Smart materials would be made of nanomachines,
typically microscopic—with features any size,
down to atomic dimensions. Such machines would
have more or less, the same components as macro,
or familiar "normal" sized machines with
recognizable gears,
bearings, motors, levers and belts... (except for all the nanocomputers).
This is somewhat helpful to the engineer
designing smart materials with a myriad of
functions like shape changing and distributing
fluids and gas—say for environmental control in
a paper thin space suit that actively moves with the body or Drexler's smart paint.
Open a can and splat some on a wall. The paint
spreads itself across the surface using microscopic
machines and changes color on command or
becomes a wall sized 3-D television... Then again,
the whole wall may as well be smart material changing
texture or windows on command.
The point here... one can visualize the machines
needed to do such a job: little tractors with sticky
wheels, connection struts and cables to other
machines. Actually, most of this can be done today, only
on a much larger scale and at great expense
(this is where the novel economics of self replicating
machines plugs in). The transition for an engineer,
is using more machines with much smaller parts and
the luxury of vast computing power.
These differences yield more great utility.
Gears made of Buckytubes are great
nanomachine components... Buckytubes are carbon graphite
sheets rolled into a tube (looks like tubes of chicken wire),
and are "like" carbon in its diamond form,
but with ALL available bonding strength aligned on one axis.
These tubes are stronger than diamond
fiber, and the strongest fiber possible with matter,
so we're starting out with real racehorse material.
Globus and Team designs are chemically stable,
very tough and varied in geometry, including gears made
from "nested" Buckytubes or tubs inside of
tubes. Such a gear would be stiffer and suited for a "long"
drive shaft. And talk about performance...
