Originally Posted by
Seneca Pilot
Auto parts are being made today with 3D. Think how many parts are purely plastic in our world. Plastic interior parts that are now shipping from Asia to the US to be installed could simply be licensed with a CAD file and be produced locally with no need for labor. There is a factory not too far from me that makes plastic interior parts for Ford. They have lots of employees and go through many molds each year due to the wear caused in the injection molding process. What if they could do the same thing with ten printers and a couple of people to manage the computers? It is coming.
Depends on volume. You can automate something like injection molding without using AM. Traditional processes are typically cheaper for larger production runs... 3D printers have lots of parts and wear out. AM might be useful to make the injection mold itself.
The advantage of a 3D printer is flexibility... it can do many different things with just a data file. For mass production there are AM applications, but in that case the AM machine might be custom-built for that specific niche. One example is extremely light cabin parts for aircraft... with AM they can build very complex, bizarre looking shapes which actually have a strength to weight advantage over simpler cast/forged/machined parts. The bizarre shapes focus the strength along the axis' where it's needed, while not carry extra weight that's an artifact of the machining process. Machining such complex shapes would take too long, if it's even possible for a specific shape.
https://www.tctmagazine.com/additive...ircraft-cabin/
Originally Posted by
Seneca Pilot
Surpised it took them that long.
But soon enough we'll be confronted with ethical and political hurdles for automation. In the past advances in automation produced a net gain in economics and QOL for society... we're approaching a point where it might just leave a bunch of folks out in the cold.