4 ms·

>we may further bankrupt ourselves in more ways than monetarily while looking for something to do the thinking for us that we are too lazy and too irresponsible

>we may further bankrupt ourselves in more ways than monetarily while looking for something to do the thinking for us that we are too lazy and too irresponsible to do for ourselves I've known machinists who said the same about CNC. Sure, there are benefits to establishing a good sense of the older ways- but it's not laziness or irresponsibility to embrace new technologies and utilize them for efficiency. There is a whole lot of bias and catastrophizing here, like the author is grieving the perceived loss of analog tools and projecting these emotions into this rather bleak commentary. Look, it's one thing to be nostalgic and appreciate simpler ways of solving/understanding things- but it's a whole nother one to make condescending judgements of value and extending these ideas onto generalizations against people.

Ancapistani 4y ago
Tools have their own advantages and disadvantages, and "new" tools are no exception. It would be ridiculous to produce 10,000,000 widgets with a manual lathe. The increase in time and material waste would be multiplied 10m times, so even a very small improvement would have huge impact on the cost. It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC. Sure, maybe doing it manually will take an hour per widget instead of five minutes with the CNC, but modeling, creating toolpaths, testing, and optimizing the resultant gcode would likely take more time that just doing it the "inefficient" manual way. More generally, it seems like it's almost always worthwhile to preserve "the old ways", at least in some form. We don't need our entire workforce of machinists to be able to hop on a manual lathe and knock out parts precisely and efficiently - but if we don't have some that can do that, we're stuck with processes that are extremely inefficient for some jobs. In machining, there will always be a place for someone who specializes in fully manual work. There will always be a place for someone who is an expect in operating and supporting CNC machinery. Now there's also a place for people who are proficient enough in both areas to reliably know which process is appropriate for a given job.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  "It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC" Are you sure about that? If the part has exceptionally precise requirements but was relatively easy to define the cutting path for (because it made use of existing tools to do so), I would think even a single widget might be more cheaply and accurately produced by CNC than manually. I actually worked on software that generated CNC routing paths for widgets produced in small quantities, and while it's true if the software was written just for any single widget it wouldn't have been economical, it was able to generate a large number of routing paths based on minor tweaks to the inputs. As far as I knew, the effort required to load up various path configurations and produce small numbers of widgets each time wasn't that significant.
- bsder 4y ago
  > It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC. It is almost always faster to use CNC in all cases unless what you are machining is incredibly simple. Manual machining is likely most used in "unit of one" where the thing is big as large CNC machines are ferociously expensive.
  - fourjawchuck 4y ago
    I am a manual machinist. Our shop is more or less that, a job shop that does one-offs or short run work on items that are larger than most cnc machines. However some of the machines have fanuc controls and can thus run programs as well.
operator-name 4y ago
My interpretation is that the author is being cautious for new technologies, and suggesting to only embrace them if they actually add value. > Am I arguing that we should throw away our computers and go back to slide rules? Absolutely not! Some problems can only be solved by computer simulation--because we really do not know enough to solve them any other way. > But, most design problems can be solved with simpler, less expensive, less time-consuming methods and tools and more experience and knowledge of basic principles. > wasting time with tools that are not appropriate for their jobs I'm sure the CNC space also has the "next hot thing" that in reality is less efficient (time, materials, process) than older methods, or a method using existing techniques.
- tzs 4y ago
  > My interpretation is that the author is being cautious for new technologies, and suggesting to only embrace them if they actually add value. There were a chapter about that at the end of the textbook for my digital logic class at Caltech in the early '80s. The chapter was called something like "The Engineer as Dope Pusher". It gave an example of clothes dryers. The way most clothes dryers worked at the time is that you told them how long to run and how hot to get. The how hot to get part was a simple selector switch. The how long to run part has handled with a simple mechanical timer. You turned the dial until it pointed to the number of minutes you wanted on the label, started the dryer, the timer ticked down, and when it reached zero the dryer stopped. Those timer mechanism designs were several decades old. They were mass produced, very reliable, very cheap, and when one did break the repairperson could easily replace it. If they didn't have the specific one for your dryer in their truck, or even one from the same manufacturer, no problem. One from a different manufacturer would probably work. The mounting brackets might not match but it was easy for the repairperson to rig something to make it work. There dryers were extremely easy for users. Select temperature, turn knob to the time you want, press start. But they are also boring for the dryer designers. So there were dryer designers out there, the author said, who were starting to design their new dryers with digital timers. Digital was exciting. The engineer got to play with microprocessors which were new at the time. They got to design printed circuit boards, a power supply for the digital electronics, a display, a keypad for input. They got to play around with programming the microprocessor. But to the consumer that digital dryer control wasn't better. It didn't offer any functionality that the mechanical timer interface did not. It had a much worse interface usually. It was less reliable. It cost more, and it broke the consumer was looking at a more expensive repair. That repair would probably take much longer because the repairperson probably would not have a new controller in their truck The point was that the engineer should not let their desire to play around with new and fun things take priority over delivering the best solution for the user.

