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How is this a practical concern? The world gets destroyed as we know it, how to use a lathe is the least of your problems. Open your fridge, pick anything fro

How is this a practical concern? The world gets destroyed as we know it, how to use a lathe is the least of your problems. Open your fridge, pick anything from it. Think of the supply chain and layers upon layers of society that was needed to get that to you. You can now be, fearful that in an apocalypse event all that wouldn't be there and you'd be stuffed (which is perfectly correct reasoning) or you can appreciate the world as it is now and how it probably will be tomorrow.

VLM 13y ago
As an intellectual exercise this is Exactly how your lathe was originally created, minus the zombie apocalypse. Even if you abstract out segments (I'll just buy screws from a screwmaker) that doesn't mean the screwmaker doesn't avoid doing the work. Someone got to make the machine that made the screws. Or the machine that made the machine that made the screws. Eventually you start thinking about mining engineering problems which is also fun, in conventional definition and DF. More importantly this is exactly how a design engineer thinks. Exactly. I want a IC fabrication thingy. Well that would need X, Y, and Z, each of which need... and you quit designing small parts when mass production makes it impractical to make your own SHCS to assemble the parts. And if the math shows you're better off bolting a COTS subassembly on, you do it instead of making the parts, or you're better off making your own leadscrew threads you do that. But fundamentally for the first steps its the same. The other thing is supply chains rarely fail completely but partially fail every day. You may need to replace the ball bearing in the headstock of your lathe and the replacement may no longer be COTS. Turn out bodging a different bearing might be a wise idea. You just never know in advance if you'll be rigging up your own babbit bearing or creating your own half-nut, so what not think about the whole thing. As an OCD fixation it could get annoying, but for bored daydreams it beats watching Oprah reruns on TV.

VLM 13y ago

As an intellectual exercise this is Exactly how your lathe was originally created, minus the zombie apocalypse. Even if you abstract out segments (I'll just buy screws from a screwmaker) that doesn't mean the screwmaker doesn't avoid doing the work. Someone got to make the machine that made the screws. Or the machine that made the machine that made the screws. Eventually you start thinking about mining engineering problems which is also fun, in conventional definition and DF. More importantly this is exactly how a design engineer thinks. Exactly. I want a IC fabrication thingy. Well that would need X, Y, and Z, each of which need... and you quit designing small parts when mass production makes it impractical to make your own SHCS to assemble the parts. And if the math shows you're better off bolting a COTS subassembly on, you do it instead of making the parts, or you're better off making your own leadscrew threads you do that. But fundamentally for the first steps its the same. The other thing is supply chains rarely fail completely but partially fail every day. You may need to replace the ball bearing in the headstock of your lathe and the replacement may no longer be COTS. Turn out bodging a different bearing might be a wise idea. You just never know in advance if you'll be rigging up your own babbit bearing or creating your own half-nut, so what not think about the whole thing. As an OCD fixation it could get annoying, but for bored daydreams it beats watching Oprah reruns on TV.