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“ Accordingly, for this architecture, test is uniquely associated with production, and suspect product is sent back to its producer for re-test.
We now consider a further embellishment of the fabricator node. Rather than entirely disassembling a faulty product, it may be profitable to rework it. Rework is in general much harder than simple disassembly because it can entail fairly complex diagnosis and repair. ”

“ Those morphs enumerated are the ones found useful in the exposition of the system architecture. Additional stocker functions may be desirable in an actual physical system. Potentially useful locations are between the kitter and producer and between the producer and the tester. Also, multiple stockers may be required following a disassembler to handle the number and diversity of components. Redundant transportation and communication subsystems at each rank would make the overall system more robust, as would redundant fabricator nodes. This could be readily incorporated into a physical system. ”

“ The designer also generates assembly instructions for his product and a parts list. The assembly instructions go to the production department and the parts list to the procurement department. The original specification is used as the test department to verify that the product is what was originally requested.
Figure 5.55 shows how such a design function is added to a fabricator node. The designer in this node functions in a capacity analogous to that of a human designer. Automated design is a function which requires a fairly intelligent machine. ”

“ After the product is produced by the producer, it is tested by the tester. In the basic Morph I, fabricator node product which does not pass the test is simply expelled as waste. Product which passes the test is sent to the stocker which accumulates it for shipment. ”

“ If the designer finds it needs a product which is not available, it chooses a free node at rank L-1 and sends to it the specification for the required product. If there are no free nodes, then the system as configured is not large enough to produce the desired final product. As the system architecture presently stands, outside intervention is required at this point.
5H.5 Utility of Node Morph Architecture
The node morphs enumerated in this paper are not meant to be exhaustive. ”

“ If the system is presented with a faulty final product, it will repair it. Interesting extensions of this architecture would be the ability to add additional fabricator nodes when required and the ability to add entire additional ranks when needed. ”

“ Although some modest amount of diversity is expected in the transportation and communication subsystems, the fabricators are expected to be extremely diverse. They will range from ore smelters, to rolling mills, to high precision lithography for integrated circuits, to final assembly of complex products. ”

“ This also was to promote economy. A side effect of this architecture (which was designed only for efficient fabrication) is that it also perform automated repair. Depending on circumstances this repair call be effected by selective disassembly or selective rework.
First consider selective disassembly for a suspect computer system that needs repair. For the purposes of example it is assumed that the final product is a computer item consisting of four racks of card cages and that each card cage contains 32 printed circuit boards. The PCBs are populated by 11 integrated circuit (IC) types. ”

“ Living Systems. McGraw-Hill Book Company, N.Y., 1978
Valdes, Francisco; and Freitas, Robert A., Jr.: Comparison of Reproducing and Nonreproducing Starprobe Strategies for Galactic Exploration. J. of the Brit. Interplan. Soc. vol. ”