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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."
Yesterday I fantasized about a generator of matter ... a device that will assemble any given object from its base, out of atoms.
I also fantasized about a generator of matter, one that was able to generate Natalie Portman right in front of me complete with a handbag full of a strange gritty substance. Ooooh yeah.
I can fabricate the perfect woman! Now, where can I get one of these things?
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
First post to mention The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) by NEAL STEPHENSON. All about nano-tech and fabricators and stuff.
Test 1 2 3 4
.. 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
Tea, Earl grey, Hot!
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Yeah, you use a hack to capture the instructions for atomically building the latest gadget or toy and then everyone shares it over bittorrent.
How is this idea different from replicators on Star Trek anyway?
.... and you thought Lexmark ink was expensive!!
...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.
sigs, as if you care.
I saw a prototyping machine at a recent trade show, that could lay down ABS plastic. For a six cubic inch toy wheel, it was an overnight job. It wasn't neceessarily a desktop unit, it was still considerably larger in footprint than an HP LaserJet 4, and is floor standing, I think.
It also costed $25,000.
The machine type described are good for prototyping and custom parts, but there are usually better mass production methods. Laying down atom-by-atom will be slow for a loooong time and at best be of most consequence to nanomachines for that time.
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.
Piracy - it's not just for software anymore...
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Doesn;t that signify a flaw in the concept of economics rather than material science?
Imagine the day when robots do most of the work.. Building, manufacturing, construction, planting.. Who can beat a machine specialized at a task?
Remember the GM workers in Detriot replaced by machines on the assembly lines?
At some point when the world is all SERVICE oriented.. because none actually produces anything.. Then all the people who HAVE money will be KINGS and QUEENS. Make sense?
I think so.
Smile.
http://www.bathsheba.com/ it is way cool.
Ah - but, how would such an economy work? Think about it.
What service would you possibly sell? And what are the people paying you with, and why do you want it? You don't have to buy anything anymore, you can make it with your fab. Food, water, shelter, entertainment. all are costless. So why would you bother providing services to anyone in exchange for something?
Such a revolution could only lead to one of two inevitable systems:
1) The world becomes a Star-Trek like Utopia. poverty, hunger, and want are all eliminated almost overnight. People spend their daily lives pursuing things that challenge them intellectually , or work to further the species as a whole.
2) The world descends into utter chaos. Since everything is free, no one has any power over anyone any longer. Governments are thrown into disarray. Wars erupt. The whole species is nearly anniahlated in thermonuclear holocost.
Calvin: "If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?"
Hobbes: "Hmm..."
Calvin: "Anything at all! Whatever you want!"
Hobbes: "A sandwich."
Calvin: "A SANDWICH?!? WHAT KIND OF STUPID WISH IS THAT?!"
Calvin: "Talk about a failure of imagination! I'd ask for a trillion billion dollars, my own space shuttle, and a private continent!"
Hobbes: (eating sandwich) "I got MY wish."
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Desktop fabrication in a specific area, say software, is still pretty uncommon. Nevermind that program generators for cobal have been around for ages. A buddy who has been in IT since the only computers around were made of vacuum tubes has coupled his cobol generators with some program conversion utilities he wrote and now generates java programs based by specifying what they are supposed to do, rather than coding in java. One would think this sort of thing would be much more common in software.
An earlier
There have also been articles on hydroforming, foam in place construction, etc.
As for rapid prototype '3-D' printers, the articles author seems to miss two major uses of this technology. Form and fit prototypes, and most common, rapid pattern making for casting.
Yes, it's happening within specific industries, big time, but the general purpose desktop fab is far in the future.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Yeah, instead of Natalie Portman, you end up with Rosanne Barr! (Ewwww!).
No matter where you go... there you are.
How about circumvention of the whole bank robbery. Just make some money.
This would throw the world economy into chaos since any industry based on the manufacture of goods would suddenly be SOL.
