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Towards Self-Replicating Rapid Prototypers
Neil Halelamien writes "Researchers at the University of Bath are developing a rapid prototyping machine capable of making copies of itself and other products, reminiscent of the Universal Constructor proposed by von Neumann. The so-called Replicating Rapid-Prototyper (or RepRap) would produce items from raw materials and small components like microchips. If successful, this could make rapid prototyping cheap enough for regular in-home usage, especially since the project's lead, Dr. Adrian Bowyer, will be releasing his project's designs under the GNU GPL. It's previously been proposed that a similar system would be useful for space exploration and industrialization."
Is anybody else thinking of the replicators from Stargate SG-1? But assuming we find the weapon of the ancients in time, then yes, this sounds awesome.
I'd welcome somebody with an original joke.
Unless it can make me tea, I can't say I'm interested... then again... think about the new abilities to piss the RIAA/MPAA/USGOV off with this? It would make downloading music seem like childs play next to making an all plastic car **cough** **cough** saturn **cough** **cough** that I downloaded the blue prints from alt.binaries.replicator.cars.
Really though, I find the adoption timeline to bit a little bit optomistic... 5 to 10 years for it to become common place in homes? It's taken 5 to 10 years for the internet to catch on, and that doesn't require bulky equipment. Perhaps in the next 50 years before I'm gone, but not in 5 to 10.
My 2cents...
But man, I'd live a childhood fantsay to order my tea from a replicator.
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it...
" being able to build anything we want ourselves."
Seen Forbidden Planet? Bad idea.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
Ok, randomness, maybe, but efficiency? I don't think so - according to most scientists, it took 11 billion years to get as far as we are today! I certainly hope that the human mind is a little bit smarter than blind randomness. If we're going to hop in chance for scientific discovery, technological breakthroughs are going to come to a screeching halt.
Except even with this you wouldn't be able to legally make anything you wanted, because copyrights and patents still exist. It's sort of like getting a CD burner and saying, "Now I can burn anything I want."
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
And the Wright Flyer was only a distant cousin to the Space Shuttle...
- Structure: The core parts of the device need a strong, stable material that can hold everything together.
- Motion: The device needs materials that convert energy into mechanical motion. These materials might include electromagnetics, electrostatics, piezoelectrics, shape-memory alloys, chemo-dynamic protein muscles, thermodynamic cycle systems, etc. Each of these types of motion-creating materials has special needs/chemicals that might require special handling devices that, in turn, must be made out of the materials in the self-replicating device. Motion is often tricky because it requires specialized assemblies of materials (think of the complexity of a simple DC electric motor or the gears and linkages in a robotic arm).
- Control: The device needs some form of logic that can read some analog of a blue-print, ROM, DNA, etc. and direct the fabrication process. If based on standard electronics, this would include materials that act as insulators, conductors, and semiconductors.
- Power: This may be the trickiest because creating sufficient power requires purified, highly engineered materials. Self-replicating a modern alkaline battery would be quite a feat. Perhaps the semiconductor technology of the control materials could be leveraged for solar panels.
I suspect that one of the trickiest part of all this is in handling and converting bulk materials (usually a liquid, powder, or solid ingot) into a shaped and controlled component or assembly. The replicator must interface with raw materials supplies, move bulk materials to a fabrication point, and convert the bulk material into a usable component in its offspring. Space exploring self-replicators face an even greater challenge of processing raw space materials (moon rock, asteroidal metals, etc.) into refined feed-stocks for replication.Its a tricky problem, but one that we will eventually solve.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
All this was done in a very crude way, as if they were developing a process for home use. Their metal casting technique is scary. They used "Wood's Metal", which is a solder-like alloy of tin, lead, cadmium, and bismuth. All of which are toxic. Lead and cadmium cause heavy-metal poisoning, and the body won't clear either of them. No serious precautions seem to have been taken against inhalation - they just used gloves. At one point they tried powdered metal, which is much more of an inhalation hazard than molten liquid. They need to run their people through the usual checks for heavy-metal poisoning.
There are rapid prototyping machines that deposit metal, and that's probably a more useful direction.
All this is a long, long way from self-replication.
