The 'chemputer' that could print out any drug

I saw a modified version of a 3d printer print out a beating mouse heart on the news recently. Pretty cool.
 
The Network said:
I saw a modified version of a 3d printer print out a beating mouse heart on the news recently. Pretty cool.
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rangrz said:
^

I'd say it's more then 10 years away. As I was saying earlier in the thread, electrons and atomic nuclei do not behave like baseballs or even like tiny drops of ink. The difference between classical and quantum mechanics make the concept of "printing" molecules by spraying around atoms in a manner analogous to droplets of ink seem meaningless imo.
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How many would you (hazard one) guess
 
If you ever make that a reality you will be very wealthy. You could probably win the Nobel peace price. I agree with the other guy that said everyone on blue light should donate money to this man.
 
So assuming someone was able to create a device which could build complex molecules, what stops someone from using the device to print out say dangerous compounds like sarin or cyanide?
 
The problem with answering hypothetical questions about this "chemputer" or systems like it, is you will still need a supply of reagents.

Sure any lay-man can make Sarin in their garage, but it takes a mountainous effort to make the precursors to precursors to precorsors, than work your way all the way down the chain... (Nobody does the ~30 step synthesis to make Ketamine from unwached chemicals either)

Printers like this should be thought more of a source of cheap equipment - glassware, tools, stirrers etc. One cannot graft bits onto molecules with atomic tweezers,

Really all I can see this machine doing is building little automated reactors for making chemical reactions into a table-top "add reagents, push button" type of deal where a computer will control the required variables of the system (pressure, temperature, reagents added) and a 3-d printer will form reaction vessels and transfer lines as needed. It will lower the barrier to small/medium scale "home process chemistry", but these devices will never eliminate the need to have a chemical feedstock as starting material.
 
Ho-Chi-Minh said:
How many would you (hazard one) guess
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In the sense of "spraying" atoms around to make molecules? Never, it's a fundamental physical issue with how things at the atomic scale behave. (i.e. wave/particle duality, the fact that the position and momentum of a particle can never be known with certainty beyond .5 of the reduced planck constant, etc and instead exists as a probability amplitude of being in any given spot at any given time) An easier one to grasp is "how to we move the atoms around?" So, that's basically a particle accelerator. Now, the way those work is they use a magnetic field to accelerate it, and use bending magnets to collimate the beam. K...so what's the problem right? Well, as we know, atoms are normally electrically (and thus magnetically) neutral. In order to accelerate and collimate them, we need to strip off some electrons to give it a + charge. Now we have an ion. Ions don't behave the same chemically as neutral atoms. Further, by the time we accelerate the particle across any non-trivial potential difference , it's FULLY ionized, that is, it's now dealt with in terms of nuclear and particle physics, and any talk of "chemistry" is utterly devoid of meaning.
 
^thank god my vocabulary from physics and chemistry wasnt lost in the "brain fry of 2008-2012".
 
Probably going to be linux based. xD Those guys are a bunch of stoners anyways. What ever it is, the fact of the matter is, computers have hackers so now instead of Black Hat it's going to be High Hat. I can see it now, "Hacker turns old womans house into meth lab".

Either way, I want mine in opiate mode instead of safe. :D
 
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