We can mining and produce many things in the space. But if we want to build robots far away from the Earth we need microporcessors, electronic components. How to produce them? What do we need?

The basics :)

http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/chipmaking/Makingofa_Chip.pdf

buy them from earth, until we can produce them.

I think it is not a good idea to buy them. My reasons:

~ If you want to mining and to build machines in the asteroid belt, the delivery time will be too high. ( About a year ) And it is extremely dangerous if a solar flare destroyed our machines.

~ Think about the worst case scenario. What will happen if we cannot buy them because of an embargo or a catastrophe.

In the space the electronic components and processors are very important. Maybe the most important.

If our nation want to live in the space, it is the first problem what we have to solve.

I agree. We need to have the ability to make on the go. My dream would be 3D fabricators, that work like 3D printers now, but can do complex materials and shapes. One machine to make replacement metal parts, plastic parts, even curcuit boards. Give each mining crew a fabricator and produce what they want on demand. All they need are raw materials. But in until we can create an open source fabrication machine, buying from Earth would be our only option. We may have to include redundancy in our mining supplies. Plenty of extra parts for the ones that break, or are damaged.

You've missed the most obvious problem with buying Earth technology.

Implanted backdoors and otherwise unwanted features at the behest of government agencies. If that's happening now with consumer equipment, then things we have produced for us are almost certainly going to be dangerous to use.

Projects like OpenPrincton might help mitigate this.

"make on the go" is certainly a required thing, but we'd need to sensibly establish orbital manufacturing before we can actually do anything really cunning. We'd need more than a 3D printer for that. The mining can be largely automated, too. And yes, the first seed factory thrown over there(the belt between Jupiter and Mars) will require many many spare, almost an entire facility. But by the time the first materials it's thrown back arrive, it should of expanded itself to the point of cloning itself, and the inbound resources will double... then double.... then double... then double... then double..

Assuming we can actually get the waifers done in microgravity(centrafuges to make artificial gravity might be sensible) then the lithography processes used on earth should work equally viable in space...

We have an Earth factory. Period. The cost of getting microchip manufacturing in space could build a whole moon city. Microchip manufacturing is not a small operation. (I have two years of schooling on a Microelectronics Manufacturing degree)

If I was dreaming of future microchip production, I'd say we'd need to develop nano assembly by DNA and RNA to create our microcircuits. DNA assembly at nanoscale has come a long way, and can already assemble conductive wires.

Yes, it'll make sense to first devel this tech on Earth, if possible - and as you point out this capability isn't cheap, which is why this type of fabrication is towards the later of my list to acquire - but there will come a time when space is the more sensible option... And by springboarding a seed factory out there, the rest becomes pretty much costless, long term. Moon cities become trivial(tho adjusting the mass of the moon probably isn't very clever).

DNA/RNA is an interesting concept - need more than conductive wires for a microchip tho. Definitely a direction to be looking, but until that comes along we're going to need something a little more conventional.

Being potentially more educated than I in this field, what would you address as the major concerns with such a process occuring in microgravity?

all of us know produce these components by ourselves are important. BUT GUYS, do you think this new country have got the ability to produce them recently? Before you get the ability to mining in out space, you still need all kinds of materials to manufacture spaceships and other equipment. One day we will have the ability to get every thing we need in space, but now we need to get them on earth.

Accepting that there is a chance that external agencies may attempt to create "back doors" into our technology, I believe that we should source our electronics requirements from Earth. There are ways and means of controlling access and staying away from large scale platforms such as windows is one of them. The technology needed to self-produce is phenomenal and we need equipment to begin that phase of development. Yes, it is a project for the future, but for now, maybe getting off the ground and using pre-existing and tested engineering may be the obvious option.

LOL @ "Accepting there's a chance" - There's documented evidence. It has happened. It is happening. It will happen again. There are ways and means of controlling access, but that didn't seem to do cisco, juniper, dell, huawei, WD, maxtor, samsung, gemalto from falling prey - companies like microsoft, intel, ATi just bend over and ask it it can come any harder.

And no, not the future, this is a project for now. That's how you make thing happen.

The technologies required exist now, we just have to package the together, and write some software. And, yes, that development starts on Earth. It can sensibly be distributed too.

