Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time

jameshowison writes: "We're doing a presentation at the O'Reilly P2P conference next week on what happens when you merge the technologies of P2P with those of 3D printers or 'Fabbers'. If you thought the record companies were pissed off, wait till manufacturers realise that P2P will affect them too!" Yum, tasty wheat.

Comments

Fabbers

[Phroggy]

I'd guess that the P2P part of this is not what would worry manufacturers...

--

Re:Fabbers

[biglig2]

I disagree. If you put work into the design and manufacture of a "good" (in the economic sense) and want to make money back from that effort, you need to worry about how hard it is for someone else to steal that effort and simply copy your good.

Now, this is always possible, and companies use laws etc. to try and protect their goods.

What is becoming interesting now is that certain types of goods, that we call software, are becoming extremely easy to copy by the average joe. The point of their presentation is to observer that eventually fabbers will mean that hardware has this problem too.

Re:Key question

[joss]

I would say, improvement rate is between 10-20 % pa.

It's a lot less incremental than processors though. Completely different approaches give radical changes. Computers are easier to measure. Turing machines only have 2 meaningful variables really, speed and memory. All digital computers are mathematically equivalent.

RP is different, material qualities, strength, versatility (not all processes can create all geometries), speed, accuracy, cost, ease of cleanup. It's hard to quantify.

For instance, a couple of researchers for hitachi in Japan, and some academics in Oxford, have recently extended scale downwards considerably, down to almost nano-scale.

3dsytems created the first machines, laser based, then later created bubble-jet based machines. The bubble-jet technology has potential to be cheap and accurate, but doesn't have strength or versatlity of stereolithography machines...

Re:Been there, done that

[joss]

> Technology can only be accepted as long as it does not interfere (now) with the status quo.

Hah ! Come on, you don't really mean that do you ? Technology always interferes with the status quo, that's the whole point.

When my grandmother was a little girl, she went to school in a horse and cart. Cars had been invented but nobody in her town had ever seen one. Since then the growth curve has steepened dramitically, hell it's almost vertical. The changes I see in my lifetime will be more extreme than those she saw. Things change, people have short memories, limited imagination and they deliberately insulate themselves against those changes, but change occurs regardless. The changes one can reasonably expect in 50 years are profound enough to make me scream in terror.

Re:Been there, done that

[joss]

> Manufactured parts come in a variety of materials formed in a variety of ways. Not all parts can be built in any one specific way - not because of the cost - but because of the material structure, the stresses which the material will experience, and so on.

You're right of course. The precise material properties are tremendously important. Even if chemical composition is the same, yield strength of plate metal depends upon roll schedule, anneal time etc. However, these problems are not as insurmountable as all that. With RP manafacturing technology, you can actually control the precise macro-structure of the material,eg create structures with custom sized bubbles in a regular pattern, and with some processes you can vary the microstructure too by adjusting time between ejection of bubble to control anneal time precisely or you could control alloy composition for every different cubic gram of material. This stuff will be controllable at a level that traditional processes can only dream about.

As the technology gets better RP manafucturing processes will be able to build structures far lighter and stronger, with desired resonance frequencies and all sorts of other cool exotic shit. It's not there yet, but give it 10 years, maybe 20... the technology will improve.

Been there, done that

[joss]

I wrote a lot of software for this stuff, (responsible for several patents too, eg http://home.att.net/~castleisland/up10/up10_12.htm _ and others before I realised that SW patents are evil.....)

It was dead fun working at 3dsystems though. I wrote a translator so I could grab cool looking VRML models off the net and print them out as solid objects. As far as I know, I was the first person to do this. Fun to come to work in the morning and have a vat full of models of the Enterprise waiting for you.

Manafacturers don't have to hang up their boots just yet though. The current machines generally print in a single material, plastic, wax, or some such. It will be a while before you go to the mechanic and he prints out a new transmission instead of ordering one from Ford. However already, you can create a cast and injection mold a small run of parts, accuracy is around 1/1000 of an inch on the better machines. Currently takes around 10 hours of so for a 10 inch cubed model.

However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too. This won't do humanity a blind bit of good until we move over to a post capitalist society though. Capitalism is a good mechansim for efficient distribution of scarce resources but when wealth is in the form of information, capitalism only works by enforcing false scarcity on the information.

Re:Been there, done that

[walnut]

As the technology gets better RP manafucturing processes will be able to build structures far lighter and stronger, with desired resonance frequencies and all sorts of other cool exotic shit. It's not there yet, but give it 10 years, maybe 20... the technology will improve.

On a limited scale, with a limited scope, an astounding *maybe*. There become timeframe issues of getting everybody to want to upgrade their equipment. The logistics of Y2K alone was only as successful as it was because it had to be. This is a technology which is optional, requires the retooling of major industries, and so on.

