Molecular assembly

The University of Illinois recently published a report of their molecular 3D printer, but it looks more like an automated lab than a real molecular machine. There are other projects for wet works and those seem more feasible.
I was asked recently if I was kidding about a self-replicating 3D printer and I am not. It isn't an easy engineering feat, but all the engineering and testing are complete. The surprising thing is that one of the most common materials should be the most useful in this respect. Silicon Dioxide or sand is ubiquitous here and on other masses. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral on earth. There are manufacturers that produce piezoelectric elements and they can be arranged to be motors, linear actuators ( 1 Angstrom precision ) , linear drive, sensors ( nano scale ), voltage generators and silicon is the material used to produce semiconductor chips. Some recent research has shown that wafer quality silicon can be produced through simple methods and it is possible to print with silicon dioxide and doped silicon. In addition a piezoelectric milling apparatus can mill almost any material, including itself. By creating a modular system with standard parts they can be used in 3D or in devices as structure, power generation , motion, or control. Presently the density of fabrication of the control chip ( my work ) would be at 1 billion gates per cubic centimeter with a 10 micron spacing. It is scalable to perhaps 1000 times smaller ( per dimension = 10 nanometers ) with the same techniques and would have a gate density of 1 billion*billion gates per cubic centimeter. It is impossible to fabricate such a thing in real time without parallel process. Because the structure is 3D and has spacing within the structure, it is less subject to thermal constraints and can be run at higher voltages as well as higher clocks.
The entire machine can be fabricated from silicon dioxide with trace materials and metal. Strangely, I found a patent from 1975 that was for the fabrication of glass helium balloons and it does make sense in an odd way, and it makes me think of 99 floating glass luft balloons, that have chip on glass integrated circuits and energy generation from piezoelectric compression.
Another interesting thing which occurred to me is that a quartz piezoelectric system composed only of metallized sand could lift 70 ton blocks to whatever height one required. It could have been done any time in history as it doesn't require sophisticated machines to produce, and based on my calculations, could lift a 70 ton block and place it on a pyramid in as little as a second. Since the Pyramid at Giza has about 2.3 million blocks, (2,300,000)/(60*60*24*30)=0.88, and thus it could have been constructed or could now be constructed with a "single" piezo 3D system in about a month, without any workers at all. Now if the ancients were so smart, they all would have had their own ( pyramid and 3d system ) and would never have been conquered. I would probably be blogging in hieroglyphs too.
The advance of technology is relentless and I discover new things every day that can be applied. More recently I have been studying magnetic reconnection , and there may be something interesting to come of that if I am right about how it can be applied.
If you wish to see the progress of fabrication, there will be updates on the web site as time permits.
It is my opinion that no electronic system will truly be free of spyware unless it is fabricated by an individual with access to the silicon in the same way that free software allows access to programs.
FSF is interested in having a free processor design, and I support that, but a design for a 3D printer would have specialized structure to deal with 4 space. I have designed numerous CPUs and it isn't a great trick ( if you have the skills ), and it can even be done with FPGAs.