Liubo looked at the carton that was just deposited on his door step by the delivery person just a short moment ago with great anticipation. It was a dream come true to him---it was the one thing that he had saved nearly six months for, and it was finally here after waiting anxiously for the delivery web portal to display its slow progress from Shenzhen, where these things often came from.
The carton itself was roughly a cube with sides of around forty centimetres all around. It was sized in such a way that a relatively strong person could probably lift it in a type of bear hug, but the shape of the box was deceptive in the mass that was contained within.
Eagerly, Liubo read the airway bill that was stuck on the top of the carton, despite already knowing what it was---that the delivery person had to use a trolley to move it around was a big hint. The sender field had the clearly printed text of ``Shenzhen Molecular Printing Company'' on it, and the contents had four line items, the first of which stated ``Molecular Printing Device (small): 1pcs'', the second was ``Molecular Printing Gel, Organic: 1kg'', the third was ``Molecular Printing Gel, Base Metals: 500g'', and the last was ``Molecular Printing Gel, Precious Metals: 5g''.
And on it was another important field: ``Net weight: 30kg''.
Liubo closed the main door to his apartment and bolted it, before carefully dragging the carton across the living room towards his work room. It was a small apartment, only two bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen, and a single shower-toilet. It was definitely not a large living space, but it was something that Liubo was proud of as he had bought it under his own name as an unmarried adult from the government. The housing policy was something of a sticky point for him, but now that he had reached the age threshold to own his own apartment under the lease-hold scheme, he was somewhat satisfied.
The living room was spartan, and had a clear path that led from the main door to his work room. In stark contrast, the work room was a cornucopia of controlled chaos, where every available wall had a rack or a shelf set up with various tools and projects in different states of assembly/disassembly, while every floor space that was not immediately contributing to the basic movement path was co-opted as additional storage for even more tools and projects.
Liubo dragged the carton up to the centre of the room and looked at the table space that he had set aside a week ago on one side of his main work bench. The new device, the Molecular Printing Device (or just the molecular printer) was going to be the centre piece of his latest set of experimentation. On the opposite side of the same table sat the forlorn plastic filament based 3D printer that he had owned for nearly ten years. It was the state-of-the-art when he had first purchased it, and as time went on, he used it to assemble parts that could be used to upgrade it. But fundamentally, that 3D printer could not overcome a fundamental problem: it was based on physical processes only, which limited the precision to something that was at the high sub-millimetre scale. But for finer objects at the nanometre scale, it was basically impossible to improve upon the 3D printing technology to get that far.
Liubo pulled his utility blade from his work bench and carefully sliced open the carton at the packing tape seals and carefully opened up the flaps. Immediately greeting him were the small tightly sealed cannisters that contained the three different printing gels---the largest was the organic printing gel, the middle sized one was the base metals printing gel, and the last was the precious metals printing gel. He carefully removed each cannister from the packing, pausing each time to marvel at their composition, and the fact that he was literally holding them in his hand, before setting them aside. The cannisters of printing gel were useless unless the molecular printing device itself were assembled.
Below the cannisters was a layer of molded expanded polystyrene that helped with packing the materials snugly. Liubo gingerly removed the molded styrofoam, being careful not because of its fragility, but that it made the most horrific shrieking sound when it was in friction with other surfaces. With the layer of packing styrofoam removed, he looked into the carton and paused at the majesty of the most complicated device that one could own in the home without spending a king's ransom on.
(Story continues here.)
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