13-09-2014, 11:23 AM
Fabbers Technology
[attachment=67924]
ABSTRACT
Fabbers are machines that are capable of fabricating useful items on demand from computer-generated design specifications. It is meant to be used in our homes as free form fabricating machines. Even though such machines have to overcome several obstacles scientists in Cornell computational Synthesis Laboratory have taken the first steps toward the creation of a fabricating system that can produce small, simple robots incorporating a battery, actuators, and sensors. They have succeeded in creating a small fabber that makes a coin-shaped battery and an actuator suitable for the envisioned robot. Compact and yet capable fabbers point the way toward a future where the term "online shopping" takes on a whole new meaning. Imagine purchasing a piece of software that encodes detailed specifications of something and then seeing that object emerge from a box on your desk not bigger than a microwave oven. Like your desktop printer today, this desktop fabber would use some sort of cartridges. And just as desktop-printer cartridges contain the inks that can produce a limitless variety of images, the fabber cartridges would contain the necessary raw materials to create a profusion of desired items. Not every consumer product is suitable for fabbing, of course, but anything whose materials cost is low compared with its intellectual investment is a contender. A few examples are electric toothbrushes, cell phones, eyewear, toys, costume jewelry, and other decorative items .Although many technical hurdles must be cleared before home fabbing can become a reality, and it’s already possible to see its huge implications for engineers, designers, and distributors. Manufacturing, at least for things that could be fabbed, would be divorced from rigid corporate control, spawning new classes of independent designers. Much of the stock and delivery costs associated with conventional manufacturing would be eliminated. And with appropriate software, a product could be customized, enabling a system of bespoke production almost inconceivable today. The focus of this paper is on the architecture of a 100% automatic, self-contained and versatile fabrication process, capable of autonomously producing an entire working machine with no human intervention
INTRODUCTION
In the future, a new kind of Internet appliance will allow people to download the digital description of a product and have that product made immediately and automatically. This appliance is called a digital fabricator, or “fabber.” Fabbers use 21st-century technology to translate digital product data into physical goods. The data can be transmitted over the Internet and the product “fabbed” at any local node. Fabbers are the link between old-fashioned, industrial-era manufacturing and the coming magic of nanotechnology
Digital fabbers transact the magic of producing physical products from digital information A fabricator (or fabber) is an ultra-modern machine that makes things automatically. Fabricators use raw materials and computer data to generate three-dimensional, solid objects you can hold in your hands, submit to testing, or assemble into working mechanisms. They could make a huge variety of reasonably complicated objects, and yet was attainable by ordinary people, would transform human society to a degree that few creations ever have. Fabbers have been derived from machines that were once used exclusively by manufacturers to prototype new designs. With such machines, people can, in effect, download such complex objects as bicycles, chemical sensors, radios-and eventually robots, and may be even prosthetic limbs-much as they now download music and video files.
From a CT scan of a patient's fractured skull, surgeons recently printed out a 3-D model they could use to plan their operation. At the moment, the objects can be made only of plastic, but various schemes for fabbing things out of metal are under development. Manufacturers around the world for low-volume production, prototyping, and mold mastering are using them. Scientists and surgeons for solid imaging, and by a few modern artists for innovative computerized sculpture also use them. Manufacturers report enormous productivity gains from using fabricators. As the quality and speed of fabricator output steadily improves, we are gradually moving toward a time when these machines will be able to participate in the construction of large structures and make parts to be incorporated into working machinery. This paper investigates several of the issues important to evaluating the opportunity to reduce transportation costs by using fabricators for on-site generation of machine parts and construction components.
[attachment=67924]
ABSTRACT
Fabbers are machines that are capable of fabricating useful items on demand from computer-generated design specifications. It is meant to be used in our homes as free form fabricating machines. Even though such machines have to overcome several obstacles scientists in Cornell computational Synthesis Laboratory have taken the first steps toward the creation of a fabricating system that can produce small, simple robots incorporating a battery, actuators, and sensors. They have succeeded in creating a small fabber that makes a coin-shaped battery and an actuator suitable for the envisioned robot. Compact and yet capable fabbers point the way toward a future where the term "online shopping" takes on a whole new meaning. Imagine purchasing a piece of software that encodes detailed specifications of something and then seeing that object emerge from a box on your desk not bigger than a microwave oven. Like your desktop printer today, this desktop fabber would use some sort of cartridges. And just as desktop-printer cartridges contain the inks that can produce a limitless variety of images, the fabber cartridges would contain the necessary raw materials to create a profusion of desired items. Not every consumer product is suitable for fabbing, of course, but anything whose materials cost is low compared with its intellectual investment is a contender. A few examples are electric toothbrushes, cell phones, eyewear, toys, costume jewelry, and other decorative items .Although many technical hurdles must be cleared before home fabbing can become a reality, and it’s already possible to see its huge implications for engineers, designers, and distributors. Manufacturing, at least for things that could be fabbed, would be divorced from rigid corporate control, spawning new classes of independent designers. Much of the stock and delivery costs associated with conventional manufacturing would be eliminated. And with appropriate software, a product could be customized, enabling a system of bespoke production almost inconceivable today. The focus of this paper is on the architecture of a 100% automatic, self-contained and versatile fabrication process, capable of autonomously producing an entire working machine with no human intervention
INTRODUCTION
In the future, a new kind of Internet appliance will allow people to download the digital description of a product and have that product made immediately and automatically. This appliance is called a digital fabricator, or “fabber.” Fabbers use 21st-century technology to translate digital product data into physical goods. The data can be transmitted over the Internet and the product “fabbed” at any local node. Fabbers are the link between old-fashioned, industrial-era manufacturing and the coming magic of nanotechnology
Digital fabbers transact the magic of producing physical products from digital information A fabricator (or fabber) is an ultra-modern machine that makes things automatically. Fabricators use raw materials and computer data to generate three-dimensional, solid objects you can hold in your hands, submit to testing, or assemble into working mechanisms. They could make a huge variety of reasonably complicated objects, and yet was attainable by ordinary people, would transform human society to a degree that few creations ever have. Fabbers have been derived from machines that were once used exclusively by manufacturers to prototype new designs. With such machines, people can, in effect, download such complex objects as bicycles, chemical sensors, radios-and eventually robots, and may be even prosthetic limbs-much as they now download music and video files.
From a CT scan of a patient's fractured skull, surgeons recently printed out a 3-D model they could use to plan their operation. At the moment, the objects can be made only of plastic, but various schemes for fabbing things out of metal are under development. Manufacturers around the world for low-volume production, prototyping, and mold mastering are using them. Scientists and surgeons for solid imaging, and by a few modern artists for innovative computerized sculpture also use them. Manufacturers report enormous productivity gains from using fabricators. As the quality and speed of fabricator output steadily improves, we are gradually moving toward a time when these machines will be able to participate in the construction of large structures and make parts to be incorporated into working machinery. This paper investigates several of the issues important to evaluating the opportunity to reduce transportation costs by using fabricators for on-site generation of machine parts and construction components.