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III. Fill in the gaps using the given words.

A) Driving, squeezing, built, making, used, advanced, prototyping, using, manufacturing, connected

RepRap: Machines building machine parts

The idea is simple: use a rapid prototyping machine to build duplicate machines, (_____) down the cost, and (______) rapid prototyping widely available.

Using manufacturing systems to produce more manufacturing systems is a major goal of molecular (_____), the (_____) form of nanotechnology. But a group at Bath University is working toward that goal today, and they are not even (____) nanotechnology.

RepRap stands for "Replicating Rapid-Prototyper." Rapid (_____) (RP) machines have been under development for the last decade or so. They work a bit like a 3D version of inkjet printers, (_____) out plastic in three-dimensional shapes under direct computer control.

For the most part, RP machines have only been (____) to make inert objects, because they can handle only one kind of material. The advance that's put RepRap on the map is the ability to include metal – wires - in a plastic product. If wires can be (___) in by the computer rather than (____) by hand, then more complex products become easier to build.

B) Being, purchased, including, used, building, turned, scaling, finished, manufacturing, costing

The RepRap plan requires that the motors, bearings, and computer chips be (____) separately, and a person would need to snap the parts together. Their design is far from (____). But there's no obvious reason why a few hundred dollars of motors, chips, and plastic goop couldn't be (___) into an RP machine (_____) many thousands of dollars today--and the new machine, (_____) inexpensive, could be (____) to build a wide range of consumer goods that today need large factories to produce them economically.

Molecular manufacturing has several important advantages over RepRap or any other large-scale manufacturing system. (____) laws mean that small machines can be many times more powerful than large machines. And (____) with atomic precision lets you take advantage of several physics tricks (____) superlubricity, zero-wear sliding surfaces, and automatic maintenance of precision in (____) operations.

C) Shared, replaced, making, unreasoning, uncontrolled, supplied, creating, manufacturing, associated

Several advantages are (____) between RepRap and molecular manufacturing.

The three most important aspects of such a self-copying rapid-prototyping machine are that:

1. The number of them in existence and the wealth they produce can grow exponentially,

2. The machine becomes subject to development by artificial selection.

3. The machine creates wealth with a minimal need for industrial (______)

The word (______) in the second point was "evolution." This is because molecular manufacturing has become incorrectly (____) with runaway evolution and (_______) self-replication. Let's be clear: both RepRap and nanofactories will only build duplicates on command, and only according to the blueprints that are (_______).

Even if RepRap succeeds in (_____) the structural and electrical components of an RP machine, it will have lower performance than a molecular manufacturing system simply because droplets of plastic are far larger and less precise than molecules. But RepRap is a good start. If nothing else, a familiar human-scale machine (_____) useful duplicate machines will help to mitigate the (______) resistance to the idea that a nanoscale machine could do the same.