Topic: The 3D printer that prints a 3D printer

[sltlamina]

I still don't get how the 3-d printer works. Can someone explain it to me?

The machine can build 60% of the parts of what it is. But it doesn't assemble itself.

The creators of this machine want it to be able to replicate itself completely and be able to build all the pieces it just made into a replica of itself.

Thus leading to the idea of self-replicating microscopic robots that everyone is talking about above.

They probably will be able to assemble themselves one day. It'll be all neat to watch until one shoots foam at your face witch quickly solidifies, choking you to death!

[DarkDragon]

When they will have inteligence and be able to copy themselves, then we will be all doomed

[sltlamina]

When they will have inteligence and be able to copy themselves, then we will be all doomed

We could just let off a nuclear bomb at a high altitude, it'd wipe out any of them in a couple of hundred kilometres.

[DaMuncha]

When they will have inteligence and be able to copy themselves, then we will be all doomed

We could just let off a nuclear bomb at a high altitude, it'd wipe out any of them in a couple of hundred kilometres.

And all other life at the same time.

[sltlamina]

When they will have inteligence and be able to copy themselves, then we will be all doomed

We could just let off a nuclear bomb at a high altitude, it'd wipe out any of them in a couple of hundred kilometres.

And all other life at the same time.

Well not everything would be killed, just a lot of the things from places that the radioactive particles were carried to by the air currents. At least the threat of the printers would be ended by the EMP.

[DaMuncha]

I suppose the cockroaches would survive

[plastik]

What about something like this to combat such a machine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator
This technology can be used to make an E-Bomb which would disable these 'things' fairly quickly. Faraday cages can be used to defend our own useful circuitry from EMP's, but that also brings on the question of what we'd do if they produced their own shielding against EMP. This kind of thing would happen only if they were made to be super-intelligent though.

[Kcronos]

How would they shield against EMP, pray tell?


I'm assuming you need a barrier of some sorts, like lead.  But that would have to be a large barrier, hence not making them nano anymore...

[plastik]

Being so small, they could even be smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, and thus be immune from it. Failing that, a mesh of conducting metal with holes smaller than the wavelength of the radiation, would protect them. The mesh would probably stop it from cloning into the area around, unless it just burst open with dozens of clones when the pressure gets too high inside (and the clones themselves would also have the shielding and would continue the cycle). But this is seriously getting impossible now...

[Kcronos]

Its safe to say that by that time, humanity won't matter anymore 

[Kcronos]

Are you saying we've reached the technological singularity, and I didn't notice?! 

[Yokto]

I still don't get how the 3-d printer works. Can someone explain it to me?

A 3D printer is what is sounds like. Something that prints 3D objects. Now there are not one type of 3D prints out there. In fact there are many different ways. Everything for machines that mod plastics to machines that cut out objects of solid blocks of metal.

In the future they might evolve in to Fabricators, Santa machines or Replicators (Yeah. No one is really sure what the call them really.) That will work smiler superficially to the replicators in Star Trek. You just order the machine to build you something you need and it does that.


I am writing a paper that touches on the topic right now for school. This i believe will be a new industrial revolutions that might change a lot more then we can imagine.