5 ms·

Semi-related: As an average consumer I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissanc

Semi-related: As an average consumer I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. I've purchased the odd 3D printed or resin cast tchotchke from small operations a few times at this point. But it's still disappointing that if you need professional quality products, you still either need to pay out the nose to have it fabbed or ship it in from China. It seems to me the industry is very good at serving hobbyists and prototypers. But I think there is a huge market being missed out on easy-to-use, introductory products for mold tooling, plastic injection, and general manufacturing automation. As cool as 3d printers can be, I don't think owning one scales up into a professional endeavour very well. However, developing a pretty good mold for a phone case would.

thepasswordis 4y ago
You're wrong. There are massive 3D printing farms that are producing consumer products at scale in the united states now, and that is a direct result of the work that the maker community (both here and especially in China) has done on 3D printing.
- legitster 4y ago
  Sure. But the vast majority of products are not ever going to be 3D printed. Most of the things you are going to touch today are going to be injection-molded. Keyboards, keychains, car parts, cups, computer cases, etc. There's a 3d print shop that sells at my local farmer's market. But they only sell tchotchkes. I am imagining a world where the same size business could also phone cases or mugs or even supply a local manufacturer.
  - dicknuckle 4y ago
    We're not at farmers markets, because our niches are too focused. One guy I follow on YouTube pretty much only sells tool trays for cannabis products and I only sell replacement brake cable guides for 1980's powersport machines. We've been at the very beginning of what you're describing for about 3-4 years now. I only started selling by request of the communities I'm part of because none of them knew anyone to print it.
    - legitster 4y ago
      > I only sell replacement brake cable guides for 1980's powersport machines Haha! Doing the Lord's work. Although, it should be noted that while I buy lots of hard to find car parts this way, as a buyer I almost universally prefer actual molded plastic parts in almost every situation. In some cases I have even requested my money back because the seller deceitfully tried to make their parts look OEM.
      - dicknuckle 4y ago
        I'm actually expanding to Fork Guard Guides in the near future and can appreciate the design differences, all of my stuff is blocky and minimalistic for the most part, and cannot be mistaken for OEM, moreso because the metal brackets are something I simply can't supply with my tiny operation. I've actually started recommending alternative parts that operate the same, but came from different machines, or even competing manufacturers (like a Suzuki brake cable guide that bolts directly on to a Yamaha but looks nothing like the original). In the end, this is a product of my frustrations with obsolete parts that become impossible to find. I'm also trying to stay cheaper than the OEM costs of 5 years ago to promote my alternatives ending up on machines that see dirt and rocks on the regular while NOS parts are more likely to end up on pristine restorations. Buying NOS parts for some rough examples never sat well.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      Hmmm. There's a (non-critical) switch for my 2000 Honda Foreman that I can't find anywhere except direct from Honda or a dealer and I don't think it's worth the $100+ they want from it. For other model years, I can find it from $20 - $60 which is more reasonable. I've been thinking of making my own for a while but now you have me thinking of making them for resale. I can't be the only person in this situation.
      - dicknuckle 4y ago
        Ideally you'd print it in PETG, and this can be done on a $100 Ender 2 clone with a $20 spool of filament, but if all you want is a few small parts and maybe a few batches for other people, you could find a local 3d printing service on FB market. I'm selling a pair of brake cable guides for $10 including shipping to the lower 48. I'll make more money if I find a cheaper way to ship, but I'm not really doing it to make money.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Don't think production floor, think tool room. Every production floor has a bunch of machines that are absolutely not very precise, with an extremely precise insert. The use that insert to make a widget. Over and over and over again. But, there has to be a room in the back of the production floor, isolated from all that, where you make the insert. That's where 3d printers do their work- not the production floor. Because at scale, it almost never makes sense to make things with 3d printers (or ultra-precise CNCs, etc).
  - buildsjets 4y ago
    3D printing is great for prototyping, and for small production runs, but economies of scale are not in favor of 3D printing for mass production. The material deposition rate is too slow, and the machine cost is too high, compared to traditional manufacturing methods. I have one part that I designed several years ago which is part of the APU installation on a certified aircraft. The part we flew during flight test was 3D printed aluminum (AlSi10Mg). The turnaround time from completing the design, to having a completed, inspected part ready to be installed, was about a week. For a machined part, the turnaround would have been about 6 weeks, and about 6 months for a cast part. But then when we looked at manufacturing methods for the production part. 3D printing directly in metal was the most economical method for up to 10 parts, because there is no up-front tooling cost, but the recurring cost of both the raw material and the machine time is very high. For 10 to a hundred or so parts, the most economical method was investment casting using a 3D printed wax preform, and for more than 100 or so parts, the most economical method was to buy traditional permanent closed-die tooling for the casting.