Take the rain gutter industry. Extrusion technology has been around long since before the first playdough press, but only within the last 5 years have custom length rain gutters extruded from the back of a truck become a reality.

All I'm saying is, I can fully agree that the technology for this stuff will be available in 10 to 20 years, but personal use and wide manufacturing use will be nearly non-existant. Technology can only be accepted as long as it does not interfere (now) with the status quo.

No parts manufacturer would want to be without one of these to build thier own parts with, but they would be about as unwilling as a dog at the veteranarian to just give up the schematics and plans for their flux capacitor and have it fabbed at a given store.

So my predicted timeframe for just this event (keep in mind this is basically wild guessing):

10 years technology to fab parts in an timely viable way.
15 years technology to fab parts in a structurally viable way.
20 years technology to fab parts of a limited variety of materials
50 years technology to fab single material parts in a economically vaiable way
65 years technology for a handfull of manufacturers to use the current product to construct their products (as opposed to a C&C mill/lathe, manufacturing process)
75 years to model internal parts (not just outside skeleton - think chips and such)
85 years to fab internal parts as well as external parts.
95 years to do this quickly.
100 years to make these machines cost effective
105 years parts stores such as NAPA have those fabbers and no longer have their small parts distributed

... and so on...

Re:Been there, done that

[walnut]

Manafacturers don't have to hang up their boots just yet though. The current machines generally print in a single material, plastic, wax, or some such. It will be a while before you go to the mechanic and he prints out a new transmission instead of ordering one from Ford. However already, you can create a cast and injection mold a small run of parts, accuracy is around 1/1000 of an inch on the better machines. Currently takes around 10 hours of so for a 10 inch cubed model.

However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too.

Cool that you wrote the stuff. That's gotta be some pretty cool code. However, manufacturing will probably not make that kind of switch *ANY* time soon.

Manufactured parts come in a variety of materials formed in a variety of ways. Not all parts can be built in any one specific way - not because of the cost - but because of the material structure, the stresses which the material will experience, and so on. Casting is cool for engine blocks, but I would hate to see it used for body panels.

Different parts not only have different thicknesses of materials, but different structural makeups. Pressing a metal weakens and strengthens it vastly different from stamping, forging, or casting. Sheet alumininum will respond quite differently to outside forces than say, a part spun from aluminum bar stock.

I guess, that plastic parts have a better chance of being usefully replicated, but traditionally the processes used (injection blow molding, rotational molding, extrusions, and so on) are usually used to produce the original product because it is simple, easy and quick. Ten hours to build a shampoo bottle, or a half a dozen legos is unacceptable when the manufacturing process for producing them turns out hundreds or thousands in that amount of time.

While I agree, there will be an increased role of these prototype modelers in the coming decade, the replicators from star trek are - well - not. This story is FUD.

Ice Fabbers

[Effugas]

A while ago, Slashdot linked to a story about what I feel is truly the most interesting model for 3D fabrication: Ice.

Much as the military has been pushing for the ability to deliver damage with energy instead of ammunition(because ammunition requires supply lines, separation of parts, and so on, while power simply requires any of a thousand sources), ice fabbers only require water to do their work. In my mind, the temporary nature of the material(which can even be three dimensional and thus reflective of its internal structure!) is outweighed by the near-zero marginal costs and surprising flexibility of such a device.

This company seems like they're just trying to tweak manufacturers into making noises(thus validating them to VCs who will give them money). It's like the old obsession over plastics, only spoofed into the P2P/Napster/No-Money-Economy model. The sheer coolness of arbitrary ice sculptures belies the fact that very few materials build correctly layer-by-layer--in other words, since your materials are limited, you can't go off and download a car or even a rolex--the parts won't last!

Arbitrary chimeras will come before arbitrary rolexes. Creatures are self-assembling, rolexes aren't.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

"Desktop Manufacturing"

[Jeremy Lee]

Ha. "Fabbers". Good name.

I'd come to pretty much the same conclusions over the last few months. I've been talking to engineer friends about the machines that sinter metal powders with lasers, the UV-sensitive polymers, and the starch bubble-jet printer, and the possible combination of them with the various plastic electronics components still being developed.

I applied Moores Law (probably not directly relevant, but a good bechmark nonetheless) to the current state-of-the-art, which is a washing machine sized device that can sinter plastic powder. A place here in town will take your CAD files and return a plastic part for about US$180 a pop.

I calculated we'll have microwave-sized 'fabbers' as a common household appliance in a little less than 15 years.

That means us early apopters will have expensive 'hobby' kits in just less than ten.

The main action will remain in commercial prototyping up until then. It will probably be a common commercial practise in about five years.

