The future, today (maybe)
Some news items from the future:
Synthetic oil fermented from crop waste using genetically modified e. coli — looks like someone in Silicon Valley's decided that $140/barrel crude is a good enough reason to fund a dash for Oil 2.0. (Let's hope it's not snake oil or another long scam like the car that runs on water: carbon-neutral synthetic oil is exactly what we need right now.)
Meanwhile, here's a new spin on an old material: paper is the new cast iron, or so it seems; cellulose molecules extracted from wood pulp can be processed into a material (dubbed "nanopaper" by its inventors) with a tensile strength of 214 gPa (compared to 250 gPa for steel and 130 for cast iron). More here.
(Random thought: right now, most 3D printers, including reprap, manufacture items by extruding layers of plastics such as polycaprolactone or polylactic acid. These substances are useful but they're soft and they lack tensile strength. If it turns out to be possible to deposit nanopaper in layers, the future may turn out to be made of papier maché.)
Mind you, not everything that comes out of a rapid prototyper is good. Here's the Magpul FMG-9 prototype: and here's some more. Is it a flashlight? Is it a submachine gun? Who knows? Here's another baroque weapon that probably started life on a rapid prototyping machine. If reprap-like machines with strong materials turn out to be cheap and easy, then never mind licensing handguns — we're going to have a problem with home-made crew-served weapons. (Reminder: yr. hmbl. crspndnt. lives in a country where, for better or worse, possession of a pistol by anyone who's not in the police or military carries a mandatory 5-year minimum prison sentence. The implications of rapid prototyping machines for this sort of legislative environment probably parallel the effects of peer to peer networking on music industry cartels.)
What kind of society are we likely to get if it turns out that yes, we're hitting peak oil round about now, but that it's possible to process random junk biomass into crude oil for $100 a barrel, and $1000 will buy you a machine that you plug into your laptop and that can make, well, just about any small macroscopic structure you can design, out of feedstock derived from biosynthetic crude oil or woodchips, or paper?
Comments
Available to download already: RepRappable solar collector system. Just add stirling engine.
On the broader point, "anarchy" might cover it - either in the sense most people use the word (DR Congo, but everyone's got manpads and basic drones), or in the sense *anarchists* use it.
Completely off topic, here's some World of JENNIFER MORGUE watch. Inexplicably tiny deep-sea subsurface organisms that may form a community of "metacells", each one made up of several individuals.
Posted by: Alex | June 16, 2008 2:15 PM
Or, relating to the AI topic last post:
Feed: KurzweilAI.net
Title: Roadrunner supercomputer puts research at a new scale
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers are using the lab's new Roadrunner petaflop supercomputer to model the human visual system, as a test. The "PetaVision" simulaton models more than a billion visual neurons, reaching a new computing performance record of 1.144 petaflop/s. Based on the results of these trials, Los Alamos researchers believe they can study the entire human visual cortex in real time. Applications could include "smart" cameras that can recognize danger, or an autopilot system for automobiles that could take over for incapacitated drivers in complex situations such as navigating dense urban traffic. See also: Military Supercomputer Sets Record (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news132497981.html)
Posted by: Michael | June 16, 2008 2:37 PM
Speaking as a Materials Scientist, properties like yield strength and elastic modulus are quite important... and to say that it has the "toughness of cast iron" is right out.
Posted by: B.Dewhirst | June 16, 2008 2:48 PM
3D printers can print metals too; the raw material is metal dust. A thin layer is put down and a laser scans over it. turning on over the places where the part is to exist. The laser sinters the metal, effectively welding the grains together into a structure that has the metal's electrical and heat conductivity, but is lighter because of the voids between grains. It's not as strong as solid metal, but stronger then the plastics that are used in 3D printers. Currenty laser sintering machines are more expensive than plastic extruders, but that's mostly the cost of the laser; the rest of the machine is very similar.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | June 16, 2008 2:50 PM
>> "What kind of society...?"
One that un-learns human factors. Have you seen some of the crap people knit?
Posted by: case | June 16, 2008 3:18 PM
The takeaway should be that the disruptions caused by the Computer (and Internet) Age to non-scarce resources (media, software, etc.) are coming to the World of Atoms. Computers plus networks plus reprap makes weird things happen real fast.
We can fret over the details, but the big picture is pretty clear IMO. Absent super heavy-handed legislation Real Soon Now, this horse will be out of the barn (for better AND worse) way before anyone "in charge" even starts to grok the consequences.
Posted by: Ken Kennedy | June 16, 2008 3:21 PM
"Let's hope it's not snake oil or another long scam like the car that runs on water..."
And sodium and/or lithium borohydride (probably), which admittedly sounds way less sexy. Not sure I'd classify it as a "scam" though, just overhyped.
Posted by: Stephen Shevlin | June 16, 2008 3:29 PM
Oil 2.0 beats boiled Whale as a fuel source but does paper maché furniture mean we are heading back to the Victorian era.
Posted by: maggie | June 16, 2008 3:42 PM
It's nanotech, Jim, but not as we know it.
I can barely wait for the new online iKea, where every wardrobe, chair and vase costs $0.99/download.
As for Oil 2.0 - weren't we already producing methane from biomass, like, last century or so? Petrol to LPG engine conversion is trivial, and you can easily adapt the old infrastructure to support the new fuel - most countries in Europe already did it, to my knowledge. The problem was (and remains) the scalability of the whole process.
Posted by: Laur | June 16, 2008 4:36 PM
For one thing, the Open Source movement becomes 3D in a big way, and a lot more demographics become interested. This may be the death-blow to closed source culture, unless something else comes along to put it out of its misery first.
And it's like nanoassembler training wheels.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 4:49 PM
Also: the copyright laws? You ain't seen nothing yet. As a trainee IP barrister of my acquaintance put it, this stuff is going to do for patent, trade secret, and IP law in general what p2p file-sharing did for copyright law.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2008 4:52 PM
I'm a little concerned about what happens when some Brazilians gets their hands on oil-shitting bacteria and turn all of Amazonia into feedstock for it.
Posted by: Adam Rice | June 16, 2008 5:01 PM
This (minus the fuel bit) reminds me of Cory Doctorow's story Printcrime.
Posted by: R.K. Ussery | June 16, 2008 5:20 PM
Bespokery and customization dislodge brand-loyalty for all extrudable commodities, and all the imaginary value imparted by brand evaporates (good riddance). Hopefully this catches on in areas that remain unaffected by extrusion.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 5:23 PM
Kids get (and get to design) totally wikked toys.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 5:30 PM
On the other hand, I wonder what happens to nanopaper when it gets wet? And, so far, rapid prototyping in hard materials is a rare, expensive technology. It's relatively easy to make castings from soft materials through a lost wax process, but that does take some skill; it's still easier to machine most parts.
Posted by: Randolph | June 16, 2008 5:38 PM
How about something simple?
Fitting shoes and clothes.
Posted by: tp1024 | June 16, 2008 5:39 PM
tp1024: if you think clothing and shoes are simple you obviously don't share accomodation with someone who makes her own.
(I suspect those teraherz wavelength body scanners that are being rolled out at airports are going to start showing up on the high street in the next couple of years, so you can have off-the-rail clothes tailored to your precise body shape in a factory somewhere, but despite the availability of knitting machines, we're a long way from having home fabricators that fab fabric.)
