Soliciting Feedback: OS Design

I don't think so. The reason this topic keeps coming up is because
we're damned close to having all the pieces now. It's been a long time
coming, but Moore's Law has finally delivered up extremely high
performance very cheap -- you can buy a 400MHz linux computer the size
of a stick of gum <http://gumstix.com>. There is a lot of buzz in the
robotics community right now that the true age of robotics is upon us,
and I tend to agree.

In fact, I'm on this list in support of a controls design I'm working
on for a DARPA Grand Challenge entry. This race is a 60-mile course
through a city, and the technology developed out of it will show up in
vehicle safety systems that pull over and park for you if you zonk out
driving late at night. It might even manifest as a commuterbot if the
legal and safety issues get addressed.

This kind of thing has been fantasized about for decades in sci-fi;
we're building one now.

3D printers that you describe are also becoming popular, but as yet
they only work with an extremely limited set of materials, albeit
growing very quickly.

Mechanical engineers I know regularly use outfits like Redeye for
samples (and some limited quantity production), so additive processes
are coming as well.
http://www.redeyerpm.com/

I really like the Japanese CNC lathe video. That shows exactly the
type of thinking I'm getting at. Sure, they call it a lathe, but when
you run a router against a rotating part, it's an entirely different
beast. (In fact, that might be the way to go.)

And it needs a new name. "Lathe", "router", and "mill" just don't cut
it and carry pictures of totally different machines. I did get
something out of the vid, though -- the machine I'm thinking of will
be very similar.

Now I'm totally off-topic. Sorry -- I'll stop now.

Regarding laser cutters: You can build a CNC laser cutter using a CO2
laser fairly easily. Laser cutting is limited to fairly thin
materials, though, and the material has to be matched against the
laser wavelength.

This guy bought a 100W CO2 laser from Ebay (the wrong place to buy
lasers on a budget) and integrated it into a CNC machine in his
basement:
http://www.nilno.com/laser_intro/system.html

Disclaimer: if you blind yourself with a homemade CO2 laser cutter,
don't even think of suing me, sue that guy.

On 7/25/06, lcdpublishing <lcdpublishing@...> wrote:
> My opinion on this is strongly biased towards the only existance of
> some such "Device" in going to be in sci-fi movies for a very long
> time.
>
> It is funny though that you started out from the perspective of a
> subtractive process as opposed to an additive process. Hopefully by
> the time mankind gets smart enough to do something close to what you
> are describing, we will have figured out that an additive process
> would be more efficient.
>
> Funny how this sort of topic keeps popping up on the various forums,
> each with assumptions and perspectives from the point of view of the
> forum's general subject mater. Software forums would talk of self-
> creating software, electronics forums talk of self-creating circuit
> boards, machining forums talk of self-creating machines.
>
> While somewhat interesting in sci-fi movies, don't expect to see
> anything in this realm for a VERY LONG time.
>
>
>
>
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