Ancapistani 4y ago

Tools have their own advantages and disadvantages, and "new" tools are no exception. It would be ridiculous to produce 10,000,000 widgets with a manual lathe. The increase in time and material waste would be multiplied 10m times, so even a very small improvement would have huge impact on the cost. It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC. Sure, maybe doing it manually will take an hour per widget instead of five minutes with the CNC, but modeling, creating toolpaths, testing, and optimizing the resultant gcode would likely take more time that just doing it the "inefficient" manual way. More generally, it seems like it's almost always worthwhile to preserve "the old ways", at least in some form. We don't need our entire workforce of machinists to be able to hop on a manual lathe and knock out parts precisely and efficiently - but if we don't have some that can do that, we're stuck with processes that are extremely inefficient for some jobs. In machining, there will always be a place for someone who specializes in fully manual work. There will always be a place for someone who is an expect in operating and supporting CNC machinery. Now there's also a place for people who are proficient enough in both areas to reliably know which process is appropriate for a given job.

wizofaus 4y ago
"It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC" Are you sure about that? If the part has exceptionally precise requirements but was relatively easy to define the cutting path for (because it made use of existing tools to do so), I would think even a single widget might be more cheaply and accurately produced by CNC than manually. I actually worked on software that generated CNC routing paths for widgets produced in small quantities, and while it's true if the software was written just for any single widget it wouldn't have been economical, it was able to generate a large number of routing paths based on minor tweaks to the inputs. As far as I knew, the effort required to load up various path configurations and produce small numbers of widgets each time wasn't that significant.
bsder 4y ago
> It would likely be similarly ridiculous to produce 5 widgets with a CNC. It is almost always faster to use CNC in all cases unless what you are machining is incredibly simple. Manual machining is likely most used in "unit of one" where the thing is big as large CNC machines are ferociously expensive.
- fourjawchuck 4y ago
  I am a manual machinist. Our shop is more or less that, a job shop that does one-offs or short run work on items that are larger than most cnc machines. However some of the machines have fanuc controls and can thus run programs as well.

operator-name 4y ago

My interpretation is that the author is being cautious for new technologies, and suggesting to only embrace them if they actually add value. > Am I arguing that we should throw away our computers and go back to slide rules? Absolutely not! Some problems can only be solved by computer simulation--because we really do not know enough to solve them any other way. > But, most design problems can be solved with simpler, less expensive, less time-consuming methods and tools and more experience and knowledge of basic principles. > wasting time with tools that are not appropriate for their jobs I'm sure the CNC space also has the "next hot thing" that in reality is less efficient (time, materials, process) than older methods, or a method using existing techniques.

tzs 4y ago
> My interpretation is that the author is being cautious for new technologies, and suggesting to only embrace them if they actually add value. There were a chapter about that at the end of the textbook for my digital logic class at Caltech in the early '80s. The chapter was called something like "The Engineer as Dope Pusher". It gave an example of clothes dryers. The way most clothes dryers worked at the time is that you told them how long to run and how hot to get. The how hot to get part was a simple selector switch. The how long to run part has handled with a simple mechanical timer. You turned the dial until it pointed to the number of minutes you wanted on the label, started the dryer, the timer ticked down, and when it reached zero the dryer stopped. Those timer mechanism designs were several decades old. They were mass produced, very reliable, very cheap, and when one did break the repairperson could easily replace it. If they didn't have the specific one for your dryer in their truck, or even one from the same manufacturer, no problem. One from a different manufacturer would probably work. The mounting brackets might not match but it was easy for the repairperson to rig something to make it work. There dryers were extremely easy for users. Select temperature, turn knob to the time you want, press start. But they are also boring for the dryer designers. So there were dryer designers out there, the author said, who were starting to design their new dryers with digital timers. Digital was exciting. The engineer got to play with microprocessors which were new at the time. They got to design printed circuit boards, a power supply for the digital electronics, a display, a keypad for input. They got to play around with programming the microprocessor. But to the consumer that digital dryer control wasn't better. It didn't offer any functionality that the mechanical timer interface did not. It had a much worse interface usually. It was less reliable. It cost more, and it broke the consumer was looking at a more expensive repair. That repair would probably take much longer because the repairperson probably would not have a new controller in their truck The point was that the engineer should not let their desire to play around with new and fun things take priority over delivering the best solution for the user.