Of course, corporations would try to "fix" this situation with DRM-encoded recipes. Anyone can make a shoe (with the help of open source), but if you want the new spectacular Nike shoe recipe you have to spend money...the recipe components are downloaded to your nanofactory and boom, you have the "cool" shoe.
What this would do would be to make branding more important that it already is. Emphasis will be placed on quality and style of the product instead of usability (which will be possible to gain for practically nothing). Stephenson thought that this would give rise to a whole new artisan class of the economy which I agree is possible.
There will be economic restabilization, and that's going to mean a lot of death and suffering for a lot of people. Since people kill each other over resources anything that creates a massive alteration in how resources (and thus people) are controlled will result in war, whether they can produce the weapons from nanofacotries or not . But you just wait, this is only a precursor to the real suffering.
The real danger of this, at least for me, isn't economic restabilization, but population control. With such a device food will be possible to create even more easily. No need for crops, cattle or any other "source" of food. All food can be manufactured for the simple cost of energy needed to combine the appropriate atoms.
Any ecologist will tell you that the one thing that limits a population is food. (lots of people debate this and say humans are different. That we control our population at will, however since the "invention" of agriculture the world's human population has done nothing but go up. When the world's population starts decreasing because of self-imposed limits, then I'll listening to how we determine our own carrying capacity). World hunger is a constant issue now, but if everyone in the world can eat, I assure you that the world's next generation will be even bigger. And if all of them can eat...well you see where I'm going.
The only thing limiting (and I use that word loosely) global population is the manufacture and distribution of food. If those limitations are taking away the world is soon going to be a very cramped and unlivable place.
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.
Go read Drexler's "Engines of Creation" for the classic "nanoassembler" hype. The idea of pushing atoms together is neat, but it's hard to do. Free-floating nanoassemblers are still a fantasy. I expect to see nanoassemblers, but they'll probably be more like scanning tunneling microscopes made on an IC substrate and used to read and write DNA. Making big hunks of solid materials that way is too slow. Look at how long it takes to make a tree, or a coral reef, or a pearl. (Admittedly biology is power-limited. In a manufacturing environment, you can run external power into the nanomachines and remove that limitation. But that won't work for the free-floating nanomachine concept.)
If you have a good milling machine, you can make almost any solid shape you want. I know four people with milling machines at home. Two of them have good computer-controlled mills with all the necessary software. Yet they don't actually make all that much. One of them is building a steam engine, and he's been at that for years.
Then there are stereolithography machines. The newer ones work fine. You can now make things out of ABS and nylon, which are tough enough to be useful. This is a big improvement over the early models, which made only soft wax models nice to look at but useless.
It's a very slow way to make stuff. In the real world, almost all consumer products, with the notable exception of wood and fabric products, are made by some kind of cheap moulding process. There are dozens of such processes, from die casting to injection moulding to progressive stamping, but they all involve forcing material into a mould. This is an incredibly cheap process in quantity, and is why manufactured goods are so cheap. Very few consumer items are made by machining down a solid hunk of material.
Even ICs aren't made by direct writing. It's quite possible to make ICs with direct-writing electron beam machines. This eliminates the need for masks, and every IC can be different. Works fine. Useful ICs have been prototyped that way for years. Too slow to be commercially feasible.
> fantasized about a generator of matter,
> one that was able to generate [image of beauty]
> right in front of me complete with a handbag
> full of a strange gritty substance...
this fantasizing of procuring women from stone has persisted
thousands of years in the greek legend of 'pygmalion galatea'
Pygmalion and Galatea in Greek Mythology
Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it. It was indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents such as young girls love, - bright shells and polished stones, little birds and flowers of various hues, beads and amber. He put rainment on its limbs, and jewels on its fingers, and a necklace about its neck. To the ears he hung earrings and strings of pearls upon the breast. Her dress became her, and she looked not less charming than when unattired. He laid her on a couch spread with cloths of Tyrian dye, and called her his wife, and put her head upon a pillow of the softest feathers, as if she could enjoy their softness.
