Wikipedia knows everything

[Rayden]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanolathe

[Decimator]

It's known by another name too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping

[manored]

Wikipedia is made by slighly insane people like us so... WE KNOW EVERTHING! :)

[Strategia]

It's known by another name too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping

My other car is a Weasel.

[grumpy_Bastard]

Who came up with the "nanolate" term?

Lathe definition:
"machine tool for shaping metal or wood; the workpiece turns about a horizontal axis against a fixed tool "

!=

Nanolathe definition:
"Working from a pre-defined blueprint in memory, a construction unit spays down microscopic particles, layer upon layer, until the build is complete. Once the blueprint is established, other construction units may assist with building up the layers, even if they do not have the blueprint themselves.."

In other words,

Nano ("on a scale of nanometers") + lathe (spins a block of material to perform various operations) should = small scale block spinning.

[Fanger]

o rly...

[Decimator]

Languages don't work that way, grumpy. Unless we're talking about dead latin.

[KingRaptor]

If the meaning of a compound word was dictated by those of its constituent words, monopoly would be an oxymoron.

[smoth]

a lathe does function like that. horizontal spin with a bit applied to carve out peices.. the nanolathe thing always bothered me but I leave it at sci-fi jargon.