DIGITAL FABRICATOR

A 'digital fabricator' (commonly shortened to 'fabber') is a small, self-contained factory that can make objects described by digital data. Fabbers make three-dimensional, solid objects that can be used as models, as prototypes, or as delivered products. They are widely used by manufacturers for these purposes. Fabbers use a wide range of techniques to make products from a wide range of materials. The quality of these materials and the precision of fabrication can be a major constraint on functional applications.[1]
Proposed nanofactories would be fabbers that employ arrays of nanoscale machines to assemble macroscopic products from molecular feedstocks. This level of control would enable production of high-performance materials that form structures of nearly perfect precision.
The term "fabber" is also used to refer to hypothetical devices that would be capable of Universal Fabrication. Given a sufficiently detailed set of plans, power and the correct raw feedstocks, a universal fabber could produce any manufacturable item, including a copy of itself. No proposed machine would be universal in the common sense of the word, since not all physical structures can be manufactured.

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See also

External links

See also

★ Fab lab

★ Clanking replicator

★ Desktop manufacturing

★ Solid freeform fabrication

★ RepRap Project - self replicating fabber

★ 3D printing

External links

★ Fab@Home Personal Desktop Fabber Kit

★ Intro to fabbers

★ worldchanging

★ Discussion at Make magazine's site

★ New Scientist: Desktop Fabricator May Kickstart Home Revolution

★ economist story

★ Fabbing · Impresión en 3D