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Fab
I first heard of Gershenfeld and this book after listening to a podcast of a discussion he participated in at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I'm a programmer by day but in my pre-parenthood days, I played with a bunch of microcontrollers and simple robotics-related hardware (mostly motors and sensors). The idea of being able to fabricate anything I could think of appealed to me instantly.
Gershenfeld asserts that personal fabrication tools are developing along a path very similar to the one taken by computers. Computers were once large, expensive, complicated machines accessible only to skilled operators. Now they are much more accessible and have evolved to the point that most people can make use of them to some degree. Machine tools, at best, are still at the mainframe-stage of evolution but that is changing rapidly. What happens when machine-building machines, which can manipulate atoms and molecules, are as accessible as computers are today?
Well, it turns out that machines already on the market can give you a pretty good sense of what's in store. While not quite at the level of Star Trek replicators or Nutri-Matic dispensers from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (both, oddly enough, seem to be mostly used to make tea or something almost, but not entirely, unlike tea), fabrication machines are getting smaller, and cheaper. Some of the tools discussed in the book include:
- desktop milling machines : affordable
- sign cutters : novel uses including cutting copper sheets into traces for circuit boards
- laser cutters : very expensive
- waterjet cutters : very expensive but extremely useful
- 3D printers : expensive and slow, but very cool
- functional material printers : print resistors and capacitors into circuits a layer at a time
- microcontrollers : powerful and cheap
- CAD software : difficult to use
- CNC machines : expensive, difficult to use
The longest section of the book is called "The Present". The section is about the current state-of-the-art and it alternates between a chapter of anecdotes and project descriptions and a chapter on some aspect of fabrication (e.g. cutting tools, CAD software, electronics, etc...). By keeping the practical or social discussion next to the technical discussion, Gershenfeld makes what could be dry technical details accessible and engaging. It makes the book and the central ideas accessible even to (or perhaps especially to) non-technical readers.
In fact, the author has been very careful to not include too much technical detail in the text of the book. There are notes at the end with slightly more info, and a pointer to a website with some of the actual schematics and Python source code, but it is still very frustrating for a technically inclined reader who immediately wants to dial in on some of the details. The book will age better because of this, but it will send many Slashdotters running to their favorite search engine looking for more information.
The book includes a lot of illustrations and diagrams. They are all in black and white but have an inconsistent presentation. Sometimes the photos are presented on a weird background that looks like a network of circles and squares while others have no background. There are several photographs of circuits that do not add anything other than to show you how simple the circuit is (often just a microcontroller and a couple of other components). You usually cannot even make out what the individual components are or how anything is wired up. There are many photos of the people at the center of the stories and those pictures do manage to convey a sense of the awesome impact the tools have.
So, what's missing from the book? Personally I would have liked to see the technical appendix greatly expanded. I understand that this information doesn't age well and I'm guessing the author (or wise editor) didn't want to elaborate on the technical details for that reason. Fab is written for a very general and broad audience. Enough technical details are presented to keep the geeks reading, but it mostly wouldn't discourage a non-technical reader with the possible exception of the chapter on electronics. For a lot of Slashdot readers, the book definitely leaves you wanting more.
The chapters are generally under 20 pages each and the writing is fluid and simple. The book has a table of contents and a comprehensive index and even though Gershenfeld doesn't cite other publications in the text, I would have loved to see a bibliography or other list of materials that expand on the topic of personal fabrication. A few pointers from the author to complementary material would have been appreciated. The book definitely piqued my interest and fortunately, a little research has shown this to be a very active subject.
The book ends with a rather defensive look forward. There are many who feel self-reproducing machines could basically take over the planet. Gershenfeld acknowledges this and answers with his belief that any negative technologies that emerge will be fought with countermeasures, like the virus-antivirus battle on modern PC's. It's pretty much inevitable that evildoers will acquire this technology, but Gershenfeld is optimistic that fab labs can help address the root causes for conflict, largely assuaging any threat.
In summary, if the idea of having your own replicator is appealing (hello tea lovers!) or if you are interested in a new approach to giving people around the globe the tools they need to help themselves, then you will enjoy and likely be inspired by this book. Just be prepared to look elsewhere for the minutiae. I rate this book an 8/10.
You can purchase FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
until the Feed is available?
How to make an atom bomb
Are they even allowed to publish this kind of information? Or is it withheld under the PATRIOT act with the rest of our civil liberties?