The festival of Aphrodite was at hand - a festival celebrated with great pomp at Cyprus. Victims were offered, the altars smoked, and the odor of incense filled the air. When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife" - he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead - "one like my ivory virgin."...
--
sometimes you don't get what you want, but you get what you need.
go for the real thing, reciprocal exchange is so much better...
best regards,
j
Uhh NO one to make Dinner while the other fetches me a beer ;-)
---START SIG It is better to know that you have lost than to NOT know that you have won! ---END SIG
Then again, this all sounds way too good to be true.
Probably because it is too good to be true. They're just so many flawed assumptions behind the idea of the desktop replicator that puts it on the same level as warp drive, a literary device that is good for those moments when you need the hero to create an object on the fly, but really bad when talking about future economics.
Such a device would make physical goods value-less. The only things of value any longer would be services and artistic creations.
Whoa! Hold on here just a minute! There are a large number of costs involved in producing a physical good. While your machine might be able to eliminate the labor costs, you still have to deal with the costs of raw materials, the costs of time, the costs of design, and the cost of energy.
Just in terms of energy costs, it is quite possible that it is cheaper to create a toaster using traditional metallurgy than to try to assemble a toaster atom by atom. The big problem with assembling metal objects atom by atom is how you deal with oxygen. When you are working with ingots, sheets, and wires, the fact that contact with oxygen is limited to the surface area helps quite a bit. The smaller the particles that you try to push around, the worse the oxygen problem becomes. Once oxidized, separating oxygen away from what you want to work with is a hugely expensive process in terms of energy. The reason why living organisms prefer to work with carbon is because carbon is one of the few elements for which the energy trade-offs are reasonable for both oxidation and reduction.
The second problem is time. It is not necessarily the case that a fabricator will be able to produce a widget atom by atom in a time frame that is competitive with an assembly line. This also adds value to products.
I think that there is also a basic misunderstanding of economics expressed here on this topic. Economics is not just about our current fuzzy version of capitalism. Economics applies to just about any situation in which you have local surpluses and local scarcities. Even with a desktop fabricator, there are still surpluses and scarcities that do not spell an end to economics.
If of all the foods available, people start replicating McDonald's burgers, then there are larger problems in the world.
As for the whole world hunger thing... the problem isn't one of the volume or mass of food, it's a matter of money to purchase it or to ship it in a timely manner to where it's needed. If the people can't afford food, they sure can't afford a molecular manufacturing machine to "build" the food. Not to mention the energy to run the things.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Anyhow, on a post-apocalyptic Earth (as always) the saviors of humankind are these huge bloblike aliens who fabricate anything people want from them out of dust. Cars, houses, clothes, food, etc. Problem is people have been depending on these aliens for so many generations that they have no idea how make anything, and they aliens are starting to die off (and all the things the aliens conjured are falling apart)--panic ensues. Enter the hero who shows people an ugly, crude clay mug that he made himself.
[pink beam of light]
It was liver. Kidneys are very, very complicated. Whereas livers are merely very complicated. To produce functional kidney, you'd have to reproduce a complex three dimensional plumbing arrangement that's basically natures reverse-osmosis desalination plant. Liver, on the other hand, is more like a coffee filter that happens to also manufacture digestive fluids, and is relatively simple in comparison.
Lawsuits? How about asking yourself: how complicated are the atoms of the usual variety of brisant explosives? Answer: not much. Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen. You can get these elements from electrolysis of water (H2, O2), from the air (O2, N2), from common household chemicals like ammonia (NH4), and finally from the messy molecules of bulk items like common sugar.
... except that it will go on every goddamn day.
....
So, with a deskfabber in hundreds of thousands of bedrooms owned by mischievious teenagers, you'll have the world's largest arms race in a jiffy. After the C4 specs are posted to the Internet, at least tens of thousands of these little fuckers will have tons of C4 made within 30 days. It'll be a July Fourth to remember
(If I had had a deskfabber, I would have made explosives. I'm sure at least 50% of the hands-on techies here on Slashdot would have done the same.)