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2008 5:45 PM
Ooh, Santa Claus machine. Another SF concept after the invention of which the future ceases to have any reliable predictabilty.
Is it Singularity Month or something?
:)
Posted by: GregLondon | June 16, 2008 5:50 PM
What kind of society? The right one. I guess it's my redneck roots showing, but I really like the idea of self-reliance and decentralization. I think the world's going to get a lot bigger, and frankly, it's about damn time.
Posted by: Michael Roberts | June 16, 2008 5:55 PM
Alex@1: Regarding the nanobe stuff, look at the date. Nanobes are... equivocal at best and most people don't think they actually exist.
(For a nice horrible example of what might happen if they did exist and we acted stupid enough around them, see Peter Watts's _Starfish_ trilogy.)
Posted by: Nix | June 16, 2008 5:56 PM
Charlie @18 The fashion industry has been toying with 3d scans for years. There is a problem with the armpit/ groin areas in fitting this way. Are you scanned doing star jumps or standing to attention? Okay there are algorithms dating back to the victorians to solve this, but they have to be applied .
The problem is the bespoke-ness of clothes that fit. Why do you think a hand made suit costs? The apparel industry makes its money on the fitting as many pattern pieces on to a length of cloth as possible and cutting out a six inch pile with a laser. The more banana/star shaped the pattern pieces the more waste. That's why you can't walk in cheap trousers or lift up your arms in cheap suits. Its also why you find clothes made up of hundreds of little bits, it reduces the banana problem (all polygons can be made from triangles). And conversely why NEW LOOk suits featured 10 yrds of fabric in the late '40s.
Since the invention of the sewing machine * the cost of construction is negligible compared to the setting/cutting out. Which can't be easily automated as outlined above for bespoke-ness.
As to general lack of fit. Apart from meanness of cloth or 'there's no call for it'. The industry is still using 1950's measurements of the population and we all know how much we have changed shape since then.
*The invention of the sewing machine was stalled for a long time, because people were trying to reproduce the action of hand sewing. The final suite of designs involves processes that have little relation to hand sewing. The first machines produced chain stitch, and were used to make uniforms for the French navy, unfortunately if the seam was damaged it completely unraveled…
Posted by: maggie | June 16, 2008 6:15 PM
Yes, I know it is not that simple.
Well, this was the same kind of "simple" as in finding a cure for the common cold. It's not that you couldn't live without it, or that it would make such a huge difference that spending a few billion Euros on it was a no brainer, but it is so convenient that it MUST show up as soon as the technology is available. So it should be a good indicator of progress.
But then again, I think that this time the problem really is a lack of trying. Except for some clothes and items that are liable to be out of fashion after the 6 weeks it takes to ship them from [insert current developing country here] to the rest of the world, almost all clothes are made in remote places, in fordistic low wage environments that offer zero customization and almost zero automation - as that would only drive up initial investment costs that have to be paid for with money that just isn't there. (And no, almost no matter how high oil prices will go, ships are reliable and cheap means of transport, and nothing short of a 100 fold increase in marine piracy will change that.)
I'm pretty sure that if there was something like a textile industry left in Europe, clothes on demand would be here rather sooner than later. You don't have to make them at home, some things just don't make sense in terms of economies of scale anyway. I don't know which ones though. Anything that is small enough and needed in small quantities should work out.
Posted by: tp1024 | June 16, 2008 6:17 PM
The implications for the third world are staggering. Especially considering your previous post on flash mobs/modular housing. Fabbable playpumps alone could save millions of lives. If the fabs are fed by junk biomass and solar power they're almost totally self-sufficient. Farming and irrigation implements. Man/animal-powered farming machinery. Bikes. PC/laptop cases. As far as the OLPC vision, unfabbable componentry is still the bottleneck, but it becomes a helluva lot cheaper (sub $100?).
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 6:25 PM
tp1024 @ 23 I wouldn't count several hundred industrial sewing machines zero automation.
Fashion is one of difficult to define ones. It takes two years to produce 'something that will be out of fashion within 6 weeks.' If your a teenager who cares about what their peers think your going to by clothes for pennies and customise them. That's one of the founding definitions of teenage.
The textile industry in Europe concentrates on high value, low unit number, because that's the only way they can afford to pay their work force is with lots of shiny value added.
About ten years ago Sultex developed a brand new way of weaving x3 faster than standard, hoping to preserve the weaving industry in Europe (more out put for the same staff). I guess china is their biggest customer now
http://www.sultex.com/index/multiphase_weaving_machines.htm
I guess a five bed knitting machine and a cunning programmer would be the best way forward for bespoke soft 3D things, both cost money, and as Charlie said knit isn't for every thing.
Unless some AI guy in is black t-shirt and jeans is going to spend a few years learning an expert system in sewing the best way to get bespoke clothing at affordable prices is to re-negotiate the cost of living.
Posted by: maggie | June 16, 2008 6:49 PM
On clothing:
tp1024: You don't have to make them at home.
What if:
* You are a non-standard size? (As Maggie commented, current clothing sizes on the UK high streets are calculated to fit 80% of the population who were measured for the sizing charts ... in the early 1950s!)
* You want something that's properly made out of good quality fabric but don't want to pay someone else to do the work at developed-world labour prices? (Again: much high street fashion clothing is abominably badly sewn and finished precisely because it's designed to be discarded and replaced after 6 weeks.)
* The particular item you want is out of fashion and not likely to come back for 5-10 years?
Last week I went shopping for a black velvet jacket to replace the one I'd been using for two years. "Oh, they went out about nine months ago," said the nice man at the suit shop. Feh. I don't care about what the rest of the population want to be seen in, I care about my appearance, and insofar as I am not a fashion herd follower, this offers endless opportunities for annoyance.
Anyway. The market is under no obligation to supply me -- or you -- with precisely what I -- or you -- need. Periodically the fabric manufacturers decide to change colour on us, and the clothing manufacturers decide to switch us to a new style; at which point, everything turns beige, or straight-leg jeans become unavailable because everybody is expected to wear flares.
And thereon probably hangs a thread.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2008 7:11 PM
Nifty (in a scary sort of way) though that FMG-9 may be, it still uses a fairly conventional automatic pistol for the working parts, and doesn't seem to be anything that would be beyond a skilled machinist with a half-decent workshop. I'm not sure the ability of people to make guns in their home office would change the law much mind, although I would imagine it would increase the number of armed police officers.
As for textiles and the fashion cycle, ISTR Alex talking about companies re-opening Yorkshire textile mills to be able to get designs to market at Topshop and H&M and the like in about 6 weeks without having to wait the same time again for the clothes to arrive from China.
Posted by: Jakob | June 16, 2008 7:17 PM
Tremble for the future day of Peak Woodchip! It will be at least as terrible as the dark day of Peak Whale!
Posted by: Grant Gould | June 16, 2008 7:22 PM
> The textile industry in Europe concentrates on high value, low unit number, because that the only way they can afford to pay their work force is with lots of shiny value added.
