Future Small Scale Manufacturing

I'm a fan of Makers. They've got projects that solve problems. America has a lot of problems to solve, biggest one being we exported our manufacturing to China rather than employ the poor who WANT TO WORK in cities like Detroit and Oakland and Chicago. Exporting jobs makes for higher burden on social services and fewer people who can actually pay the taxes that funds them. The thing is, many of those being kept unemployed by Socialists (like Pelosi) would like to work.

One of the big upsides of Makers is they're operating from very small budgets out of their kitchen or garage, which means the equipment makers can't charge $100K for a CNC rig that can make car parts. They're only able to get a few thousand. Which is within the means of a small time engineer graduate or bored hobbyist. And that means that someone who'd rather do things that are useful actually can. Makers could change Oakland by driving this new market in tools. They can also change rural towns when its time for a Maker project to begin full manufacturing.

Makers are doing really interesting things in electronics, of course, and clothing and hobbies, but their big shift is in Motorcycles. Makers are producing new electrical systems for old bikes which notoriously bad ones, returning vintage bikes to life. They're making LED turn signals and leather seats and new paint schemes that turn a frumpy old beast of the 1970's into something pretty. I've been impressed by reading about them on BikeExif and seeing some of their ideas executed, one bike at a time, and tested in the real world of roads and traffic. The manufacturers can't try small scale ideas, but Makers can. And if the Manufacturers are smart, they'll contact the makers and pay them for the design, in actual money, so those makers have the funds to do more. Take the Musket, for example. Its a British bike built in India by Royal Enfield, who couldn't afford to fix the worn tooling on their bikes so they literally have to hand fit their parts because they're not final machined. What kind of crap is that? This makes Enfields notoriously unreliable. Ten years ago, they paid an Austrian firm to build new engines and transmissions so the bikes start working properly. A fan looks at this and says "I could build a Vee-twin" and sets about doing this. You have to understand that turning a single cylinder engine into a twin means you have to build a crankshaft, and a place to put it, meaning a new engine block. He built a new engine block, from scratch, so the bike would work. And kept after it for several years. Its now rideable. He finished it.

There are other engineers who like a frame from one bike and the engine from another so they put them together, doing the fitting and welding to accomplish this Franken-bike project and we get bikes that are better than their origins. How cool is that?

Why don't we do things like this with cars? Well, we do. They're called Hot Rods. Most are built to be more powerful, prettier, properly finished everywhere, with better and more reliable components than originally manufactured. Many are built by people who either had one as a teenager and now have the money to correct their quality deficits, or maybe even worked on their assembly lines and regret how slapped together they were originally. We don't have to build cars to only be faster or louder, of course. You can do something a bit more unusual and lighten them. The usual way is build a race frame from welded tubing and attach body panels over the outside to look like the original car, though usually from lighter materials like fiberglass. Its a pity that local colleges and tech schools don't teach vacuum molding so students can cast parts from carbon fiber for projects like this. If carbon fiber were more commonly available, we'd be making leaps and bounds over the Chinese.

Imagine, if you will, a home hobbyist wants to build a proper Vespa scooter and replaces the soft tupperware body panels with strong carbon fiber and mounting points that stiffen the suspension. The suspension gets upgraded and now it handles better. Then they decide that adding the weight of the engine on the back wheel is really stupid when a simple chain and cam wheel can transfer all the weight back onto the frame, so they do that and suddenly a simple Vespa gets a 20th century upgrade, 50 years late, and can now handle things like potholes and pavement seams and become a much smoother ride, thus far safer for cute little coeds to ride. This enables the Maker to sell this upgraded frame and suspension, competing with Vespa by offering a superior model, or forces Vespa to buy the upgrade and sell it themselves instead of the overpriced toy they're offering now. Imagine how many would sell if there was a factory building these in Austin Texas or Sacramento. Instead of China, and wrapping them in plastic.