Right now the only users are the commercial and educational 'early-adopters' with specific needs that are filled by the fairly primitive tech we have now. Automated milling machines are currently a far superior tech if you want to do metal, for example.

Of course, the very existence of these machines is likely to push the curve forward by an unpredictable amount.

Just consider: fifteen years from now, well look back on all those jokes about ordering things over the internet, ("how do you fit it down the wires! Ha, ha!") and not get it.

The main obstacles are as follows:
* Sintering (melting powders together) has precision limits caused by heat transfer in the material.
* Light-sensitive polymers are still rather nasty chemicals. They're also quite brittle.
* Plastic electronics need to become available in dye/powder form. This will take a while. (And they will never beat silicon for high-performance tasks)
* You need infrastructure to ship the raw materials. They don't just magically materialize in the print-head, you know.
* Recycling all these things is going to become an issue.

But, yes. 'Fabbers' are another great step down the path. Open Hardware, here we come. (And the advantage is, it's easier to design a plastic toy than your average piece of software)

If you want a good historical analogy, you can't go past printing. From Gutenberg, to desktop publishing, to the web.

Can't wait.

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[Omnifarious]

Many products are actually made from a trivial variety of materials. Most toys are made of plastic, and many toys don't really have many moving parts. For example, action figures. In fact, I think action figures would be especially vulnerable because a great deal of their cost is from movie industry royalty markup.

The technology will improve and get cheaper. I think at various steps along the curve, there will be new sets of things it makes economic sense to manufacture at home.

At some point, the technology will be good enough and cheap enough that you can fabricate fabricators. Prehaps, at first, this will result in a sort of analog degredation effect like you see with tapes, but eventually, it'll make more sense to get a fabricator from your neighbor than from the factory.

I would actually guess that the real overhead in many types of manufacturing comes from marketing and distribution (just like with music). Both of those costs would become unrecoverable with fabricator technology.

In short, I think you're being shortsighted. :-)

Re:Wow, someone has drunk a little to much coffee.

[MikeFM]

Obviously you are unable to take past and current trends and see likely places they will go. How exactly they work out is of course up in the air until it's happened but it's far better to start looking at the possibilities now. If you noticed my timeline was 'maybe in our lifetime' so that is in 80+ years.

Eventually nanotech will work. It is obvious that our bodies, among other things, are natural occuring nano-machines and that there is a large amount of interest in miniturizing and new fabrication techniques. Eventually that will lead to practical nanotechnology.

As the Net (includes the Internet and all future Internet technologies which are not yet named because they don't even exist yet) advances bandwidth will grow as well as improving of our concepts of what forms of communication are possible. Eventually P2P will be king as everyone will want to be able to share what they have directly making the client-server Internet just a subset of P2P.

I think it's fairly obvious that these P2P functional object fabbing will eventually become popular and that'll drive the above technologies to higher quality and lower prices creating that nice little positive spiral.

Of course every new technological jump shakes our world view but I do think you'd have to admit that the sort of jump that destorys our economical model and even our concepts of what is reality is a shattering thing. Probably an event such as that has never happened in the entire history of the human race. Stopping it is probably impossible so we better damn well get ready.

Sure it sounds sci fi'ish (doesn't everything? hell some days I open the news and am shocked they have already managed something that should be in Star Trek) but none of it is against the laws of science and for the most part it's all just based on many small changes happening. If you don't understand the issues enough to understand what the likely converging technologies will be that's fine but it doesn't stop others of us from thinking about it and talking about it.

It so happens that I actually think Gibson has a very poor understanding of technology and it's usually reflected in his books. I do enjoy some of his works but I much prefer Bruce Sterling or Neal Stephenson, both of which auctually do a lot of research and have a good idea of what they are talking about. I hear more of this when listening to friends of different sciences talk than from sci fi.

Maybe you should hang out in the field more and get some expossure to some working researchers before you stamp stuff as drivel. If you want to find it funny though that is fine. Anyone with grammar as poor as mine deserves to be laughed at now and then. :)

Wow someone sees the light!

[MikeFM]

Glad to see someone who isn't a sci fi lighter seems to get it. Maybe they can get this into the minds of future CEO's and politicians now so that they'll have accepted it and be ready to work with it by the time it becomes reality. There is no stopping it. By the time we reach home nanotech our entire idea of what divides information from objects will be tested. When anybody can own anything for virtually nothing then what is the point of money? Take it one step further where medical technology has embraced nanotech and we've learned to replace ALL parts of the body. That essentially makes US software. Then what stops us from transfering ourselves physically over the Net, living both in the physical world and the Net, redesigning our bodies, etc? Then imagine we hook the Net/P2P thing into the very root of what we consider our bodies so that we could transfer control of atoms to other hosts over the Net, trade ideas in raw data formats, etc. It all quickly gets very complicated and shatters our world view. This isn't that far away. It might even happen during some of our lifetimes. How will a society who still believes in copyright laws and such handle that they themselves may end up software owned by someone? It all sounds very post-cyberpunk and post-modern. :)

New forms of money

[Sloppy]

and what do you need money for if you can create anything you want with the fabber? My guess is that energy will replace money as a way of paying for things when molecular level fabbers become reality.