Exactly, but that is mostly because there are cheap alternatives in developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa that can undercut European prices any time - without prior investment. Without cheap imports they could probably produce clothes locally at reasonable prices (probably much less than a 50% mark up, due to higher productivity - with adequate investment) and even provide jobs to mostly unemployed people without adequate education for other jobs (part of today's reality). Higher prices would also mean that fewer used clothes are exported to the least developed countries - that have destroyed the local textile industry there. (In about the same way that imports of cheap subsidized food did to their farming. That said, I should add that I'm all in favour of globalisation, I just don't make a religion out of it.)
Posted by: tp1024 | June 16, 2008 7:25 PM
I've done some thinking about the future of rapid prototyping and the "Boutique Economy". The IP problems are a nightmare, though there would be an interesting new niche for open source designs.
But it would basically make all the problems with have with software and media piracy, and extend them to physical objects too. Anything that's designed for a rapid prototype machine can be copied and recreated.
I hadn't thought about the application of the technology for criminal weapons production though. Probably because legal and illegal weapons are already cheaply available here. It won't be the end of the world, but it may give police a lot of trouble... Though I can't wait to see some of the insane hillbilly guns rednecks design...
If the technology becomes advanced enough, there are some serious military applications. What happens if Country A steals the fabrication files for Country B's new tank? Or how about on-site arming of troops? Fly in your soldiers and manufacture their gear on the battlefield...
Posted by: Andrew G. | June 16, 2008 7:27 PM
People, come back to the real world, please. No way home manufacturing is going to cost less than a mass-production in a foreseeable future. No way you could build any sophisticated weapons like a tank with this stuff.
Posted by: Anatoly Meller | June 16, 2008 7:37 PM
Charlie:
> You are a non-standard size?
Check. (Just a tat too small to be considered a grown-up male by the industry.)
> Good quality at developed-world labour prices
Would be much lower with economies of scale.
> is out of fashion and not likely to come back for 5-10 years?
All the time.
But what if we were talking about books? If a book is out of print, has a readership of barely above one, thus very unlikely to get back into print, and you don't quite feel like going to a copy shop and get a shoddy bound block of paper that defies the notion of "book" in all but the letters-printed-on-paper sense at developed world prices - what do you do?
Well, if you happen to want to have the right book, just go and order it at books on demand - who clearly do have to deal with developed world wages and still manage to be not that much more expensive than others. Having the same for clothes - clothes on demand if you will - would be a start. (I want that pant[shoe] design, just in size S[40].)
Posted by: tp1024 | June 16, 2008 7:40 PM
At my house we recently acquired a state of the art device, I'm sure many of you will be jealous.
The system can generate a myriad of clothing designs, has an intelligent interface capable of taking basic orders in and can process raw food supplies into comfort food.
We can power our new device on tea, short bread and fifteen to one.
We have named it Grandma. During the purchase phase we managed to recycle a house for a new family and reduce our carbon footprint due to lack of travel on a Sunday.
I recommend a Grandma replicator, ours is the Val Doonican 5000i - it's the future.
Posted by: Graham | June 16, 2008 7:44 PM
You build DRM into the fabs.
Right from the start.
So ther's no equivalent to the bog standard MP3 player.
Guns, I expect revolvers. The springs in an auto pistol are critical, and need very specific characteristics.
And any sort of locked breech is going to need fairly specialised materials. A revolver, you can use a Whitworth barrel to get around the rifling problem, and you can make the chamber walls and barrel much thicker.
But where do you get the ammo?
And a harmonica gun would be another way to get around some of the limits.
Flintlocks?
Posted by: Dave Bell | June 16, 2008 7:49 PM
Better plumbing/glue/duct-tape for interfacing preexisting but incompatible hardware. Like real-world Perl for DIY projects.
Items are extruded as a solid unit, so seams disappear.
With enough power and feedstock you can have (power of 2) fabs in logarithmic time, cranking out an ass ton of whatever. (struts and panels for geodesic domes, ball bin, instant Carnival, massive buoy platforms, mega-scale food processing)
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 8:05 PM
You build DRM into the fabs.
Right from the start.
So ther's no equivalent to the bog standard MP3 player.
Guns, I expect revolvers. The springs in an auto pistol are critical, and need very specific characteristics.
And any sort of locked breech is going to need fairly specialised materials. A revolver, you can use a Whitworth barrel to get around the rifling problem, and you can make the chamber walls and barrel much thicker.
But where do you get the ammo?
And a harmonica gun would be another way to get around some of the limits.
Flintlocks?
Posted by: Dave Bell | June 16, 2008 8:06 PM
I think you mean MPa, not gPa. Don't know what gPa is but it wouldn't be much.
Posted by: Ed | June 16, 2008 8:06 PM
It will be particularly interesting when these devices are starting to emerge, but still only offer marginal "print quality" compared to traditional products, but as such low cost that they really start to permeate. how many people will print themselves a "low resolution" but open source running shoe rather than going to foot locker and shelling out 100 dollars for shoes with springs built into the heel. We may temporarily end up with a generation of the worst dressed kids of all time. Maybe it will become fashionable.
Posted by: Ben Stryker | June 16, 2008 8:14 PM
The big problem is that we won't have enough "random junk biomass". As Adam rice points out, the technology would have rather bad results if used in the wrong way. A worst case scenario I can envisage is that oil prices keep climbing, and this technology becomes widespread just as a large number of countries/ societies realise they desperately need some oil like stuff, so ruin their local biosphere in order to stay alive another few years.
As for guns, you can have single shot ones firing black powder right now. So all you need to do is stick a bunch of tubes together and hey presto, a multiple fire gun.
What I'd like would be a replica of one from the late medieval period, I believe is tas 3 or 4 barrels, with holes drilled such that you load each barrel with multiple charges, aligned with the holes. Then you ignites one, it fires through the hole, and ignites the next one. So you get a barrage of shot over a few seconds.
In fact given what I know right now I could probably be arrested for thought crime, and I don't even know quite as much as I can learn. Plus I'm planning on making a Greek Fire engine for next year, got to cement my mad scientist reputation.
Posted by: guthrie | June 16, 2008 8:20 PM
The FMG9 add is interesting insofar as it suggests a level of paranoia waaaayyy beyond that which I consider acceptable or necessary or desirable. Good thing I live in the UK.
One of my hobbies is medieval re-enacting, and I'm spending about 90 to have a seamstress make a knee length gown (1460's or so) in nice blue wool. It is made to measure, although is a comparatively trivial piece of work compared to my arming doublet, which is being made up after measurements have been taken and actual cloth patterns made of my body and torso.
I would imagine that this sort of technology will lead to some interesting control measures. What I have been finding out, whilst trying to re-create some medieval technologies in my back garden, and generally fiddle about with fun stuff. (Whats the point of being an adult in your own flat if you can't do things that you thought would be cool when you were a child?)
Basically, getting the correct material can be rather hard. Finding a catalogue that will sell you tin, or sulphur, or whatever, is difficult. I suppose if you wanted to make your own loudspeakers, you could rapid prototype the actual body and frame inside, but the speaker itself would have to come from a catalogue.
So what we might see is gvt and others attempting to control the technology by limiting access to the necessary parts and materials, which would work for a large chunck of the populace, and the growth of many little owners groups and clubs, with their own online forums where they pass tips and hints and designs. It'll be a bit like model railway enthusiasts for example. Certainly people will be trying to hack their prototyper.
