re-fabrication unit.

By: arduinopi

To start off this is just a concept at the moment that hopefully can develop into something, not a working bit of hardware.


I'll break the concept down into two parts deconstruction and reconstruction. The idea is to create a unit which can break down a modern electronic piece of equipment into, as much as is practical, it's rawest materials. With these raw materials then being reconstructed into something useful.

1) Deconstruction.

The idea is to create a mini lab which can melt, grind, dissolve or otherwise extract different elements from non working equipment and collect it together. This can be done a number of ways like melting down the plastic into a single block, de-soldering, grinding down ceramics into dust, dissolving metal coatings from components and similar process'.

A key part of this would be a good controllable 'oven' that can melt things and a series of chemical reservoirs that can be used to separate things like gold plate off connectors.

These can then either have things manually moved between process' or ideally ultimately have a robotic system to move things around.

2) Reconstruction.

This would be some form of 3D fabrication unit that can reuse the recycled parts to make something new.

The idea being you could say throw in an old PC and it would be taken to bits and could be turned into something different that could be made from the recoverable parts.