New Machines Could Turn Homes Into Small Factories

[ramonmercado]

New Machines Could Turn Homes Into Small Factories

'A small autonomous robot built in an FDM rapid prototyping machine. It is about 200mm in diameter. The robot was made to demonstrate a new RP process we've developed for the direct incorporation of electrical conductors into rapid prototypes'.
Bath, UK (SPX) Mar 18, 2005
A revolutionary machine which can make everything from a cup to a clarinet quickly and cheaply could be in all our homes in the next few years.
Research by engineers at the University of Bath could transform the manufacture of almost all everyday household objects by allowing people to produce them in their own homes at the cost of a few pounds.

The new system is based upon rapid prototype machines, which are now used to produce plastic components for industry such as vehicle parts. The method they use, in which plastic is laid down in designs produced in 3D on computers, could be adapted to make many household items.

However, conventional rapid prototype machines cost around £25,000 to buy. But the latest idea, by Dr Adrian Bowyer, of the University’s Centre for Biomimetics, is that these machines should begin making copies of themselves.

These can be used to make further copies of themselves until there are so many machines that they become cheap enough for people to buy and use in their homes.

Dr Bowyer is working on creating the 3D models needed for a rapid prototype machine to make a copy of itself. When this is complete, he will put these on a website so that all owners of an existing conventional machine can download them for free and begin making copies of his machine.

The new copies can then be sold to other people, who can in turn copy the machine and sell on.

As the number of the self-replicating machines – there are now thousands of conventional rapid prototype machines – grows rapidly, so the price will fall from £25,000 to a few hundred pounds.

"People have been talking for years about the cost of these machines dropping to be about the same as a computer printer," said Dr Bowyer. "But it hasn’t happened. Maybe my idea will allow this to occur."

A machine could, for instance, make a complete set of plates, dishes and bowls out of plastic, coloured and decorated to a design. It could also make metal objects out of a special alloy that melts at low temperatures, making it suitable for use in printed circuit boards for electronics.

The machines would not be able to produce glass items or complex parts such as microchips, or objects that would work under intense heat, such as toasters. But a digital camera could be made for a few pounds, and a lens and computer chip bought separately and added later.

The rapid prototype machines would be useful for producing items that are now expensive, such as small musical instruments.

The items produced could be from a few millimetres (0.25 inches) to 300 millimetres (12 inches) in length, width and height. Larger items could be made simply by clipping together parts of this size.

Dr Bowyer said all that would be needed for a machine owner would be to buy the plastic and low-temperature alloy for a few pounds, and items could then be created in a few minutes or a few hours depending on their size.

Designs for items could be bought – or downloaded free – from the web. Alternatively, people could create them for themselves on their own PCs.

He said that he would publish the 3D designs and computer code for the machine to replicate itself on the web over the next four years as they are developed, until the entire machine could be copied.

He said that he has not taken out a patent and will not charge for creating the design for the machine. "The most interesting part of this is that we’re going to give it away," he said.

"At the moment an industrial company consists of hundreds of people building and making things. If these machines take off, it will give individual people the chance to do this themselves, and we are talking about making a lot of our consumer goods – the effect this has on industry and society could be dramatic."

The machines would be about the size of a refrigerator, and would self-reproduce by making a copy of themselves, part by part. These parts would then have to be assembled manually by their owners.

Dr Bowyer said the machines were a form of Universal Constructor, first proposed theoretically by the mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s.

He also said their progress would be similar to that of a species in nature – as the machines replicated, so their users would vary them to suit their needs, some making larger objects, some more accurate devices and some making devices more quickly.

Dr Bowyer, and his colleague Ed Sells, have already created a demonstration robot with an electrical circuit built in using this technology and funding from the Nuffield Foundation. They hope to get new funding soon to begin work on the other stages of development.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-05q.html

Related Links
Homepage of the Replicating Rapid-Prototyper Project
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab/replicator/

 

[Melf]

computer! earl grey, hot

 

[TheOriginalCujo]

We could be on the verge of a technological great leap forward.

Maybe we're finnaly going to get to live int the 21st century that we were promised. Of course what will probably happen is that someone will point out that copying the maching constitutes copywrite theft.

 

[AMPHIARAUS]

If this actually works some idiot will replicate a pistol or other prohibited item and the will get the machines banned for personal use.

 

[Melf]

id imagine therell be set peramerters built in initaly, until someone hackes into it

 

[Rrose_Selavy]

Hmm, Something doesn't ring right about this - Since the machines at the moment cost 25 grand = who is going to give those away so we can replicate the replicator that we are supposed to give away. call me cynical - I have my doubts about this,

 

[NilesCalder]

All it will take is one rebel with 25 grand to start the ball rolling and then nobody will be able to stop it.