Then what will happen is that some teenagers will prototype themselves something like the FMG9 and get shot by the police, and there will be the usual outcry. Add that to the copyright and patent laws, and you'll find that all these machines will be DRM'd to heck.
Posted by: guthrie | June 16, 2008 8:42 PM
Anatoly @31: Of course rapid prototyping is going to cost more than mass production. That's not the point. The point is, it gives you a level of control and/or customization over the product that isn't available from the mass market suppliers; it fills the opposite side of the balance from economies-of-scale with tailored-to-meet-exact-needs.
Dave @34: you build DRM into the Fabs. Right from the start. Too late, they're already out there. (One of my mates is working on a startup with one right now.) As for your take on guns, you're thinking of sophisticated stuff; I'm thinking about Saturday night specials using unconventional components and materials, manufactured as a single lump, designed to be discarded after use (and ideally biodegradable -- to remove the evidence).
Ed @37: Typo: should be MPa.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2008 9:10 PM
So, instead of scaling up the fuel-producing vats, how about we scale down? Sure would be nice if the contents of my home septic tank could be routed to a bio-fuel fermenter. The only danger would be accidentally injesting the modified E. coli. If they established themselves among your gut flora, you'd end up farting diesel.
Posted by: Nick | June 16, 2008 9:26 PM
Guthrie @ 40: I live in the US, and also consider the FMG9 to be over the top paranoia...
As for police shooting people with home made guns, the more worrying thing would be people manufacturing guns that didn't look like guns. For the most part that's illegal now, but imagine people making guns that looked like ipods or packs of gum in their machines.
Posted by: Andrew G. | June 16, 2008 9:28 PM
well, as it turns out, here in new zealand a company seems to have cracked just that.
these guys install these scalable filters in sewerage ponds for the natural algae (that the sewerage firms normally pay someone to clean away). the algae is high in lipid (?) oils, which makes biodiesel. the advertising says they could supply the country's entire diesel needs off the current supply of poo.
why spend money to harvest your biomass when humans are producing thousands of litres every day?
Posted by: che tibby | June 16, 2008 9:39 PM
Andrew- I should have made it more clear- I was thinking of teenagers making gun look a likes similar to those in the film of the day, or TV series everyone watches, or suchlike. Add a cap firing mechanism or something which makes gun like noises, and some people will get confused.
I have a giles annual from the 1950's which is based on the idea of the USSR producing small spy guns hidden in packets of cigarettes...
I think it would be very easy to make such a hidden gun using home made explosives and a carefully manufactured cellulose tube, for one off use. And then if you use the right kind of ammunition...
Posted by: guthrie | June 16, 2008 9:42 PM
Perhaps it's time to consider the "proposed spam solution" checklist to replicator technologies.
I'm still particularly fond of "( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes". It would be fun (for some definition of "fun") to let loose something content-modifying like the Wazzu virus (sadly, google isn't finding as many documents infected these days). Maybe it prints IR-visible 2D barcodes---on parts designed to fall off!
We're pretty sure this future doesn't have an analog of the yellow dots (both scanning and printing)?
Posted by: Jay Carlson | June 16, 2008 10:03 PM
Making guns:
It's easy to make a gun. The tech and materials to make one at home can be bought on-line -- just look in any model engineering catalogue or on-line supplier for a small hobby lathe, suitable drills and cutters and some pieces of steel (I get a lot of my raw metal stock for home engineering projects off the streets as litter). There are a few obvious bits that need really good steel (the barrel and bolt) but they are easily sourced too (excuse me if I don't list URLs here) and there are ways around that if you know what you're doing. You don't need a "replicator" unless you want to make several units all the same.
What you'll end up with is primitive (single shot, inaccurate) but capable of delivering stored energy at a distance, just like a "real" gun. Then again you could deliver the same amount of energy to a human being with a good swing with a baseball bat, or even a sword (which can be and often are made in hobbyist workshops).
There are bows and crossbows, darts and lots of other non-chemical projectile weapons which can easily be made in home workshops, but there is no real need to do so since they can be bought in shops or over the Internet without many restrictions.
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | June 16, 2008 10:10 PM
Math underlies software for the universal auto-tailor. See, for instance:
arXiv:0805.3791 [ps, pdf, other]
Title: Isonemal Prefabrics with Perpendicular Axes of Symmetry
Authors: R.S.D. Thomas
Comments: 38 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables
Subjects: Combinatorics (math.CO)
It has really pretty pictures, convinced me that there is valid mathematical definition of "Satin" and "twill." But it takes a lot of Group Theory to understand, which most Fashion Design faculty seem
(alas) to lack.
Open Source fab may free us from the alien culture so well portrayed in "The Devil Wears Prada."
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | June 16, 2008 10:12 PM
Building guns: IIRC there are fairly complete instructions for a muzzle loading shotgun in Bevis, the Story of a Boy.
Posted by: Alan Braggins | June 16, 2008 10:47 PM
There'll be an awful lot of guys w/ the nickname 'Lefty' if they use fabbers to make guns with as little understanding of the underlying science as the average meth-cooker. And I kind of assume we're talking about a substantially overlapping set.
Also, why aren't we rendering dead people for their oil? Only kidding, unless there's money in it. The reverse Dune analogy makes me chuckle.
Posted by: Brett L | June 16, 2008 11:00 PM
If they established themselves among your gut flora, you'd end up farting diesel.
I think that already happened to me back when I was a student - is anyone researching that at Royal Holloway?
Regarding European textiles, exhibit A is Zara, which makes all its clothes in Asturias and the Basque country. They have reliable long-term suppliers there, as the Toyota production system prescribes, and they can turn models around quicker than the ship from China gets there. The mill the Chinese textiles trade association bought is in Wigan, not in Yorkshire.
Mind you, I was shopping for a new pair of trainers the other day, and I would happily have paid more to specify the details I couldn't find because of some knobber's second-guessing of what ought to be in fashion. (Khaki suede Adidas Samba with white 3 stripe can't be impossible, right? I used to have a pair.)
Regarding firearms, quite advanced ones are already made by artisanal workshops without the benefit of reprapping, or indeed computers. The Viet Minh copied Thompson guns and M-1 carbines, although they replaced them with captured genuine stock as fast as they could bully the peasant militia into handing theirs over and reporting them as lost to the Americans.
Then, of course, they swapped them as fast as possible for Soviet kit. And Afghan/Pakistani gunsmiths are quite well known for copying AKs and Soviet machine guns with their own tools. Imagine what they could do with quick lightweight fabrication and....electronics. In fact, the "Afghan lathe" was a concept the RepRap team thought of using early on - a drill aimed at an angle to the work, the work being turned on a shaft. Vik Olliver, I think, had seen this in the NWFP.
Repraps, so far, could lay down the wiring, and the logic could be done with the guts of something else. Iraqi insurgents seem pretty good at firmware hacking.
Posted by: Alex | June 16, 2008 11:29 PM
guthrie@40:
"Add that to the copyright and patent laws, and you'll find that all these machines will be DRM'd to heck."