You can expect some serious resistance from the government. In fact, I would say that using energy as a form of money, simply will not be tolerated. It will be made illegal to do this, assuming it isn't illegal already.

Why do you think we left the gold standard? It was so that government could (sort of) control the economy. They used the non-backed dollar to artificially lower interest rates (to encourage growth regardless of whether or not it is needed) and to create inflation in order to "tax" the possession of money. Do you think they will ever let this power slip from their hands? It's going to take a revolution before money is ever out of the government's control.

---

Re:Last time I checked

[Tim C]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm old enough to remember when a sound card was very much "extra hardware". Now you can't buy a (home) computer without one...

Given enough time, either the cost will decrease, or the utility increase, to the point where most homes have one.

Think about cars - dirty, noisy, smelly, dangerous, damaging to the environment, expensive, incredibly useful; it's a rare home that doesn't have at least one, despite all their bad points.

Cheers,

Tim

Yes, though not really peer 2 peer

[Chuck Chunder]

The assembler-whatsits (nanofaxes, IIRC) in All Tomorrows Parties were all controlled by the Lucky Dragon chain of convenience stores. Having a single entity controlling all the distribution points doesn't really fit in with the P2P middle :)

Chaos Erupts

[BlueLines]

It's the beginning of the diamond age.

I can see the headlines now:

Neal Stephenson Sues Fabber Industry For Prior Art

Then the flash cartons:

Neal Stephenson says Fabbers Bad!

Then the lawsuit:

Neal Stephenson sues Fabster for anonymous digital distribution of "A Young Lady's Primer"

-BlueLines

Arrow in the Head

[TheDullBlade]

Maybe you should study a little more humor, before you go shooting your mouth off about things you obviously know nothing about.

First of all, it was clearly a joke.

Secondly, Jeebus made the world in his sacred image, which mortals are not permitted to look upon. However, he doesn't take offence at the attempts, he just sends his microscope gnomes to fake all the results of particle physics, just as he sends telescope gnomes to hold pictures of galaxies up between the astronomer and the big cow's hide with holes poked through it to let in the light of the phlogiston. He enjoys it, and loves silly people like scientists.
---

Key question

[LinuxParanoid]

3D deposition printers have been around for a decade. The key question in my mind is: what is the rate of improvement in this technology? The printers still seem to be very slow and very expensive. 3D printers are not semiconductor-based, they do not necessarily follow Moore's Law (which works out to ~60% "improvement" per year). So at what rate (in either cost or speed of printing) are these 'fabbers' improving? There should be enough historical data out there for someone knowledgeable to take a stab at explaining that. That'd seems to be a rather key question...

--LP

Fly in the ointment

[gazdean]

As every schoolboy knows, Planck's theory dictates that
we can only know exactly *what* something is, or exactly
*where* something is. Not both.
This, unfortunately, puts the mouth on precision fabbing.
In the future, we will be able to build a Rolex at home,
we just won't know *exactly* where it is.

Re:Fly in the ointment

[GMontag451]

Maybe you should study a little more quantum mechanics, before you go shooting your mouth off about things you obviously know nothing about.

First of all, it was Heisenberg who worked out theory, not Planck. All Planck did was to suggest that maybe electrons could only give out specified amounts of energy.

Secondly, its not "what" and "where" something is, its momentum and position. And the Uncertainty Principle really only applies practically at the sub-atomic level.

Um... Not any time soon.

[walnut]

Ok, Having had a close friend who worked in a prototyping lab in college and myself now working in a job where we build and design custom automated machinery - this isn't going to happen any time soon.

Ok, so the prototype models I've seen are made usually out of a few different types of things. Either a solid piece of plastic or wax is cut with a laserlight, or a resin is hardened with a lazer level by level (and the structure is effectively grown).

The former is the older process, and it does not lend itself to irregularites in the material, requires additional material (as a bunch is thrown away) and builds solid objects which cannot be hollow. The latter (resin) allows a structure to be grown hollow, but commonly you spend a couple hours with a exacto blade cutting out the flange as it builds these wells in which to build the resin figure. Basically, you can model more complex parts with the latter process (things with slots, ball joints and so on).

The bottom line is however, you can't copy - say - the schematic of a board. We won't see people copying electronics, building their own chips, and/or duplicating custom ASIC designs...

