Mechanosynthesis core

• preceeding: tooltip preparation zone
• next: DME assembly robotics

Akin to processor cores defined by the local environments of arithmetic logic units the cores of APM systems can be considered to be the local environments of the places where mechanosynthesis is actually executed. They are located in assembly level 0.

Different types of robotic manipulators can be used.

General purpouse cores

General purpouse cores are robotic manipulators that either get tooltips delivered in a stream from or pick them up use them and put them down subsequently. With a few exceptions [todo explain them] they are very voluminous and slow compared to mill cores. They have the advantage that six degrees of freedom are easier to implement. Random access to different tool-types is not exclusive to general purpouse cores. I might be doable with mills just fine.

The zone where tool-tip preparation is done can clearly be separated. There the carriages holding the tools might be transported through channels on rails or on rolls like more like in a mills core.

Mill cores

• range of programmability
• delimitability to tooltip preparation zone
• consist out of a lot of strained shell structures

• [barrel mills; rails; use for unstrained infill]

core arrangement

Since the robotic mechanosynthesis cores form the lowermost and smallest assembly level the assembly mechanics need to be a lot bigger than the pieces they are handling (one to a few atoms) and the products. This limits the speed of a single core making it finish one product of its own size much slower than the higher up assembly levels can process and thus calls for high parallelism. Mill cores could e.g. only add a few stripes of a layer and then pass the extended diamondoid molecular element to the next mill core threading it from its spawning to its reception point e.g. a redundant routing layer.

General purpouse cores could be used for the outer passivation and special non-regular or not yet automated structures and interspersed in the aformentioned threading.