How exactly would the DRM-ing prevent instantiation of off-the-internet (with automatic design obfuscation to confound contraband recognizers) or custom designs? Is the idea that access to generic fabricators would be severely restricted, with access to replicators of approved designs more generally available? This is the common SF solution, but would it actually work? The continuing arms races we've seen with computer viruses and spam suggest that an absolute technical solution is unlikely.
Posted by: Bill Arnold | June 16, 2008 11:29 PM
Got a little ahead of myself in the latter part of 35. Scale isn't what this is good for (yet). Especially since fabs aren't completely bootstrappable.
I'm sure a number of Open Schematics repositories will pop up. Electronic gadget re-skinning and re-mixing; housewares; Green DIY smart-car projects with lots of fabbable components; the hobbyist robotics and RC airplane scene, ahem, taking off (you called that one in "Accelerando").
There will suddenly be a demand for 3d models of objects that already exist, so there will be a need for affordable 3d imagers (or at least good software that can take photos of an object from multiple angles and stitch them together into a hi-res vertex map). And the legal issues behind the resultant schematics? Ye gods...
Actually, the consumer market for all kinds of unfabbable components will skyrocket. Motors, servos, FPGAs, LEDs, switches, etc.
I imagine assembly-centers will spring up, similar to copy centers now, that have the fabs and imagers and many of the unfabbable components and knowledgeable staff (open 24 hours, free coffee), and so on. Hell, maybe Radio Shack has legs yet.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 16, 2008 11:34 PM
The FMG9 is cute, as others have said, but if you want an SMG that's easy to make nothing beats the Sten.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten_gun
Can be made with pressed metal and spot welding in five hours. Or maybe quicker with cellulose and super glue. Ammunition remains the problem however. I can see a few problems with trying to "print" any kind of volatile material.
Future Watch 1: Darwin Award for first attempt at printing nitroglycerine.
Future Watch 2: Super glue banned by authorities "for its obvious terrorist applications"
Wandering off guns and humour and back onto SF ground: Harry Harrison did a nice time travel tale (A Rebel in Time) based on a Confederate stealing a Sten and its blueprints and going back to change the outcome of the Civil War, pursued by an African-American Yankee, natch. Written a full decade before Turtledove made the subject matter his own. Anyone else remember it?
Posted by: AH | June 16, 2008 11:38 PM
AH @54:
I'm sure the authorities will look benignly on as home fertilizer stills for high grade nitrates spring up. I mean, what's the worst a guy could do with ammonium nitrate and (bio)diesel? Much less TNT or RDX.
And isn't super glue already banned by the authorities as part of the eternal War on Drugs?
Posted by: Brett L | June 17, 2008 12:06 AM
- more textile industry rant -
The global industrial process was enabled from the late part of the 18th century in North East England. Cheap cotton from the southern states. (The cotton gin, eliminated the problem of pesky slaves not working hard.) Water power, the spinning mule and 'automatic' weaving machines (6 -12 machines:1 person) in one building. A captive market in Europe and India (which had its native textile tradition destroyed by the British.)
The British entered the market as pile them high, sell them cheap, but then they had an expanding population to clothe. They lost the edge to Germany etc at the end of the nineteenth century because they wern't hungry enough and failed to invest in new plant. (That's the short answer.) When the industry collapsed in the 1959 lots of plant was shipped out to the far east, I think.
Before this time a significant fraction of the population spent a significant fraction of their working lives making enough fabric for their own use.
-/ more textile rant -
As for Fashion… Traditional it was either what Grandmother would abhor or the last generations sporting togs. Consider that most of us wander around in what a generation ago considered underwear and work clothes that aphorism works. It's all about the yoof.
Today there are people paid to predict what people will be wearing in two years so material can be designed, woven and made up. (That's why Charlie's jacket was so last year.) Cunningly what ever is predicted is made, but not necessarily bought.
Posted by: maggie | June 17, 2008 12:30 AM
tp1024 @23, almost all my clothes are made in Cotati, CA, and my underclothes are all made in Seattle. Yes, I pay more. I wish I was still able to sew, since it's difficult to find nice clothes in large sizes.
Graham @33, LOL But what's fifteen to one?
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | June 17, 2008 12:35 AM
You can already make yourself a lethal backyard weapon with bits and pieces from a hardware shop. Go read Ken Macleod's recent post about Roman catapults. Then I think "tension catapult" is what you need to ask Google about. Even that nasty yellow clothesline rope is stronger than the hemp the Romans had. If you splashed out on 10 metres of Kevlar from a chandlery, you'd have the stored-energy equivalent of a sniper rifle.
These things are controlled by social factors, not by technological limitations. Someone slightly organised could get something much more potent than stones and Molotov cocktails into the average angry mob, it just hasn't happened yet.
Re: Biomass to oil. Our civilisation needs high-energy nitrogen fertilisers MORE than it needs 747s and airconditioners. Would anyone care to do a back-of-the envelope calculation of the energetics of running the Haber process to grow enough crops to make all that "waster" biomass? Although the sewage angle is interesting...
Posted by: Chris L | June 17, 2008 12:46 AM
Well, David Axe did report this last April:
Posted by: Jay Carlson | June 17, 2008 1:00 AM
@ 56 And we haven't even mentioned the fibres the textiles are made out. Technical fabrics have come along way from the 100% Nylon drip dry days. You have to think very carefully about the design of the extrusion to make something bearable to wear, mimicking what's nice about natural fibres.
In these days of global-flimflam it's impossible to go back to 100% natural fibres, unless you radically cut demand. Not enough space in the world (even without the competition from bio-fuels) and cotton for a start is one of the most un-green crops in the world (spot the Aral Sea anyone?). Don't burn bacteria poo spin it!
Hemp might be okay - difficult to make smooth shiny white sheets though and you have to build a processing industry from scratch. (Hint the fibres are as tall as the plant, -- macro-nanopaper.)
Posted by: maggie | June 17, 2008 1:11 AM
maggie@60: Most of my clothes that are prone to wearing out (and therefore the ones I buy most often) are at least 50% cotton, and I don't think I'm unusual in that regard. The clothes I have that more mostly synthetic fibres are things like rain jackets and warm tops, which last for years.
Others: I dunno about the 1950s sizings. I'm taller than the average man of 1955, and I generally have to buy the smallest pair of trousers on the rack...
Posted by: Chris L | June 17, 2008 1:27 AM
Chris L @ 61 It's really easy to forget all the other textile applications other than the clothes and bed linen we see every day. Once upon a time all thin flappy stuff was made of nature fibres: Sails, awnings, tents, belting, bags, upholstery, ribbon, nets, sieves and filters and an infinity variety of string. Without mentioning cunning things you get now, like knitted metal catalysts, braided cores for carbon composites.
General Comment -- Use life: higher quality/more expensive fabric -> more expensive clothes which last longer. Poly cotton mixes may contain low quality cotton. How often do you use your rain jacket / warm tops? How worn out are your t-shirts before you reuse/recycle?
I guess you don't eat many doughnuts if you have a small waist size. Leg length is easier to compensate for than the complex geometry of middle-age spread, (she says politely) which changes shape depending on whether you are standing up or not. Also biology means that profile doesn't scale as you go up a dress/pant size.
Posted by: maggie | June 17, 2008 2:54 AM
I'd be more impressed if the demo guy for the FMG-9 didn't look like a cross between a mall ninja and IT geek.
