Assembly level 4 (gem-gum factory)
The from microcomponents to product fragments assembly level.
Contents
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.
Positional accuracy may be lower than atomic.
Connection mechanisms can restore atomic resolution by guidance (self centering).
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.
Clean air as potential working environment
The fourth assembly level is the earliest assembly level where
product parts can be handled in a clean air-filled (non-vacuum) environment while
not incurring too large design restrictions from that decision.
For clean air to be a possible work environment there
must remain no exposed open bonds on the input parts (microcomponents) to this assembly level.
By adhering to no exposed open bonds assembly level 4 can be made the last assembly level.
In principle switching to clean air would be already possible one assembly level lower at asslembly level 3.
But not allowing any remaining open covalent bonds on crystolecular units is
a significantly more constraining design constraint than only not allowing them on whole the about 32x bigger microcomponents.
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
Concerns:
- Compression of atomically tightly sealed enclosed volumes must be avoidedif not explicitely intended (as in a positive displacement pump)
- Condensation of water vapor might be of concern.
Expulsion of microcomponents between the third and the fourth assembly level
can mark a clear line preventing inter-mixture between these assembly levels.
Level 4 as the last assembly level
Operating in clean air also means assembly level 4 can optionally be made the last assembly level.
That is from here microcomponents can be assembled to structures of nigh arbitrary scale.
Limited only by the dimensions of the macroscopic gem-gum factory chip.
What is the point in going up to further assembly levels still?
See page convergent assembly for that.
Single sub-layer restriction and part streaming assembly as compensation
Note that the decision to make this assembly level the last assembly level puts some additional constraints on it.
- The assembly level geometry makes most sense being a planar layer.
- For potentially fully solid products it must be a single layer of assembly robotics.
Note that non-final assembly levels (as layers) can have many sub-layers as long as
transport speeds don't start exceeding assembly speeds.
This can happen quickly due to the enormous throughput-density of nanomachinery.
See: Higher throughput of smaller machinery
This restriction to only one single sub-layer reduces potential throughput.
Fur nor needing to rise assembly seeds to much
(and thus also with speed quadratically growing friction losses)
One approach is to go for part streaming assembly.
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
Production of macroscopic single crystals
This requires positionally atomically precise covalent seamless welding of
fully unpassivated crystolecule fragments of space filling shape.
With irreversible strong bonding on first contact self centering is not a viable option.
First contact must be atomically precise without the help of any self-centering guidance.
With growing size of crystolecule blocks (super-large crystolecule fragments) the
vulnerability to large amplitude vibrations from external mechanical shocks increases.
Thus aligning blocks to atomic precision gets increasingly difficult/risky with growing size.
And going far up in a convergent assembly hierarchy is actually counter-productive.
So for the production of large single crystals the earlier the last assembly level is the better it is.
With an early transition to an air filled environment the creation of monolithic structures becomes easier.
Vacuum quality becomes an issue though.
Creating and maintaining a practically perfect vacuum across a macroscopic volume is likely
more challenging than for just micro-chambers (which suffice for all other applications beside macroscopic single crystals).
While macroscopic open volumes of PPV are completely impossible with today's UHV technology,
macroscopic open volumes of PPV should be possible with gem-gum technology though.
If not, then complex tricks with local sealing need to be pulled.
See main page: Creating piezomechanosynthesis of macroscopic single crystals
Macroscopic single crystals as products – Take2
See main article: piezomechanosynthesis of macroscopic single crystals
For this particular case of products one cannot go to an air filled work environment.
This is because assembling such products requires seamless covalent welding all the way throughout the convergent assembly level sequence.
And seamless covalent welding needs open non-passivated highly reactive bonds that would react with the oxygen and nitrogen of the clean air.
Also seamless covalent welding gets increasingly difficult with rising assembly levels.
Macroscopic mechanical vibrations/shocks can begin to cause assembly errors because
some assembly motions may be hard to guide stiffly enough to relieably achive the required positional atomic precision.
No self centering in seamless covalent welding.
So for this special case one may want to stop convergent assembly at a quite early assembly level like e.g. assembly level 2.
Further assembly levels do not contribute in nanofactory capability for this one very very particular product case.
Note that almost all practical products will not need macroscopic single crystals.
These may only be necessary for certain very peculiar products.
Even solid state lasing media can probably do with properly designed interfaces.
Metamaterials from passivated microcomponents should be capable of fulfilling almost all our needs.
So macroscopic single crystals are really just a very special niche case.
