the first "gnuASIC" should be an FPGA. The open graphic people shouldn't be the one to do it though. It's hard enough to keep near the bleeding edge of graphics/FPGA card design without incurring the extra delay of developing an FPGA chip from scratch. What is needed is for a second group of people to step forward to develop the gnuFPGA. This FPGA could then be the foundation for other projects, such as Open Graphics.

Of course the question is then what of proprietary ASIC processes and libraries? Maybe the ultimate solution is to put a monumental effort into reprap and get it to the point where it can build an integrated circuit? We will then have truly free (as in freedom) ASICs.

It can't produce its own ink, but PLA can be made by fermenting certain plants. http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/PLA Ideally, you'd have an ink based on cellulose so you could take lawn clippings and make them into a car. Well, some people have even been evaluating making printer parts from BEER, gelatin, and sand.

While CAPA and PLA are the primary materials, there are also experiments with ABS, at:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/04/absolution.html

and HDPE, at:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/03/hdpe-pu.html

At this point the extruder can extrude any thermoplastic with a melting point of less than 200 Celcius. A high temperature extruder made of stainless steel is being worked on, and if it works it would be able to extrude the full range of thermoplastics. That experiment is at:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/03/high-temperature-extruder.html

There is work on high resolution printing, like at:
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,10726

The priority, however, is making something that can make the majority of itself. Because then you can make the custom parts needed for high resolution printing cheaply; for a typical material cost of twenty dollars, rather than having to order several hundred dollars of parts just for an experiment.

For fun stuff that can be built with low resolution plastic, hopefully I'll be able to print a small kayak next summer:)

Almost forgot, help RepRap, join the discussion board here: http://forums.reprap.org/

Here's the real site. Look at the picture. The machine can make the white plastic parts. Not the motors, not the leadscrews, not the frame rods, not the belts, not the wiring, and not the control electronics. The parts it is making look like about $10 worth of injection molded plastic - the cheap parts.

http://reprap.org/

check it out, got nice pictures.... article is quite lame.

Particularly since the news article seems to be down, here's the official site, which has some neat photos of RepRap:

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Here's their main blog, where you can keep track of progress on RepRap:

http://blog.reprap.org/

Particularly since the news article seems to be down, here's the official site, which has some neat photos of RepRap:

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Here's their main blog, where you can keep track of progress on RepRap:

http://blog.reprap.org/

Well, it is free as in thought. They give you plans for it. There is a 'not-for-profit' store for kits, setup by reprap.org - http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/PartsSupplies

We almost have a working Von Neuman Machine. http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Its currently capable of replicating about 50% of its own parts.

Wanna help us reach 100% automated replication? Join us here: http://forums.reprap.org/

We almost have a working Von Neuman Machine. http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Its currently capable of replicating about 50% of its own parts.

Wanna help us reach 100% automated replication? Join us here: http://forums.reprap.org/

Turning Plants into Plastic--And Replacing Oil in the Process

Ballooning Demand for Plastic Made from Vegetable Resin

Plastic without the petroleum

Starch based plastic 3d printer

We need a lot of industrial equipment (compilers, if you will) that take an idea and instructions to a real tangible object. How much does an injection molder cost? How much does metal presses cost? How much do chip fabs cost?

http://breakingranks.net/
"The purpose of this web site is to discuss the social cost of rankism and to develop a grassroots capacity to defend and protect dignity in everyday life. We hope you will join us in planning and building a world without rankism!"

http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

http://www.reprap.org/
"[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment..."

http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

I used to hang out at the robot labs at CMU in the 1980s. What frightened me most about the whole thing of military robotics (as well as mind children) was a combination of arrogance and incompetence (not that I haven't been guilty of both at times myself), which in this area is likely as not to lead to robotic cockroaches that take over the earth (exterminating humankind incidentally) and which then all die off. :-)

If robots that kill autonomously is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.

"Free" may be the only thing that "works" in the the long term, check out:

    "Why work"
    http://www.whywork.org/

    "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

    "A critique of a neo-futurist's vision of the decline of work" by Bob Black
    http://www.t0.or.at/bobblack/futuwork.htm

    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine."
    http://www.reprap.org/

    "The Triple Revolution" letter to the president sent in 1964
    http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

"Free" used to work in the past in America:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Let's hope "free" works again in the future, or we may get this:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable."

A sci-fi novel about a clash of old and new ways of thinking:
    _Voyage from Yesteryear" by James P. Hogan
      http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29