5 ms·

3-D Printing, robotics swing manufacturing might from China back to the U.S.

51 points by blurpin 14y ago

senthilnayagam 14y ago
the kind of jobs that would be created would be to install and maintain these robots and machines, until someone figures a way to automate that as well
- mattstreet 14y ago
  "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
- DanI-S 14y ago
  But with any luck, the products of fully automated local manufacturing will be so much cheaper that humans won't need to work long hours in monotonous jobs in order to buy them.
  - glesica 14y ago
    I love the sentiment, but I doubt it will come to pass. That's exactly what people have said at every stage of industrialization. But the gains always end up being consolidated and the long work weeks and boring jobs march on.
    - DanI-S 14y ago
      I think we have to factor in the VAST increases in quality of life that industrialization brings. Increasingly automated car manufacture undoubtedly still involves boring jobs, but it also brought car ownership within the realm of possibility for millions more people. The same applies for anything from textiles (we can now buy clothing for a few dollars that would once have only been available to royalty) to electronics (in a world where almost everybody carries a mobile phone).
    - learc83 14y ago
      >the long work weeks and boring jobs march on. The long work weeks continue because apparently we are willing to trade less time at work for more stuff. If you want to live a 1960s lifestyle with a 60s size house, 60s level health care, 1 car per family, only 60s era gadgets, and cooking the vast majority of your meals--you could easily do it on 20 hours a week for most jobs. As an experiment to illustrate my point, look around the room you're in and count the things that you own that didn't exist in 1960.
    - danmaz74 14y ago
      In the late 19th century it was normal for industrial jobs to be 12 hours a day, 360+ days a year. I wouldn't say that there haven't been changes.
  - ippisl 14y ago
    If you look at the history of the industrial revolution , many of the gains the workers got:reasonable working hours, minimum wages, etc. were gained by a strong political fight(that many times took blood). There's no reason to assume that this time it will be different.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Such is the fate of China also, they're just a bit further removed from it. Automated manufacturing is vastly more reliable and higher-quality than anything manual labor can pull off. As the standard of living rises in China and cost of labor exceeds the threshold, automation will take over just like it has here. The death of US manufacturing is a little overblown (though not entirely) - what people are really talking about when they bemoan the death of American manufacturing is the death of American manufacturing jobs.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    "The death of US manufacturing is a little overblown (though not entirely) - what people are really talking about when they bemoan the death of American manufacturing is the death of American manufacturing jobs." Exactly, if you look at manufacturing output, America has remained a leader [1], but the number of people employed by manufacturers has gone down. The recession did put a dent in that increase of course. [1] http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2010/02/17/usa-china-and-japan-lead-manufacturing-output-in-2008/ http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2010/02/17/usa-china-and...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
consultutah 14y ago
I've been saying this for a while. I think all manufacturing will turn local at some point, though it may take decades still. If I ran FedEx/Kinkos, I'd be researching all the best 3D printers and trying to pick winners and losers.
- terryk88a 14y ago
  A while back (seems like it's been about a year) Radio Shack solicited ideas to make their stores more relevant. I suggested they install 3d printers in every store to bring hobbyists back in. Crickets.
qntmfred 14y ago
I've seen a lot from the DIY companies and academic demos - what companies are designing this kind of production-quality cutting edge robotics and AI solutions though? I'd like to be a part of this future, but it seems like those jobs are in much shorter supply and harder to find.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I would say the jobs in 'cutting edge' robotics (no pun intended) are in surgical robots. Intuitive Surgical is growing very quickly. Proto-typing is at companies like Zmachines. You need to realize that the personal computer market was all DIY and academic demos until Lotus 123 on the Apple came out. That filled a niche in business. When the PC came out it was supported by a 'real' company (Apple was not considered much of a company then). I would expect a similar trend in 3D printing. Some niche will open up and cause a lot of 'enterprise' money to be spent there and then one of the printer companies will jump in with the kind of product these things will evolve into. (And you'll get to complain to your grandkids about all the beige 3D printers are so boring, you remember when they were innovative and quirky) Much of the AI stuff has been in pick and place robots (see the Japanese competition on this) and the military's use.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
    The DIY aspect is a very good point. I just finished watching a few videos on YouTube on early machine tools and one of the narrators mentioned that a lot of early milling machines didn't even have manufacturer's names because they were built in-house by the same people who needed them. There is a very large DIY contingent building CNC machines of all flavors, not just the basic lathes and mills, but routers, benders, presses, wireforming tools, etc. Take a look around cnczone.com; you can waste hours on that site. The DIY part of the industry needs software. The dominant tools are still very basic and there doesn't seem to be much support for 4 and 5-axis machining because most DIYers are only building 3-axis machines at most. So there may not be a huge number of jobs, but there is room to make your mark writing software for the home-built project machines. I'm awaiting the day someone posts their design for a 5-axis homebuilt mill fully integrated with their own CAM software. I think that person will become very rich.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