--
NoVA Underground: Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun, Prince William, Fairfax County forums and chat
"Gershenfeld predicts one day he will be able to drop the word "almost" from the title of his course."
Not until I can replicate the replicator.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
A few years I read Automated Fabrication by Marshall Burns. The point that he made was that these machines are very similar to fax machines in the early 60's-they exist, and are being used, but are clunky and unreliable compared to where they will be in a few decades.
I can't wait, finally a date!
Anybody have the source code for Kelly LeBrock?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/
I dream in binary.
Gee, I'll be able to make gaming tokens just like the guy did on "Breaking Vegas" (The History Channel).
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Imagine what proportions piracy will take when everyone can copy their favorite car instead of buying it. That doesn't mean that it won't cost anything, but there probably will be a few objects that will cost more to buy than copy...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Well, I disagree. I am actually building a homebrew CNC router. Does it take time and some skill? Yes. Is it expensive? Depends, all the components for mine have cost ~$2,000USD.
Now, the ability to mfg anything that pops into my head is truly amazing! Many products I were thinking of buying, I am now designing my own versions - and planning on selling them too!
I think that is the big thing. Who needs to pay some Giant Mega-Corp when I can make the product myself?
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
We'll be able to solve all of the world's problems once scientists have invented magic.
What does CNC mean? k thx bye
so you can mass-fab DNA, cDNA, RNA, protein, and other biological output and measured material really fast (like 300,000 per second per printhead).
we have some in Husky colors here at the UW, they're super cool.
from small fabs come great discoveries.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
a fabricated meatball sub will still taste like meatball sub.
(end of post)
Gershenfeld is a true believer in technology, but unfortunately does not hold a very critical or insightful views. His book, When Things Start to Think, is a simplistic and excited jog through future visions of technology that merely repeats general myths and expectations about how computers can learn to understand human behavior and emotions. Also, Gershenfeld would be more convincing if he had not claimed in a conference presentation to have studied the "eskimo" herding reindeer in Norway and making good use of mobile phones. Fancy that. The people are called Sami, and make just as good with mobile phones as any other scandinavian person.
Why buy it in basic black when you can get a fab to crank out some high-def logos with inkjet fabs that are durable and last as long as the standard car finish ...
...
think about it. you can have a rad car with fire curling around your headlights, a yellow Pikachu hopping on your roof, and doors with your name in lightning bolt cursive on it
all in iridescent colors that last decades.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...is the copy generator/fabricator first introduced?
Wait, What?
>but unfortunately does not hold a very critical or insightful views
According to the mod rating of your post, neither do you!
I kiid, I keeed!
I can't help but think that a lot of this is bullshit. I mean, there's a lot to learn from his class and book for most people and that's great, but I think it's a ridiculous notion that most fabrication equipment will make it into home use. I mean sure, a lot of it's going to get cheaper in the future, especially a lot of the real high-end stuff (i.e. laser engravers) but it will never quite reach the point where a home user will have one. Even stuff that is affordable now like sign cutters is still expensive enough that most people wouldn't buy one unless they were using it to make money. Plus, while very cool, a sign cutter isn't actually that useful for making things, from what I've seen of the course it's mainly used for cutting out t-shirt transfer material and circuits. For both of those activities there are cheaper replacements -- kits for etching circuit boards can be bought for about $100 (some for less) and a basic screenprinting kit can be under $100, compared to a $500+ cutter (and that's if you cheap out, the ones they have in the lab are several thousand dollars).
I own a thermal printer and sign cutter, it cost more than the car I brought it home in and it's relatively cheap for what it is. I would have never considered buying it if I didn't intend to make money with it.
Imagine what proportions piracy will take when everyone can copy their favorite car instead of buying it. That doesn't mean that it won't cost anything, but there probably will be a few objects that will cost more to buy than copy...
Yes, this is very interesting if you think about classic car parts for example. If there were a cost effective way to create the various doors, quarterpanels, trim, etc for that 57 bel air you always wanted then some very interesting things could happen.
Then mix in simplified CAD design and suddenly after-market modification could enter a new era.
The lowest cost version, below $1000, handles anything that starts out with a solid block of material (for instance, milling a complex heat sink out of a solid block of copper, or turning some big jack screw out of a solid block of aluminum, things like that.
The medium priced version, $1500, adds sheet metal design to that.
