New 3d printer

http://pda.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142605-25569.html


Mmmm....technology.

"Aaaahhh Mom, are we having zymoveal again?" That was the complaint of a jaded kid in one of Isaac Asimov's best science fiction novels. The food item was imitation beef, cranked out in the underground city's big yeast vats.

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
"Aaaahhh Mom, are we having zymoveal again?" That was the complaint of a jaded kid in one of Isaac Asimov's best science fiction novels. The food item was imitation beef, cranked out in the underground city's big yeast vats.

That would be "Caves of Steel".

Originally posted by sonhouse
That would be "Caves of Steel".

Yessir.

🙂

Originally posted by iChopWoodForFree
http://pda.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142605-25569.html


Mmmm....technology.

Oh, hell yeah, I'm gonna get me one of those! 😲

One day a 3D printer will be both able to and programmed to print out several 3D printers each being identical to itself and each one of those 3D printers will print out several more identical 3D printers and so on and on forever. We could then have both the benefit of use and the nightmare of an unlimited number of 3D printers from just one original one multiplying out of control and taking over the world. Perhaps some would mutate and, while they compete with each other for dwindling room an resources, natural selection would select the most adapted variants and they could evolve into a variety of new species; some tiny but social like ants and bees while others will evolve into giant dinosaur printers only to become extinct when a big meteorite hits. But then some evolve to walk upright with big brains and yet, despite the big brains, some become so religious that they like flying aircraft into tall buildings ....OK, I am getting more and more fantastical as I went along there.

Originally posted by humy
One day a 3D printer will be both able to and programmed to print out several 3D printers each being identical to itself and each one of those 3D printers will print out several more identical 3D printers and so on and on forever. We could then have both the benefit of use and the nightmare of an unlimited number of 3D printers from just one original one multip ...[text shortened]... rcraft into tall buildings ....OK, I am getting more and more fantastical as I went along there.

A world where religious printers would be right; there was an original manufacturer.

Originally posted by C Hess
A world where religious printers would be right; there was an original manufacturer.

Yes, but they would believe the original manufacture to be a supernatural god that also created the whole universe and they would still deny evolution!

Originally posted by humy
One day a 3D printer will be both able to and programmed to print out several 3D printers each being identical to itself and each one of those 3D printers will print out several more identical 3D printers and so on and on forever. We could then have both the benefit of use and the nightmare of an unlimited number of 3D printers from just one original one multip ...[text shortened]... rcraft into tall buildings ....OK, I am getting more and more fantastical as I went along there.

That concept was first put out by Von Neuman. They were called Von Neuman machines.

The idea was to launch them into interstellar space with the ability to create itself but many other things, including machines that could be incubators for DNA combinations that would end up putting humans far out into interstellar space, filling the whole galaxy in a few thousand years, where the incubators would also have robots as teachers to bring the new batch of babies up and teach them Earth knowledge so those first kids would only have peers as companions but the next generation would be born normally on a planet that was terraformed thousands of years earlier and so becomes a new home. All at the cost of sending out one Von Neuman machine into interstellar space and it wouldn't matter if it was going 1/1000 ths of the speed of light or at the speed of light, eventually it would reach a star it was aimed at, set up shop on some asteroid, mine it for materials to build more Von Neumans, build new rockets, send that batch off into yet another direction in interstellar space and so forth. All with the information of all life forms on Earth ready to be put together to populate a newly transformed planet.

The main question, similar to Fermi's paradox, why hasn't it already happened? Why don't we see such machines everywhere in our solar system?

BTW, here is another use for 3D printers:

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-scientists-3d-artificial-blood-vessels.html

Originally posted by sonhouse

BTW, here is another use for 3D printers:

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-scientists-3d-artificial-blood-vessels.html

The next generation of those printers will not only print out blood vessels but whole conscious living human brains.

Originally posted by humy
The next generation of those printers will not only print out blood vessels but whole conscious living human brains.

Who... not so much.

IF that is possible we are talking quite a large number of generations down the line. Not next gen. 😉

Originally posted by humy
One day a 3D printer will be both able to and programmed to print out several 3D printers .....

The biggest constraint as it currently stands is that 3D printers need materials to print with. So until they develop the ability to seek out raw material on their own, uncontrolled reproduction just cannot happen. And lets not forget the power supply, but I guess solar powered ones would resolve that.

I could currently afford a 3D printer, but have not bought one because the cost of the supplies is still too high. Incidentally the same argument explains why I haven't bought an inkjet printer.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I could currently afford a 3D printer, but have not bought one because the cost of the supplies is still too high. Incidentally the same argument explains why I haven't bought an inkjet printer.

Just the other day I read that the cost of ink for printers works out to $8,000 US per gallon.

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
Just the other day I read that the cost of ink for printers works out to $8,000 US per gallon.

If you buy it from the printer manufacturers, then you pay 5 to 10 times more than if you buy it from a 'compatible' source. Of course the printer manufactures fight back by making it harder and harder to refill cartridges.
Modern inkjet printing is one big rip-off.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If you buy it from the printer manufacturers, then you pay 5 to 10 times more than if you buy it from a 'compatible' source. Of course the printer manufactures fight back by making it harder and harder to refill cartridges.
Modern inkjet printing is one big rip-off.

Indeed. One that [failing actual regulations requiring printer manufacturers to
make easily refillable ink cartridges] may be solved by 3d printing.

If 3d printing becomes mainstream so that people could print their own 2d printers...
or at least the ink cartridges for them... then people will naturally design and print
ink cartridges that maximise ink capacity and are easy to refill.