Looking at the current production levels of the working systems it occurs to me that the first things we may want to make arent the parts themselves but rather tooling for small scale production.

The foundry industry uses many methods of production for making sand cores, the simplest is to combine sometype of resin (hundreds are available) with a liquid catayst and mix it with a filler, then ram the mix into a negative cavity. Hardening time can be from 3 to 60 min depending on the resin. The inside of the negative cavity is greased to facilitate part removal and the cavity is simply reused until if falls apart. Pumice is dirt cheap (US$0.05 per pound bulk in areas with volcanic activity), 100% recyclable, available as a filler in most areas of the world and weights less than a lot of plastics on a volumetric basis. Use a thermoset resin and you could pour the wiring and not worry about damaging the Pumice at all.

I picture having a wooden board with lot of square cutouts to bolt different sizes of cavities. Blend up the material, ram the mix, strike off the unimportant surface, wait 10 mins, turn the pieces out, rinse and repeat. Its done in a thousand core shops all around the world every day.

If anyone is interested in trying to make tooling and can get it to me I will gladly give a production run a try. My real email is mbrown AT ashland DOT com.

Mike