I use their sheet metal CAD for things like server enclosures.
Very simple to use:
You start out with a flat rectangle of sheet metal (on the screen). Then you add a flange on the left side and a flange on the right side, with just a few mouse clicks, and - bingo! - you have a U-profile. Then you add studs and/or standoffs as needed, holes as needed and you have the bottom part of a sheet metal case.
Having designed the bottom part, you then proceed to design the cover and the front panel and the rear panel. Thus, you get a sheet metal box.
What is it?
A custom rack mount server case.
You can then generate 2D drawings from the 3D model, print out the 2D drawings and take them to a local sheet metal shop for a quote.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
All of these tools are available to some degree but most are very expensive and all are quite complicated to use
Compared to getting Nagios up and running, fabricating the milling machine BY HAND from scrap aluminum is frigging child's play.
Come to think of it, you can go look up a book series on exactly that and find out for yourself.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Once they invent a Fab Lab Fabricator, we're done.
It's pretty much inevitable that evildoers will acquire this technology, but Gershenfeld is optimistic that fab labs can help address the root causes for conflict, largely assuaging any threat.
I'm afraid that's a pretty materialistic analysis - assuming scarcity of goods is the root of all conflict - and it misses at least two other root causes that are not easily addressed by improved production.
The first is psychopathy. About 1% of the human race has a mental defect that amounts to having no conscience. Think "color blindness", but with moral behavior / internalizing others' pain, rather than color. (Another couple percent learn to act as if they have no conscience, but that's a social/upbringing issue.)
A large fraction of these people don't learn how to compensate, and a lot of those don't think ahead to long-term consequences to themselves from their actions. Such people will do whatever pleases them, which includes such things as creating a new virus (computer style or molecular, depending on available technology) just to see how much havoc it can cause.
Improving production won't address this root cause. Indeed, to address it directly may require brain surgery or its nanotechnological equivalent. This may be within the scope of the fabrication technology. But deploying technology to rewrite peoples' brains in order to suppress a class of destructive behavior starts down a very slippery slope.
A second is ideological: Adherence to a belief system (especially a political and/or religious belief system) allowing, or even prescribing, the initiation of deadly force in response in various situations.
If such a situation is perceived, the adherent with access to such technology may utilize it to create the deadly force. And in a classic case of asymmetric warfare, empowering individuals simply increases the ability of small numbers of people to create large amounts of damage. (Examples: Adherents to a confused splinter of such an ideology, mainstreamers who have perceived a threat where none existed, or mainstreamers who perceived an ACTUAL threat and overreacted).
"Addressing" this "root cause" would again involve attempting to modify peoples' mindsets. And most such ideologies include, at the top of the list of situations where deadly force is mandated, attempts to suppress the ideology. "Addressing the root cause" creates the very apocalypse you're trying to prevent.
This is not to say that the technology should be suppressed: On the contrary. It holds enormous promist for actually eliminating the root causes of many sorts of conflict. And it may be enabling for real solutions that would demotivate some of these hard cases. Cheaper resources are generally good for problem solving, making more solutions accessable.
But counting on it to "address", or even "help address", ALL the "root causes of conflict", IMHO, expects too much from it. Some of these will need solutions that don't come out of fabrication technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You can make many parts of things using a relatively inexpensive machine. The trouble is all the parts you can't make. No matter what kind of machine you have, there are parts it can't make. The trick is to re-design products so all the parts can be made on the same machine. The issue is mostly product design. This is a software problem as much as anything else. With a simple enough user interface, the possibilities are vast. But we aren't there yet.
Just as an exercise, try to imagine how a machine might make something as simple as a coffee maker given just raw materials. It's not at all a simple problem.
Ok, so perhaps not EVERYONE will redesign their car, bed, desk, house, etc. but the implications for repairs and regulation seem pretty clear.
It'd be great to see everyone driving/flying their own personal reinventions of the wheel, but I pity the repairman who has to try to fix them by the road, even if he can fabricate the necessary parts and tools on the spot. How the hell does he know if he's done it right? Nearly everything he works on is unique, subtly or flamboyantly.
I pity the regulator who has to tell a million proud inventors why their particular new craft is not just inefficient and unsuited to current traffic conventions, but intrinsically lethal to themselves and others. Hot-rodding isn't really a good example, because the non-superficial rebuilds take enough equipment and time to guarantee a fair amount of knowledge/seriousness. Plus, the parts are standard, even if their use may not be.
