6 ms·

> but it's incredibly hard to do right in mass manufacturing. Any particular reason? From the outside, wood seem easier to use than plastic.

by ama729 13y ago

Domenic_S 13y ago
The Nest's ring is metal (brushed aluminum?).
- grinich 13y ago
  The first version was plastic. The second (latest) has a brushed stainless steel ring.
kitcar 13y ago
Wood is basically more expensive than plastic for mass-manufactured items. The basic raw material is more expensive. You can't source a large volume of aesthetically-identical pieces, so its harder to produce identical items. You can't injection mold wood, so higher manufacturing costs. There are "manufactured" woods which address many of these issues, but they also tend not to be deemed as beautiful / strong as the real thing.
- adestefan 13y ago
  There is also a lot of waste when using wood.
- swalsh 13y ago
  As a hobby woodworker, i'd love to be able to buy the parts, and make the enclosure myself. I got some scraps of walnut that would look awesome.
  - jsilence 13y ago
    Well, you can buy the parts for the spark version.
larrydag 13y ago
I believe its the reason that injection molding plastics is so popular versus doing metal and wood. Wood and metal most of the time require a subtractive(sp?) manufacturing process that requires a lot of raw material, assembly steps, and waste. Injection molding and 3D printing is additive that is automated and simplifies the process with minimal waste.
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  I dunno, the Nest's ring is aluminum which is almost certainly machined from large stock.
pistle 13y ago
You can't beat polymers for consistency, finishing, handling, tooling, durability, etc. For each friction point with wood, you could create dynamic systems to alleviate the pain or you could just start with materials designed for scale. The future is not made of wood.
- yardie 13y ago
  The future is mountains of plastic. One of the good things about wood is you don't have to worry about it sticking around for 1000+ years. The problem with plastics is most of it can't be recycled. Not the way we think of recycling. Aluminum cans are melted down and turned back into aluminum cans. Polymers are ground up and injection molded into lower grade polymers. Once too many polymer chains get broken the grade is too low to be usable.
  - Kliment 13y ago
    Careful polymer selection can work around that. PLA can be digested back into starch by an enzyme or composted at high temperature. There are plastics that can be cleanly incinerated or ground up and embedded in concrete mixes as insulation. You can chemically depolymerize a number of plastics and end up with much more manageable products. The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant.
    - yardie 13y ago
      > The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant. The problem with plastics is its cheap acquisition costs and expensive disposal costs. One of the good things about living in a developed country is we sorta manage the disposal costs well. In developing countries they don't manage plastic disposal at all. In all my travels one of the overriding themes I've seen is plastic on the sides of road, in rivers, on the beach. When I removed the wooden door from a house we didn't need to call the city to send a special truck to dispose of it. We chopped it into pieces and used it for bbq. Then we mixed the ashes into the compost. Disposal was $0. While plastic is cheap in the short term I think there are a lot of long term costs that get ignored.
grinich 13y ago
Tolerances, among many others.
kybernetyk 13y ago
> Any particular reason? I'm only involved in manufacturing as a hobby for my custom keyboard projects. But my bet would be that it's about injection molding [0]. Once you got the molds machined you can mass produce plastic parts extremely cheaply. Need more plastic parts? Get a few more molds made. It scales pretty well because one mold can produce multiple parts at once and the injection molding presses itself are relatively inexpensive and pretty much fully automated. Wood while being great for prototyping doesn't scale that well in mass production. You would machine it using CNC routers and if you need more produced you need new expensive CNC routers which can only produce one part at a time. Also the CNC routers I know you have to baby sit. Again: That's only from my limited experience with limited runs (a few thousand pieces at most). Maybe someone who knows more about real mass production can elaborate a little more on this. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_molding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_molding
- gnaffle 13y ago
  Then again, isn't the current Nest made with metal (and I would guess, CNC milled just like Apple computers)?

