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Peer To Peer Meets Manufacturing
Crashmarik writes "Small times has an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing. They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net. We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects. More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?" Great article - the author of it also won The Foresight Institute's prize in communications for 2002.
How much they're gunna charge for the ink...
Visualize the world of wine
July 25, 2003 - Imagine your kitchen blender conks out the day you're hosting a large cocktail party. You search an online catalog, decide on a model, and click the "buy" button. But instead of waiting three days for the appliance to be shipped to your door, a new kind of printer on your desk springs into action. Layer by layer, the miraculous machine squirts out various materials to form the chassis, the electronics, the motors - literally building the blender for you from the bottom up in a matter of hours.
Call it desktop manufacturing. For gadget geeks in need of instant gratification, it's a miracle. For designers deep in the iterative prototyping process, it's a revolution in product development. And thanks to small tech, it's becoming a reality.
University of California, Berkeley engineering professor John Canny and his colleagues are building such a printer. They call the technology "polymer mechatronics" or, more simply, flexonics. The revolutionary approach to desktop manufacturing is enabled by recent advances in 3-D printers, organic electronics and polymer actuators.
Three-dimensional printers are commonly used to make prototypes of new product designs. For example, a designer may load a digital design into a Fused Deposition Modeling machine. The FDM then extrudes thin beads of ABS plastic in .01-inch layers, until you have a completed passive
functional part or device. While the printers are dropping in price, the leap
from producing passive to active devices is monumental. That's where organic
electronics come into play.
Organic electronics were born in the 1970s when researchers discovered that chemically doping organic polymers, or plastics, increases their electrical conductivity. Since then, researchers have worked to develop the most effective and inexpensive organic compounds that can be patterned on flexible substrates to create useful circuits. In the private sector, companies ranging from Bell Labs to IBM to UK startup Plastic Logic are also working to develop quality organic transistors that are fabricated far more cheaply than silicon circuits. Organic semiconductors will most likely first hit the market in the form of inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and flexible display screens.
Canny's co-investigator in Berkeley's flexonics effort, Vivek Subramanian, is one of many researchers harnessing the microfluidic precision of inkjet printing technology to deposit organic semiconductors in desired patterns. The key ingredient in Subramanian's organic circuits is "liquid gold." Synthesized in his laboratory, liquid gold consists of gold nanocrystals that are only 20 atoms across and melt at 100 degrees Celsius, 10 times lower than normal.
The gold nanocrystals are encapsulated in an organic shell of an alkanethiol (an organic molecule containing carbon, hydrogen and sulphur) and dissolved in ink. As the circuit is printed on plastic, paper or cloth using inkjet technology, the organic encapsulant is burned off, leaving the gold as a high-quality conductor.
Combining Subramanian's circuit printing technology with a 3-D printer enables electronics to be embedded within the housing of the device being printed. The chassis and the electronics are fabricated as one single structure.
The next step is to add the actuators that provide electromechanical capabilities to the devices - for instance, a mechanism that causes the blender's blades to spin when switched on. For this, Canny plans to fill inkjet cartridges with electroactive polymers that contract when zapped with a voltage, enabling components to flex in desired directions. Additionally, the polymers generate a voltage when compressed, so buttons and switches can also be embedde
How long will it be with this system in place until you can download the most ungodly of things from adult entertainment sites? EEEEW!
stuff |
We'll all be complaining about the CIAA (Car Industry Association of America), CBAA (Coffee Brewers Association of America), BBAA (Beer Brewers Association of America) etc etc etc
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
When we have desktop universal constructors, then I expect the manufacturing world will kick up a stink, but unless I misunderstand the article the printers it describes can only make certain sorts of devices - mainly those containing plastics and certain types of electronics and specific sorts of movement in them. Sure, this is going to cut into the manufacturing market for some things, but nothing like a real UC could do...
As our society moved into the industrial revolution ... it meant unrealistic controlls over labor (slavery) had to go.
As society is moving into the information age means unrealistic controlls over information (copyrights, and untangable patented things) half to go.
And as our society moves into the "replicator" age. It means unrealistic controlls over invention and creation (patents) will half to go.
IMHO.