It's like hacking with real-world objects. Some will be talented and great at it; the majority will be uninspired, petty, and just plain irresponsible with it.
That being said, I can't wait to download BMW's latest and greatest from Limewire.
Get FAB cheaper here. You save more than $3!
*brought to you by the Fists of Righteous Harmony*
It doesn't take an MIT scientists to do those things. Go and look at hobbyist magazines on woodworking and metalworking: they are full of these kinds of computer-controlled tools. It's kind of ironic that good old American hobbies are being sold by futurists and scientists as the next great thing.
However, all of those devices are still far from being "desktop fabs": they cannot create complex machinery, they require manual intervention, they require expertise to operate, they require expensive manufactured manufactured materials, and they certainly cannot replicate themselves. It will take a lot of engineering to address those problems, and that kind of engineering will not come from a bunch of publicity-hungry futurists.
I've had the opportunity to use the Fab Lab in Boston, and it has been a wonderful experience, but it has some drawbacks too.
The biggest source of dissapointment is that, due to litigation concerns, the Boston Fab doesn't have access to the same breadth of equipment as some of the labs abroad. That being said, there is a lot of interesting stuff to be done there. So no TIG welder for me (or the plasma cutter. Damn!)
The biggest challenge is ditching preconceptions of what can and can't be accomplished with the current technology, and learning to work with the available materials. Bring on the plexiglass, cardboard, wood and PCBs. And machining wax, for making molds.
I have a few pictures up from my first session (he cringed): Fab Lab Pics.
I should have some more pictures of finished projects up soon, and those I'll post on the Fab Lab site, SETC.
What were you expecting?
This is a subject that has interested me for quite a while now. The biggest limitation at the moment seems to be the software that is needed in order to make complex objects.
I've designed and built a computer controled (CNC) 6-axis router using easily available parts. I estimate that the whole thing could be built for $500-$1500, depending upon how good you are at scrounging parts.
I have a gallery of photos at CNCZone, as well as a site for the control software at SourceForge.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
Things built in a home fab will be different from those built in a factory. Factory built stuff is built to be cheaply made in a factory. Home fabbed stuff will be built to be easily assembled. Anything easily assembled is easily disassembled, repaired and reassembled. ie. Things that are now throw-away will become repairable. This has to be good for the environment.
http://reprap.org/
A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.
A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer.
The project described in these pages is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor.
There is a dark side to the fab, highlighted in that good ol' RPG Cyberpunk and of course with more flair in The Diamond Age, namely-
-people making weapon systems with these things.
Imagine if the Sunni/Baathist/aQ types could fab high quality gun tubes or missile parts- a lot more Strykers would be dead.
The chaos inherent in the release of unlimited fab powers was a major element in both these futures.
And of course there is the dark Ogre future in which the fabs are controlled by nuclear-armed AI tanks, kind of Colossus with treads and an attitude.
The logistics of war might more closely resemble a Command and Conquer game then the age-old 'make what you fight with, bring it with you', but with a dizzying design and counterdesign fight measured in hours rather then months or years.
On a more mundane level, I expect a lot more accidents due to poor QA of 'homemade' items. Ultimately a condition will be placed on most insurance policies that if it is not UL-rated any losses incurred by using home/garage fabbed appliances and gizmos will not be covered.
I mean seriously, do you trust the average person to make a toaster that won't explode?
On the other hand, we could really see a rebirth of American cottage industrialism. Just consider all those car customization shops out there, then apply that to all manner of consumer products. Could be good.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I was ready to discount this as the typical futurist hype until I remembered where I recognized his name from.
Dr. Gershenfeld is the author of The Nature of Mathematical Modeling, one of the best technical books I own on any topic. It's definitely worth a look if you want a concise overview of simulation, estimation, and machine learning algorithms.
I have a good sized CNC mill in my garage that I use practically every week to make various rocket parts. It is certainly cool, but the realities of tool reach, work holding, and chip removal make it more of a "super power tool", rather than a free-form-fab.
The various technologies that essentially rasterize arbitrary parts are what excite the imagination, but I don't expect any radical changes in society any time soon from them. Stereolithography is pretty mature, and getting arbitrary parts rasterized in plastic is fairly common today. However, in 99% of the cases, these are still used as models / proof of concept / R&D, not actual manufacturing, because they are drastically more expensive than, say, injection molding, and more mechanically limited. There are a lot of technologies touted for rasterizing 3D metal parts, but I spent some time recently trying to find a place to fab modest sized rocket engines, and none of the companies I spoke with were able to handle it for various reasons.