pyb 4y ago
I also hold this unpopular opinion : the maker movement has ultimately failed. I am not fully certain why, but think social factors are partly to blame. What I saw (in the UK) was that the new generation of middle-class, hobbyist makers weren't interested in engaging with and learning from the historical, working-class manufacturing sector.
- jehb 4y ago
  Would you mind expounding upon this comment? Against what goal did it fail to deliver? I think I was more hopeful a decade ago than I am now that we'd see more decentralized manufacturing and more home-grown innovation, but I'm not sure that these were ever realistic expectations.
  - pyb 4y ago
    I realize my comment is way too terse to make sense to anyone other than myself, this should be a blog post!
  - legitster 4y ago
    I think to OPs comment, tinkers at the turn of the century were able to turn curious scientific discoveries into huge consumer product segments. Radio, film, automobiles, etc all basically grew out of hobbyists at home. It seems like makers in general focus too much on self-reliance and making personalized goodies than actual creation.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      I don't want to sell cars or radios. I want to make the things I need for myself.
    - jwagenet 4y ago
      I think the problem comparing to the last turn of the century is the cost of real innovation is much higher (ignoring that most “hobbyists” in that time period were quite affluent). A key difference would be that many foundational technologies were ripe for discovery then, but we are now in the optimization phase.
dymk 4y ago
It depends on what you mean by a renaissance of small-scale manufacturing. I see CNC and 3D printers much more often now in prosumer and small-business shops. People are making professional quality casts, with some work. Yes, it's effort, but it's going to be effort regardless of if you outsource the work, or learn how to do it the right way yourself. Plastic injection machines can be a few grand on eBay now. A very reliable 3D printer is $800, a Shapeoko Pro 4 XXL is $2.5k. Very much in the range of a small business, or even an enthusiast. I started off with a 3D printer for my shop and that was great for making slipcasting molds for ceramics, and then jigs for woodworking. I bought a CNC for the shop for flattening, carving, and inlaying, and the two have a nice synergy with traditional woodworking methods. "Maker youtube" has been popping off for years. People love small shops and DIY.
- legitster 4y ago
  I am specifically thinking of a Christmas bazaar I was just at. You had all of these booths selling beautiful customized phone-cases and earrings and candle-holders and etc. And nearly all of them are starting with Chinese made plastics and putting labor intensive value on top of it. And there was a single 3d print shop booth that sold glorified paperweights. It just seemed to me that there is clearly a market failure between these two industries.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Mass market junk is cheaper to make in China and ship by the containerload than it ever will be to produce locally no matter what method you use to manufacture them. Personally I wished people would stop buying these things whose only real goal seems to be to end up in landfills.
    - legitster 4y ago
      I mean, what do you think most people are using 3D printers to make?
      - jacquesm 4y ago
datpiff 4y ago
> Semi-related: As an average consumer I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. I don't think this was ever any kind of real goal. Way more emphasis was put on education and removing barriers of entry around design than anything to do with manufacturing.
- legitster 4y ago
  I largely agree. But I thing the goals should expand. We have removed the barriers to design and we now have a huge collective competence in design work. But now we have a bottleneck in turning that education into progress.
sokoloff 4y ago
Machining metal in general and, to an even greater degree, mold-making in particular is time and labor-intensive. Consumers are used to buying injection molded parts at $1/kilogram, with the mold costs largely ignored (by virtue of being <$20K amortized across >500K parts). They're not used to paying $1-2 per part for just the short-run "soft" mold for a run of a few thousand parts.
rspeele 4y ago
Another problem is that really good CAD software is expensive. I have used FreeCAD. Its instability frustrated me. Not very rewarding to work on a part that needs a moderately complex feature like a loft, only to find out that after adding the loft FC crashes every few minutes so the part is essentially impossible to edit further. SolveSpace is much more stable but it doesn't have those complex features at all. You can use Fusion 360 for hobby stuff, but if you're attached to your work (as any creator would be), it's disquieting to have it hosted in a cloud that you're just being given permission to access. You're one corporate decision away from losing your files. My dream is that one day some billionaire will buy out Dassault and make SolidWorks free as a form of philanthropy. Imagine what net good could be done for the world with freely available high quality tools for designing 3d objects. Or, to think of it from another angle, imagine how far behind we'd be in software if there weren't any free compilers for "real" languages and the commercial ones cost thousands (per year!)