OK, as to fabbing, this could get interesting. High density energy storage (batteries, fuel and explosives) are going to be the big issue here because they would be dangerous to fabricate. And expensive.
Still, the idea of a batch of terrorists assembling a bunch of cheap automatic weapons (and scoring the ammo somewhere) is frightening. Easier would be some sort of flamethrower for a terror weapon because you can buy gasoline (or its future equivalent) easily enough.
For less lethal options, I could see the paper model hobby leaping on this in a big way and it putting a serious, serious hurt on the gaming industry that makes miniatures.
Posted by: Trey | June 17, 2008 3:00 AM
It's pretty easy to build a device to deliver violence. That's not that interesting. What's important is the ergonomics of the device.
Consider the phenomenon of impulse downloading....
Posted by: Jay Carlson | June 17, 2008 3:18 AM
#64 -- that looks like Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener's The Year 2000, Table III, no.9:
TABLE III
Some Possible Causes of "Surprising" Changes in the Old Nations
1. Invasion and war
2. Civil strife and revolution
3. Famine
4. Pestilence
5. Despotism (persecution)
6. Natural disaster
7. Depression or economic stagnation
8. Development of "inexpensive" doomsday or near-dooms day machines
9. Development of nuclear "six-gun" weapons technology
10. Resurgence of Communism, or revival of Fascism
11. A racial, North-South, rich-poor, East-West, or other disruptive polarization
12. Economically dynamic China (~ 10 per cent per year growth)
13. Politically dynamic U.S., U.S.S.R., Japan, West Germany, Brazil, and other powers
14. New religious philosophies and/or other mass movements
15. Development of UN. or other worldwide organizations
16. Possible regional or other multinational organizations
17. Psychologically upsetting impact of new techniques, ideas, philosophies, and the like
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | June 17, 2008 4:05 AM
The injection mold plastic toy industry will be in dire straights. Archives of schematics of, say, the entire run of original Star Wars action figures could be traded on p2p networks. Transformers. G.I. Joe. Voltron etc. Nostalgia extrusion.
With touchscreen lcd's, micro form factor motherboards, keypads, card readers, etc. available on the cheap from southeast Asia there could be an explosion of bespoke hardware hackery and gadgetry enclosures -- much of it completely assembleable at your local FedEd/Kinko/FabCos. Maybe the wearable computing revolution is driven by hobbyists? After all, that shit's gonna need to fit. Custom fabbed eye-glass frames.
And you'll be able to fix a lot of devices that used to require needlessly propriety parts/accouterments. Broken vacuum cleaner? Download the schematics to all the fabbable parts of your Hoover SuckMaster 9000. Snapped a lever off your expensive espresso maker? etc. Other things: Hygiene devices, lawn/garden, bed/bath, kitchen. "Just six easy installments of $333.33! And that's not all! You also get five -- count 'em, five! -- imposing IP goons beating down your door absolutely free!"
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 4:25 AM
We've had electrochemical machining for a long time, for those that wanted to print their own machine guns. You plug in the right alloy steel and it is eroded to shape in minutes. Alloys have special characteristics so you better know what you are doing.
Posted by: wkwillis | June 17, 2008 5:06 AM
Have a gear-fetish that can only be sated by a wee desktop difference engine?
Need a Rubic's Cube now?
And, (oh man), have the hinges on your laptop gone to shit?
Stepped on your expensive headphones and snapped the frame? (done it a dozen times)
Custom Keycaps for your Model M?
Custom chassis for your Model M?
Have a clever solution to your gnarled power-strip/wall-wart/wiring underbrush?
I guess I'm thinking small here, but this stuff is fun. Plus, you GPL your schematics and the problems never need to be solved again. Plus plus, others can debug them.
Christ, and I'm supposed to be studying right now, too.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 5:34 AM
Speaking as someone who has done a bit sewing(costuming, children's theater), I'm finding it a little hard to believe these machines can 'make clothes'. Printing the pieces rather than cutting them out from a pattern, sure. But an awful lot of making clothes is in the stitching. I don't think these printers can manage that yet, and to glibly answer that sections could be glued together . . . well, I'm just a little skeptical.
And I think this is going to be the big problem with these fab schemes. No matter how you slice it, unless these machines are awfully clever, there's still going to have to be skilled assembly work. The hype at this point strikes me as similar to the notion that 'sewing machines will replace tailors.' They didn't, of course. But they did put more ambitious projects within the reach of amateurs.
Posted by: ScentOfViolets | June 17, 2008 5:45 AM
Wait a minute ... desktop analytical engine was your idea. "Singularity Sky". Heh.
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 6:00 AM
If reprap-like machines with strong materials turn out to be cheap and easy, then never mind licensing handguns — we're going to have a problem with home-made crew-served weapons.
And missiles. How much harder would it have been to invade and occupy Iraq if every backyard workshop in Baghdad could make surface-to-air missiles? Now that would be a Revolution in Military Affairs.
Posted by: Philip Hunt | June 17, 2008 9:04 AM
Ooh, I get to wear my "RepRap Developer Hat"!
Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers @ 4. One can take a laser-sintered steel object and dip it in a crucible of liquid bronze. The bronze wicks into the voids between the steel particles, and you get a solid, albeit hetrogynous object. Bathsheba Grossman makes her mathematical sculptures this way.
(You can also do lost wax casting in broze with many thermoplastics. It's a slightly involved process. I'm holding out hope that we'll figure out how to print bronze clay and sinter (fuse) it in a furnace. Google "bronze clay" for more details.)
ScentOfViolets @ 69 is basically correct; we're not going to be printing clothing any time soon.
Regarding the subject of firearms, ... most of the people involved in RepRap aren't really keen on shooting anyone. Robert Sneddon @ 47 is correct that you can make a firearm using hobby engineering tools like a lathe and drill press. For perspective, I'm from the US, and we seem to have an excess of firearms, but they weren't made in home workshops. It may be that RepRaps will be able to make guns someday, although I'd rather not think about that. Perhaps we should make bullets illegal?
“Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn't have any innocent bystander .” - Chris Rock
Regarding 3D printing and paper, the process is called "Laminated Object Manufacuring" (LOM). A company called Helisys used to sell LOM machines; they were a bit expensive, apparently, but the consumables were cheap. They would glue down down a sheet of paper, score the paper where the desired object isn't using a C02 laser, and then glue down another sheet. The finished product looked a bit like wood. (I'd like to see one someday.)
Regarding RepRap and 'intellectual property', my considered response is "Bleagh".
Feeding RepRaps - unfortunately, the materials we've been working with a fair bit, ABS and HDPE, are petrochemically sourced, and that stuff is getting scarcer. Polylactic acid (PLA) we get from corn, ... which is also petrochemically sourced. I like to daydream about algae that makes PLA or some similar polymer, and am curious to hear how people would go about developing such an algae. Any thoughts?
Posted by: Sebastien Bailard | June 17, 2008 9:07 AM
#27: I'm not sure the ability of people to make guns in their home office would change the law much
You're right, it won't, in the short term. And, in the short term, P2P hasn't changed copyright law. Yet. But it will eventually, because once a law becomes unenforceable, the law will eventually have to keep up with the changing social norms that technology makes possible.