I do expect this to become very exciting, but it is several years away. The excitement won't be about fabricating things that you currently buy (conventional mass production will retain significant cost benefits), but allowing low cost R&D. When you can send an arbitrary 3D CAD model over the net to a company with a metal rapid prototyping machine (they will remain expensive for quite some time) and get your part overnighted to you in a couple days with no setup fees, you will be able to iterate design cycles twice a week at quite low expense. You can do this today with plastic, and in some limited cases of small metal parts, but when you can start doing it in significant engineering materials that can be used in functional prototype machines, lots of new opportunities will arise.
John Carmack
i just assumed this was going to be about The Beetles. one of these days i'm going to click into a topic with no surprises
What if people in communities banded together to buy a super-expensive laser-design-type machine for cutting metal/plastic?
Just so you could make widgets for fairly cheap. Invention rates +1000%.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Terrible words to hear from a mechanic, these days.
For small items, no, clearly not.
For larger things; yes, I think it's possible. given the time, energy, and materials probably required to create an entire new vehicle vs. creating and installing a part, I think repair would often be preferable to complete reconstruction. That's assuming, of course, that the thing has been built with the possibility of repair in mind (which is, admittedly, a pretty big assumption).
I agree that this manufacturing model would make recycling even more of a necessity than it is now.
It's a field in which the Open Source community are already active, and as with the software industry it's hard to get something in print before it gets out of date. As reported earlier on Slashdot, the RepRap Team (and I'm one of 'em) are going for the materials deposition route as per http://reprap.org/
:v)
We believe that this is the easiest to implement of the designs listed by Professor Gershenfeld, in a way that will be capable of producing the majority of its own parts. Open Source, shareable hardware. The sooner we get MkI out, the quicker others will be able to develop it - and the harder it is for anti-social types to patent what we're going to be doing.
We've devised a way to deposit a low melting point but durable plastic called Polymorph - it's recyclable - and have also deposited a low-temperature solder as an electrical conductor.
While the project may appear a simple affair, it really does need to be. It's about more than just re-inventing the glue gun; the RepRap will be capable of fabricating itself, and so the simpler the design the less work we have to do. Sometimes, simple is hard.
Vik
Yawn...Wake me up when I can say "Earl Grey, hot."
In Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams talked about CNC machines spitting out custom firearms.
It is already the case that one can, with some skill and difficulty, make a reasonable firearm using desktop machine tools.
Sherline, maker of the preeminent hobbyist desktop lathe and mill, is already shipping turn-key desktop CNC machines, based around linux boxes.
Technical Video Rental rents out DVDs on how to build firearms from scratch.
All these trends are accelerating, and about to converge.
In 20 years, no matter what the politicians say, gun control is going to be DEAD.
A linux box + a $1k three axis desktop mill + some scraps of steel + HEAP.sourceforge.net = downloadable firearms.
So basically instead of spending huge amounts of money on products, the machine tools of the future will make us spend huge amounts of money on space to use them. Maybe it isn't the machines but the availability of useful floor space which gives India/China such an advantage.
It costs $4 for 1 sq ft of useful floorspace in U.S. every month, with power, allowable noise levels, acceptable environmental impact, and proximity to a day job to pay for these machines.
You'd need at least $4000 of floor space every month to run the machine tools to produce anything useful. There's no way anyone can afford that unless they're a CEO.
Meanwhile kids in India are buying mansions by the age of 25 from their lucrative software testing jobs.
When having personal machine shops becomes necessary, it's going to make success a matter of who can afford the floor space. It definitely isn't going to be u.s..
There can be no paradise on earth as long as the nastier bits of our evolutionary psychology are still holding us back. Egomaniacal, power-hungry, sociopaths (many of whom are now CEOs and politicians) may have been genetically successful in the past, but with increasing technological power, that mindset becomes a liability for net-positive happiness in the world. It's a good thing, then, that a biological solution, and a non-biological solution, will emerge parallel to the growing threat of exponentially more powerful tech in the hands of mostly static primate brains.