- eightysixfour 4y ago
  > You can use Fusion 360 for hobby stuff, but if you're attached to your work (as any creator would be), it's disquieting to have it hosted in a cloud that you're just being given permission to access. You're one corporate decision away from losing your files. I can export things locally in any format I want from Fusion, is that not the case with certain licenses or something?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    You can export it... either in a non-source format, or in a format that only opens in said cloud.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      No, you can export STEP to local files, or f3d's. f3d's open from the filesystem, so you can send that to another person.
      - kube-system 4y ago
kube-system 4y ago
It's there, it's just... small scale. Mass production techniques inherently don't work well for things that aren't mass production.
giantg2 4y ago
The domestic production problems/advancement have almost nothing to do with the ease of production itself. The costs still tend to be high because of the high overhead and cost of living. Unless you have huge scale (at which point other manufacturing methods may be more economical) or do it as a side hobby, you have to charge a lot. For a hobbyist, most equipment would be too expensive and take up a lot of room if only using it for a couple projects.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fdsklfdsjkl 4y ago
>I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. In my opinion, this is one aspect of the modern "rise of the novice". By this I mean, people acquiring just enough knowledge of tools and techniques to make cool-looking stuff, but not enough to make meaningful or useful advances.
pessimizer 4y ago
> nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. I think the problem is the constant declaration of the end of manufacturing economies of scale. "Maker" culture should have been focused on rapid prototyping, instead of pretending that the expensive output of 3D printers is sturdy enough to be a final product. "Makers" should be educated about how normal manufacturing processes work, so they can translate their experiments into things that factories could easily and cheaply make. For me it was a sign that when maker culture was arising, resources for independent engineers (who weren't making kits) actually started to disappear around the edges. The end of the Small Parts* catalog was the worst. Also, instead of using 25¢ micros, people were using $20 full Linux systems to do insignificant things. It seemed like everything was moving backwards. > It seems to me the industry is very good at serving hobbyists and prototypers. I don't think it's good for serving prototypers because prototypers should be ultimately thinking about manufacturing as a goal. I don't think that small scale manufacturing is being held back by anything, it's just not efficient and nothing has changed that would make it so. ----- [*] https://web.archive.org/web/20190221190826/http://smallparts2.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190221190826/http://smallparts...
bsder 4y ago
> It seems to me the industry is very good at serving hobbyists and prototypers. Sorta. Prototyping has gotten a LOT better thanks to the resin printers. Extrusion continues to suck like always, though. > But I think there is a huge market being missed out on easy-to-use, introductory products for mold tooling, plastic injection, and general manufacturing automation. Sadly, I simply do not believe that there is a huge market being missed out. I'd love to know what you think isn't being served. However, in the end, customer service is THE drag on small volume production. There is a reason why there is nothing in the gap between $100 Chinese electronics things with no customer service (see: NanoVNA) or $10K lab equipment with mediocre support.
jononor 4y ago
What has happened is that services offering medium scales production has become quite a lot more accessible. One can get a quote by uploading to online form, no need to enter a long term supplier agreement, few restrictions on minimum order quantity, and the starting points of prices is lower that before. And the 3d printer is key tool in prototyping the solution, and validating the design before sendibg off. It greatly reduces the risk of spending money manufacturing the wrong thing, or in wrong way (design issues).
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
I sympathize with your disappointment, but I'm honestly not surprised by what happened. I never expected much to come from it except for introducing a few more people to light manufacturing. The reason is that the people who were already going to do this (actual mechanical engineers and machinists) had a path forward: buying used CNC machinery and starting up in their garages. And many of them did/are doing this, but it's not the kind of thing that's discussed unless you are on a manufacturing forum, which HN definitely is not. Part of the problem is that if you're going to make a living doing it, you need professional quality tools that can run all day, every day. "Maker" level tooling won't do that.