Posted by: Philip Hunt | June 17, 2008 9:20 AM
Sebastien @ 72,
When you say 'Regarding RepRap and 'intellectual property', my considered response is "Bleagh"', do you mean that you don't see IP as an important consideration or one that should potentially limit the development of technology such as the RepRap? Because I'd respectfully note that there are vast numbers of people in the design, marketing and production industries who would beg to differ. You might not agree with them, but their concerns can't be armwaved away.
Disclosure: I'm the 'trainee IP barrister' Charlie mentions at comment 11 (I think 'aspiring' would be a better description right now!). The postgraduate dissertation I'm working on right now centres on this; I was amazed to find that a pretty comprehensive search of the legal literature makes almost no mention of the intellectual property implications of personal rapid fabrication. Yet every IP lawyer I've discussed this with has the same reaction:
1) I've never even heard of this.
2) That's going to turn the IP world upside down.
Now, plenty of people round here might say 'and a good thing too' re the second point. But when you turn things upside down without thinking ahead, all the bits tend to fall out; what I'm trying to do is to point that out in advance, not so that we can stop the box being turned over - that's futile and impossible - but so that we can at least work out where the bits are going to fall, and not stand underneath there.
Posted by: Simon Bradshaw | June 17, 2008 9:59 AM
Incidentally, on the guns/ammo front, you don't need ammo for a Saturday night special.
There's a 18th century military technology that was so scarily effective that Napoleon banned it as a weapon of mass destruction; the only reason the Austrian army (who used it) didn't clean his clock was that it required elaborate logistic support back in the day. The technology in question is the air gun.
Today we mostly think of air guns as BB pistols for plinking at targets rather than as serious weapons, but that's really a side-effect of the convenience of cartridge ammunition for military quartermasters. If what you want is a Saturday night special, there's a lot to commend some sort of gas powered weapon: for one thing, there are no powder residues to haunt you, and for another, air is free -- you don't give yourself away by looking for a dealer in (presumably illegal) ammunition or explosives.
Really stupid reprap idea: how about looking for a strain of algae that has lignified cell walls and tends to clump or form biofilms? Then you could spray it in aqueous solution to build up layers, and dry it out to come up with a substance approximating soft wood.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2008 10:04 AM
OK - so all these auto-lathes (term coined by John Brunner who wrote a lot about this sort of stuff - the whole thread is straight out of Shockwave Rider) are connected to computers that are connected to the interweb:
Nightmare Scenario: Zombie-net has the world's 'lathes produce ricin or explosives (with pre-set timer).
Probable (I'd say inevitable) Scenario: Age Of The Widget. My kids bring home enough plastic crap now to fill an entire room with plastic pigs, spacemen, pen-caps emblazoned with various corporate logos etc. The biggest use of repraps will be to produce these things even more massively, not always with the owners consent. Face it - this sort of rubbish is the stuff that will be free of copyright restrictions.......
Posted by: Andy W | June 17, 2008 10:08 AM
On the military applications, it strikes me that although rolling your own rifle would be cool, nobody who wants war ever seems to be constrained by the availability of small arms, and as pointed out above, common metalworking tools will do it anyway.
RepRap in camouflage sounds more appropriate to things where the shape, design, or electronic content is decisive. Things like shaped charge EFPs, RPG warheads, and basic guided weapons. Oh dear.
Interestingly, if you reprapped a gun, one feature would be that the whole thing would be plastic...which is nice for certain applications.
Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2008 11:06 AM
I believe DARPA is pouring considerable amounts of cash into portable fabs, for long-term logistical support of US military forces in the field. The idea is that it'd be enormously useful to have a mobile field fab that can run up spare parts for vehicles and tents and other pieces of kit in the field. One of the big problems all armies face, when operating away from their home territory, is maintaining a supply chain that can provide replacement parts for things that break; if you've got fabs in the field with your troops, all you need to ship is raw feedstock plus design schematics, rather than needing a fulfillment chain that can deliver fifty million different orderable SKUs into a theatre.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2008 11:41 AM
At the RSC Summerscience exhibition last year, some researchers from University of London Queen Mary were showing off an acoustically-driven powder printer - sand paintings by music. It gets more complicated, but the fun part is that you can control the composition gradient throughout, and print with dry powder to a ten-microgram resolution.
Dr Shoufeng Yang's research.
So instead of spraying in solution, you can always print in a powder & matrix format, and then sinter. (Anything that comes in a relatively uniform fine powder.)
The droplet size is too large to build up proper functional films, but what you can do is get uniform small-grain solids - or alternate layers of two reagents and then get a shaped object of a third substance you couldn't normally work.
Posted by: Sam Kelly | June 17, 2008 12:08 PM
Simon @ 74
Two examples of the wheels falling off as a result of cheap replication are:
George O. Smith: the Venus Equilateral story in which their "matter transmitter" gets reworked into a matter _duplicator_.
Murray Leinster: The Duplicators (what happens when the tech breaks down and people have forgotten how to fix it).
3:O)>
Cadbury.
Posted by: Cadbury Moose | June 17, 2008 12:21 PM
AH @ 54 wrote:
> ...Confederate stealing a Sten and its blueprints
> and going back to change the outcome of the Civil War
...
> Anyone else remember it?
Yes, I have the hardcover somewhere. It's an interesting idea but the materials technology of the time was not nearly advanced enough to make it work. About the best you could hope for from a blowback submachine gun fed with blackpowder ammunition is a couple of shots. After that, the fouling is going to prevent the cartridge from going far enough into the chamber for support, and it will blow the end off, leaving you with a jam that will require disassembly to get the remains of the case out.
The Gatling Gun worked because the action was operated by muscle power and a dud cartridge would be ejected anyway. The Martini Henry rifle suffered extraction problems as fouling built up, to the point that the extractor could rip the head off the cartridge.
The Sten requires precision ammunition - it's got to have repeatable chamber pressures in order to cycle the action - jacketed bullets to prevent the barrel fouling with lead deposits, and smokeless powder that was not invented until some considerable time later.
Cadbury.
Posted by: Cadbury Moose | June 17, 2008 12:42 PM
Something to bear in mind: free software to maked 3D computer models is already out there. (For instance: Wings3D)
The software to produce pictures from these models is cheap. Example Image
You can feed that image into a fabricator and get a 3D object. There was an article about this in 3D World magazine, sometime in the last year or so. But that model wouldn't work. There are things about it which are fine for a picture, and a total disaster for a physical structure. Parts aren't combined into a single mesh. Some things are essentially cups or tubes with zero thickness walls.
Converting things is not easy. You really need to design from the start for fabrication.
Simon, if you haven't checked out the low-end CGI model market, it's worth a look. www.renderosity.com for instance. What you'll find are a lot of people making models, selling them, or giving them away. And there are trademark/design/copyright issues.
One of them is about control. You're selling the model so that the purchaser can make images, which they in turn can sell. But you don't want them to sell your model, or the surface textures. You're going to need something more subtle than Creative Commons--it looks to me as though there is a division between different kinds of Derivative Work.
Renderosity has a forum on Copyright issues, though uit has the usual US bias. Free registration required, and, in my experience, a pretty safe site. They don't spam folks.