Power to the Peaceful
My previous employer was Align Technology, Inc. ("those invisible plastic braces"). This guy sounds like he looked at what they were doing years ago and wrote a book about it. They can scan hundreds of molds a day, and probably output over 20,000 aligners a day, each a unique rigid 3D plastic shell that's accurate to less than 0.1mm in all three dimensions, then cut exactly along the gumline according to a precise algorithm, sanitized, and packaged.
Anyone interested in this stuff would probably get a kick out of the Quicktime manufacturing video they did a couple years ago. It briefly goes over being able to scan a 3D mold extremely accurately and quickly, model the dentition on 3D workstations and build a case, make the aligners, cut them out of the mold, and package them.
I believe I heard while I was there that, at the time, they had more 3D Stereolithography machines on-site than any other facility in the world. One of my jobs there was to help write the distributed computing system that processes the 3D data on a rack of servers to prepare them for manufacture. It's incredible how much data you can churn in a day.
Although the materials are as expensive as the machines these days, I agree with him that it's all becoming very accessible. There's no fundamental barriers, so far, anywhere near this technology... it's all down to getting people to come up with applications that will drive early adopters (like Align,) and getting people to write the software that will drive these machines to do EXACTLY what you want, which is tricky stuff.
E pluribus unum
There are others who would say this has already happened.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I can almost guarantee you that some people will see the whole purpose and meaning of the FAB age to extract patent and usage royalities for unlimited growth and profit. They will attempt to extend patents forever (like copyrights today) and they will attempt to enforce royality collection using violent and coercive means (because copyrights are information, physical coercion of individuals will not work well, but since most patents are physical by nature physical coercion will be the most obvious strategy). With the ability to create weapons at your disposal, it will make the civil war and the death of the plantation system look like a peace walk. People will make the usual bullshit arguments like "it's my property"
Watch for it to happen in 30 years or so (it could be longer, but at the rate of progression I don't think it will) , watch countries like China to be a real problem here as their society will likely eventually adopt patent controlls, but will not have the culturial and physical restraints like western founded societies.
(Another couple percent learn to act as if they have no conscience, but that's a social/upbringing issue.)
And still they leave the business schools open!
Most of the body parts like quarter panels and door bodies, floor, hood, etc. would probably best be made out of sheet metal, suitably bent or pressed. Other structural parts probably could be best made out of pipe stock. There still exist drawings of these components, and it wouldn't be impossible for some metal shop to make them, even considering adjustments for the different mechanical parts.
But smaller, irregularly-shaped parts, such as door handles, instrument panel, light-fixtures and much of the cast chromed parts, could very well be made with some of these new methods.
The resulting vehicle would perhaps become a '07 Bel Air? :)
Another thing is that these fabrication methods can be used for making new specialty engine or other parts for old cars in general, where no modern useable equivalent is available.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
If you haven't been there already, spend days (or weeks) at MIT's open courseware site. Gershenfeld's course as well as many others are available free to the public here
What's that you say, you need raw materials? Oh crap. Well, how about this pound of lead I happen to have lying around. Oh crap, can't do it. How the hell could we ever have a machine that can fab anything unless we stockpiled it with every element under the sun (never know what you might need), or we happen to develop some fantastic forms of fusion/fission that can transform elements? The same problem defeats the whole 'gray goo' idea. If a self-replicating nano-bot needs silicon to replicate, but there's no silicon within its reach, what will it do? Nothing. I'm still creeped out by the gray goo idea, but thankfully, I find it very unlikely that we'll get to self-replicating bots any time soon.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
the price of wood isn't really controlled by us here in the U.S. It's controlled no small part by korea and japan and canada. Tho we do have something to do with it. My dad has been logging all his life. I've lived in a logging camp for over half my life. In the 80's the logging industry in the U.S. was booming. In the early 90's, stuff started getting shut down by the environmental movement. My dad lost his job. Eventually they re-opened some selective logging where we had lived previously and we went back. But it was NOTHING like the booming logging industry in the 80's. Maybe some of the huge logging corporations are making big profits, but the small operations in Alaska sure aren't. Almost all are struggling to survive. My dad moves from one site to another almost every month (literally). He makes good money. By good I mean middle class, prolly $40,000 a year. He's quality control and extremely experienced. He probably made the same cutting back in the 80's . Wood prices went up because supply went down. And sure you can site statistics saying supply went up if you'd like. That's fine, I'm sure it did. But did the supply of high-quality hemlock an sitka-spruce go up? LoL.. no. Towns in southeast alaska (ketchican anyone?) shut down their mills and people lost their jobs, economies collapsed. Also, a lot of our stuff goes oversees and if they feel like screwing us some year, they do. Lot of american companies (like rayonier for example, which is a very good company in general) are starting to hook up with russian companies and log siberia because the logging isn't happening as much here. Guess what folks, it costs money to ship that shit... (off topic, the engines on those log-ships are HUGE tour one someday if you can)
There is a "wood cartel" but it isn't the loggers, sorry. There's some big corporations that buy lumber but they have been screwing over the actual loggers and mills!