From my experience, the only things useful for these kinds of prototyping could remotely be useful in is prototyping parts which a good machinist could build quicker, faster, and cheaper with or without a C&C mill/lathe. I guess you could also use it to build / research custom orthodics, as they used the resin prototyper to commonly build feet. But once again, the resin material is relatively toxic to the touch and prone to breakage, so this would probably not be an ideal application either.

Yeah, so remember, when you buy that rolex off the guy on the street in NYC, while it probably isn't real, it wasn't (and probably won't be) fabbed by rapid-prototyping equipment - just a couple hundred kids working in a sweat-shop in southeast asia...

I agree, but not from this tech.

[walnut]

Cocaine and THC are chemical compounds. Prototyping machines produce a physical component from an original polymer. Unless this polymer were already Cocane or THC, these prototypers are not going to build you one. You can probably though make a 1 kilo brick of resin. (which if you smoked would make you pretty high).

The technology for downloading molecules is relatively non-existant, as the alchemists of the middle ages found out. While scientists of the 20th century have since proved, you can make gold from lead - it just costs more than the made gold is worth, "simple molecules" (which are way more complex than an element) will be nigh impossible to construct from "thin air."

But overall, yes, at home labs will become more prevalent, advances in plant biology will allow for more divers growing climates for various greeneries to grow in, and ultimately the WoD will be called off in persuit of easier and cheaper legislation...

Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters.

[walnut]

So are you saying that the guy who wrote that will discover it?

I doubt it. Plus I'd argue that flying represented a greater technological step than manufacturing systems. The air previously was only accessed by zeplins or hot air baloons, everybody wanted to fly (which has a controlable movement portion which neither baloon nor zeplin achieved). We have a myriad of ways to produce any one product nowdays. As I've said in other responses, there are different methods of manufacturing which are suited for different products, but some are better or worse.

Nowdays screws and nails are stamped out, but previously they were spun on a lathe, cast or smelt. There are companies which still do the other older methods, but for the most part that is because of custom dimensions or technological availability. The point is, flying hadn't been done. Making a screw - well that already exists.

And I'd point out that the same quote applies to the prediction that this technology will exist. Its use is an oxymoron, and I hope you really meant it as such.

The original poster probably did know what he was talking about. If nothing else, the fact that this could elimiate or reduce shipping will prevent and delay this... that's taking on the teamsters.

Ok, a correction then.

[walnut]

Point well taken, however... I'd rather make a correction than a complete recindment.

If a new technology is not presented in a manner which is similar enough to an old technology, that a significant (signifcant does not mean over 50%) proportion of the proponents of the old technology embrace it, and fails to establish a strong new customer base then that technology will fail.

This has been seen in DvX, where the subscription component was too foriegn for people who are now willing to rent a DVD at blockbuster.

Yes, I agree that we will see changes, but changes which only the current industries allow. As we move towards a mega-corp erra (where people have less and less of a problem with massive mergers) then our choices as to what we use and what we do become limited. Yes, thousands of smaller businesses will be founded, and most will be swatted away. Yes, there will be a handful which create true new elements of technology, but unless they eventually rise themselves to a megacorp status, they will be swallowed, consumed, or ruined by a rival company. Diversification of a company to control all aspects of distrabution is an economic goldmine. This is how Rockafeller(sp?) used the railroads to make his money. If you control the steel, the barrels, the rails, and the trains, then you control the cost of whatever good someone wants to ship, and every real means necessary to do so.

While yes, tech development has increased in quantity, I would argue that we have developed a greater quantity of less-useful inventions. I will site as an exception though, the biomedical industry, which has continued to always look for a better stick.

The electric lighting system, the car, the plane, the rocket, the television, the computer, and the semiconductor were all revolutionary. TiVo, the Ab-Rocker, the juicer, and the palm pilot however are not in the same league of invention quality. Should I begin to discuss pattents on "one click shopping?"

While I believe rapid product development would be in the "revolutionary" category, I believe there are enough interests threatened by this, that it will be discouraged.

One of our most successful inventions from a "it works" standpoint was an autonomous natural gas pipe inspection unit. It was requested to be developed by several natural gas companies. The problem with many utility companies is that when they know about a problem, the must continute to monitor the problem, or fix it. This is expensive, so the utilities chose not to develop the product any more. Really, they would have been happier with a little box that blinked and told them nothing. It is all too common for a product which provides useful or corporately unhealthy information to a given utility to be... "dumbed" to the point of uselessness (the little blinking box).

When you develop a product which builds "anything," your manufacturers will be threatened. I can garountee that it is not in their best interest to devlop it... hence, at best we'll get a "widget maker" or an "enhanced widget maker." Even still, as the joke goes, they would make sure that it only works using the substance unobtainium.

Re:Tea...Earl Grey..Hot.

