Difference between revisions of "Assembly level 4 (gem-gum factory)"

Revision as of 15:35, 21 May 2022

The 'from microcomponents to product fragments assembly level.

Overview

• In go: fully assembled microcomponents
• Out go: assembled product fragments – (or the final product if this is the last assembly level)

Processing is done:

• Location: robotic assembly chambers (clean room)
• Robotics: Pick and place assembly. Possibly streaming.

• Connections methods: Mainly form closure interlocking, some vdW sticking
• Environment: possibly an ambient pressure clean air environment. Dirt like chain molecules viruses and dust must be considered.

Robotics character

Pick and place robotics.
Eventual part streaming robotics here to speed assembly up.
Speedup is especially important if this is the last assembly level, since then it needs to be a single layer.

About stiffness from choice of geometry

Factors contributing to more filigree robotics:

• thermal motion is less influential than on preceding assembly levels - kT distributes over rigid bodies with much more atoms
• required placement accuracy is possibly not as high due to all assembly steps employing self centering guidance for restoration of atomic precision - atomic precision is likely still easily reachable though.
• Part streaming robotics can reduce the needed speeds.

Counter-factors:

• If this is the last assembly level then it must be a single layer. This enforces higher speeds for assembly operations. (Assuming levels have layers geometry)
• less bearing surface area at this larger scale allows for higher speeds without incurring too much dynamic friction.
  Speeds are typically still too low for things like mechanical ringing to become a problem. So this is a non-issue.

End effector adapters

Just a few (if any) adapters for the end-effectors are needed.
Microcomponent are big enough to sacrifice a bit of surface are for standardized gripping interrfaces.

Ultra high performance applications that cannot afford even that little scacrifice might wanna use more adapters for end-effectors which is likely not too much of a challenge compared to adapters in preceding assembly levels.

General purpousness & Routing of inputs

There is sufficient space for general purpose just in time freely programmable control.
There is no need for hard-coded motion paths as in assembly level 1 and before.

Though general purpousness and routing will likely be less intensively used compared to the preceding assemble levels 3 and 2 though.
Due to the preceding assembly level 3 already being highly general purpose reprogrammable
microcomponent can be produced pretty much exactly where they are needed and there is not much more need for rerouting them.
For the recomposition of already preproduced microcomponents the total opposite holds though. Capacity for loads of long distance rerouting needed.
An argument for microcomponent recomposers as specialized seperate devices.

Level 4 as the last assembly level

The fourth assembly level is the soonest point where product parts can be released into to a clean air filled (non-vacuum) environment.
This allows for large open spaces where microcomponents can be assembled to structures of arbitrary scale.
In other words: By adhereing to no exposed open bonds assembly level 4 can be made the last assembly level.

No exposed open bonds means that seamless covalent welding of surface interfaces is no longer an option.
The connection methods that still remain available include:

• form closure interlocking
• "weak" VdW sticking

Further reason for stopping with irreversible interfaces at low assembly levels

Waste prevention by enforcing more recyclablity

There is a tradeoff between

• density of function carrying nanostructure (functional-density) and
• reusability of self contained functional units (unit-reusability).
  

Smaller units means units:

• become more fundamental single function only fulfilling and thus more reusable but ...
• necessarily have more interlocking surface eating up quite a lot of otherwise usable volume.

Less requirement for placement accuracy - perhaps

Covalent welding needs positional atomic precision which is more than what self centering requires.
Self centering structures can be combined with covalent welding though in certain cases this might defeat the purpouse though.

Benefits of reversibility in assembly

Full reversibility of assembly in combination with good design of parts (modular and interchangeable) implies full recomposability. Recomposing already pre-produced parts (that is: micocomponents) rather than production from scratch can yield significant gains in:

• waste reduction
• (re)assembly speed
• energy efficiency

Related

Global microcomponent redistribution network

Hopefully a global network of machine phase component redistribution pipes will emerge at some point in time.
Amassing of Mt Everests worth of incombustible diamondoind waste might be the one most under-recognized and severe risk of gemstone metamaterial technology.
So recycling should be taken very seriously from early on. Otherwise it might be too late quite fast.

See main page: Global microcomponent redistribution system

Microcomponent recomposer

Basically a gemstone metamaterial on-chip factory but with all assembly levels below the fourth stripped away.
Such a device cannot produce anything new from scratch but can only recompose microcomponents that were already per-produced elsewhere.

Compared to assembling products from scratch just recomposing already built microcomponents into different configurations produces considerably less waste heat, and can also be done considerably faster. This is because production from scratch requires material to go through the preparation steps and assembly level 1 which rip and form almost every single chemical bond before the molecule fragments finally end up at their final place in the final product. All that covalent bond ripping and forming corresponds to a very large energy turnover in preprocessing and assembly level 1. See: Energy efficiency of piezomechanosynthesis.

See main page: Microcomponent recomposer

Microcomponent maintainence microbots

Like microcomponent recomposers general purpouse microcomponent maintenance microbots can too recompose components (mainly microcomponents and crystolecular elements) to completely different macro-products.
These come with mobility and are not tied to a production device.

microcomponent maintenance microbots are not to confuse with
the (outdated) ultra compact diamondoid molecular assembler concept which
typically are proposed to only operate at assembly level 1 and perhaps assembly level 2.

See main page: Microcomponent maintenance microbot

(wiki-TODO: the below makes absolutely no sense - resolve that)

With an early transition to an air filled environment the creation of monolithic structures becomes harder or even impossible. But:

• Such structures provide only minor and questionable advantage in absolute tensile strengths. Form closure fir tree interfaces can preserve a goof deal of the absolute tensile strength bulk material and provide spots stopping cracks.
• Such structures are non-modular and non-reusable, so not very desirable anyway.

Only for certain very peculiar products (including e.g. a macroscopic single crystals) it would be necessary to defer product expulsion to higher assembly levels.
Metamaterials from passivated microcomponents should be capable of fulfilling almost all our needs though.
Microcomponent expulsion marks a clear line preventing inter-mixture between the second and the third assembly level.

Internal Links

• Productive Nanosystems From molecules to superproducts
• Gemstone metamaterial on chip factory