You rant about the loggers screwing you over, getting free roads, etc. I've NEVER seen anyone in southeast alaska get free roads EVER. Hobart Bay alaska... Find a suitable blasting area, blast, get rock, build road. The government didn't pay for it sorry~LOL. Maybe you live in some fantasy land where you consider the roads built so the public can access the forrest to be "free roads". In which case you better complain that UPS is using your free roads to deliver your latest video card(which of course they pay for with their gas tax don't they?!)
In your third paragraphy you state "why are only lumber corporations allowed to take trees". Huh? At least here in Alaska we are allowed to take some for wood. We have some nice cedar boards out there in our back yard cut from Alaskan timber! My dad used an "alaska sawmill" which is a chainsaw on a slide basically, to make the boards. Perfectly legal!!! If you are so interested in getting some lumber, get a little land or get a permit or check your laws in your area. Then go get some. A few trees will go a long way. Shoot if you live in a rainy area why not plant some on your property? What? you live in a city? doh!
If you came wanting to buy some wood at a reasonable rate directly from a small logging operation *they would be happy to provide it*... Lot of the big log buyers in the U.S. are just stuck whining about imports and exports to and from canada right now.
Clinton actually *DID* shut down a lot of the logging. (still i'd rather have clinton than bush sigh)... The clinton years pretty much killed logging in southeast alaska. It's maybe 10% of its former self. We have idiots in DC that try to run alaska it's so sad. And the so-called liberals (i'm a liberal myself, but some are far out of touch with reality, which is why i said so-called.. trying to control everyone else's life does not count as liberal) whining because bush wants to give more control of their land to the states hahaha. Yeah. One of the only things bush has tried to do that I support. Man I wish alaska was it's own country.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
At the present time various technology exists to print in metals, ceramic, plastics, various other polymers and glass using additive processes (as opposed to subtractive methods such as milling). The use of nano like materials (small groups of for example copper atoms, surrounded by for example a UV sensitive hyrophobic layer) enables copper to be printed in solid lines well below the melting point of copper. Other more unusual properties are being discovered with small groups of atoms. Technology exists which is capable of inkjet printing basic passive and active electronic components - for example workable transistors with no signs of degredation after 6 months at the 30 - 70 mircometre scale. Work is being conducted on printing RFID tags, use of organic semiconductors, printing of display screens (e.g. OLED displays), even printing batteries and optical electronics. The cost of the machines is reducing (simple economies of scale) - consider the first inkjet printers. If you said to someone fifteen years ago that you could buy a colour inket printer capable of producing photographic quality prints in your home for $200 - they would have laughed. A photo lab operation was a fortune, not $200. There are even groups looking at printers capable of printing printers - which in effect would enable the viral spread of the means of manufacture. This collision of the physical and digital world, is unavoidable. The process of manufacture will change whether through the availability of mass customisation (the individual production run), the mass printing of electronics (RFID tags etc) or the eventual home as a factory. As an observer, I have watched this trend follow a well trodden path over the last ten years. As with all technology trends it goes through cycles of bursts (thunderstorms) and then lulls. The next thunderstorm in my view is the combination of printed electronic techniques with 3D fabrication techniques. Allowing for the creation of mass customised novel electronic devices, and the subsequent growth in electronic hacking. The internet was a communication revolution. 3D printing has the potential to be a manufacturing one with an estimated market of between $200bn - $1 Trillion+ (depending on who you listen to). Value is ultimately in the raw material and the design - which of course raises an interesting question for the open source movement, and whether open source hardware can ultimately become as influential as open source software has. The technology has the potential to profoundly affect our society, and it is no longer a question of if but when. On the question of when, this is moving faster than most people realise.
