DARPA’s dream: vacuum tubes from 3-D printers CQ CQ 75 GHz DARPA, through its Innovative Vacuum Electronic Science and Technology (INVEST) program, aims to develop the science and technology base for new generations of more capable vacuum tube electronic devices (VEDs). Jan Buiting of Elektor magazine covers the story. https://www.elektormagazine.com/news/darpa-s-dream-vacuum-tubes-from-3-d-printers DARPA News Release (August 2015) http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-08-11
I'm waiting for them to do a 3-D printer job to make a 3-D printer. It will be called a Feedback Experiment. Talk about a dog chasing its tail...
Clever, but you're in good company on this one (Von Neumann, Dyson, Moore). Look up "self-replicating machine".
Now, if they could only replicate the physical material needed for the replications... "Uh, do you want fries with that?" Reminds me of the new secretary trainee that needed 10 sheets of typing paper so she took the one sheet she had and made 10 copies of it. "Yep, that would work..." (And she still had the sheet of typing paper for future emergencies.)
The local maker space has indeed used a 3D printer to fabricate parts needed to fix that particular gadget.
Another active area of research is vacuum microelectronics. The basic concept is that you use microelectronic fabrication techniques, but arrange so that your switching elements are tiny vacuum triodes (or other devices). You would still have an integrated circuit, with thousands or millions of triodes in a single package. By many parameters, electrons moving through vacuum are 'faster' then electrons moving through silicon. 73 Jon AF7TS
I would perk up and take note if someone with a 3-D printer put out a bunch of straight CW keys and flooded the market with them. Perhaps it would force the market to come down a smidgen. Perhaps replacing all those keys on display in Morse Museums would release the originals and allow them to be put on the market. Perhaps as useful to the Ham society would be to set up one of the printers to spin out a few hundred knobs for older equipment. Then fewer people would be buying up dead radios and selling off the knobs. Two birds with one 3-D printer, so to speak. There are a lot of unique items of interest to hams that a 3-D printer could be set up to put out. Or, would the price be prohibitive and they want to keep this a secret? Has me wondering if those printers are able to do print "jobs" for a reasonable price. Perhaps the setup program is the bear in kitchen. How about copies of variable capacitors? Is the material used in the 3-D printer capable of replacing plates in a cap used at HF or higher frequencies? I'd be more interested in knowing the real capabilities of the printer's output instead of making me wonder if it's just pretty and artful replicas of real items/devices.
FYI there are pending patents on these components--3d printed-- and all have been realized in at least modest form.No one is interested in toys or replicas.