Apply similar upgrades to lots of small cars. The Bug Eye Sprite has big headlights, terrible electrics, a tiny engine, and a small car body. What if it weighed half as much and the engine were a more modern motorcycle engine, still small, with the same horsepower? What if you built it out of race frame tubing, a carbon fiber body, rubber seals to keep the rain out, and a nice insulated fabric top for the wet weather days? Its still small, but its fun and very light, less than 2000 pounds. All that's preventing this kind of kit car fun is the DMV, which requires high standards for crash safety requiring every single model to survive multiple crash tests, destructive ones. If you only have one of these, you can't crash it multiple times without building multiple duplicates. This favors big manufacturers and actual safety, but screws over hobbyists. There are a few loopholes, such as cutting the body panels off of existing cars and then building the space frame on it, covering with a modified design, and allowing it to replicate the intent, without being quite as much fun. Its all about Power to Weight ratio. That's what makes a car fast. If you make it light to start with, and give it an agile suspension, the powerplant doesn't have to be such a monster fuel hog and it will still be fun. This is why I like the original Mazda Miata. It was small, light, and it always started. Somewhere between a FIAT and a Sprite and an MG, only made in Japan so it actually runs. I've read many stories by people who struggled with their convertible Jaguar XJ which would die during a road trip 20 miles from home, often in the rain. Great looking body design, nice paint, antique wire wheels that needed innertubes because the spokes don't hold air, and a leaky roof. Yet people loved them. Why don't we build those to modern standards in the same style? We've got Fake Minis and Fake FIAT 500s. Why not Fake Jags? More pretty cars on the road is Win. There is a semi-underground kit car industry which sell you expensive body parts to install onto a car underneath, usually attempting to body fiberglass to steel, which always cracks. Always. The temperature range and differential expansion rates means they can't work. This is a shame. Some of the designs are really beautiful. Dad had one of those kits and fitted it to a 914 Porsche, which is a VW with Porsche pricing but VW quality and performance. Its a Mid-Engine which SHOULD be better but really just kinda isn't.

Honestly, I'm a bit shocked we aren't seeing Subarus getting tweaked with exotic racing bodies and their heavy transfer cases replaced with heat treated aluminum at half the weight. That would be a huge performance boost for the tractor-like snow-cars. This is one of the reasons I haven't bought a Subaru. They're too heavy to be truly fast. Yes, there's the WRX, but that's a majorly stressed engine destined to die, and Subarus are commonly passed on the highways here. My Honda is faster, more powerful, and gets 10 mpg better fuel economy despite having a 3.0 L engine instead of a 2.0 like the Subaru. Now, if you stripped out all their weight, gave them a more fun shape, and lightened heavy things like transfer cases, a Subaru would be FUN on these roads. If it would hunker down into turns like a BMW M3 (or original 320i like I once had in 1990), and made a throaty growl, that little engine wouldn't be so wasted. Something I keep running into is there's neat cars out there that are begging for a remodel. And Hatchbacks are ugly. Bring back small sports cars. Same size, just trunk lid instead of hatch. And forget about carrying more than 2 people. Two is plenty. Sports cars are for dating or racing, not carrying a soccer team. Back Seats are lame.

Another way to save weight in a sports car: manual instead of electric. Manual mirrors. Manual windows. Manual mechanical seats, not electric ones. That's about 200 pounds saved. That makes the car noticeably faster accelerating. There are comfortable seats available made of carbon fiber instead of steel that weigh 1/5th as much. The floor panels in a car can be carbon fiber too. That's another two hundred pounds. One of the reasons I love the Lotus Elise and the Noble M400 is they're a shell, an engine, and no comforts, just aggression and roaring noises with superior handling due to great suspension and light weight. I would love to own one of those. I'd probably get some really basic interior and a fan for air on my face while I drive, but otherwise just enjoy it as-is. Its driving purity. It would be a fun ride on twisty mountain roads, which are my favorite for apexing turns, how I measure car performance. Apexing turns is supposed to be really great on a motorcycle, but you need a fast one for that and that's how motorcyclists end up quadroplegic. The other reason I like those cars is they're mid-engine so the weight balance is right and they're short, so I fit in them properly. Most cars are built for men at least 6 inches taller than me. I'm a couple inches taller than Hammond, very normal sized for a white man of European descent. Small cars are not small for me. They're the right size. And I take advantage of them. Its a shame that the MR-2 was discontinued. That was a good car. Honda discontinued the S2000 despite getting Top Gears "best car" rating according to its fans who actually own  them. The Miata was their go-to if you just want a convertible that always starts, is fun to drive, and boring because of that. This is the same Top Gear that avoids America's best roads because Jeremy Clarkson is a Secret Hillbilly. Part of their charm is that Top Gear are Rednecks with English accents. I wonder how they'd do on the roads in my home county? Going fast has more to do with surviving corners. Straight line power just results in impacting on a tree or rock wall and possibly catching fire. My roads were like the Thunderdome. You go in, and you better have it together or you won't leave in one piece.

So Makers can do nifty stuff. With cheaper tools, access to CNC and carbon fiber, they can rapid prototype up a solution and get something out of it you can actually use. No excuses about minimum orders of 5000 units, delays by port authority for incomplete documents, and excise taxes. They just make it, install it, and see if it works like you wanted. This is what American ingenuity is all about. I think it is time for us to leapfrog that bad Chinese Model which served its purpose. We can leave it behind. Move forward with smaller projects and employ people again. If Idle Hands do the Devil's Work, Busy employed people raise families and pay mortgages and taxes and have a future worth having. And I want Americans to be happy by working for their own advantage, not abusing everyone else. We're stronger as a people when we're employed.