Vulcan Fabrication

Measurement

A the hear of everything that will be done, we need to be able to measure. Small distances should be accurate to under 1-thou. Also need weight, electrical.

Plastic

The ability to work with plastics is at the heart of the fabrication. The most fundamental tool will be the 3D printer.

I don't know how feasible it will be, but there may be value in vacuum forming and injection molding.

There are other important considerations though. Welding plastic will allow large pieces to be assembled from several prints.

Something that is going to be important to me ideologically is the ability to recycle plastic. Most critically, recycling prints, but it would also be nice to be able to identify and sort waste plastic and do a small scale recycling for printing and injection. Possibly even involving some chemistry to allow us to tweak the properties of the plastics we're working with.

• ABS
• PLA
• HDPE
• Nylon

Metal

• Replicate any work that would be done on a mill or lathe to an accuracy of 1-thou.
• Cut stock
• Welding

The two metals that it's most important to be able to work are steel and aluminum. Aluminum is much easier and that will be the primary goal.

I think the most likely route is going to be using the 3D printer to print rough shapes, build molds from plaster and sand, cast aluminum then finish by machining the part on a CNC mill

We should be able to produce wire in a range of gauges. This will particularly be valuable for copper reclamation.

Wood

There are really 3 variations on wood working that we're concerned with - carpentry, fabrication and fine. Carpentry is building structural elements with construction lumber. Fine woodworking is building mostly furniture, but is concerned with the quality and aesthetic of the piece. Fabrication is the use of wood in functional systems - for instance using wood to make a mold. There is also a lot of overlap of these three.

• Cutting
• Drilling
• Surfacing

Composites

I'm thinking fiberglass and carbonfiber. Again, the 3D printer forms the core - printing the frames to be wrapped. An interesting candidate for at least partial automation (wrapping, if not the epoxy).

This may also allow us to reduce the requirements in other areas. Composites may provide the strength requirements that would otherwise require steel manufacturing.

Cloth

Not one I consider as often as I should. We should have the ability to work with cloth. Cutting, sewing, attaching eyelets, snaps and zippers.

Electronics

With the low cost of custom PCBs, we should make sure we can take advantage of them. But we should also be able to make our own boards.

I'm really curious about the practicality of building a layered PCB. The best way would be to use some sort of lithographic process to stimulate copper deposition, alternated with layers of something like epoxy. A more surefire approach, but not as elegant would be to add layers of copper foil, then remove the excess before adding a non-conductive layer.

A pick-and-place machine would be extremely valuable. We may even be able to integrate a camera and some AI to identify the parts rather than needing to specify them, as well as being able to validate the board before putting it in a reflow oven.