Desktop manufacturing is a long, long, long way off. You can do it with plastic bits, MAYBE circuit boards, but not much else. Technologies like these have revolutionized the manufacturing process - rapid mold prototyping for casting, and C&C machining of parts.
The fact remains though that you're not going to get the strength of cast aluminum or forged metal without very expensive equipment - that's not pessimism, that's physics.
..don't panic
I already downloaded a piece of software from a site and as soon as I ran it a cupholder appeared from my PC!
Read reviews of shopping cart software
These are cool. You can build any *shape* you want. Too bad you're limited to one (or a few) specific materials chosen more for their useability in this process than for other useful properties. What do you do when you need a copper winding for a motor? Iron core for a transformer? Hardened steel for a bearing race?
Basically, you can use these to make toys, mockups, and maybe most of the parts for certain items. But don't expect them to replace real manufacturing anytime soon.
Let me be the first to announce the open-source Car project. I'm currently on version 0.2. We have the chasis mostly bug-free, with occasional glitches on an Interstate network. Seat-Belts are available on the nightly builds, but aren't supported yet. You'll still have to use a closed-source engine module, and we're not planning on adding it until version .5 when we have the chasis, firewall, and fuel system components some-what bug free. I've heard some people saying that they've been able to use the engine module from the Open-Source-Lawn-Mower project, but it will only work under light loads. For now, I have to get back to developing the lights module. BTW, we're looking for someone to design a module-hot-swaping system, similar to linux.
Oh great. Instead of the RIAA wondering about those songs on your hard disk, you'll have the NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) getting after you because you have 60 full-sized plastic Cadillacs downloaded from Repster in your back yard.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't see this replacing manufactured goods in price. Where this process would be invaluable would be for mechanics, construction workers, etc. All sorts of things could be repaired with this. So many items go in the garbage, not because they are useless, but because they are in need of one minor, obscure part that is no longer in stock. Anyone who has done mechanical or construction work can appreciate the need to be able to duplicate one trivial part that cannot be purchased. I am thinking any auto mechanic would go nuts over such a machine.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson...
They have those replicators (printers) connected to "feeds" (component reservoirs) and can get/create almost anything they want on the molecular level.
AND the society of this age is a thriving nanotech/Private Community mix.
AND diamond, coming from carbon (the most inexpensive stuff possible), is so common it's a natural construction base...
Go read it, its a good book
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
"This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties."
... would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs"
That is entirely an urban legend, like the 200 mpg carburetor. This did not happen: the grave is empty.
"Big Business will never let this go through, ever."
Not true either, since business can profit from such things if they actually exist
"Corporations
It does not work this way. Look at music: people still prefer to download (legal or not) the products of the major record labels, even though "Self-designed" stuff is all over the place, often legally free.
"Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation,"
Low rate? What do you mean?
If the main resource is carbon, it is widely available. The trick will be to have the assembler 'mine' it's raw materials from its environment (plant matter, atmosphere, ...). Also, wastage will be pretty well zero, so a bare minimum of material will be required. Thirdly, having full control of the material being fabricated allows very strong structures to be built, opening the possibility of strong low density 'foam' type materials, using even smaller amounts of raw materials.
one where all needs are provided
The trick would be to figure out how to get the universal assembler to provide all the basic needs. Food, shelter, sanitation, water, energy source. Biggest problem would be that the supply of real estate is limited. It would be interesting to see where people's greed will be directed once most things have no monetary value. I suspect people will start to hoard real estate. Will we see a war when the landless manufacture weapons and attempt to stop landowners from hoarding land surplus to building a shelter on?
Still, fabs would have to be made and sold, and only a large fab could make smaller fabs.
This is not necessarily the case. Any self respecting 'universal assembler' will be able to make a copy of itself.
There will STILL be an economy
It depends on what you mean by an economy. Surely the (forgotten) purpose of the economy is to satisfy our needs? Once needs can be satisfied without an economy, why have one? With any luck, the economy will be replaced by community. We will then live FOR those around us. It might take a bit of adjustment, but I'm sure most will cope.
You can do that today at the corner of 7th and 11th.
No, no, no.