thepasswordis 4y ago

You're wrong. There are massive 3D printing farms that are producing consumer products at scale in the united states now, and that is a direct result of the work that the maker community (both here and especially in China) has done on 3D printing.

legitster 4y ago
Sure. But the vast majority of products are not ever going to be 3D printed. Most of the things you are going to touch today are going to be injection-molded. Keyboards, keychains, car parts, cups, computer cases, etc. There's a 3d print shop that sells at my local farmer's market. But they only sell tchotchkes. I am imagining a world where the same size business could also phone cases or mugs or even supply a local manufacturer.
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  We're not at farmers markets, because our niches are too focused. One guy I follow on YouTube pretty much only sells tool trays for cannabis products and I only sell replacement brake cable guides for 1980's powersport machines. We've been at the very beginning of what you're describing for about 3-4 years now. I only started selling by request of the communities I'm part of because none of them knew anyone to print it.
  - legitster 4y ago
    > I only sell replacement brake cable guides for 1980's powersport machines Haha! Doing the Lord's work. Although, it should be noted that while I buy lots of hard to find car parts this way, as a buyer I almost universally prefer actual molded plastic parts in almost every situation. In some cases I have even requested my money back because the seller deceitfully tried to make their parts look OEM.
    - dicknuckle 4y ago
      I'm actually expanding to Fork Guard Guides in the near future and can appreciate the design differences, all of my stuff is blocky and minimalistic for the most part, and cannot be mistaken for OEM, moreso because the metal brackets are something I simply can't supply with my tiny operation. I've actually started recommending alternative parts that operate the same, but came from different machines, or even competing manufacturers (like a Suzuki brake cable guide that bolts directly on to a Yamaha but looks nothing like the original). In the end, this is a product of my frustrations with obsolete parts that become impossible to find. I'm also trying to stay cheaper than the OEM costs of 5 years ago to promote my alternatives ending up on machines that see dirt and rocks on the regular while NOS parts are more likely to end up on pristine restorations. Buying NOS parts for some rough examples never sat well.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Hmmm. There's a (non-critical) switch for my 2000 Honda Foreman that I can't find anywhere except direct from Honda or a dealer and I don't think it's worth the $100+ they want from it. For other model years, I can find it from $20 - $60 which is more reasonable. I've been thinking of making my own for a while but now you have me thinking of making them for resale. I can't be the only person in this situation.
    - dicknuckle 4y ago
      Ideally you'd print it in PETG, and this can be done on a $100 Ender 2 clone with a $20 spool of filament, but if all you want is a few small parts and maybe a few batches for other people, you could find a local 3d printing service on FB market. I'm selling a pair of brake cable guides for $10 including shipping to the lower 48. I'll make more money if I find a cheaper way to ship, but I'm not really doing it to make money.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Don't think production floor, think tool room. Every production floor has a bunch of machines that are absolutely not very precise, with an extremely precise insert. The use that insert to make a widget. Over and over and over again. But, there has to be a room in the back of the production floor, isolated from all that, where you make the insert. That's where 3d printers do their work- not the production floor. Because at scale, it almost never makes sense to make things with 3d printers (or ultra-precise CNCs, etc).
- buildsjets 4y ago
  3D printing is great for prototyping, and for small production runs, but economies of scale are not in favor of 3D printing for mass production. The material deposition rate is too slow, and the machine cost is too high, compared to traditional manufacturing methods. I have one part that I designed several years ago which is part of the APU installation on a certified aircraft. The part we flew during flight test was 3D printed aluminum (AlSi10Mg). The turnaround time from completing the design, to having a completed, inspected part ready to be installed, was about a week. For a machined part, the turnaround would have been about 6 weeks, and about 6 months for a cast part. But then when we looked at manufacturing methods for the production part. 3D printing directly in metal was the most economical method for up to 10 parts, because there is no up-front tooling cost, but the recurring cost of both the raw material and the machine time is very high. For 10 to a hundred or so parts, the most economical method was investment casting using a 3D printed wax preform, and for more than 100 or so parts, the most economical method was to buy traditional permanent closed-die tooling for the casting.