Posted by: Dave Bell | June 17, 2008 2:00 PM
Simon@74: I think of small extrudable macroscopic objects and mostly what comes to mind is "housewares" and "toys" (I'm not very interested in weaponry). While I know that includes some big corporations ready to file lawsuits, somehow it doesn't seem to be the big sexy IP issue you and Charlie are hinting at. Especially since electronics can't be fabbed. Where do you see the most friction between end-users with fabs/schematics and corporations with IP to protect?
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 2:49 PM
#54 & #55
Ammonium Nitrate CO
BINED with the right materials (Aluminium Powder, Toluene, etc.) is a VERY effective miltary explosive, though out-of-date now, I still wouldn't want to be standing anywhere near it when it went off!
Look up: Ammonal, Amatol .....
Posted by: G. Tingey | June 17, 2008 2:59 PM
Simon Bradshaw @74
When you say 'Regarding RepRap and 'intellectual property', my considered response is "Bleagh"', do you mean that you don't see IP as an important consideration or one that should potentially limit the development of technology such as the RepRap?
The latter. It's a can of worms. We've been in touch with some folk from the EFF and the FSF, to ask their advice.
Posted by: Sebastien Bailard | June 17, 2008 3:03 PM
Charlie@78: I remember seeing an article referenced by slashdot on topic almost a decade ago. I wonder if its seen the light of day yet...
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 4:34 PM
The technology in question is the air gun.
as a paintballer, I'll point out that the technology for air-driven weaponry is already fairly advanced. carbon fiber HPA tanks, basically miniature scuba tanks, hold air at 4500 PSI. You can buy them for a hundred. Not sure if you could fab em with this paper mache thingy. Might be a bit heavy.
paintball HPA tanks are a bit large for a pocket weapon, but they're designed for holding enough air for a couple games of paintball, which might consume a thousand shots of paint. If you just need a few shots of lead, then you could probably make the tanks smaller.
Normally, paintball guns (some prefer to call them "markers" to be less scary to the nonplayers) regulate the pressure down to 800 psi or so. But no reason you couldn't build an entire paper mache gun to operate at a couple thousand PSI.
Not sure how much pressure it would take to move a lead bullet down a rifled barrel. Or maybe you don't need rifling. A lot of crime can be had at ranges under ten feet.
Oh, and plenty of paintball guns today are semiautomatic and completely mechanical. They use the same air that moves the paint down the barrel to recock the marker and load another paintball. springs wouldn't be too hard to figure out.
The main thing would be they would be big and clunky and hard to conceal for criminal uses. Not sure how small you could make one that did only a few shots.
Posted by: GregLondon | June 17, 2008 4:39 PM
Another gunpowder-free gun making the rounds in an online demo accelerates spherical slugs using what's basically a centrifuge, and ejects them out a hole that sends them on a tangent path. The rate of fire on the thing is ridiculous (thousands of rounds/sec).
Posted by: Adam Rice | June 17, 2008 6:01 PM
It doesn't matter how cheap the prototyping machines can be manufactured and maintained. They'll require a government license to own and operate, and it will not be easy to get one. It'll probably be difficult as hell to figure out which arm of the state apparatus is the one that takes applications.
Posted by: j h woodyatt | June 17, 2008 6:12 PM
JH@89: It'd be virtually unenforceable, especially since they can replicate most of their own parts.
---
As far as air-powered weaponry, a plain old blowgun is pretty darn effective, and totally innocuous looking. Used well as a plot device in "The Sign of Four".
Posted by: insect_hooves | June 17, 2008 6:32 PM
Yeah, the thing about replicators is you can NOT depend on DRM'ing them. if EVEN ONE replicator gets hacked to disable DRM, that one replicator will be used to make a million more replicators.
And if the only fuel is electricity and a big stack of old newspapers and scrap wood for fodder, it'll be impossible to track down.
We might not know what the world will look like when cheap replicators are available, but having them under DRM control (or any other technical control) is one option we know won't be there.
Posted by: GregLondon | June 17, 2008 6:48 PM
jh woodyat: So the government makes you get a license to buy a fabber? Fine, you just buy one from China, or build it yourself using the RepRap online instructions available on Pirate Bay. Is the government going to look in everyone's shed three times a week?
Posted by: Russell Dovey | June 17, 2008 6:59 PM
Dave@82: You're going to need something more subtle than Creative Commons--it looks to me as though there is a division between different kinds of Derivative Work.
There is currently no strong copyleft license that I know of that protects specifications of physical objects. GNU-GPL is commonly used to protect ee designs on the opencores website. The problem is that GNU-GPL's copyleft only attaches itself to derivatives of the original work that are also distributed. And a physical device isn't a derivative, and selling it isn't considered distribution by copyright law. So, GNU-GPL won't protect the Open Hardware community nearly as well as it protects the open software community.
I started looking into the various licenses, to the point that I ended up writing a paper about it, "Libre Labyrinth". And the kind of Open Source license you would need to protect physical designs doesn't exist.
The license that is closest to doing the job is the Apple Public Source License. It doesn't require distribution to activate copyleft. It attachs copyleft to all derivatives, even privately made derivatives. APSL was designed when websites started using modified webhosting software, but were not legally required to make those modifcations public because they didn't distribute teh executable/derivative. The derivative remained on the host computer, and users would surf to the site and the code would execute. Since the user only saw the output of the executable, rather than the executable itself, the work wasn't distributed, and the GNU-GPL didn't require that the source code fo the modifications be made public.
Turns out, this exact same license is almost exactly what an Open Hardware or Open Physical Design license would need. It is a bit old, though, so I'd prefer to add some anti-patent clauses and an anti-tivo clause.
There's a discussion over on the Open Hardware Foundation website trying to come up with a good, strong copyleft license for hardware and physical objects. It doesn't contain any IP lawyers on the list though.
Posted by: GregLondon | June 17, 2008 7:18 PM
I've known a lot of Americans underestimate airguns, despite the example of Lewis and Clark.
In the UK, because of the firearms laws we have been lumbered with since the 1920s, weapons are designed with muzzle-energy in mind. The two main calibres are .22 and .177 and they deliver the same energy. For many decades, spring-pistons were the usual power source. Because of a couple of quirks in the law, the CO2-cartridge-powered gun was illegal in the UK until relatively recently, despite it's wide use in the USA and in international target competition. Britain was the place where compressed air was developed as a power source.
I'm not at all sure about paintball in the UK. I know it happens, but the legal constraints are different. (And I follow The Whiteboard.)
Still, if you can get the Firearms Certificate you can get airguns with much higher muzzle energies. And Colonel Moran's famous airgun was close enough to real.
And on other issues:
I'd expect to see specialised fabricators. A clothing fabricator would be nothing like the machine which can make the decorative wall-plaque from a mega-catalogue of kawaii.
I wouldn't rule out glues and spot-welding in clothing fabricators.
Modern fabrics have more stretch. Look at reenactments, and compare 18th Century breeches to modern pants.
Machine sewing made modern trousers possible. There's a pretty huge amount of sewing in that fly, whether it uses a zipper or buttons.
Modern factories still need skilled labour, but who trains it? You pay to train people, treat them like shit, and they go to work for your competitors. Fabricators look a very tempting solution to that mindset. People have been weasel-wording the definition of s