Someone emailed this to me. Now maybe if they reverse the polarity on the quantum mechanical stabilizer while adequately purifying the dilithium crystals, they can replicate people!
Recent Comments
 | That Other Anonymous on March against Monsanto this… |
 | Forest Queen on March against Monsanto this… |
 | moviedad on March against Monsanto this… |
 | Cookie on March against Monsanto this… |
 | "Henchman Of Justice… on March against Monsanto this… |
| "Henchman Of Justice… on March against Monsanto this… |
| Erasmus on March against Monsanto this… |
| Cookie on March against Monsanto this… |
 | suzy blah blah on Priorities |
 | Not A Native on March against Monsanto this… |
| suzy blah blah on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | HUUFC on March against Monsanto this… |
 | Eric Kirk on March against Monsanto this… |
 | Just Watchin on March against Monsanto this… |
| Cookie on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
July 17, 2011 at 6:28 am
Mitch
Eric,
People with the time and skills can build one themselves, minus the hype:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
The long term goal of this project is to build a device that can build all of its components.
July 17, 2011 at 7:33 am
Bolithio
wow
July 17, 2011 at 7:50 am
06em
They have one of these machines at the CR main campus. If you go to Science Night, you can watch it in action and might even be given a small wrench printed by it. They’ve had the machine for several years.
July 17, 2011 at 10:03 am
suzy blah blah
Want one.
July 17, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Fred Mangels
I hate to play the part of the lefty, anti- tech, anti- progress gadfly, but there goes all the manufacturing jobs on this planet in the not too far away future.
But that is pretty neat. Can it print a copy of itself?
July 17, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, I think it’s a long ways from any kind of industrial production, and it’s not anywhere near as fast as assembly line manufacturing per unit. I doubt that hard powder wrench will last very long. And we know nothing about the cost.
But I suppose in the very long run it could replace industrial processes, at least in portions. But then if every household has one of these things, maybe they won’t have to earn as much to meet their needs.
July 17, 2011 at 1:59 pm
06em
According to the CR folks, they’re mainly used for faster and cheaper prototyping.
July 17, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Mitch
What would happen with a grown-up species is that these things would be hooked up to solar power — you’ll even find a youtube video of one running in the desert, using sun heat to do the deposition — and we’d all live happily ever after, like the folks on the Star Trek episode that should have been named “Planet of the Scantily Clad But Mysteriously Vacant Southern California Blondes.”
What will happen looks a lot like what happened once we got the keys to daddy’s oil wells, except bigger. The relevant sci-fi is probably Wall-E.