The Speculist

Fab Lab

n. short for fabrication laboratory. A miniature factory that can produce solid objects using computer instructions and simple raw materials. The promise of inexpensive fab labs is that manufacturing (like publishing) will be removed from its industrial confines. The cost of disposable goods will be reduced to the cost of information.

When writing about Fab Labs (here and here) I have been careful to distinguish between the fab labs being experimented with today and nanofactorries or molecular assemblers that might be possible in the future:

The nanofactory is imagined as an appliance...that manufactures whatever is desired from individual molecules up. This has been called the ultimate technology...

...even we optimists understand that we are presently a long way from developing self-replicating nanoassemblers, the basic component of a nanofactory.

Personally I see no reason why automatic home factories need wait for the development of exotic nanotech.

Imagine a computer driven factory that uses raw materials (shredded plastic, wood pulp, various metals, silicon) to assemble whatever product you require using downloaded designs...

With a nonnano fab lab, a consumer would have many of the benefits of a nanofactory without exotic dangers like homemade plagues or gray goo.

I stand by my prediction that we will see these nonnano fab labs much sooner than nanofactories, but the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology published an article yesterday that would take issue with part of my premise:

...Molecular manufacturing is about tiny manufacturing systems. But those manufacturing systems are not nanobots. Modern plans for molecular manufacturing do not involve self-contained nanoscale construction robots at all.

No one worries about an inkjet printer crawling off the desk and stealing ink cartridges. Molecular manufacturing systems will be no more autonomous than inkjets... In advanced designs, called nanofactories, the molecular fabrication apparatus will all be fastened down in well-ordered ranks inside a much larger structure...

-via Instapundit

"Self-replicating nanoassemblers" are not the basic component of a nanofactory as envisioned by CRN. This makes nanofactories sound very much like fab labs working at the molecular level.

This new vision of molecular assembly answers nanotech critics who've argued against the feasibility of nanobots. These critics admit that life involves molecular assembly, but because it's water based they argue that such technology would be very limited.

CRN might get the last laugh with molecular manufacturing, even if the nanobot critics are right. CRN continued:

As nanoscale technologies begin to move from the lab to the marketplace, and attention turns to molecular manufacturing research, it will be increasingly important for journalists [and bloggers] to counter outdated and incorrect ideas of nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing. Both scientists and the public have gotten the idea that molecular manufacturing requires the use of nanobots, and they may criticize or fear it on that basis. The truth is less sensational, but its implications are equally compelling.

Read the whole thing.