Latest revision as of 16:27, 11 February 2024

A chip processing atoms/molecules to macroscopic products.

One possible form factor is similar to today's tablet computers. The protective hood could be dynamical deployed making it very backpack-portable. See: Form factors of gem-gum factories. For how products may look see: Likely visual appearance of gem-gum products.

Assembly levels organized as Assembly layers as shown in the "Productive Nanosystems From molecules to superproducts" concept animation.

A personal desktop gem-gum factory that is in the process of extruding out some product. (Screencap collage of from concept video "Productive nanosystems")

Old mock-up using a Note1.

Up: Advanced productive nanosystem
Gemstone metamaterial on chip factories (or gem-gum factories for short) are a main topic of this wiki.

From molecules to super-products

The idea is that a gem-gum factory will take in simple raw materials on one side.
And out the other side come high performance atomically precise products for very low price.
There are no waste materials beside pure water and warm air.

Video:
Here is a concept animation video (plus its discussion):
Productive Nanosystems From molecules to superproducts
It depicts some internals of a gem-gum factory.
What is shown in not derived from creative/artistic freedom but
from the results that were found by the theoretical analysis in Nanosystems.
The doubtful in the audience might want to read the page:
Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale.

Building with air:
Given enough energy is supplied even the carbon dioxide in plain air could be be used as a building material resource.
Using carbon from the air to build stuff as plant's do (but quite differently in the details – See: Air as a resource).

Produce faster with recycling:
Instead of using simple molecule raw materials old microcomponents can be recycled.
That should take less energy and be faster. (See: On chip microcomponent recomposer)
Old microcomponents for recycling could be supplied via a global microcomponent redistribution system.

Diversity of gem-gum factories:
Gem-gum factories will come in a wild variety of form factors.
From as small as key-fob sized over phone sized, laptop sized, standalone photocopier sized, garage door sized, and maybe even seaport sized and beyond.

The factories innards – stepwise assembly successively bigger parts

Inside the gem-gum factory products are assembled not right a way as a whole (there is no in place assembly) but in small parts that are successively assembled to sucessively bigger parts via successively bigger robotics. This assembly process to successively bigger parts is called convergent assembly.

• The successivley bigger robotic assembly stages are here called assembly levels or assembly layers.
• The successively bigger part sized are here called component levels.
• The successively bigger transport intermediary transport systems are here called routing levels or routing layers.

The assembly levels are interspersed with the routing levels.

• Each assembly level sits between two component levels. Small parts get assembled to big parts.

Level after level – A recurring but changing cycle

Going up the levels from the very bottom the resource molecules to the last and topmost assembly level one finds that there is a recurring pattern. The same functionalities need to be done over and over again at different size scales.

Depending on the size scale of the layer the same recurring functionalities need to be provided via somewhat different means. This is because of already predictable design constraints like:

• physics behaves quite differently for different size scales.
• A focus on standardized mass produced parts motivated by lowest scale space constraints and a desire to maximize further up recycling

Analyzing these design constraints can give us a crude preview of how the innards of a gem-gum factors might eventually look like. Of course an actual implementation might carry quite some differences. Especially some more or less useful legacy stuff from the bootstrapping pathway will likely be present.

What would actually be inside – mapping out and comparing the recurring process steps

The table in the following section meanders repeatedly through the same functionalities at the different size scales.

• Rows are functionalities
• Columns are levels

By going through the columns you see how the same functionality is solved differently for the different size scales.

Here in this wiki the size for the steps for the scales is chosen slightly arbitrary to be 32. Just because:

• two steps then make roughly 1000 and
• only four steps suffice to go all the way from big nano (atoms well visible) to small macro (parts well visible for anyone not almost blind)

Size growth is geometric not arithmetic. The successive size-steps multiply.

Stage vs step table

You may meander through this table in two ways:

• size wise column by column including all the repeating processing steps (including the assembly levels) and/or
• type wise row by row showing how the chosen aspect of the processing chain changes with scale

Matching to the basic assembly levels there are corresponding design levels.

The assembly levels are about the size and character of the intermediary convergent assembly steps both the assembly systems (assembly chambers, assembly manipulators, ...) and the general character of the product-fragments assembled inside. The design levels are about product design software that matches these levels.

Assembly levels are mostly static and will likely only change significantly when the nanofactory itself receives an upgrade. The design levels are about software tools for actual concrete product design which may change on every production run (with the exception of hard coded assembly in the initial convergent assembly steps).

(TODO: add miniature images and links to table)

Nature of parts, robotics, and connection mechanisms across the scales

Info-sheet: Illustrating what is going on in the assembly layers of a gem-gum-factory.
yellow: kind of building blocks – red: kind of assembly – blue: kind of robotics

See graphic on the left.

Microcomponent recomposers as a separable Subsystem

Note that if you strip a nanofactory of the first assembly layer
(and maybe of the second assembly level too) then what you are left with (after fixing open ends)
is a microcomponent recomposer.