The endless July Fourth would go on until someone notices that clever little teenager, taking his fabber down to the river, just below the runoff from the tailings from that old uranium mine
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
And what happens when the local dictator seizes control of all the replicators to make weapons and food for his soldiers, and his friends?
Or the local religion declares them to be the tools of the devil?
Or the complexity of recreating a replicator causes the pattern to be corrupted?
Oh wait I forgot this is magic technology.
It never malfunctions and is always availible to anyone anywhere even if they are in such a back-assward place that hasn't even invented toothbrushes yet.
at least they should give credit. The idea of individual automated object fabrication has been around for several decades at least and was part of a series of influential science fiction stories. The stories even describe the different levels of technology: macroscopic automated manufacturing in the earlier versions, microscopic and atomic in later.
People at MIT didn't come up with the idea. In fact, they didn't come up with the hardware either: they took a bunch of off-the-shelf components (laser cutters, 3D scanner), put them together in the obvious and known way, and apparently are saying "look how smart we are". That is more a testament to the size of their bank account than to their smarts. Most people don't build those kinds of systems yet because they don't make economic sense yet. Once laser cutters and 3D scanners come down in price to the point of printers and digital cameras, then those combinations will be widely deployed.
When that happens, just be sure to give credit where credit is due: the original visionaries, and the people who created the technology that made it work: the engineers developing the laser cutters and the inventors coming up with organic semiconductors used in the ink jet printers used for custom electronics manufacturing.
My fear is that many, many companies will rightfully feel threatened by this concept. It would allow us to make pretty much anything for the cost of the raw materials (very cheap). We'd quickly see things lize open source food, clothing, computers, everything. This would (understandably) destroy most industries as they currently stand. I hate to sound paranoid, but they will not let this happen.
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
A revolution of affordable open source desktop manufacturing is on the way. There is already an alternative approach to rapid prototyping and manufacturing using inkjet technology.
Well before we are building things atom by atom, desktop manufacturing will be producing some stunning and swift changes in what we can produce for ourselves. The humble Inkjet, in a jag of hardware hacking is already spitting out solar cells, batteries, complete working gadgets, human tissue and computer circuitry,. A computer printing computer circuits simply from software instructions. That's only a stone's throw away from self replication.
There's more.
Researchers Hod Lipson and Jordan B. Pollack at Brandeis University have coupled inkjet technology and software to autonomously design and fabricate robots without human intervention.
or
Google Search
The software simulates a variety of rudimentary virtual robots. In an accelerated Darwinian contest of survival over hundreds of generations, the most successful robotic designs are then physically prototyped. Robots autonomously designing, testing and manufacturing robots.
The implications of open source desktop manufacturing are perhaps more in the questions inspired than in what is produced.
What will be the effect of open source hardware? What happens when a desktop peripheral as economical as your printer manufactures custom computer circuitry, solar cells and batteries as cheap as wallpaper? Or when distributors ship a product as software, with the end user supplying the raw material. No distribution costs and instant delivery of a physical item. Or when autonomous robots fitted with accelerating computational intelligence design and manufacture their own next generation?
And now another working approach to desktop manufacturing pops up. I say 3 years will see the revolution spill out of the manufacturing sector onto our desktops.
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
Well, I'm sure there would be SERIOUS economic changes, but in order for this thing to function, it would need resources, which countries control.
This would either lead to war over resources, and a desire for people to control those resources. Think about that and what it leads to.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
....be a breach of someone's IP rights - on investions wuch as a "wheel manufatured using fabricating process".
You will be able to use a fabricator only after taking legal advice, that is until they are banned as "devices designed to faciliate IP theft".
In 1959 Feynman described what it would take to build arbitrarily anything at the atomic level: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman/plenty.html