Starting with a CNC milling tool(larger concern is debris in microgravity, not impossible to solve), a few 3D printer, preferably developing a method that can use one system for multiple materials, but if required just several types(some varients are more suited than others), a couple of delta robots, a few mechanical arms etc, -=- Preferably you would be considreing generation, but early iterations can be grid based -=- and you start building small scale industrial capacity that is capable of building the parts required to build itself. You then make it print off higher quality cogs, gears, etc to be able to upgrade itself to higher precision, then you start expanding the physical capabilities of the seed factory. As that starts, you could also begin an intermittent run on a clone then ship them parts to a lesser fortunate Asgardian with assembly instructions. I'm sure to not be the only one to attempt such a feat, and once I've open sourced plans there will be even more. If such a thing would be of a concern to you, then also at about this stage it should be possible to make it pay for itself by way of renting it's capacity to the public and or private companies. Basically, from feeding it materials a wide range of goods should be possible to be produced - we can additionaly start an archive of open source plans - that should, apart from a few things required for purchase, be able to further enhance itself with more heavy industrial processes. Once there's a sensible number of units with high enough quality output through series of self improvements a kit can be produced distributed and shipped to near launch site for assembly. Launching it at this phase in it's cycle should keep it's weight down, and still allow it to upgrade itself autonomously in orbit.

And now for why it's relevent to this topic.

One of the things it would be sensible to upgrade itself with whilst it's up there is chip fabrication capacities - then it'd make sense having a reflow oven and thinking about PCB fabrication. My ground unit will have PCB fabrication, pick n place, reflow oven already automated well before it's getting lifted and one of the next obvious steps to devel would be chip fabrication capacity, I could do with some of that. Most of it would be built at material cost, too. It'd make sense if possible to utilise methods and procedures that would then directly transfer to microgravity application -=- Then we can upload the plans to the orbital seed and build that mostly out of LEO debris. If we can devel this before we even attempt to lift it, we could actually print off the chips, boards, and shielding ourselves and maybe stand a chance of retaining control over it whilst it's up there. By distributing the production we can produce rapidly. It will also distribute cost, and could in theory have the entire enterprise dropped down to materials cost (which could be paid for by the machines) and launch costs.

LOL @ "Accepting there's a chance" - There's documented evidence. It has happened. It is happening. It will happen again. There are ways and means of controlling access, but that didn't seem to do cisco, juniper, dell, huawei, WD, maxtor, samsung, gemalto etc much good from falling prey - companies like microsoft, intel, ATi just bend over and ask it it can come any harder. And it's not just the big the firms, the little ones get hit too.

And no, not the future, this is a project for now. That's how you make thing happen.

The technologies required exist now, we just have to package them together, and write some software. And, yes, that development starts on Earth. It can sensibly be distributed too. It's a little bit of work, but it's not beyond the realms of possible.

Starting with a CNC milling tool(larger concern is debris in microgravity, not impossible to solve), a few 3D printer, preferably developing a method that can use one system for multiple materials, but if required just several types(some varients are more suited than others), a couple of delta robots, a few mechanical arms etc, -=- Preferably you would be considreing generation, but early iterations can be grid based -=- and you start building small scale industrial capacity that is capable of building the parts required to build itself. You then make it print off higher quality cogs, gears, etc to be able to upgrade itself to higher precision, then you start expanding the physical capabilities of the seed factory. As that starts, you could also begin an intermittent run on a clone then ship them parts to a lesser fortunate Asgardian with assembly instructions. I'm sure to not be the only one to attempt such a feat, and once I've open sourced plans there will be even more. If such a thing would be of a concern to you, then also at about this stage it should be possible to make it pay for itself by way of renting it's capacity to the public and or private companies. Basically, from feeding it materials a wide range of goods should be possible to be produced - we can additionaly start an archive of open source plans - that should, apart from a few things required for purchase, be able to further enhance itself with more heavy industrial processes. Once there's a sensible number of units with high enough quality output through series of self improvements a kit can be produced distributed and shipped to near launch site for assembly. Launching it at this phase in it's cycle should keep it's weight down, and still allow it to upgrade itself autonomously in orbit.

And now for why it's relevent to this topic.

One of the things it would be sensible to upgrade itself with whilst it's up there is chip fabrication capacities - then it'd make sense having a reflow oven and thinking about PCB fabrication. My ground unit will have PCB fabrication, pick n place, reflow oven already automated well before it's getting lifted and one of the next obvious steps to devel would be chip fabrication capacity, I could do with some of that. Most of it would be built at material cost, too. It'd make sense if possible to utilise methods and procedures that would then directly transfer to microgravity application -=- Then we can upload the plans to the orbital seed and build that mostly out of LEO debris. If we can devel this before we even attempt to lift it, we could actually print off the chips, boards, and shielding ourselves and maybe stand a chance of retaining control over it whilst it's up there. By distributing the production we can produce rapidly. It will also distribute cost, and could in theory have the entire enterprise dropped down to materials cost (which could be paid for by the machines) and launch costs.

I think that the space will provide a better chance to produce microprocessors and electronic components because there is no gravity there. So, the production of the integrated circuits will be done in a very high effeciency and the electronic products will run in a very high performance.

I wasn't aware of gravity being a required part of the lithographic process. It might matter for the fabrication of the waifers. Additional concerns would be shielding required. I'm sure there's other things I must of missed, too.