[ Disclaimer, I bought a 'Replicator' [1] from Makerbot so its the only one I've got 'first hand' knowledge ] The 'hobby' ones are still very rough. Think Altair/IMSAI level of personal computer. The lack of a reasonable filler/support material (so that you can print 'voids' and later dissolve out the filler) means that a lot of obviously useful shapes are unprintable at the moment (horizontal tubes for example). But the writing is, as they say, on the wall. My instinct is that plastic printing will overtake injection molding for small run products in as few as 10 years. The biggest challenge to robotics in the US market has been organized resistance. Ford had the most productive auto plant in the world, in Brazil, because it was mostly robotic. They tried, and failed, to get it built in the US. But the depth and length of this recession has changed the politics on that to the point where 'any' jobs trumps 'no' jobs, even if the 'any' comes with the uncomfortable reality that nobody in the new plant will be able to work without at least a solid high school diploma and 2 years of apprenticing. The 'high paying' jobs will require a four year degree in manufacturing technology. [1] http://www.makerbot.com/docs/replicator/ http://www.makerbot.com/docs/replicator/
- TylerE 14y ago
  I don't think 3D printing is going to replace injection molding any time soon, even for relatively small runs. The cycle time is just so much longer - an injection molding machine can make most parts, even quite large ones (think big plastic trashcans) in on the order of less than a minute, sometimes much less depending on the machine. That's also ignoring that the plastics you can injection mold have better mechanical properties and surface finishes, too. Of course, true small run stuff isn't usually injection molded anyway, due to the amount of time and effort and high grade tool steel it takes to make the mold. Where 3D printing really IS changing things is prototyping and the occasional one-off part, but we're quite far off production usage.
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    Yes, even for DYI's, 3D printing now (even with the rough ones) is a cheap tool to just try out prototypes. And try out A LOT of prototypes cheaply. Even though they are slow, it is cheap and you just can try out so many things before you go to production with CNC & injection molding. And you can give away limited prototypes so you can do market research with the printed models; even though they are rough, I have seen them work well enough for people to get this 'wow I want this' feeling.
mcantelon 14y ago
>Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit. So Tim Cook announces Apple's intention to do this at the end of May, and this is somehow "following suit" when Google hadn't even announced the Nexus Q yet (June 27)? >We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. What are average humans capable of that robots aren't?
- ajross 14y ago
  My memory is that Apple announced a "desire" to do more manufacturing in the US. Google announced an actual product that will be built there. Not really the same thing. Someone correct me if Apple is actually sourcing anything other than semiconductors from the US for a planned product. The whole "where is it built" thing is dumb, though. But still, if you're going to take afront, this doesn't seem like the right spot.
  - mcantelon 14y ago
    I'm just pointing out an inaccuracy, not making a claim to Apple's greater virtue: the article asserts Apple is being influenced in May by something announced in June (unless one is to assume Apple got an insider tip).
    - ajross 14y ago
      I think you're reading too far. The assertion is pretty straightforward: an Android device built in the US puts pressure on Apple to do the same. And the sentence links to a story about Apple wanting to build in the US but not being able to do so. I don't see an assertion of causality. They just looked for an opportunity to link to another Forbes story, saw a relevant one, and threw it in. The author may not have even written the link in the original.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
warrenmiller 14y ago
Surely if the robots are replacing people then they're not really creating jobs, just taking jobs away from the Chinese. Sure there will be some people manning the robots, but isn't the whole point of using robots to cut down on the human workforce? Even the robots aren't created in USA - some are Kuka robots from Germany.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- shimon_e 14y ago
  Many simple products are made completely by machine yet have been coming for a long time from places like China. Sometimes it is due to the Chinese owning better machines (e.g. mills in China are generally more advance than their counterparts in America). 3D printers are probably going to be a boost for Mexico and low cost countries in Europe. That is if they get their act together.
jfoutz 14y ago
This article is great opportunity for the title editor.
micro_cam 14y ago
Does anyone know of any US based consumer electronics factories set up to take small-medium sized orders from small companies...say for kickstart campaign funded products like the Ouya?
- curt 14y ago
  It's FAR more expensive to produce in the US, Usually between 2x-4x. I do prototyping in the US and the companies that I use also do small-medium production runs. You can find them in the Manufacturing thread I wrote.
- derda 14y ago
  One problem for consumer goods production in europe / US is component sourcing. You will need a PCB-Fab, ICs, injection molding, ... . While you can get most (some things just arent built statesside anymore) of those things in the states, they will be more expensive and maybe not built to capacity (since they specialized on really small batches for example). In china you will have all of the suppliers down the road and pretty cheap. From someone who worked for a large automotive supplier, which does a lot of manufacturing here in germany, that wanted to release a consumer device I heard that you can get the whole product finished in china for the price of sourcing the components in europe.
Symmetry 14y ago
The US already has plenty of manufacturing, we make more stuff in the US right now than we ever have in the past. The thing is that we just use robots instead of people to do most of it - and 3D printing will only tend to continue this trend.
cadr 14y ago
I seem to remember hearing some argument about why it is hard to bring manufacturing back to the US, and it had to do with the supply chain in China being vastly shorter. I'm not sure how robotics would address that. Thoughts?
terryk88a 14y ago
For those who aren't well read (grin) a very good read looking at a dystopian future where 3d printers have displaced manufacturing is Cory Doctorow's "Makers". The Creative Commons licensed book can be downloaded from his website, craphound.com, or purchased elsewhere. I suspect it may be one of those near-prophetic works of science fiction that will amaze future generations - "How'd he see that coming?"