[walnut]

The egg or the chicken (which ever came first) was the start of replicator technology. This is, however, a major advancement in synthetic replication technology. We're a far cry from "Tea...Earl Grey...Hot" and really much closer to "Widget...Plastic...Useless"

Yes, though, holgraphic image displays do have interesting similarities, but so do 3d video cards.

Edible?

[orangesquid]

Just imagine the possibilities if one of the materials it could use was an edible, fast-drying sugary paste!

Doughnuts for all!

Or, better yet, little edible figurines of Metallica! :)

"Forbidden doughnut..." --Homer Simpson

But but but

[biglig2]

But assuming the open source model is as viable as we believe here in slashdotville, the open source movement will expand to include hardware engineers. It wouldn't be trivial to build an open-source car, but then it isn't trivial to build an open-source OS either, and that seems to be going quite well.

Now you see the future

[matthew_gream]

Now you have connected the parts together to see the future. Well done.

Although this is all early generation, it will be the kind of thing that is "in principle" on the path towards star trek type replicators.

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[istartedi]

(circa 1960) One of my girlfriends has a computer in her office. I don't see why anybody should care about them.

-- Computers are very slow.

-- There's a limited number of things you can do with them.

-- Basic economics tells you that they are no threat to the typewriter industry.

-- Reports stored on magnetic tape don't have the durability of printed documents.

Technology is always improving. Seriously folks, Just imagine this: "Mom, can you fab me another Pokemon action figure?". Give it 10 or 20 years at the most.

I think you are thinking too small

[afrazer]

What we are really talking about here is changing every kind of property into intellectual property. Once this can be done at the molecular or atomic level, then you can make gold, heroin, a ferrari, or any other desirable item out of your garbage, mud, sewage, etc. It would render things like recycling completely obsolete. It would also render the ownership, buying and selling of material goods completely obsolete. Every electron, proton, and neutron would be worth the same amount because all would have the same utility.

I think you are also missing the biological implications. Today, when we want to fix a problem with your body, we have to first understand the problem, then coax your body into healing it with its immune system or with chemical help. But if we could just move your molecules around, we could just take a "snapshot" of you when you were a healthy 18 year old, and then, years later, rearrange your decrepit 85 year old body, except the brain, to the original configuration. This would be much more dramatic than cloning. You could duplicate or modify yourself with great flexibility, and would not have to wait for the product to "grow up" - while we don't understand certain mysteries of life, I bet a bunch of electrons, protons, and neutrons configured just like me would be, well, just like me. PEOPLE might ultimately be transformed into intellectual property.

There's also the military angle. Those who read Ender's Game may remember the "Molecular Detachment Device", which could undo molecular bonds. Just like you could turn a pile of garbage into a person or a tank, you could turn a tank or a person (or a country) into a pile of garbage. Perhaps the analogy is really Calvin & Hobbes's transmogrifyer. Of course, "they" could just turn their pile of garbage right back into a tank, and this time also turn YOU into extra missiles for them to use, so this would quickly spin completely out of control.

Of course, the ability to do this at the atomic level is very far from the fabbers we are talking about. I doubt it will come any time soon.

Forget P2P! Fabber = Von Neumann machine!!!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Think about it, if you can put the recipe to build a fabber into a fabber...

This means that to start with you have 1 fabber. Then 2. Then 4, then 8 then...

This capability would be useful in some situations, particularly if you are in space and next to an asteroid you wish to mine. Run the fabbers for 16-30 generations and then switch to making mining equipment.

In space when you are next to an asteroid you have a) fairly unlimited materials and b) unlimited power (solar 1.6kw/m^2).

That combination is very useful.

Re:Forget P2P! Fabber = Von Neumann machine!!!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Yes, or you make the fabber assemble the parts when it is done. Or it is self assembling in some simple way.

Although the geometrically smaller fabber is useful until scaling laws start to bite; but the biggest problem is simply that it can only deal with a linear amount of energy and material, whereas Von Neumann machines can handle an infinite amount of both.

Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

"I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would
not fly for fifty years...Ever since, I have distrusted myself and
avoided all predictions."

Wilbur Wright, U.S. aviation pioneer, 1908.

Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

No, I'm saying that even wise/smart people make dumb predictions about impossibility/timelines. EVEN the smart ones.

As to the idea that this technology is lame, I kind of buy that right now. Still, all it takes is one killer app and... phooomb. Something comparable to what the web did to the internet may well happen here.

Also there's a lot of materials out there; you can bet that some combination of these materials are cost effective/useful.

The technology seems pregnant to me.

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[SnapShot]

There is a subset of things that this might be useful for, though I don't know if there is enough of a demand to replicate the Napster model.

