… Feel FREE to use it …. you will get that joke in a moment

Information in the age of the internet has great personal and societal value but no real monetary worth. Micro economically speaking, when information is infinitely replicatable, at almost no cost, it has a small but finite monetary value that approaches Zero. That is basic supply and demand economics. Look at this chart to see whats happening to the media distribution industries.

Currently you can go down to Sears and order a CNC mill for wood working, you can go online an order rapid prototyping machines for building wax, and plastic models. People are printing out electronics and computer circuitry on ink jet printers. Combining the two enters us into a whole new world of possibilities. As with information we are slowly gaining the knowledge to replicate materials items in an infinite way. This plastic flash memory is one small step in that direction.

Now lets crunch some numbers in a way that replicates (pun) the numbers given by the recording industry on piracy losses … GRIN … (ie use real numbers and spin them slightly in our favor)

Here are our “FACTS” ….

-Ink jet printer can put down a layer of material that less than 1/4000 of an inch thick.
-An Ink jet printer can have a resolution of up to 5000 x 5000 Dots per inch.
-Electronic circuits, OLED’s, conductive polymers, metal pathways, and transistors can be printed using an ink jet printer
-Structural materials (plastics) can be printed using an ink jet printer
-Contact sensors can be built using an inkjey printer
-rapid prototyping can be done in as many layers as needed
-An ink jet printer can do upto 15 sheets per minute

Lets see what we can do with these facts …. Lets build something … a new 100 GByte USB flash memory storage device … (we are going to ignore these and other facts, the alignment of 1/5000th cant be done layer after layer on an inkjet, the dry time required for each layer, the fact that no one has yet done flash memory on an inkjet)

First lets figure out our storage density … With the printer at 5000×5000 dpi that would be ~2500×2500 with spacing between flash memory cells. Thats a memory density of 6.25 Mbits per inch^2, divided by 8 (to find the bytes) 781,250 bytes per inch^2.

Now using 8 1/2 x 11 inch stock for our printer lets find out what our storage capacity is per memory layer. 8.5 x 11 x 781,250 bytes per inch^2 = 73,046,875 bytes per memory layer. Each memory layer consists of 4 individual layers, plastic film, metal transistor gates layer, aluminum oxide, and an insulating polymer. So with inkjet printer laying down 1/4000 th per pass that means each layer will be 1/4000 div 4 = 1/1000 th inch thick. (This ignores the fact you cant layer Al2O3 that way. You probably can find a some other material to use in an inkjet that has the same qualities, dielectric, resistance,etc)

Now how many layers do we need for 100 GByte???

100,000,000,000 bytes div 73,046,875 bytes per memory layer = ~1369 memory layers or in inches 8.5 x 11 x 1.37 inches.

How long would it take to make ???

1369 memory layers x 4 actual layers = 5476 actual layers.
5476 layers div 15 layers per minute = 365 minutes or 6 hours.

Okay this was total BS with current technology but it was fun to do … 🙂

The one thing missing with inkjet printing of electronic circuits is the memory. This is a step in the right direction.

Now Imagine a day in the near future when the companies that manufacture solid items start going through the same pains as the information distribution companies. When this technology or nano technology begins to allow anyone to manufacture anything they want anytime they want to. In the end all you need is to pay for raw materials once and just recycle them … When everything is FREE after you buy the raw materials once …