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Envisioning the Desktop Fabricator
mkl writes "Yesterday I fantasized about a generator of matter. Not a laser plotter for carving 3d objects, but a device that will assemble any given object from its base, out of atoms. I was thinking about a device that can find its place under the roofs of all the people working on PCs all over the world. So I fantasize about it at work and what do I see in the Wired News newsletter? 'Any product, any shape, any size -- manufactured on your desktop! The future is the fabricator.' Heh."
.. what would you make ?
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Something similar (utilizing some kind of 3-d inkjet printer with hot, liquid plastics für ink) was presented in the mid-1990s at some trade fair I went to. Matter of fact, I think I have also seen these on TV, building evolving robots (not joking, cannot remember the context, thought)
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
...once created, throw the entire world economy into chaos? Of course I am referring to not a simple fab as the article is talking about, but what it is insinuating at, a device capable of assemling things at the atomic level.
Think about it.. once you buy such a device, no matter *what* the initial cost, you could use it to make almost anything... including, other devices!
Such a device would make physical goods value-less. The only things of value any longer would be services and artistic creations.
Then again, this all sounds way too good to be true. We're not evolved enough as a sepcies to have that kind of tech - think also - everyone instantly has access to unlimited weapons. Great.
We would kill ourselves off as a species within days.
Then again maybe that's not a bad thing.
Engines of Creation: http://www.foresight.org/EOC/
Not everyone thinks this is only a dream. Of course, many people think these people are crazy.
But one must reach a bit beyond the accepted if one is to achieve something greater than the norm.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
http://www.bathsheba.com To start building a model from my 3D file, the design is built up, one layer at a time, from steel powder held in place by a laser-activated binder. ... This produces a porous steel part that is about 60% dense. ... The model is heated, the stems are dipped in a crucible of molten bronze, and capillary action causes the bronze to wick throughout the piece. Counterintuitive to say the least, but apparently it works very well.
at a speed of 1 billion atoms per second takes about 20 million years.
Slow, slow.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
It strikes me that although we may have mass consumer 3-d plotter type stuff that can create objects out of certain substances, or maybe a combination of a few materials, atom-by-atom assembly is going to be a long way off, if ever. At the very least it will require very advanced nanobots.
But what is more likely is biological printers that grow stuff out of cells. It will be much easier to let the cells do the work of reproducing and just induce specialization into a lattice of pre-grown tissue through chemical infusion.
This wouldn't be home genetic engineering, just creation of specialized tissue from a batch of pre-cooked cells of a fixed genome. It could be some other organism's genome, plant or animal or something specially designed for object replication, or even, your own...
So in 50 years or so, you or a doctor may be "printing" out a new patch of skin for your tatoo removal or a new seed for a lost tooth, or high follical count skin for your balding head. Or a tentacle to help you type faster. Or, well, I don't really want to even get into where elective plastic surgery is likely to go in the next decade with reguard to certain less seemly "self-enhancements" people might be inclined to make, nevermind the concept of "home bio-generation kits."
It's truly scary stuff -- let's just say tomorrow's anime conventions may not require costumes for the truly devoted fans.
Someone had to do it.
A class I am working with at Brown University is working with 3d scanners in conjunction with 3d fabricators, such as were discussed here (ABS plastic, wax, plaster, etc). The 3d copier idea seems funny, but as we've found out it's not nearly so simple. We have a blog about our work, if you are interested, and a general webpage too.