The little plastic pieces that always seem to get broken on laptops. The little piece in front of the CD drive has broken, I could send the laptop to DELL or download the design file and build my own. Or, the top of my travel mug has finally worn down to where it leaks continuously; buy a new mug ($19.99 at Starabucks) or build a new lid.

Nicknacks - "you should see the new Regis Filbin model that Sue-Ann Magruder has posted and how about Mary-Joe's 'Jesus-on-a-cross' it's soooo spiritual. I heard that FabberTech (tm) is now selling glow-in-the-dark plastic for their 234xl model. That would really be cool."

Hobbiests: build a custom guard for your paintball gun, build a custom body for your RC car, etc. etc...

I'm sure, given the bandwidth and access to the fabbers, people will find a use for them that we can't even think of now. You're right, it may be more expensive and less convienent than buying the mass-produced product, but that's was makes it a hobby, right?

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[Alien54]

While a large number of items are made of plastic, many of the higher durability components are made of metals, sometimes with exotic alloys, very tight tolerances, and unusual properties.

Consider a common car engine with the higher and higher temperatures and pressures neede for fuel efficiency. There are many curved parts made to high tolerances. Never mind little details like gasoline and oil, and heat removal issues.

The short answer is that there are places where it can be used, but it is not ready for prime time at all under these conditions.

In this case, if the manufacturers could have saved money or improved performance via a plastic engine, they would have. Instead, the future is more in the direction of ceramics in this high performance field.

Heck, - would you want a plastic or a metal heat sink for your overclocked CPU?

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[SubtleNuance]

One of my girlfriends

I knew you were a liar right after that... no /. user has *many* gfriends. So - is the rest of your article pure fabrication?

;)

Very much ahead of our time.

[Donald Kerr]

One of my girlfriends works at a rapid prototyping workshop, so I've seen some of these "fabbers" in action. In my experience, I really can't see the manufacturing industry are going to be too worried by them. Fabricator machines are useful for prototyping of products, but they really aren't suitable for the production of the finished product.

Fabricators are slow. Very slow.

There's a limited range of materials you can use in them - the idea of a Rolex fab mentioned in the article is a fairy tale. The fabricator can't just magically produce gold and diamonds and incorporate them into a shiny new replica Rolex Oyster. Fabricators just aren't designed for making luxury goods like this, or for making anything which requires a non-trivial variety of materials.

Basic economics tells you that fabricators aren't a threat to the manufacturing industry. Real manufacturers benefit hugely from economies of scale, allowing them to buy raw materials in bulk and use faster and more efficient machinery. By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens. The industrial revolution happened for a good reason!

Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items.

There are countless other reasons why fabricator technology isn't a threat to manufacturing industry. This presentation is just jumping on the peer to peer bandwagon, but it really isn't realistic. Only when we have Star Trek-esque replicator technology will this sort of thing approach viability, but I am sure that replicators will also prove to be financially unviable.

--

Re:Very much ahead of our time.

[Alatar]

Okay...what could be reproduced by these things then. Cheap plastic thingies, such as novelty toys, buttons, an RJ-45 end, the straw on a can of WD-40. If it can print as well as mold, you could be looking at the ultimate fake I.D. machine. Could it manufacture something as fancy as the two halves of a CD jewel box? What about scanning your wiener, and placing the file for sale on the internet so anyone can mold their own replica? C'mon people...think dirty. The first moneymaking applications are always the porno ones.

no more drug control

[mojo-raisin]

I just saw the movie Traffic, which points out the inevitable failure of "The War On Drugs." With the coming advent of molecular fabbers, prevention of drug use will become an even bigger joke. Imagine downloading the simple molecules for cocaine or THC and making all you want for a cheap price in the privacy of your own home.

If we as a society ever hope to deal with the drug problem, it's clear prohobition will have to go. We might as well start preparing people now for the responsibility of dealing with drugs rather than waiting for the mass flooding of the market that will occur with "the diamond age."

Fast 3-D Printers Using Cornstarch

[Schwarzchild]

I've heard of 3-D printers like this one (that construct an object using cornstarch) for years but are there any others that have builtin lathes, molds, drills and such?

I used to entertain the thought of buying one of these just to be able to design some cool sculpture and print it out.

Color 3-D is available.

[Schwarzchild]

Er, the link I just posted is to a review by Wired Mag about a new 3-D printer that can print in color. It's supposed to be useful to printing out molecules, handhelds, etc.

I guess you can print out those action figures in color too! All you have to do is cough up about $60k dollars.

Bad introduction...

[Gendou]

It almost sounds as if the author is stating that P2P has damaged the music inudstry. Seems to me that he was going for shock value in a "dum-du-dum-dum-duuumm" sort of fashion.

He did this rather recklessly too, setting a tone for the whole article. I almost felt as I read this that the methods described for "Fabbing" products from files off the Net would be a bad thing (which of course, it's not in the slightest).