51 points by blurpin 14y ago

the kind of jobs that would be created would be to install and maintain these robots and machines, until someone figures a way to automate that as well

mattstreet 14y ago
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
DanI-S 14y ago
But with any luck, the products of fully automated local manufacturing will be so much cheaper that humans won't need to work long hours in monotonous jobs in order to buy them.
- glesica 14y ago
  I love the sentiment, but I doubt it will come to pass. That's exactly what people have said at every stage of industrialization. But the gains always end up being consolidated and the long work weeks and boring jobs march on.
  - DanI-S 14y ago
    I think we have to factor in the VAST increases in quality of life that industrialization brings. Increasingly automated car manufacture undoubtedly still involves boring jobs, but it also brought car ownership within the realm of possibility for millions more people. The same applies for anything from textiles (we can now buy clothing for a few dollars that would once have only been available to royalty) to electronics (in a world where almost everybody carries a mobile phone).
  - learc83 14y ago
    >the long work weeks and boring jobs march on. The long work weeks continue because apparently we are willing to trade less time at work for more stuff. If you want to live a 1960s lifestyle with a 60s size house, 60s level health care, 1 car per family, only 60s era gadgets, and cooking the vast majority of your meals--you could easily do it on 20 hours a week for most jobs. As an experiment to illustrate my point, look around the room you're in and count the things that you own that didn't exist in 1960.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    In the late 19th century it was normal for industrial jobs to be 12 hours a day, 360+ days a year. I wouldn't say that there haven't been changes.
- ippisl 14y ago
  If you look at the history of the industrial revolution , many of the gains the workers got:reasonable working hours, minimum wages, etc. were gained by a strong political fight(that many times took blood). There's no reason to assume that this time it will be different.
potatolicious 14y ago
Such is the fate of China also, they're just a bit further removed from it. Automated manufacturing is vastly more reliable and higher-quality than anything manual labor can pull off. As the standard of living rises in China and cost of labor exceeds the threshold, automation will take over just like it has here. The death of US manufacturing is a little overblown (though not entirely) - what people are really talking about when they bemoan the death of American manufacturing is the death of American manufacturing jobs.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  "The death of US manufacturing is a little overblown (though not entirely) - what people are really talking about when they bemoan the death of American manufacturing is the death of American manufacturing jobs." Exactly, if you look at manufacturing output, America has remained a leader [1], but the number of people employed by manufacturers has gone down. The recession did put a dent in that increase of course. [1] http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2010/02/17/usa-china-and-japan-lead-manufacturing-output-in-2008/ http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2010/02/17/usa-china-and...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