What you are concerned about was "totalitarianism", i.e. the philosophy that the state was all, and all citizens were subservient to it, existing only for the state. This is a separate concept from communism and socialism. The USSR, the Fascists under Mussolini, and the Nazis, were all good examples of totalitarian governments. "1984" was written as a warning against totalitarian policies.
Communism is a little different. It suggests that the means of production should be shared equally by all, and the fruits of the labor be equally divided as well. Communism as suggested by Marx was not evil at all. Modern-day china seems to be making a pretty good go of the idea; I think that aside from being a little overzealous in censorship (and their organ donor program, ha ha), they're doing fairly well.
Socialism (different yet again) suggests that a society's first duty is to its citizens, and that the purpose of government is to take care of the people (rather than, for instance, ensure the welfare of corporations, or wage ridiculous wars to help the oil industry). Canada, the most innocuous nation in the history of nations, is mostly socialist. Do you consider the canucks evil? Aside from the Kids in the Hall, I mean.
Let's be fair, kids.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
When the printing press was born, together with gunpowder in weapons it brought about the distruction of fudal opression. It allowed new ideas to spread promoting revolution and eventually democracy, the availability of religeous texts lifted the oppressive and conservative warping of the bible propergated by the clergy of the day. The publishing of the classics in vast quantities allowed the commoners to become educated and eventually stand up for themselves.
It was centuries later that it was decided that things printed on these presses should be copied, before then everything was for accidemic uses or was timless like the bible or classical plays or histories. Then someone found out a way to make money from this, create new laws to force royaties. Machinery started to be patented and builders were forced to not use new technology.
Today we stand in a world where entire countries have incomes less than individuals, where the worlds most ecconomically prosperous country exports almost nothing phisical, except maybe old el-paso barito kits, coca-cola concentrate and the occasional calefornian orange. Where the holders of the "interlectual property" that they obtained though a little bit of tenacity or luck, or simply bought like an officer from victorian england buying his commision can dictate the price of the sale of their intangible chattles and the public must buy. Where streamlining, efficiency and outsourcing are the measure of good buisiness in an effort to have as few workers who will work for as little as possible so those who simply manage can take everything.
Today the measure of a physical object is not what it is, it is what it represents. Western "worksmanship" is simply a swoosh slapped onto a shirt made for nearly nothing in a third world country, rather like the way a five hundred dollar program is arranged in dints upon the surface of a worthless disk. If you live in a western country, you already live in a world where the construction is nothing and the concept, or interlectual property is everything. This new manufacturing won't change anything.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The article misses the whole point. This isn't a efficient way to make things you can make now. It's a way to make things you can't make now. Things with detailed microstructure. Things with moving parts and electronics inside.
This is inherently a slow technology, because you have to build up thick objects layer by layer. But it produces objects that are more "organic", not in the hippie sense, but in the sense of having "internal organs." The first applications will probably be medical devices.
What else? Photonics parts such as switching mirror arrays. Peristaltic pumps. Cell sorters. Sensing devices. Once it's clear what you can do with this approach, there will be new, interesting things to be made that way. But they'll be small, high-detail objects. You're not going to make an I-beam that way, even if you could.
Almost all manufactured objects made in quantity (with the notable exception of wood products) are produced by some kind of "moulding" process. Casting, stamping, lithography, injection moulding, hydroforming, etc. are all "moulding" processes, where material is formed to match a master pattern. All these processes are fast and cheap. That's the great achievement of the first half of the twentieth century.
Machining, by contrast, is slow and expensive. Almost nothing you buy in a store is carved out of a solid block of metal. Many things could be, but that's only done for the prototype. Volume products are made by moulding-type processes. There may be a bit of finish machining, but it started with a moulded blank that looked almost like the finished part.
You can have a computer-controlled milling machine, and all the software to drive it, at home right now. I know two people who do. They don't use them for making routine household objects. It's too slow and too much trouble.
If you want a sense of what one-off manufacturing is like today, download eMachineshop. It's a free CAD program with a difference. After you design the part, use the Job->Material menu to specify the material, and use the Job->Price menu to get an estimate. Then use Order->Place Order to have one made. An automated machine shop in New Jersey will make one and send it to you. Most parts cost $100-$300 for the first one, and a small fraction of that for each additional copy.