A microcomponent recomposers ...

• may either come as separate standalone device, or
• the upper assembly layers of a gem-gum factory may be just used as a microcomponent recomposer.

Microcomponent recomposers will likely have an extremely high maximal throughput if designed for that property.

See main page: Hyper high throughput microcomponent recomposition

Nanofactory control

• hardware hierarchy of processing logic
• software decompression chain
• User interfaces for gem-gum on-chip nanofactories

Block diagram of a nanofactory
(TODO: include this broad image overview here)

Related: Materializable programs

Self replication of gem-gum factories

Self replication in the bootstrapping process

Highly compact self replication at the nanoscale (as it is present in the obsolete concept of molecular assemblers) is not (!!) a prerequisite for the bootstrapping of advanced nanofactories. For details about how the bootstrapping process could be performed check out the main article: "Bootstrapping".

Self replication in normal usage

Beside a sheer infinity of useful products a gem-gum factory can quickly produce copies of itself. It does not need any special fancy raw materials for this. The necessary raw materials are abundant and everywhere available. Heck even the air you breath works if nothing else is available.

So when you have a gemstone metamaterial on chip factory then you can make more gem-gum factories for all of your friends. Anywhere and anytime. And they can make more copies for all of their friends. Since everyone is linked to every other person on earth through a low number of acquaintanceships, see: wikipedia: six degrees of separation (which btw is not entirely true), you can imagine how fast this can spread. We know it from software. Actually the limiting factor may very well be the the time it will take us to develop these devices.

Specialization pushes self replicative capabilities into the macroscale

A main defining feature a gem-gum nanofactory (if not one of the most important ones) is that while the whole system is general purpose all its various subsystems are highly specialized. Much like what you find in a general purpose computer (moterboard, CPU, main bus, …). There's no magic general purpose computronium inside.

This makes it:

• much more efficient than the old and now obsolete molecular assembler concept
• not possess highly compact self replicative capabilities as the molecular assembler concept

Specialized one-task-only pick and place mechanisms (like molecular mills) can be smaller and faster than general purpose ones. Just as this is the case in macroscale factories.
When every standard part needs it's own production line then a system capable of self replication that needs many part types naturally becomes quite big. Quite big meaning well visible for human eyes. As a wild guess think thumbnail size.

Resillient backup

Strewing out thumbnail sized gem-gum factory save point chips at strategic and random locations over the whole earth that are specially designed for being able to bootstrap gem-gum technology from nothing but the device itself could serve as a worst case backup plan for human technology and civilization.

Alternate names

There are several names for this concept.
Some already existing, some introduced in this wiki.
Some maybe problemaic like the name "Nanofactory"
See main page: Alternatives to the term "Nanofactory".

Related

• For the gemstone metamaterial technology
  that these devices are made out of and
  that these devices are making
  check out: gem-gum technology
• For a more general overview over atomically precise manufacturing as a whole including steps on the pathway to this advanced target please go to the main page.
  
• For a more technical overview about gem gum factories check out: Design of gem-gum on-chip factories.

• Up to a more general concept: Advanced productive nanosystems

• Form factors of gem-gum factories

• Gemstone metamaterial on chip factory are both part of and origin of in-vacuum gem-gum technology.
  If that sounds paradox it's because of the chicken egg problem of bootstrapping such factories.

• Design of gem-gum on-chip factories
• Productive Nanosystems From molecules to superproducts – The concept animation video
• Advanced productive nanosystem
• Visualization methods for gemstone metamaterial factories
  including Distorted visualization methods for convergent assembly
• Gemstone metamaterial technology aka "advanced high throughput atomically precise manufacturing"
• Convergent assembly
• Assembly levels mapped to Assembly layers
• Discussion of proposed nanofactory designs

• User interfaces for gem-gum on-chip nanofactories

• Semi hard-coded structures
• Bottom scale assembly lines in gem-gum factories
• Molecular mill, Mechanosynthesis core, Building chamber
• Sequence of zones

Complementary

• Molecular assemblers – outdated as sensible desirable far term target and
  questionable as bootstrapping pathway towards more advanced systems (due to extreme difficulty)

What it is and what it does

A personal desktop gem-gum factory fabblet with dynamically deployed protective hood.

The personal gem gum factory is: Your personal device that can push out virtually every thing* of your daily use. (* at least every inedible thing) The personal gem gum factory makes: Your products that are as cheap as the abundant mining-free raw materials that it processes. Your products that are far superior to today's best and ridiculously expensive high tech products. Your products potentially in an environmentally friendly effluent free way (also advanced recycling is faster than producing from scratch) Graphical Infosheets: [1] (work in progress)

External links

• [todo: add the main ones]
• Preliminary rendering from the "productive nanosystems" concept video: [2]
  some details are different than in the final versions.
• Complete molecular manufacturing systems will have many subsystems, designed to meet many constraints (2014-04 on K. Eric Drexlers website)
• Personal Nanofactories (PNs) – Center for Responsible Nanotechnology