🚀 go-pugleaf

dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:

>PS. BTW, it would be an interesting to put 5 or 6 scientists/engineers on
>a desert island (rich in ores) with the goal of producing a 5um accuracy stepper
>motor from stratch. They are allowed any text books they like and we feed them
>well, so they can work on it full time.

>It would be interesting to see if they could do it within their life time.

>Do people think it would necessarily take a number of generations?

>Also recording the minimum number of steps it took to "bootstrap" modern
>precision out of stone age tools would be a fascinating bit of trivia.

Piece of cake.  (Assuming you have the right kind of ores.)
Make a 5 micron/step 'inchworm' motor.  (An inchworm motor works
using the expansion and contraction of piezo-electric crystals
to make the system 'walk'.  They are used in probe positioning for
atomic resolution scanning-probe microscopes  (e.g. scanning tunnelling
microscopes.))

Wire you can beat out of native gold.  Batteries might be a problem,
but you could make a generator out of magnetite and wire.  Use quartz
for the piezo-electric components.  Polished stone for the rails.

Voila, within a year.  Less if the team includes a master blacksmith who
can do ab initio smelting of metals from ores.  A lot longer if you have
a management team.

All it takes is a little Conneticut Yankee ingenuity.

-- 
		David Palmer		 palmer@alumni.caltech.edu