 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
66.126.229.80
In Reply to: YES! posted by scruffy_ on September 6, 2005 at 06:27:30:
Making cables by hand is about the hardest thing I've done, and I did not even try to make something with an exotic geometry. The concepts are simple, but getting the damn wires to stay where I want them to is nearly impossible!Machining is an art in itself, and use of electricity is only indirectly related to precision. Even with computer control, there has to be a precise transducer at some point to tell the computer where the tool is. Someone had to machine that transducer.
Follow Ups:
I know I’m going off on a tangent here, but this stuff really gets me going. Pick up a toothpick and ask how you would begin to design the machine necessary to mass produce them? Would a roomful of the smartest professors from our finest universities be able to figure this puzzle out entirely on their own (excluding mechanical engineers who may have already cheated by having been taught this stuff)? The point here is to gain insight into the innate wit that was necessary to phantom the machine at the very beginning. Now, pick up pencil and ask the same question, keeping in mind that a pencil will never get produced from a toothpick-making machine. Next, take a little look around and realize all the unique machines, injection molds, and tooling necessary to produce all the worthless junk we have scattered around us. Where’s all that innate wit at? And where are all the toolmakers, mold-makers and designers hiding?Maybe I’m just not good at simple addition, but things don’t seem to add up for me here. I mean, I find it really, really difficult just to figure out what parts to purchase to put my computer together (and where to get the best buy), but how all this stuff got designed and built in the first place, I haven’t a clue!
and not given to self-promotion. You won't find them on the covers of tabloids or wearing suits and pulling down $11 million salaries. We could send all the movie, TV, and sports stars to Iraq to direct traffic, and replace all the suits with helium balloons with smiley faces painted on them, and our lives would be improved if affected at all. However, take away the machinists (and nurses, teachers, and other trades and crafts people), and where would we be?
I would expect specialized machine building to be an industry in its own right.My point is to look within just about any industry, like the food industry, auto industry, computer industry, or aircraft industry (Boing) and you will see people running these EXTREMELY complex specialized machines. These are the machines that get me filled with awe.
Sure, companies like General Motors and Boing Aircraft have designers, machinists and mechanical engineers, but if you look closely I think you'll find that their function falls far, far short of the actual building of these specialized machines. Yes, they are involved in the repair of these machines when needed, but that's about it from as far as I could ever tell.
Again, take a closer look at all the specialized machines across all the industries as a whole and ask: “Where did they come from?” Sure, there are a lot of companies that specialize in the building of machines, but more often than these are the mass produced machines, and moreover you’ll probably see that they are built on yet more specialized machines that seem to get unaccounted for.
It’s the industry that builds these specialized machines that seems to be missing; a giant industry at that! An industry crammed packed with engineers, machinists, tool makers and mold makers. Take a look at the counts in the industries and occupations listed US census data and tell me where are they?
Where does one order a toothpick making machine, for example? And how long would you expect to wait before it gets designed and built (correctly)?
These industries exist on a vast complex hierarchy of other industrial sectors all feeding on each other.I could (in theory !!) put together a toothpick plant (trees in , boxed and shrinkwrapped picks out) because I can buy, next day, from catalogs everything from flooring, shelving, electric motors, gear-boxes, spindles, bearings, drills, cutters, stampers, folders, control systems, comptuters and software, packing equiment, labellers, stock control and accounting systems and delivery trucks!
Not to negate the expertise of those who put it all together - far from it - but building such a plant from scratch on a desert island is a different proposition.
try and grasp the bigger picture I'm trying to create, and consider all the specialized machines needed in just the past 100 years or so to get the ball rolling, and to continue to keep the ball rolling.What you say here magnifies the bigger picture even more for me in that many of the products you just mentioned need specialized machines to produce.
I'm HALF kidding here, but doesn't it bother anyone that the most important industry that drives all other industries (specialized machine building, where ever the individual parts may come from) is virtually non-existent (very dinky, to say the least)?
Specialized machines are built by machinists, electricians, and computer programmers. They are designed by mechanical and electrical engineers.Take the semiconductor industry for an example of exotic and specialized machines.
Something like a step-and-repeat camera, used to print the patterns on silicon wafers, is built one (or a handful) at a time by a company with roots in advanced optics. The heart of such a machine is the lens system, of course, but the degree of mechanical control of the stage motion relative to the lens, the manipulation of the wafers in and out, the temperature, humdity, and dust control, etc., are beyond comprehension of most people not in the industry.