consultutah 14y ago

I've been saying this for a while. I think all manufacturing will turn local at some point, though it may take decades still. If I ran FedEx/Kinkos, I'd be researching all the best 3D printers and trying to pick winners and losers.

terryk88a 14y ago
A while back (seems like it's been about a year) Radio Shack solicited ideas to make their stores more relevant. I suggested they install 3d printers in every store to bring hobbyists back in. Crickets.

qntmfred 14y ago

I've seen a lot from the DIY companies and academic demos - what companies are designing this kind of production-quality cutting edge robotics and AI solutions though? I'd like to be a part of this future, but it seems like those jobs are in much shorter supply and harder to find.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
I would say the jobs in 'cutting edge' robotics (no pun intended) are in surgical robots. Intuitive Surgical is growing very quickly. Proto-typing is at companies like Zmachines. You need to realize that the personal computer market was all DIY and academic demos until Lotus 123 on the Apple came out. That filled a niche in business. When the PC came out it was supported by a 'real' company (Apple was not considered much of a company then). I would expect a similar trend in 3D printing. Some niche will open up and cause a lot of 'enterprise' money to be spent there and then one of the printer companies will jump in with the kind of product these things will evolve into. (And you'll get to complain to your grandkids about all the beige 3D printers are so boring, you remember when they were innovative and quirky) Much of the AI stuff has been in pick and place robots (see the Japanese competition on this) and the military's use.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
  The DIY aspect is a very good point. I just finished watching a few videos on YouTube on early machine tools and one of the narrators mentioned that a lot of early milling machines didn't even have manufacturer's names because they were built in-house by the same people who needed them. There is a very large DIY contingent building CNC machines of all flavors, not just the basic lathes and mills, but routers, benders, presses, wireforming tools, etc. Take a look around cnczone.com; you can waste hours on that site. The DIY part of the industry needs software. The dominant tools are still very basic and there doesn't seem to be much support for 4 and 5-axis machining because most DIYers are only building 3-axis machines at most. So there may not be a huge number of jobs, but there is room to make your mark writing software for the home-built project machines. I'm awaiting the day someone posts their design for a 5-axis homebuilt mill fully integrated with their own CAM software. I think that person will become very rich.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

[ Disclaimer, I bought a 'Replicator' [1] from Makerbot so its the only one I've got 'first hand' knowledge ] The 'hobby' ones are still very rough. Think Altair/IMSAI level of personal computer. The lack of a reasonable filler/support material (so that you can print 'voids' and later dissolve out the filler) means that a lot of obviously useful shapes are unprintable at the moment (horizontal tubes for example). But the writing is, as they say, on the wall. My instinct is that plastic printing will overtake injection molding for small run products in as few as 10 years. The biggest challenge to robotics in the US market has been organized resistance. Ford had the most productive auto plant in the world, in Brazil, because it was mostly robotic. They tried, and failed, to get it built in the US. But the depth and length of this recession has changed the politics on that to the point where 'any' jobs trumps 'no' jobs, even if the 'any' comes with the uncomfortable reality that nobody in the new plant will be able to work without at least a solid high school diploma and 2 years of apprenticing. The 'high paying' jobs will require a four year degree in manufacturing technology. [1] http://www.makerbot.com/docs/replicator/ http://www.makerbot.com/docs/replicator/

