New plastic is strong as steel, transparent

Sound like something we could possibly make with a RepRap:
[www.nanitenews.com]

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Wow. I wonder what level of accuracy and precision you'd have to look at to make that work... do you have to manipulate the chemicals at the molecular level, or is it somewhat self-organizing? I don't quite understand the science behind the article.

... it's mostly a composite from very hard and strong nano-particles (or ceramic-flakes) embedded in a polymer ...

It's nearly the same principle, as in glass-filled epoxy-sheets (GFK) or 'virtual stone', where you fill an epoxy with sand - only the particles are much smaller and have a rough surface or some molecular structures on the surface, where the polymer-molecules can dock, so the structure would have a much better inherent stability ...

With better evolved nanotech-compounds there should be much more interesting stuff - imagine a 'spider-web'-string, build from 'endless' carbon nanotubes (or perfectly combined shorter ones), which is over 1000-fold stronger then steel, but as light and bendable as fishing-wire ...

There are visions for applications of this super-strings in all sort of superior mechanical setups - e.g. for space-lifts or for super-strong building material - as thick as a cartonage-sheet, but strong enough, to build miles-high sky-scrapers or 'bullet-proof' plastic-bags ...

Viktor

I have read about this a couple of weeks ago.
The tricky part, on top of the painstaking layer per layer dip thingie, is to find out the correct suspenion of clay particles. It can't be to much and not to little, and the clay type has to have the correct platelet-group size.

This is as far as I remember reading, i think from Physorg.com

The description looked like they just used a machine to repeatedly dip a piece of glass the size of a microscope slide into a set of vials. I thought that is something any 3D robot could do, but I suppose its what's in the vials that is the clever bit!

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

... actually most nano-work is spin-coating, film-drying or even dipping, as in this article ...

Some months ago i found some clever guys aligning nanowires through solving them in soap-liquid, blow soap-bubbles and wet with one side of the bubble a silizium-plate, so the solved nanowires in the liquid-film could be separated, aligned and transferred to the surface of a SI-sensor


For 'real' nano-work you need nano-accuracy and nano-tools - with an wet AFM-tip you can draw nano-lines on a surface for example ...


I'm trying to go in the direction of micro-work - here i have my tripod-setup, which should be capable of sub-micron accuracy and with the thinnest syringe-needles (~100 microns diameter, 60 microns hole) i can draw linewidths of maybe 80 - 120 microns, but with sub-micron positioning accuracy.

When i extrude a very low-viscouse liquid, which dry to a thin film, then the thickness of the slice can be something as 5 to 20 microns - that is the actual limit with this sort of hardware ...

With a special developed pin-dipper i managed to place extemely high-viscouse droplets with 30 microns size and 5 microns height, but this is a single-drop-per-step-approach, so not very fast (but i can eventually reduce the droplet-size down to 1 micron or even lower!)

If you want real nano-accuracy with nanoscale structures, then you must go the way of Eric Drexlers downgrading assemblers - a coarser System build a finer one, step for step down, until you reach the molecular/atomar level, but this way isn't so easy, as building ever smaller lego-bricks!

If your parts and particles undergo some structural dimensions, then you reach the range of molecular effects as adhesion, Van-der-Waals-forces, electrostatic attraction and molecular tribology, which are then much stronger, then gravity or external magnetic forces.

Let us start with millimetres, then step down to microns and maybe next year or a bit later we can try with nano ...

Viktor

Thats all it is the trick as you say is in the vials not in the machine.

As far as research is concerned Reprap's strength is that it would allow for the inexpensive expansion of a lot of testing. Currently in research one major limitation is that you can run many factors at the same time since the number of tests inceases geometrically. But comparing factors run seperatly means that you miss any possibility of interactions between factors.

But as far as the article is concerned, polyvinyl alcohol is cheap, and nano-clays arent that expensive. The problem would be understanding the critical factors for creating a cured film (such as particle size etc.) and for that reprap is potentially very useful since it can build a thousand racks for the purpose of dipping tens of thousands of different samples that can then be broken assembly line style expoentially increaseing the data stream. Or perhaps building a dozen basic robots that build a single sample, break it, then plug the resultant number into a statistical decision maker, change the setting on a mixer or the speed and then repeat. This method and ones like it are used in medicial research but no where else due to the cost. Reprap is potentially a way around that cost.


Mike

ohiomike,

I like that idea! I have been pretty down on medical research in the past due to the fact that they approach all of their problems from a trial-and-error/brute-force mentality--admittedly it is due to the problems being so complex. your idea of using a RepRap system to automate the testing of materials is pretty good. I like that we can apply the brute-force method where it has not been cost effective before. That stands to make a lot of discoveries very quickly.

Demented

Most of my work is development not true research. Research is always years ahead of the development that MIGHT make it cost effective. Reprap is potentially a developers dream in that would allow you to run constant small variations and completely plot out the cause effect graph in more dimensions than we can hope to do now. I am a half-way decent statistician and I usally stick to no more than 3, although I dapple in 4 and will touch 5 on occasion.

More importantly a guy with a half dozen repraps in his basement can run testing on things that a large corporation would never bother with, and a guy with a reprap built pilot plant could then produce enough of that material to facilitate other research. You get the picture.

Honestly, just looking at the number of things that are just recently off patent makes me very eager to get my hands on a fully functioning Darwin.

When I start thinking blue sky stuff I think of how quantum computers will potentially have the ability to do multiple processes at the same time using the same processor. So a quantum processor should be able to run a therorically unlimited number of repraps all doing something different, and then process that information. Heady stuff

Mike

The views expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. Any attempt at impliemtation is at your own risk,

Mike,

A lot more things become possible once RepRap starts printing in metals. I'm particularly keen on how this will bring down the prices of quality machining tools. Lots of things are expensive simply because the machines that make them only exist in a few places.

The patent issue doesn't really affect me. I don't want to sell the things I make so the patents don't really apply to me, do they? Companies can scream and bitch all they want but they can't stop me from "making stuff" on my own dime for my own use. The whole patent thing could stand a bit of parring down IMHO.

I definitely want a handful or twelve of these machines when the process gets hammered out.

Demented

I think patent and copyright issues will face the same faith as we see in the music industri today...

Of course anyone suffers the risk of being clubbed by some big-corp. laywers hitting at random to statue an example, but they can't stop the development as such.

At least patents aren't life plus some number of decades.

They aren't until some sort of Disney analog gets ahold of the idea that they can swing such a thing...

... what's tis with 'steelwire'?

It's the same behaviour, as a (clever) spam-bot!

Viktor

Forum spam and user deleted. I'm curious if it's running a human backend or a computer. It's an interesting trick to quote previous text. We will probably see more of it.