Other semiconductor manufacturing tools have different family histories. Ion implanters were originally particle accelerators designed by atomic physicists and built in university machine shops. Plasma etchers are made by folks with primary expertise in vacuum technology.
There is usually a small community (small in number, but global in extent) of specialists whose primary expertise lies behind any specialized machine you can think of. These people are invisible at the shallow level of everyday life, but a little digging into the present market for these machines will uncover their trade organizations, network of educators, etc. Perhaps we should redirect Labor Day to be a celebration of specialized skills, not just manual labor, to make these life pathways more visible.
The special machinery needed here alone, just to package all the junk we buy, should boggle anyone’s mind.It’s far, far beyond me. There simply isn’t enough wit in me to comprehend even the packaging machines.
I ask again, who has the wit necessary, and where does it get produced? Is that small community you talk about above or below this planet? Surely they must have heads the size of beach balls!
They are not sharks out to take advantage of each other, and the total knowledge required is easily distributed over a manageable number of individuals.It used to be that these communities had to be located all in one place. This is why there were nationalistic overtones to certain areas of expertise. Hitler lost the war because he chased away many of the physicists with the knowledge to build the atomic bomb.
I guess trying to quantify “wit” as it applies to industry is difficult, if not impossible, but I still can’t help but suspect that specialized machines require much, much more “innate wit” than that devoted to the rest of the industry. I’m not talking copycat knowledge, or learnt talent, but truly unique creativity.That we humans can become knowledgeable and/or talented is not the issue for me, nor am I that impressed with this stuff. That an engineer can look at one machine and gain ideas on how to build a new machine is certainly an advantage in creating new designs, but there remains so many obstacles that must be overcome, of which require true wit. Knowledge can be shared, and talent can be learnt, but not the innate wit that is required in true creativity.
Even in the field of engineering, most of what they possess seems to be knowledge and talent, but somewhere there must exist the wit that made the advances we have seen over the past 100 years or so possible. It’s not the knowledge or talent that doesn’t add up for me, but the wit. And to think that this wit could have been replaced with trial and error learning would be preposterous.
What you are talking about is engineering creativity, which comes from the same source as any good poetry or compelling music. Engineers think in abstract languages which are only intelligible to others of their small virtual communities. An engineer well-versed in the state of the art in his or her area can think of new approaches that truly advance that art, instead of reinventing something already known. Trial and error is sometimes the only practical way to solve limited problems, but it is no substitute for preparation and creative thinking.
Thanks, but what would be really helpful for me is to get some trustworthy statistics that tease out the wit and man hours involved in the building of specialized machines from that devoted to the rest of the industry. For example, compared to all the engineering time spent within Intel on the design of its products, how much engineering time is needed to produce the specialized machines necessary to produce those products? Do you care to take a wild guess here? Also, to know where the hours spent on these types of specialized machines get accounted for within the gross national product? Would be nice to see it having its own slice of pie within a pie chart.What would also be interesting, something that might make an interesting program for the History Channel would be to take an old toothpick-making machine from say the 1930s and explore its construction to a modern-day toothpick machine. Again, how long did take to build it? Where was it built? How many people from each occupation did it take to build it? The key here would be to provide the viewer a glimpse into the seemingly mystery of how all the advancement we experienced over the past 100 years or so came about.
looking just on the desk in front of me I see several plastic cups of different shapes, a penny, a quarter, several pairs of eyeglasses, a roll of Teflon tape, some RCA connectors, a notebook, several pens, a check book, just to name a few of the items. Imagine all the time and wit necessary to get to the point of mass producing any one of these items! A small community of specialists! We must be talking a small community the size of China!I worked for a small company that made specialized machines while I was in high school. The design and work that went into them was amazing, and never do I remember any of them working correctly the first time around. We're taking about a year to design, another year to build, and another several months to rework them before they could ship. And these were the most dinky machines imaginable compared to what I see nowadays.
Same thing for a single plastic injection mold that’s needed for most any given plastic knob, or what have you. The time involved in the design and workmanship is simply painstaking! Automatic machines are often of little use here; everything is specialized and must be custom made. Again, we’re talking maybe a year of design work and another year before it gets built and shipped.
And this is just for the simple things; look behind the scenes at the automation in the US Postal Service or auto industry and things become incomprehensible . . . excuse me, but this is the asylum, right! I am in the right place!
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