...something almost, but not entirely, unlike tea
...something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Incorrect! It's:
Remember, all Arthur wanted was a cup of tea to recover from the recent ordeals and all the ship could give him was something that only had a hint of tea.
Fabulous (sic) idea - but more fundamentally (and I can't remember if this is an original idea, or else absorbed from some sci-fi book somewhere) is there ever going to be a complete "technology tree" for all man-kind...
So, like if I like crash on some strange planet that just so happens to have ore-rich rocks a N/O^2 atmosphere and plenty of organic materials (damn, no matches) - I could then recreate civilization from the ground up. Minus a few bombs and things...
That would be cool. Standard Technology Templates.
You would think this would be something Wikipedia or How Stuff Works would get into.
Trust me, it's nothing more than a PR ploy to generate more grant money.
First of all, his brilliant MIT students have succeeded in little more than building some very simple objects out of polymer cutouts that inevitably betrayed their 2-dimensional origins. Any idiot could do a much better (and cheaper/easier) job with a jigsaw and some plywood.
For example, one of his students demonstrated his "cutting edge" bicycle design that was nothing more than a bike body cut out of a sheet of polymer and fitted with conventional bike parts. Wow!!!
I can really see some third world country investing tens of thousands in that kind of fabrication when they could do it with conventional (and much more effective) milling techniques for a fraction of the cost (which would produce more durable, much cheaper results).
As for the assertion that we will one day be able to build anything with personal fabrication machines...well, that's so laughable I won't even bother addressing it.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Worse than that, when you try to get close enough to them to put on the psychopathy-removal brain-rewriter nanohelmet, Republicans get squirrely and call you a fag.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Canada? But the discussion is about wood prices that are too high. Canada's currently enduring US trade sanctions on the grounds that we sell our wood too cheaply.
That, mind you, is softwood.
Most scarcity in the world is on purpose. The economic conditions are often the result of paying off a debt that the government of a country encurred without the will of the people and not to benefit them. Also, poverty and starvation are a good means of countrol.
If poverty and starvation were ended, you could not have the disparity and strife that is so profitable for the elites who profit from it. Maid service and yacht prices would go up.
Everyone really needs to read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" to understand how the world really works.
It hasn't been about a shortage of resources for at least 50 years.
I'm also sure that having a "Fab anything device" will be illegal if it did not include a copyright infringement prevention database and oversight connection that would allow users to pay the appropriate fee to reproduce someone elses design. All designs in the future will be owned by someone -- and if you do have a unique design, it will have to be registered with the patent office (with a yearly maintenance fee) before you could use it.
The world is controlled by oil and copyrights, in the future it will be copyrighted genes and water. Copyright pirates will be shown in movies as the most dangerous and evil of scum--oh, well they already are. But in the future, they will be synonimous with terrorists.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Yeah, I mean I use my printer to print my wallpapers. I don't buy any newspapers or books I just print them. Same with posters and artwork hanging on the walls.. No, wait..
[I'm already doing it]
:-
The argument is more one of the use of printing as a means of manufacture. Whether that is in the home place or mass production of goods. The best example at this moment of mass production via printing is the work being done on printed electronics and the use of flexographic printing and other techniques to produce RFID tags, sensors etc. Printing is very good for mass production - as per your examples of newspapers and wallpaper - it may well become a viable means of mass producing electronic components and other systems.
For more information on this see the work of Professor Bruce Kahn, Rochester Institute of technology as well as the other research labs around the world (company and university).
[Grant Mongering]
Now, for my favourite part - some gentle ribbing of those who see things in black and white and are certain of what is going to happen.
Dear Eric,
Thank you for your future prediction that "As for the assertion that we will one day be able to build anything with personal fabrication machines...well, that's so laughable I won't even bother addressing it."
Given that the negative assertion breaks no physical laws, then your comment has the future potential to be included in the list of other people's completely wrong absolute predictions for the future. Such predictions famously include
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."-Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". - Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
- Simon
That's amazing... absolutely amazing. I can't believe that you believe your own bs, and by the +5 Interesting obviously others do aswell. It's when people say things like "1% of the human race has a mental defect that amounts to having no conscience" that I think our society must be completely screwed to have people believing such crap. You're like that truck driver who escaped from iraqi terrorists and said how he knew he couldn't show fear to them, because that's what terrorists live for, they'd have killed him if he did. You see everyone against you as mindless psychopaths who's only wish is to ruin your life.