pyb 4y ago

I also hold this unpopular opinion : the maker movement has ultimately failed. I am not fully certain why, but think social factors are partly to blame. What I saw (in the UK) was that the new generation of middle-class, hobbyist makers weren't interested in engaging with and learning from the historical, working-class manufacturing sector.

jehb 4y ago
Would you mind expounding upon this comment? Against what goal did it fail to deliver? I think I was more hopeful a decade ago than I am now that we'd see more decentralized manufacturing and more home-grown innovation, but I'm not sure that these were ever realistic expectations.
- pyb 4y ago
  I realize my comment is way too terse to make sense to anyone other than myself, this should be a blog post!
- legitster 4y ago
  I think to OPs comment, tinkers at the turn of the century were able to turn curious scientific discoveries into huge consumer product segments. Radio, film, automobiles, etc all basically grew out of hobbyists at home. It seems like makers in general focus too much on self-reliance and making personalized goodies than actual creation.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    I don't want to sell cars or radios. I want to make the things I need for myself.
  - jwagenet 4y ago
    I think the problem comparing to the last turn of the century is the cost of real innovation is much higher (ignoring that most “hobbyists” in that time period were quite affluent). A key difference would be that many foundational technologies were ripe for discovery then, but we are now in the optimization phase.

dymk 4y ago

It depends on what you mean by a renaissance of small-scale manufacturing. I see CNC and 3D printers much more often now in prosumer and small-business shops. People are making professional quality casts, with some work. Yes, it's effort, but it's going to be effort regardless of if you outsource the work, or learn how to do it the right way yourself. Plastic injection machines can be a few grand on eBay now. A very reliable 3D printer is $800, a Shapeoko Pro 4 XXL is $2.5k. Very much in the range of a small business, or even an enthusiast. I started off with a 3D printer for my shop and that was great for making slipcasting molds for ceramics, and then jigs for woodworking. I bought a CNC for the shop for flattening, carving, and inlaying, and the two have a nice synergy with traditional woodworking methods. "Maker youtube" has been popping off for years. People love small shops and DIY.

legitster 4y ago
I am specifically thinking of a Christmas bazaar I was just at. You had all of these booths selling beautiful customized phone-cases and earrings and candle-holders and etc. And nearly all of them are starting with Chinese made plastics and putting labor intensive value on top of it. And there was a single 3d print shop booth that sold glorified paperweights. It just seemed to me that there is clearly a market failure between these two industries.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Mass market junk is cheaper to make in China and ship by the containerload than it ever will be to produce locally no matter what method you use to manufacture them. Personally I wished people would stop buying these things whose only real goal seems to be to end up in landfills.
  - legitster 4y ago
    I mean, what do you think most people are using 3D printers to make?
    - jacquesm 4y ago

datpiff 4y ago

> Semi-related: As an average consumer I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. I don't think this was ever any kind of real goal. Way more emphasis was put on education and removing barriers of entry around design than anything to do with manufacturing.

legitster 4y ago
I largely agree. But I thing the goals should expand. We have removed the barriers to design and we now have a huge collective competence in design work. But now we have a bottleneck in turning that education into progress.

sokoloff 4y ago

Machining metal in general and, to an even greater degree, mold-making in particular is time and labor-intensive. Consumers are used to buying injection molded parts at $1/kilogram, with the mold costs largely ignored (by virtue of being <$20K amortized across >500K parts). They're not used to paying $1-2 per part for just the short-run "soft" mold for a run of a few thousand parts.

rspeele 4y ago

Another problem is that really good CAD software is expensive. I have used FreeCAD. Its instability frustrated me. Not very rewarding to work on a part that needs a moderately complex feature like a loft, only to find out that after adding the loft FC crashes every few minutes so the part is essentially impossible to edit further. SolveSpace is much more stable but it doesn't have those complex features at all. You can use Fusion 360 for hobby stuff, but if you're attached to your work (as any creator would be), it's disquieting to have it hosted in a cloud that you're just being given permission to access. You're one corporate decision away from losing your files. My dream is that one day some billionaire will buy out Dassault and make SolidWorks free as a form of philanthropy. Imagine what net good could be done for the world with freely available high quality tools for designing 3d objects. Or, to think of it from another angle, imagine how far behind we'd be in software if there weren't any free compilers for "real" languages and the commercial ones cost thousands (per year!)