As for firearms I don't think you'll be able to make a working one with low temp plastics and metals.

What'll happen is the blueprints for some items will become valuable.

Just my tuppence....

What? "Base block almost expended?" you've been wasting it to make yourself b****y machine narcotics again! Sonofabish! :madeyes:

 

[dreeness]

Most firearms are very simple machines, anyway. Building a sewing machine or a lawnmower from scratch, that would be vastly more involved than a DIY revolver.
(Usual disclaimer, please don't start building Sten guns in your basement, okay?)

 

[NilesCalder]

That may be true dreeness but the materials for a firearm need to be able to survive certain stresses. However these.. autofacs.. use materials to that are below those stresses. Indeed high stress material will be too hatd for them to work.

 

[dreeness]

(I know, I was merely pointing out that it was a fairly straightforward bit of engineering for the hobbyist or sociopath, even without a replicator...)

 

[AMPHIARAUS]

That may be true dreeness but the materials for a firearm need to be able to survive certain stresses.

Agreed, if you tried to make an exact replica of a colt 1911 in ZBA, the thing would come apart spectacularly in seval ways at once, however if you had a design that accomodated the low strength of the materials you could easily produce something like a very fat derringer.

Cue little johnny downloading the file from the internet into him replicator and then taking the result to school to show his mates.

I, ahem - sorry someone I once knew, years ago made a rudimentary and reusable gun that could fire .410 shotgun cartridges out of a section of aluminium javelin - so I know it can be done.

 

[Yithian]

Hmm, Something doesn't ring right about this - Since the machines at the moment cost 25 grand = who is going to give those away so we can replicate the replicator that we are supposed to give away. call me cynical - I have my doubts about this,

Brilliant thinking.
No doubt we'll have to sign huge, legally dubious disclaimers like those for current computer products whereby i may 'own' this product but i can't do what i may like with it. In fact, I can only do what 'they' would like me to do with it!

 

[Rrose_Selavy]

We already have machines that can reproduce video programmes and films and look what trouble that has caused with copyright etc - imagine, even if it were possible, the issues with actual products - the market would be saturated with counterfeit goods.

 

[Anonymous]

Autofac, eh? That is another idea from the mind of Phillip K Dick, IIRC.

 

[Anome]

Autofac, eh? That is another idea from the mind of Phillip K Dick, IIRC.

...and ripped off from him by pretty much everyone since.

Actually, I don't know that it was original with Dick, but he used it a lot, and had quite realistic societies built around it.

 

[Anonymous]

One step closer to The Singularity.

2035 wasn't it?

 

[NilesCalder]

Autofac, eh? That is another idea from the mind of Phillip K Dick, IIRC.

:? It just popped into my head... next to it was the word "Makers" and those werte quickly followed by "Replicators". Sorry.

 

[Rrose_Selavy]

Hi-tech DIY to solve local problems

Latest here on replicators.....

Hi-tech DIY to solve local problems
By Clark Boyd
Technology Correspondent



Of all the cool, futuristic machines featured on the television series Star Trek, the "replicator" was certainly one of the most useful.
A character simply asked for a cup of tea, and voila - the replicator would make a cuppa.

A machine that can make anything sounds like the stuff of the distant future, but a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) program is making personal fabrication a reality.

Around the world, MIT is helping to build Fabrication, or "Fab" Labs, and they are reaping results.

Haakon Karlsen's farm sits hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. The tinkle of sheep bells is a constant reminder that humans, and their animals, have carved out a life here for thousands of years.

He spends a lot of time thinking about how technology can help him tend his flock. "It's not easy to collect sheep in the fall, when it's dark," Karlsen says, pointing to the nearby peaks.

GPS sheep

"Some sheep are always left up in the mountains. So, in 1998, I started to use the first radio around the neck, for sheep up in the mountains."

Karlsen modified a cell phone with Global Positioning System capabilities. He strapped the phone onto a sheep collar. The phone sends a text message with the coordinates of the sheep, and more.

"The phone also sends information about whether the sheep are moving or not," says Karlsen. "It tells us what the temperature is, and so on. It tells us a bit about the condition the sheep are in up in the mountains."

Karlsen's mobile phone for sheep is a perfect example of what MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld calls "personal fabrication".

"By personal fabrication, what I mean is ordinary people creating, rather than consuming technology, creating technology to solve local problems," Gershenfeld says.


