3 ms·

No, this doesn't solve the right problem. We bees to put injection molding machines in schools, CNC machines cutting the tooling, teach people how to make real

No, this doesn't solve the right problem. We bees to put injection molding machines in schools, CNC machines cutting the tooling, teach people how to make real things in real factories with realistic costs. This is the expertise that left these shores 20 years ago. Tooling manufacturing, automation, semiconductor etc.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago
3D is heavily used in China as well for small scale manufacturing and prototyping. It is a good place to start for middle or high school kids, and is pretty accessible and rather safe
eastbound 1y ago
MythBusters-types of people can only exist in a country with garages and residential suburbs. I think what most changed music and mechanics was the transition from suburbia to flatsharing in the city centers.
- pdmccormick 1y ago
  Not to mention intact families where parents had sufficient discretionary time (i.e. jobs that paid the bills with reasonable weekly hours) and a culture of prioritizing passing down knowledge to children and creating spaces in the home for them to pursue their individual interests and talents. People are not just atomized economic units.
alnwlsn 1y ago
I'm afraid we have far more basic problems than that - illiteracy in their fingers. We have people who can't use a knife or scissors, let alone a power tool. 3D printing is an excellent introduction to just making an actual object in the real world. It's cheap and accessible, and has obvious design limitations to fall into and learn from. The step from 3D printing to full CNC is a lot less than the step from nothing to 3D printing.
StillBored 1y ago
They have, at least in some places. Where I live (Austin TX) I've been in multiple high schools that have extensive Manual machine shop/3d printing/CNC/Electronics/etc labs for students to use. It might even be at the point where the nicest/most complete machine shops in town are actually in the suburban high schools. Go to the local FIRST https://www.firstinspires.org/ https://www.firstinspires.org/ competition and talk to the kids from the high schools in the more expensive parts of town where their parents are getting tens of thousands of dollars in donations every year for the teams. Whether any random kid can use them is a different story, but they do 'work' if by success having both of your school's FIRST team leads go to MIT is any indication, as happened last year at the HS my kid graduated from. So at least some of our students are being given the opportunity, and there are multiple paths to success, but maybe the largest difference is that while truly talented multi disciplinary young engineers (and I work with a few) are rare, they always have been. The real questions are probably around social issues, does giving your kid a phone remove the boredom that encourages them to tinker with stuff in the garage, is there a sweet spot of being able to afford an old car, but to poor to pay to fix it, force kids to learn hands on repair skills. Does being able to stop at radio shack/surplus/frys/metal supply/etc and browse racks of stuff on the way home from school encourage kids to build stuff to impress their friends, or is having it delivered in the mail enough. AKA, like me the other day, I stopped a microcenter to get a pedestrian computer peripheral I could have ordered from amazon, but discovered a ESP camera module that gave me 'ideas'.
- iancmceachern 1y ago
  Exactly, your post read like a highlight film from my childhood and engineering upbringing. Thank you.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

3D is heavily used in China as well for small scale manufacturing and prototyping. It is a good place to start for middle or high school kids, and is pretty accessible and rather safe

eastbound 1y ago

MythBusters-types of people can only exist in a country with garages and residential suburbs. I think what most changed music and mechanics was the transition from suburbia to flatsharing in the city centers.

pdmccormick 1y ago
Not to mention intact families where parents had sufficient discretionary time (i.e. jobs that paid the bills with reasonable weekly hours) and a culture of prioritizing passing down knowledge to children and creating spaces in the home for them to pursue their individual interests and talents. People are not just atomized economic units.

alnwlsn 1y ago

I'm afraid we have far more basic problems than that - illiteracy in their fingers. We have people who can't use a knife or scissors, let alone a power tool. 3D printing is an excellent introduction to just making an actual object in the real world. It's cheap and accessible, and has obvious design limitations to fall into and learn from. The step from 3D printing to full CNC is a lot less than the step from nothing to 3D printing.

StillBored 1y ago

They have, at least in some places. Where I live (Austin TX) I've been in multiple high schools that have extensive Manual machine shop/3d printing/CNC/Electronics/etc labs for students to use. It might even be at the point where the nicest/most complete machine shops in town are actually in the suburban high schools. Go to the local FIRST https://www.firstinspires.org/ https://www.firstinspires.org/ competition and talk to the kids from the high schools in the more expensive parts of town where their parents are getting tens of thousands of dollars in donations every year for the teams. Whether any random kid can use them is a different story, but they do 'work' if by success having both of your school's FIRST team leads go to MIT is any indication, as happened last year at the HS my kid graduated from. So at least some of our students are being given the opportunity, and there are multiple paths to success, but maybe the largest difference is that while truly talented multi disciplinary young engineers (and I work with a few) are rare, they always have been. The real questions are probably around social issues, does giving your kid a phone remove the boredom that encourages them to tinker with stuff in the garage, is there a sweet spot of being able to afford an old car, but to poor to pay to fix it, force kids to learn hands on repair skills. Does being able to stop at radio shack/surplus/frys/metal supply/etc and browse racks of stuff on the way home from school encourage kids to build stuff to impress their friends, or is having it delivered in the mail enough. AKA, like me the other day, I stopped a microcenter to get a pedestrian computer peripheral I could have ordered from amazon, but discovered a ESP camera module that gave me 'ideas'.

iancmceachern 1y ago
Exactly, your post read like a highlight film from my childhood and engineering upbringing. Thank you.