A Rust Belt Native and Technologist Re-Thinking American Manufacturing
&gt;For example, there’s one machine where you typically need to wait five to 10 years in machining before touching that piece of equipment.<p>For good reason. If we are talking real production, not 3D printing a bust of Beethoven for fun of buying a Shapeoko to cut a little bracket.  If that&#x27;s what we are talking about, well, you are not going to take someone who hasn&#x27;t proven themselves trough years of training and learning on the job to run something like my Haas VF2-SS, VF3-SS or VF4-SS.<p>One mistake could cost tens of thousands of dollars in damage to the machine and untold losses due to disruption to production.  This can include damage to very expensive tools (we are not talking about $0.50 Home depot drill bits here).  And then there are such things as optimizing tool wear and throughput.<p>Despite what is said in this article real machinists don&#x27;t sit there guessing at what to do. They know because they studied, learned and made enough mistakes.<p>Fields such as manufacturing highly accurate medical, optical or aerospace parts require real skills.<p>Can all of this be automated to the point of eliminating both human CAM toolpath programming and the machinist?  I&#x27;d say in a very limited set of cases and with restrictions that do not make for efficient manufacturing.<p>This is one of the problems with Proto Labs. They can machine quite a range of parts but they are very, very expensive for what you get. Sure, for quick turn &quot;I just need a part&quot; manufacturing (and, to be fair, more than that) they work fine.  For anything else, no way.<p>Here&#x27;s an example from a couple of weeks ago.  I needed a half dozen copies of a part made out of mild steel.  We needed to send it out because our machines are busy.  Proto Labs could make them for $300 a piece.  I called a couple of local shops.  I had them made for $20 a piece and delivered to us overnight (one of the guys from the shop drove them over).  They used their waterjet machine to cut the basic shape quickly and then threw it on a VMC to square-up and finish all the other features.  Twenty bucks.<p>Yes, we will eventually succeed at automating the CAD-to-Machined-Part process to a significant degree and with good results.  This will require AI, Machine Learning and a lot of the knowledge accumulated out there encoded into these systems.  You need to be able to make real parts with real manufacturing problems.  Any part.  Some parts require designing new parts to make them, whole machines even (fixtures, jigs, clamping and alignment systems).  It isn&#x27;t a simple problem.<p>And, even as these problems are solved the totality of manufacturing isn&#x27;t CNC maching aluminum.  Not even close.