1. You buy an appliance that can manufacture a hell of a lot of stuff you use on a daily basis.
Plus it can manufacture itself, so if you really want to, you can make a couple more. Personally, I think it'll take a while before a commercial entity will offer a product that will compete with it. It makes no financial sense. They'd sooner make an appliance that can manufacture anything *but* itself. But let's skip to the point where someone built a self-replicating machine, and much like gmail accounts, sooner than not everybody's got one for himself and 6 or 50 to give out to his friends.
2. You stop buying a major percentage of the stuff you use on a daily basis.
3. Some companies, from many sectors, who make stuff that you've been using go out of business. Not a bad thing in itself. Many whip-makers went out of business when cars were invented and horses stopped being the preferred means of travel. It's the natural course of technology.
4. People make more and more stuff that they need out of raw materials.
5. Raw materials become more scarce. No more plastics in the bin. Plastic Recycling plants get no more plastic cuz nobody's throwing it away anymore. The price on anything made from materials useable at home rises dramatically.
6. Things we cannot manufacture at home yet which we still buy and are made of said materials, say your car, go up in price due to higher material costs.
So you pay less for your plates and but more for your car.
7. New content market: Designs. Expect the DIAA (you heard it here first).
We'll be pirating our dishwasher plans from P2P, paying for raw materials, making it at home. Designers will be watermarking (plasticmarking) their designs. Ripping groups will be removing the marks. Machines whose designs we steal and which we built will call home over the net to activate unless we download a hacked version.
This time around, it won't be just the music industry clinging to their antiquated business model. Suddenly every company that sold you a plate, cup, PDA case or pen will want to sell you PENS (where you pay per item) rather than a design of a pen (where you pay once to get the design). First they'll laugh at you, then they'll fight you (and this time around will probbably have a humongous lobby compared to what the RIAA has today), and then you'll win of course, those of the companies that managed to strip off the bulk of the no longer neccesary manufacturing from the price of what you buy making it to the next round.
Change indeed.
Like software or music, all over again.
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Once everyone has a machine in their basement, the economy of the world will be turned on its ear. Consumer goods will cost only the price of their materials.
I'm afraid not. Think software. Consumer goods would no longer be sold they would be "licensed".
Creaming their pants, most likely... just imagine... 1) plant in "customer" network, 2) wait and watch it "grow", 3)then send in the BSA goons for some profit^H^H^H^H^H^H liscence violations... it'd be like money that grew on trees.
And that's not mentioning all the money to be made for the liscence compliance software "White Blood Cell" that seeks out and destroys these illegally spawned copies on the customer's network...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I think you have that exactly backwards. It is only the high cost of manufacturing a new instance of something (above a certain price limit) that lets us repair anything at all now. If we had make-anything machines, we would not repair anything. We would simply feed the broken thing into the machine's materials hopper (perhaps with a lil' something extra in case of lost parts) and tell it to make a new one. New lamps for old -- literally.
N.B.: If the make-anything machine uses a high enough amount of energy, this could still be uneconomical and your repair scenario might make more sense. Alternately, you could consider the re-creation process to be a kind of ultimate repair.
You got that much right. In fact, garbage dumps might become valuable mines of material.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
First generation self-replicating machines will simply consider electronic components (or DC motors) "natural ressources".
You as the user will buy 1 pack of plastic, one pack of metal and one pack of varied electronic components (expect many flavors to this kind of pack).
Those pack will be extremely useful for other gpl-hardware writers (don't forget that anything that uses the code of the original machine is GPLed too!).
As the system gets more evolved you might have to buy 7 different metals and then make your own electronic components on the spot, but it's not necessary at the begining.
Didn't somebody disprove the grey goo problem, even for nanoassemblers? Something about the scarcity of energy and rare needed materials? Plus there's the bit about it having to compete with all the existing organic replicators.
I don't have the time to wait around for evolution to work its course.
Ahh...but nature had the time to bring you into being. It took a few billion years but here you are now.
Ponder this! Your very attitude of impatience is a product of evolution in of itself. So naturally, your just a tool of evolution through your own means of inovation and progress deamed worthwhile at YOUR own pace.
Life is not for the lazy.