eightysixfour 4y ago
> You can use Fusion 360 for hobby stuff, but if you're attached to your work (as any creator would be), it's disquieting to have it hosted in a cloud that you're just being given permission to access. You're one corporate decision away from losing your files. I can export things locally in any format I want from Fusion, is that not the case with certain licenses or something?
- kube-system 4y ago
  You can export it... either in a non-source format, or in a format that only opens in said cloud.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    No, you can export STEP to local files, or f3d's. f3d's open from the filesystem, so you can send that to another person.
    - kube-system 4y ago

kube-system 4y ago

It's there, it's just... small scale. Mass production techniques inherently don't work well for things that aren't mass production.

giantg2 4y ago

The domestic production problems/advancement have almost nothing to do with the ease of production itself. The costs still tend to be high because of the high overhead and cost of living. Unless you have huge scale (at which point other manufacturing methods may be more economical) or do it as a side hobby, you have to charge a lot. For a hobbyist, most equipment would be too expensive and take up a lot of room if only using it for a couple projects.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fdsklfdsjkl 4y ago

>I'm disappointed that nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. In my opinion, this is one aspect of the modern "rise of the novice". By this I mean, people acquiring just enough knowledge of tools and techniques to make cool-looking stuff, but not enough to make meaningful or useful advances.

pessimizer 4y ago

> nearly a decade of the "makerspace" has seemingly failed to produce any sort of meaningful Renaissance in small-scale US manufacturing. I think the problem is the constant declaration of the end of manufacturing economies of scale. "Maker" culture should have been focused on rapid prototyping, instead of pretending that the expensive output of 3D printers is sturdy enough to be a final product. "Makers" should be educated about how normal manufacturing processes work, so they can translate their experiments into things that factories could easily and cheaply make. For me it was a sign that when maker culture was arising, resources for independent engineers (who weren't making kits) actually started to disappear around the edges. The end of the Small Parts* catalog was the worst. Also, instead of using 25¢ micros, people were using $20 full Linux systems to do insignificant things. It seemed like everything was moving backwards. > It seems to me the industry is very good at serving hobbyists and prototypers. I don't think it's good for serving prototypers because prototypers should be ultimately thinking about manufacturing as a goal. I don't think that small scale manufacturing is being held back by anything, it's just not efficient and nothing has changed that would make it so. ----- [*] https://web.archive.org/web/20190221190826/http://smallparts2.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190221190826/http://smallparts...

bsder 4y ago

> It seems to me the industry is very good at serving hobbyists and prototypers. Sorta. Prototyping has gotten a LOT better thanks to the resin printers. Extrusion continues to suck like always, though. > But I think there is a huge market being missed out on easy-to-use, introductory products for mold tooling, plastic injection, and general manufacturing automation. Sadly, I simply do not believe that there is a huge market being missed out. I'd love to know what you think isn't being served. However, in the end, customer service is THE drag on small volume production. There is a reason why there is nothing in the gap between $100 Chinese electronics things with no customer service (see: NanoVNA) or $10K lab equipment with mediocre support.

jononor 4y ago

What has happened is that services offering medium scales production has become quite a lot more accessible. One can get a quote by uploading to online form, no need to enter a long term supplier agreement, few restrictions on minimum order quantity, and the starting points of prices is lower that before. And the 3d printer is key tool in prototyping the solution, and validating the design before sendibg off. It greatly reduces the risk of spending money manufacturing the wrong thing, or in wrong way (design issues).

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago

I sympathize with your disappointment, but I'm honestly not surprised by what happened. I never expected much to come from it except for introducing a few more people to light manufacturing. The reason is that the people who were already going to do this (actual mechanical engineers and machinists) had a path forward: buying used CNC machinery and starting up in their garages. And many of them did/are doing this, but it's not the kind of thing that's discussed unless you are on a manufacturing forum, which HN definitely is not. Part of the problem is that if you're going to make a living doing it, you need professional quality tools that can run all day, every day. "Maker" level tooling won't do that.