> but it's incredibly hard to do right in mass manufacturing. Any particular reason? From the outside, wood seem easier to use than plastic.

by ama729 13y ago

> but it's incredibly hard to do right in mass manufacturing. Any particular reason? From the outside, wood seem easier to use than plastic.

Domenic_S 13y ago

The Nest's ring is metal (brushed aluminum?).

grinich 13y ago
The first version was plastic. The second (latest) has a brushed stainless steel ring.

kitcar 13y ago

Wood is basically more expensive than plastic for mass-manufactured items. The basic raw material is more expensive. You can't source a large volume of aesthetically-identical pieces, so its harder to produce identical items. You can't injection mold wood, so higher manufacturing costs. There are "manufactured" woods which address many of these issues, but they also tend not to be deemed as beautiful / strong as the real thing.

adestefan 13y ago
There is also a lot of waste when using wood.
swalsh 13y ago
As a hobby woodworker, i'd love to be able to buy the parts, and make the enclosure myself. I got some scraps of walnut that would look awesome.
- jsilence 13y ago
  Well, you can buy the parts for the spark version.

larrydag 13y ago

I believe its the reason that injection molding plastics is so popular versus doing metal and wood. Wood and metal most of the time require a subtractive(sp?) manufacturing process that requires a lot of raw material, assembly steps, and waste. Injection molding and 3D printing is additive that is automated and simplifies the process with minimal waste.

Domenic_S 13y ago
I dunno, the Nest's ring is aluminum which is almost certainly machined from large stock.

pistle 13y ago

You can't beat polymers for consistency, finishing, handling, tooling, durability, etc. For each friction point with wood, you could create dynamic systems to alleviate the pain or you could just start with materials designed for scale. The future is not made of wood.

yardie 13y ago
The future is mountains of plastic. One of the good things about wood is you don't have to worry about it sticking around for 1000+ years. The problem with plastics is most of it can't be recycled. Not the way we think of recycling. Aluminum cans are melted down and turned back into aluminum cans. Polymers are ground up and injection molded into lower grade polymers. Once too many polymer chains get broken the grade is too low to be usable.
- Kliment 13y ago
  Careful polymer selection can work around that. PLA can be digested back into starch by an enzyme or composted at high temperature. There are plastics that can be cleanly incinerated or ground up and embedded in concrete mixes as insulation. You can chemically depolymerize a number of plastics and end up with much more manageable products. The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant.
  - yardie 13y ago
    > The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant. The problem with plastics is its cheap acquisition costs and expensive disposal costs. One of the good things about living in a developed country is we sorta manage the disposal costs well. In developing countries they don't manage plastic disposal at all. In all my travels one of the overriding themes I've seen is plastic on the sides of road, in rivers, on the beach. When I removed the wooden door from a house we didn't need to call the city to send a special truck to dispose of it. We chopped it into pieces and used it for bbq. Then we mixed the ashes into the compost. Disposal was $0. While plastic is cheap in the short term I think there are a lot of long term costs that get ignored.

grinich 13y ago

Tolerances, among many others.

kybernetyk 13y ago

> Any particular reason? I'm only involved in manufacturing as a hobby for my custom keyboard projects. But my bet would be that it's about injection molding [0]. Once you got the molds machined you can mass produce plastic parts extremely cheaply. Need more plastic parts? Get a few more molds made. It scales pretty well because one mold can produce multiple parts at once and the injection molding presses itself are relatively inexpensive and pretty much fully automated. Wood while being great for prototyping doesn't scale that well in mass production. You would machine it using CNC routers and if you need more produced you need new expensive CNC routers which can only produce one part at a time. Also the CNC routers I know you have to baby sit. Again: That's only from my limited experience with limited runs (a few thousand pieces at most). Maybe someone who knows more about real mass production can elaborate a little more on this. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_molding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_molding

gnaffle 13y ago
Then again, isn't the current Nest made with metal (and I would guess, CNC milled just like Apple computers)?