A provocative post by Steve Richfield on the future of distributed manufacturing.

Comments on how realistic this is would be welcome.

Steve Richfield, Apr 27, 2010 at the [email protected] :

“REALLY ADVANCED CNC (Continuous Numerical Control) manufacturing machinery, some of which exists today, is instantly reconfigurable to make many very different things. Just put CNC into eBay and see some of what you can now buy on the used market. This march toward ultimately flexible manufacturing machinery is clearly headed toward a manufacturing facility that can efficiently manufacture just about ANYTHING, and do it a LOT cheaper than robots ever could. Of course, these are just another form of robot, able to take files directly from CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs and directly turn them into the desired physical objects.

To understand where this is heading, you must first understand the operation of a modern Screw Machine. In these, several, typically 6-8 chucks hold pieces of material that are being machined to a particular shape, In one kerchunk, an equal number of tools are applied to the chucks, but each tool performs a different operation, and the tools are retracted. The chucks then rotate one position, while dropping a finished part into a bin and loading a new piece of unmachined material into a chuck. In short, you can stand there and watch a screw machine going chunk, chunk, chunk and see finished parts emerging at the one-per-chunk rate. No robot could ever operate a lathe to function at anything approaching such a rate.

There are other machines that can make ANYTHING from tubing, make ANYTHING from sheet metal, etc. Put an assortment of these machines in one large building, and nothing but another such building can compete.

China is now moving in this general direction, buying up the machinery in shut-down American plants. Once this transition is complete, ALL manufacturing will be done in city block sized manufacturing facilities and NOT in anyone’s garage, nor with anyone’s robots.”