3D printing on Atomic Level

[MattSteiner]

Does anyone else see the tremendous possiblities that a 3D printer that could print on the Atomic level will have? I've heard scientist talking about this, as if it will happen soon.

If you can get a 3D printer to do this, you could basically printed molecules of anything you want. This includes food, precious metals, and body parts.

Is this something that you consider to be moral, if possible? It's basically taking over for God.

[McNabb5]

It will be amazing if this is accomplished one day. I still think we are years and years away from this. Perhaps in a couple decades we will begin seeing something that points in this direction. However, there is a lot of things science must first accomplish before even thinking about printing on the atomic level.

[Riskerbus]

Easily probably a couple decades away on any large scale level. My guess, sometime around when Artificial intelligence is perfected. Maybe 2045 or so. At this point there will be abundance, and utopia society in my opinion. Anyone can print whatever they want. The only real thing that will be needed is Land and energy, however in 30 years energy also shouldn't be a real concern either with Solar and Fusion.

[Anuvin]

While we are on the "things that are currently impossible but would be totally sweet" topic, imagine uploading your consciousness to a computer. Coupled with a 3d printer that can print at a molecular level, you have immortality. The problem from there is that once you have that, you can print/program yourself all the dopamine you want, the underpinning of human desire and all human accomplishment. If that weren't problematic enough, all concept of possession and currency will also be lost. If you assume fusion is involved, then it's not a far stretch to assume the manufacture of heavy elements, and therefore, the truest alchemical ideal: sand into gold, platinum, plutonium, you name it.

[RedSox2013]

Since we have drifted slightly off topic I will continue here. The next level after superhuman AI would be the ability to extend our intelligence with computer interfaces. We could then put ourselves into whatever life, and do whatever we want within our own minds. Computer/brain interfaces will bring this to us all eventually. Whether it's 20 years or 2000 year who knows. I am betting it comes sooner rather than later. This is also an argument as to why we have not made contact with aliens. Super intelligent aliens will go into inner space rather than outer space. If you can virtually within your mind do anything or be anything or go anywhere, why would you waste your time exploring space?

[Anuvin]

That was the conclusion some friends and I came to on the topic, RedSox. We said that exploration would still be valuable. Eventually, the death of the earth will spell the death of virtual worlds hosted there. Exploration is mandatory for human survival. It is an interesting thought experiment.

To get back on topic, I suppose this technology is a pretty far off. It may be possible from a technical standpoint in a decade, but handling particles isn't exactly easy. Look at the process for the production of antimatter. It is neither simple, nor cheap. Even if they are self contained in a sort of "atomic ink cartridge", I doubt many manufacturers will be in the market for packaging protons, neutrons, and electrons. I would file atomic 3d printing under "very distant, but nearly possible".

I really hope to be eating these words in ten years, but I doubt I will.

[mechadense]

To place atoms you don't have to handle subatomic particles like protons and electrons.
It's as good as prooven that 3D Printing on the atomic level is possible.
Single atom manipulation at room temperature has been repeatedly demonstrated with AFM & STM microscopes (ultrasharp needles)

Atomically precise 3D printing is being actively researched.

The most intensively studied method is to use whole welding gas molecules (HCCH) as resource material.
Here is an attempt to design a closed cycle or tools that can be charged and discharged with defined molecule fragments.
http://www.molecularassembler.com/Papers/MinToolset.pdf

To do atomically precise (AP) 3D printing at roomtemperature you need stiff nondiffusing suff or else everything you place will wobble and jumble away.
Nonmetal crystals are stiff and nonndiffusing - so they are producable by that method (not food or other stuff thats soft in the nanocosmos).
Nonmetal crystals are brittle but when nanostructured arbitrary material properties could be emulated.
Source: "Nanosystems" by Eric Drexler
Here are some functional elements that today everyone can simulate but noone can built:
http://www.imm.org/research/parts/
The stiff structures allowes crude emulations (force field - not exact QM) to be quite correct.

What we have today is a chicken egg problem. You need an atomically precise 3D printer to build an atomically precise 3D printer.
Well not exactly but almost.
We'll get there by iteratively improving our tools and closing the gap between top down technology MEMS (= micro electro mechanical systems)
and bottom up technology like (Structural 3D DNA nanotechnology) shown here:
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/101/
(The rather soft flexing structures are ok here since you need only placing accuracy of one block not one atom.)

What we need to do is to find ways to get the positional assembly capabilities of MEMS (aka robot arms) into systems of those atomically precise nanoblocks.
So that they can be used economically and then go futher steps to stiffer and stronger materials
like in a first step to silica & pyrite in water and in a second finally to mentioned nonmetal crystals silicon and diamond in nancapsules of perfect vacuum.
Source "Radical Abundance" by Eric Drexler

more diamondoid machine elements:
http://www.somewhereville.com/?page_id=10
http://wiki.transhumani.com/index.ph...ular_Machinery

[mechadense]

To answer the original question - yes I see tremendous potential.

With basic atomically precise productive systems it seems that
all the major problems that currently plague the human society could be solved with reasonable effort in a rather short time.

To make our actions moral we should put effort in:
* waste management
* avoidance of wealth imbalances through rapid change
* resolution of the privacy surveillance dilemma
* measures against chemical weapon production - HalogenCarbides & NOx
* ...

It's not taking over for God.
You need material resources (mining) time (building) energy (plants) and land (to store all that stuff) and most importantly
some smart predecessors that made plans for good atomic arrangements.

btw:
Precious metals cant be made (that would require transmutation)
Body parts will probably produced with "conventional" 3D printing and cell cultures.

[MartinPoets]

Precious metals cant be made (that would require transmutation)

If you could form take atoms and form molecules, wouldn't you be able to create metals, just like you could create anything else. Perhaps I'm just not familiar with what transmutation is.

[mechadense]

Transmutation means changing the atomic number of an element.
Some ways to do this are adding a neutron or an alpha-particle (= naked helium core) to the atomic core or smashing cores together.
Read up here to get more detailed informations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

You absolutely can't use nanoscopic robot arms to transmute elements with alpha particles or other atomic cores for two reasons:
1) You can't hold a naked core it would instantly suck up electrons potentially destroying the structure of the robot arm tips
2) You can't overcome the enormous coulomb repulsion between the cores wich is orders of magnitude greater than the bonding forces between the atoms in the robot arm.

Neutrons cant be hold at all. At best they can be captured in cavities when they're ultra-cold.
You need a nuclear reactor for producing sufficient quantities of them.

Anyway,
With AP manufacturing systems there will be little need for precious metals.
With just carbon and a few other nonmetals (and appropriate nanoelectromechanical designs) many material properties will be emulatable.
You could call them advanced metamaterials.
The only thing you can't emulate with diamondoid nanomachines is digestability taste and odor.