I was entertaining the possibility of a powder or fluid-based metal as an input to a 3D printer which works today for fabricating metal components and seems likely to improve significantly with time. I was considering this avenue to be the most likely way that the threshold of full fidelity-preserving self-reproduction is passed, but I have no expertise in this area. It seems like the 3D printing path, if viable, would alleviate the need for some of the tools in the Autofac setup and might reduce reproduction time considerably.
Yeah, I looked at various forms of printing from powder as a productive system. The problem is that the powder is very expensive, more expensive than most of the parts that can be produced from it. And it can’t produce some parts— like ball bearings or cast iron— so you need tools to make those. And by the time you add those in, it turns out you don’t need powder metallurgy.
I’m glad you wrote this, it adds some interesting context that was unfamiliar to me for this market I opened around a week ago: https://manifold.markets/dogway/which-is-the-earliest-year-well-hav#wji33pv4fcj
I was entertaining the possibility of a powder or fluid-based metal as an input to a 3D printer which works today for fabricating metal components and seems likely to improve significantly with time. I was considering this avenue to be the most likely way that the threshold of full fidelity-preserving self-reproduction is passed, but I have no expertise in this area. It seems like the 3D printing path, if viable, would alleviate the need for some of the tools in the Autofac setup and might reduce reproduction time considerably.
Yeah, I looked at various forms of printing from powder as a productive system. The problem is that the powder is very expensive, more expensive than most of the parts that can be produced from it. And it can’t produce some parts— like ball bearings or cast iron— so you need tools to make those. And by the time you add those in, it turns out you don’t need powder metallurgy.