I'd consider reading that article with more care as well as who sees it. It's just the kind of tone that people who aren't convinced of the proper freedom of P2P distribution don't need (see, they know that what they're doing is wrong).

Just the facts please, and no attempts to excite or thrill us as to what you're writing about.

Not very convincing reasons

[OlympicSponsor]

"Fabricators are slow. Very slow."

Computers used to be slow too.

"There's a limited range of materials you can use in them..."

Most consumer goods are made of a limited range of materials as well. Nearly all children's toys, for example, are plastic and/or wood. Besides, why couldn't I fab myself a VCR minus those parts that need to be "handmade" and then install those myself later?

"Fabricators just aren't designed for..."

Here's your basic flaw. No, fabbers aren't designed for that NOW. But what about 20/50/100/150 years from now?

"By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens."

This reads like FUD from the manufacturing industry, circa 2101. Sure, I might lose economies of scale (although dirt, air, water, wood and sunshine are all pretty cheap--not to mention the fact that I might buy my materials from a co-op or something)--but what do I GAIN? I can make a device that works EXACTLY how I design it. I can download Joe's design for a water heater, tweak some parameters and have my own custom machine that exactly meets my needs. The point of fabbers isn't saving money on pens. It's control over the devices in your life. It's also about opening the field of design (if not manufacturing) to everyone, just like the Internet opened up the fields of music, writing and programming.

"Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items."

This almost solely a function of the materials used--which could easily change in the future.

Honestly, your whole post reads like some intelligent-but-fuddy-duddy from the early 70's explaining why this new-fangled "desktop publishing" won't work. "Sure, a computer and a printer are useful for creating a manuscript--but who wants to read dot-matrix?"
--

i would print out hard copy cd's

[Alistair Graham]

I would use my 3d printer to download and play out actuall copies of cd's and vinyl records, and piss everybody off, old school music theft for the new decade

fabbing

[remy the man]

how about fabbing my own fabber so i could start selling them to people who don't have one....

Limitations

[snellac]

Although they often seem magical in their abilities, fabbers today are still far from the "Replicator" of Star Trek fame. Additive fabbers are generally limited in accuracy and resolution to about 0.1 mm (0.004 inch), although better results can be obtained by experienced operators or with some experimental techniques. Although fabbers are often much faster than alternative methods, they are not instantaneous, and sizable projects can run for days to be produced. Moreover, the maximum size that can be built in a single run of the largest additive fabbers is limited to less than half a cubic meter (a few cubic feet). Materials selection is also a limitation of the currently available machines. The commonly available materials include acrylics, epoxies, urethanes, and ABS, as well as wax for investment casting masters. Specialty materials also available include artificial wood and specially formulated ceramics, metallic alloys, and metallic composites. Finally, one must recognize that fabbers are still highly technical devices, requiring trained personnel and often industrial environmental controls for their use.

Of course, there are reasons to use a fabber too.

Some of the advantages of fabricators over other means of generating solid objects are:

• Direct generation based on digital data, without the errors arising from a tradesman's interpretation of the designer's drawings
• Ease of iteration. Part of a design can be changed and the object refabricated without the need to redo the design of the entire object
• Accuracy and repeatability of dimensions on the order of 25 to 250 microns (0.001 to 0.01 inch)
• For the additive processes, the ability to generate shapes of arbitrary geometric complexity, including composite and nested ("ship in a bottle") structures made without assembly and without seams

The advantages of using fabbers in design and production applications have been nothing short of dramatic. Manufacturers have typically realized time and cost savings of 50 to 80 per cent in product development, and even greater cost savings and schedule reductions are not uncommon. Along with reduced cost and development time, the practical ability to iterate designs leads to improved final product quality. Moreover, the ability to turn a new idea into a final product quickly can cause a stir of excitement and professional satisfaction in the product team. This in turn feeds back to high productivity and quality of performance from the individuals involved.

Very much ahead of our time - not really.

[markprof]

It is not that they are slow that is the threat. Consider that about 1 million households may eventually have fabbers. Production, then, would be in parallel and all 1M would produce parts at once. So, even if a part took 24 hours (not likely with today's fabbers which produce in less than 12 hours), that's 1M parts/day. Just like MP3s on Napster. The other issue of quality parts will be solved - you can count on that. Today the parts can be made of all kinds of plastics, wax, some metals and some ceramics. The main issue is part homogeneity and density which give a part its strength. So, my view is that in 10 years this will have happened and we can download the part description of a fuel injector for our 2009 BMW and make it in our garage and download the installation video and go for it. The AirForce is very interested in this technology as is NASA because it is tough to take a full parts inventory on a 6-month cruise or multi-year space trip. In this case, all you'd need is raw material and a CD-ROM library.