This isn't a corporation, this isn't a university, it is sort of a hub of a global network. It is a new organisational structure
Neil Gershenfeld, MIT

Gershenfeld directs MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a program whose future aim is inspired by the replicator idea from Star Trek.
"The research is aiming to make a molecular assembler, one machine that can build, on a molecular scale, anything," says Gershenfeld.

At first glance, that research might seem to have little to do with ordinary people and local problems. But then Gershenfeld discovered what he calls "a small side hack" that has practical benefits.

Since it started four years ago, the centre has had an outreach program that allowed people of all ages to use some of the lab's software and machines.

With minimal training, children and adults alike were designing and fabricating their own toys, jewellery, and even their own circuit boards.

Gershenfeld dubbed the pared-down set of tools and software that the centre made available to lay people a Fabrication, or Fab Lab. He built one in Boston, and another in Costa Rica.

Fab divide

"In a world of Fab Labs, you can think about the other five and a half billion brains on the planet not just as potential consumers, but as creators, as inventors.

"Creation itself can become much more distributed, and you can bring not information technology, but IT development to the masses. You can close what you might think of as a fabrication divide."

Gershenfeld helped set up a Fab Lab in Karlsen's barn a couple of years ago. But so many people came to use it, Karlsen decided he needed to expand.

With help from the Norwegian government, the Norwegian sheepherder built a Viking-style Great Hall to house a Fab Lab which opened last month.


Inside, next to the sheepskins, banks of PCs with high-speed internet connections hum away.
The Fab Lab machines include a sign cutter and a laser cutter. There is a 3-D computer milling machine with enough precision to make circuits.

The software that tells the machines what to do is open source, and has been created by so-called "Fab Labbers" from across the globe.

John Silvester Boafo stands next to a small scale, metal prototype of what he calls a fu-fu pounder. "In every Ghanaian home, the main dish is fu-fu," says Boafo, Principal at the Takoradi Technical Institute, home to Ghana's Fab Lab, which opened last year.

"Fu-fu is made of plantain and cassava, which are cooked," he explains.

"After they are cooked, they are put into a mortar, and pounded by hand. People go through hard labour, just to get a meal to eat.

"So, we thought we could fabricate this machine to alleviate the hard labour they use in pounding." Boafo says the fu-fu pounder is a good example of the practical projects that the Ghanaian Fab Lab wants to tackle.

One of India's Fab Labs is also working on local solutions to local problems. It has low-cost lighting projects, and is developing a device that will help local farmers test whether the milk they have collected has gone bad.

Others focus on education and training, such as Costa Rica, where there are "construction camps" to teach students the basics of design and engineering.

In setting up the labs, MIT pays for the equipment, which can cost between $25,000 and $40,000. The host country or institution provides a place to put the equipment.

Fab new level

South Africa is now taking the Fab Lab idea to the next level. The government there is fronting the money for both equipment and space, not just for one Fab Lab, but for an initial round of four of them.

The first is being built just outside of Pretoria, in what is billed as South Africa's first "science park," according to Sushil Borde, who heads the government agency in charge of the Fab Lab roll-out.

It is not fully operational, but interest is high. "We have these very high-tech small start-up companies that are excited by the proximity of the lab," Borde says.

"The companies say, 'We have these brilliant ideas, we have these business models, but we don't know how to get these ideas into tangible products.'"

Borde hopes that a network of Fab Labs will enable South African entrepreneurs and engineers alike to test their ideas, and "fast track the process of growth and development".

The network of labs is also paying dividends for research at MIT. Graduate student Amy Sun is working on designs for small solar reflectors that are easy to manufacture.

Sun, who has helped set up labs, had the idea because almost everywhere she went she found a lack of locally available power.

"It's extremely frustrating," Sun says. "We spend a lot of time picking machines that can make nearly anything, and we're all stuck with this one little problem, which is that we can't plug into anything.

"The idea here is to think about getting power not from a central source, but from a small reflector that you can put anywhere you need it."


It is a possible solution not just for Fab Labs, but for any part of the world with power problems. MIT's Gershenfeld says that the problem-solving potential of Fab Labs is causing an explosion of interest in the project.
He thinks that, more fundamentally, the idea of personal or small-group fabrication has tapped into the primal need that some people have to create things, to modify the world in which they live.

Standing in Karlsen's lab, Gershenfeld says: "This large, Viking-style building is how you build not just a room, but a community. This isn't a corporation, this isn't a university, it is sort of a hub of a global network. It is a new organisational structure."

"In a way, the Fab Labs are havens for inventive outliers in society."

Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/t ... 276180.stm

Published: 2005/09/27 08:26:09 GMT

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