(Story begins here.)
The disassembled molecular printer was neatly packed by its component box-like constructions that looked like they were machined out of some nice blocks of stainless steel, with a simple user manual placed on top of them, almost as an after thought.
Liubo took out the user manual, scanning through it cursorily, and set it aside. He would refer to it later for the actual assembly.
Carefully, Liubo removed each of the components from the carton (except for the base), weighing each gently in his hands as he took his time to wonder at the intricacies of each part that he was not completely able to see. Unlike the 3D printer, which used purely physical parts only, the molecular printer had a lot of quantum mechanical components that were fabricated with larger and more sophisticated industrial scale sub-molecular printers---these parts were not directly serviceable by the home consumer, and more importantly, were too intricate to be allowed to exist out of the specific homeostatic conditions in which the components were deliberately fabricated in.
The quantum mechanical components were what made it possible for massive miniaturisation of the molecular printer that allowed it to reach the consumer market. Liubo remembered the time where the first molecular printer was invented---it was nearly twenty years ago, and it took up the whole building where it was first put together, and it took an entire power sub-station just to provide it with enough energy to assemble any molecules of up to five different atoms. It was that large because the molecular printer (called the general purpose molecular assembler then) had to rely on high energy physics with some chemistry to force-align the electron clouds to allow arbitrary atoms to be combined in any of the possible types of bonds to create molecules. It was also limited to only five different atoms because the order and intensity of the process of molecular assembly itself grew super exponentially with the number of atoms involved, and beyond five was when the digital computers of the day could not keep up with tracking of all possible states and thus maintaining the right equilibria to perform the assembly.
But the package that lay before him could easily assemble one billion atoms together into molecules that used all the known forces that could be called a molecule, at a significant fraction of the energy cost. It was such a significant fraction that it could be powered from the standard 220 V AC socket found at home. Truly a marvel of technological advancement.
Liubo placed each component of the molecular printer on the ground near him, and retrieved the user manual that he had set aside earlier.
``Congratulations on your Molecular Printing Device (small), bring to you by the Shenzhen Molecular Printing Company! May your molecular printing needs be meet with good and efficient!''
Liubo cringed. It was typical Chinglish, an unfortunate bastardisation of the English language brought about by the helpfulness of automated machine translators that worked with the original Chinese source text. `All the technology in building quantum mechanical components for consumer electronics and they cannot even fix the machine translation,' Liubo thought to himself sardonically as he flipped through the user manual more.
The assembly instructions were quite straightforward. The largest component that was in the bottom of the carton was the molecular printer's base. It was, incidentally, also the most massive.
Liubo opened up the carton more thoroughly to expose the built-in handles of the base before carefully lifting up from the floor and placing it on a scale nearby. The scale read ``20.0 kg'', which matched the stated mass number in the assembly instructions. The mass of the molecular printer's base was very important---it served as a proxy to indicating if the quantum mechanical components were kept intact from the shipping.
Happy with no obvious damage, Liubo carefully lifted the base up seventy centimetres to place it on the freed up table space on his main work bench. He then picked up each of the other components and carefully assembled them on to the base according to the assembly instructions, surprised that they were accurate despite having more of the Chinglish. There was little need for the application of screws and the like---the parts fit together using various built-in clasps and magnetics.
The last to be added where the three molecular printing gels, and there were exactly three slots in the molecular printer where each of the sealed cannisters could go. Staring intently at the assembly instructions for a while more, Liubo realised that other than the general uprightness fit of the cannisters in the slots, there was no other alignment needed. Satisfied with the finding, he finished up the assembly of the molecular printer.
The powering up of the printer for self-diagnosis tests had to be deferred till after Liubo had his dinner.
(Story continues here.)
