Will it make me feel three feet thick?

SJKebab: Wait till the patent lawyers sink their teeth into these.

Irrelevant, because the government would never allow anyone to buy it for home-use.

right.....

like the pharmaceutical companies and the gov't will allow this to happen.........

An interesting idea, but people are way too inept to be able to do something like this properly. Plus, the threat of contamination would be really high.

Cythraul: [upload.wikimedia.org image 200x341]

Snow Crash was better -- didn't even have to print it out.

hp6sa: SJKebab: Wait till the patent lawyers sink their teeth into these.

Irrelevant, because the government would never allow anyone to buy it for home-use.

That's the thing. Thanks to 3D printing's logical extensions (them being essentially extremely simply universal constructors), you could print yourself a drug printer or make a universal one capable of accepting drug modules. This is brave new territory.

well, this would revolutionize the home meth lab............

Donnchadha: chemical". You'd never be able to adapt the system to have vials of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen and have the printer .....

total buzzkill...

The researchers next step is to try and replicate drugs already available at your local pharmacy, and speed up the printing process and resolution. They're confident that "in the future you could buy common chemicals, slot them into something that 3D prints and just press a button to mix the ingredients" - out would pop the drugs you need.

3 reasons I'm doubtful this will come to pass in the next 30 years.

1) I have faith in the Pharmaceutical companies' ability to look out for their own bottom line. If small-scale manufacturing based on "common chemicals" was really that cheap to do, they'd be doing it rather than making the drugs at centralized facilities and shipping them everywhere.

2) What do you do with the leftovers from the process? The ones the chemical company is required by law to store until inert or carefully neutralize? Are the people who own these printers going to just flush them down the toilet?

3) Teams of lawyers are probably already getting ready for this gold mine. If a consumer (accidentally or because they're out of a particular ingredient) alters part of the recipie for a pie, they get bad-tasting pie, and they typically don't sue either the cookbook publisher or the grocery store where they bought the ingredients. I'm guessing that when the drug-printer user makes a mistake, lawsuits will ensue. I doubt a manufacturer would ever be able to successfully prove that the user used expired ingredients, for example.

I hate paper printing so I hope we abandon the vile word "print" for something far more sexy like "replicate."

Hey, wanna try some-

Cythraul: [upload.wikimedia.org image 200x341]

goddamnit.

/old news is old
//mmm, mimeograph...

I would probably be dead inside of 3 months. (but a fun 3 months)

Cythraul: [upload.wikimedia.org image 200x341]

Came in looking for this, got nearly immediate gratification.

JRoo: Acid

Came here to say this. I'm tripping balls man.

I'd print myself some PB&Js.

I'd be happy if they just let me grow a pot plant in my house.

/I wish i could do acid just one more time.

For some reason, Walter Bishop is the very first person I thought of...

Unless your maker becomes addicted to the drugs it can synthesize, leaving you out of the loop...

kingoomieiii: Brew78: For some reason, Walter Bishop is the very first person I thought of...

What would he need a printer for? Synthesizing LSD is a hobby of his.

Right, I mean.. he'd just be excited by the technology and the ease with which he could devise newer and awesomer drugs, perhaps posting a multitude of recipes and empirical test data. And ratings.

jelly, from the alien comic book series.

What a culture we would have...

hallotavagyna: I would print lines of blow.

I would also print THC directly onto zig-zags.

Might as well save a step and just print THC-laced Zig-Zags.

Not going to happen. You have to respect the chemistry.

Why so much interest in drugs? Is not normal life enough for you Farkers?

Donnchadha: hallotavagyna: Donnchadha: chemical". You'd never be able to adapt the system to have vials of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen and have the printer .....

total buzzkill...

That's Dr. Buzz Killington

My friend has a Chevy Nova with a nitrous kit.

I think it might also have oxygen&hydrogen+carbon injectors as well(my Toyota has those).

If a gear head with a high school education can build that...

It'll basically destroy the War on Drugs. It's a war that depends on people doing it publicly, buying from dealers, and demonising the activities of those dealers (never mind that you get gangs BECAUSE of the illegality). Once people can make their own drugs, there's no trail, and really, busting into people's homes for their personal stash isn't worth it.

It's like what happened with porn in the UK. When people had to move magazines or tapes across borders, it was easy to stop. Once people could download it, the government just couldn't fight it.

In unrelated news, the DEA reports the street value of printer ink is now $2M/oz.

Donnchadha: HempHead: My friend has a Chevy Nova with a nitrous kit.

I think it might also have oxygen&hydrogen+carbon injectors as well(my Toyota has those).

If a gear head with a high school education can build that...

Can your friend's Chevy Nova turn gasoline and air into an anti-cancer drug in high yield and purity? Getting containers of basic organic elements is not hard -- it's getting the machine to do what you want with them that is the tricky part.

I don't know, I was just commenting on the claim it would be impossible to add nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc vials to the printer.

Obviously drugs are currently manufactured in make-shift labs in 3rd world countries or in the case of meth - the backseat of cars.

Automating the process with a printer seems very doable in the near future.

Print your own DMT? I'm there...

/also think the government and big pharm won't let this happen

Donnchadha: HempHead: I don't know, I was just commenting on the claim it would be impossible to add nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc vials to the printer.

Obviously drugs are currently manufactured in make-shift labs in 3rd world countries or in the case of meth - the backseat of cars.

Automating the process with a printer seems very doable in the near future.

My point is that you can't take generic elemental starting materials and create anything you can think of in that way, you have to start with chemical precursors. You don't make meth in the backseat of your car starting from 10 carbon atoms, 7 hydrogen molecules and half a nitrogen molecule. You make it from pseudoephedrine because already has the 10 carbons, 13 of the 14 hydrogens and the lone nitrogen in the proper bonding arrangement.

Well, according to the article from Gizmodo you can now.

Printing sheets of dxm,mxe and thc would be awesome.

Expolaris: JRoo: Acid

Came here to say this. I'm tripping balls man.

it is bicycle day*
*Bicycle Day is April 19, commemorating April 19, 1943, when Dr. Albert Hofmann first took LSD intentionally.


germ78: Print your own DMT? I'm there...

/also think the government and big pharm won't let this happen

maybe we could alter it a little so it didn't taste to terible when you smoke it

Quantum Apostrophe: Donnchadha: hp6sa: SJKebab: Wait till the patent lawyers sink their teeth into these.

Irrelevant, because the government would never allow anyone to buy it for home-use.

Irrelevant, because it will never become practical to work for "any chemical". You'd never be able to adapt the system to have vials of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen and have the printer just print out any random drug you want. You'd have to load up the system with the correct chemical precursors which will change dramatically for every new molecule you want to make. This was demonstrated by doing single step syntheses -- any real drug would be a multistep process, probably requiring several days of reactions and purifications.

Oh yeah, purification -- are you sure you want to eat that? I'm sure it's 96% clean... that other 4% could possibly harm you, right? What if it was a bit too hot or cold in your room today and you only got 76% with other side reactions taking place? How do you check? Just couple it with a home NMR instrument (that liquid helium might run you a pretty penny), or maybe one of those magical GCs that you see on television that can tell you everything you need to know about a chemical with 100% accuracy?

Oh you and your reality. This is a 3D Printer Nutter thread, where physics and reality are anathema. We *will* 3D print out glorious fusion-powered starships that burn He3 mined from the Moon. For the SPECIES!
/Scary how many people truly believe this.

Aw, let us dummies dream.

One day there will be a new frontier. Unwatched, where men can be men, women can be women and small furry creatures from Alpha centauri can be small furry creatures from Alpha centauri...