One of the gizmos I've been following for a couple decades is CNC, which used to cost around $1.5 million for a Haas CNC, the kind used in serious industrial mass machining for making things like formula 1 engines. CNC is for stuff that is not specialized enough to get its own multi-station line and instead uses one programmable robotic milling machine to make the needed parts. CNC programming is NOT easy. Its easily the hardest part of operating CNC, and the part most likely to damage the machine if done wrong. I have a friend who has spent 3 years learning all of that. Unfortunately, until the USA decides that CNC programmers are valuable within our borders, he's having a heck of a time getting a job that pays properly. If you are good at this, you should be making $50/hr. If you're using CNC to make tools, and handing those off to the heat treating and tempering guys for final hardening? You're totally worth that. The most important thing about CNC besides on-demand parts made to order and very good tolerances is that you can use the machines to build the machines to build the stations of an assembly line, creating a factory from an empty shed. With CNC, you can make jobs.
A proper machinist should know how to do CNC programming because once properly programmed and the part positioned, a good CNC operator can make just about anything. It still needs heat treating in many cases, but still, a final part is something they can do. This has extreme value in replacing crucial machines, valves, engine parts, bearings for your city's generator, bolts to clamp pipes together, you name it. Stuff that really matters whose manufacturer went under or retired and sold to Ze Germans years ago.
And CNC is getting cheaper. A decent 3 axis CNC can make a lot of parts, replacement parts or new designs. Five-axis CNC can make many more. CNC manufacturing moves technology forward or keeps it going until technology can fit that need better. There are CNC robots that cost less than a new car, now, and some which are considerably cheaper. I suspect we'll start seeing CNC programs traded around to make parts, maybe even by on-demand car parts shops. Got an obscure vehicle that needs a new fuel pump housing? Yeah, they can do that. Got an old Harley Panhead that needs a replacement wheel bearing? Yeah, they can make that. Got a Bugatti Veyron with a broken hydraulic pump for the rear spoiler? They can make that too. CNC is the ultimate tool of civilization. You can pass around the designs and turn blocks of metal into usable parts. I really like that.
The most important thing about the price of CNC dropping is this means mechanical engineers and machinists can start building their good ideas while their minimum wage jobs keep them alive, barely. They stop being underemployed and start being a small business owner or inventor, just in their off-hours. Few employers today reward innovation and pay in-house inventors real money for patents they create. They get their contract cited, told: "You're lucky to have a job at all." and kicked to the curb if they complain further. That's modern corporate cultures. You have every reason to keep your ideas secret rather than let your boss steal it and claim a bonus for himself but not share it with you. This is why the US economy is stagnant. Or one of the reasons, anyway.
Thanks to innovation being blocked by corporations that don't pay a fair wage or reward good employees, we are entering a collapse state of our economy where the only jobs are part time and minimum wage. We all sort of have to hunker down and get used to this level of dysfunction. CNC is great because it makes room for ideas to be tested without worry about economics or budget. It's just a guy at the bottom, where the employees work for a living. If the idea doesn't work out, it's still scrap metal. It can be recycled. So the cheaper CNC gets, the better the software will become, the more of these will be in home shops and garages and used by frustrated inventors to quietly change the world while the lawyers bicker over shrinking profits in their failed business model enterprises. CNC also means we don't need China anymore. We can make it here. We can rebuild the factories with the latest hardware instead of struggling with obsolete stuff.
The other nifty home tool is 3D printing, which started in polymer (plastic) pellets but has since gotten more interesting with metal powder sintered (welded) with laser beams. Such a metal part isn't really load bearing, and will need heat treating to become strong, but that can be done. Its not easy, but it can be. Even in a modest shop. The plastic parts can be housings for your electronics and metal parts, a nice cover to provide a pleasing exterior, perhaps needing finishing but its easier than building a metal mold with CNC to make one part. 3D printing is a big deal because it could, in theory, bring many products off the assembly line and into on-demand, perhaps paying a shop where a que of products are ordered from an online catalog, made by the 3D printer, checked by the operator for QA defects, and paid for when finished. Instead of storing it somewhere or paying dozens of people wages to make something. The delays will be annoying and the quality control key, but it might be a future worth having. It's certainly next generation rapid prototyping and a great tool to engineers and product designers.
I am happy that prices are coming down and software for CNC is improving. Right now, industrial CNC is capable of destroying itself because whoever did the software for the OS didn't program in sane stops in any access, or limit speeds, or do anything rational to protect the thing from ignorant users, which unfortunately is many of them. That's something which needs to be improved, without excuses.
Software needs to be improved for CNC to get easier to learn and be more common. It needs to be easy enough that it gets used more, that CNC is a viable, cheap solution to machining parts or prototyping or restoration of critical equipment. It can keep our civilization going instead of letting us slip into a Dark Age because some Chinese General had a temper tantrum and claimed the whole Pacific as a no-fly zone without his permission. We don't need that. We need ways to keep our lights on without China. We need jobs for our people making housewares and car parts and water pumps and everything useful. And even those silly Twitter-phones and Face-pads that people keep buying to feel less lonely. Whatever. But we should make it here and pay Americans to build it instead of the Chinese. Let them sell to the rest of the world. Maybe they can get a trade imbalance with India instead of us.
I just wish CNC paid more than $13/hr. I would totally learn it if so.
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