TylerE 14y ago
I don't think 3D printing is going to replace injection molding any time soon, even for relatively small runs. The cycle time is just so much longer - an injection molding machine can make most parts, even quite large ones (think big plastic trashcans) in on the order of less than a minute, sometimes much less depending on the machine. That's also ignoring that the plastics you can injection mold have better mechanical properties and surface finishes, too. Of course, true small run stuff isn't usually injection molded anyway, due to the amount of time and effort and high grade tool steel it takes to make the mold. Where 3D printing really IS changing things is prototyping and the occasional one-off part, but we're quite far off production usage.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Yes, even for DYI's, 3D printing now (even with the rough ones) is a cheap tool to just try out prototypes. And try out A LOT of prototypes cheaply. Even though they are slow, it is cheap and you just can try out so many things before you go to production with CNC & injection molding. And you can give away limited prototypes so you can do market research with the printed models; even though they are rough, I have seen them work well enough for people to get this 'wow I want this' feeling.

mcantelon 14y ago

>Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit. So Tim Cook announces Apple's intention to do this at the end of May, and this is somehow "following suit" when Google hadn't even announced the Nexus Q yet (June 27)? >We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. What are average humans capable of that robots aren't?

ajross 14y ago
My memory is that Apple announced a "desire" to do more manufacturing in the US. Google announced an actual product that will be built there. Not really the same thing. Someone correct me if Apple is actually sourcing anything other than semiconductors from the US for a planned product. The whole "where is it built" thing is dumb, though. But still, if you're going to take afront, this doesn't seem like the right spot.
- mcantelon 14y ago
  I'm just pointing out an inaccuracy, not making a claim to Apple's greater virtue: the article asserts Apple is being influenced in May by something announced in June (unless one is to assume Apple got an insider tip).
  - ajross 14y ago
    I think you're reading too far. The assertion is pretty straightforward: an Android device built in the US puts pressure on Apple to do the same. And the sentence links to a story about Apple wanting to build in the US but not being able to do so. I don't see an assertion of causality. They just looked for an opportunity to link to another Forbes story, saw a relevant one, and threw it in. The author may not have even written the link in the original.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]

warrenmiller 14y ago

Surely if the robots are replacing people then they're not really creating jobs, just taking jobs away from the Chinese. Sure there will be some people manning the robots, but isn't the whole point of using robots to cut down on the human workforce? Even the robots aren't created in USA - some are Kuka robots from Germany.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
shimon_e 14y ago
Many simple products are made completely by machine yet have been coming for a long time from places like China. Sometimes it is due to the Chinese owning better machines (e.g. mills in China are generally more advance than their counterparts in America). 3D printers are probably going to be a boost for Mexico and low cost countries in Europe. That is if they get their act together.

jfoutz 14y ago

This article is great opportunity for the title editor.

micro_cam 14y ago

Does anyone know of any US based consumer electronics factories set up to take small-medium sized orders from small companies...say for kickstart campaign funded products like the Ouya?

curt 14y ago
It's FAR more expensive to produce in the US, Usually between 2x-4x. I do prototyping in the US and the companies that I use also do small-medium production runs. You can find them in the Manufacturing thread I wrote.
derda 14y ago
One problem for consumer goods production in europe / US is component sourcing. You will need a PCB-Fab, ICs, injection molding, ... . While you can get most (some things just arent built statesside anymore) of those things in the states, they will be more expensive and maybe not built to capacity (since they specialized on really small batches for example). In china you will have all of the suppliers down the road and pretty cheap. From someone who worked for a large automotive supplier, which does a lot of manufacturing here in germany, that wanted to release a consumer device I heard that you can get the whole product finished in china for the price of sourcing the components in europe.

Symmetry 14y ago

The US already has plenty of manufacturing, we make more stuff in the US right now than we ever have in the past. The thing is that we just use robots instead of people to do most of it - and 3D printing will only tend to continue this trend.

cadr 14y ago

I seem to remember hearing some argument about why it is hard to bring manufacturing back to the US, and it had to do with the supply chain in China being vastly shorter. I'm not sure how robotics would address that. Thoughts?

terryk88a 14y ago

For those who aren't well read (grin) a very good read looking at a dystopian future where 3d printers have displaced manufacturing is Cory Doctorow's "Makers". The Creative Commons licensed book can be downloaded from his website, craphound.com, or purchased elsewhere. I suspect it may be one of those near-prophetic works of science fiction that will amaze future generations - "How'd he see that coming?"