To Become a Manufacturing Superpower We Must Simplify Production Setup

It’s a common conundrum: you have an automatic dishwasher, but if you only have a few dishes and utensils to clean—and especially if you have a couple of pots which must be cleaned by hand anyway—it’s often quicker and easier to just wash them all by hand, all at once. This is the automation problem. At low rates of production, it’s often easier to just apply your skills to simple tools, than use better but more complex tools that entail complex setup processes.

Building a prototype is not so difficult. Building an efficient factory to quickly, accurately, and reliably, repeat a process over and over millions of times, is very difficult. The difficulty is encompassed by the term, “setup.” In the case of your dishwasher, it entails preliminary cleaning of the dishes and utensils, and then bending over to load them all (along with the detergent and rinse agent) into the dishwasher. Then a couple of hours later, you must bend over to unload them all.

At its core, manufacturing entails many such setup problems, but on a much more intense level. Materials must be forged, molded, milled, cut, ground, polished, treated, painted, etc. Sometimes they must be built up—as with carbon fiber, or additive manufacturing, or electronic chip fabrication. Sometimes machining is done by metal blades and bits, sometimes by electric arcs, sometimes by high pressure water, sometimes by lasers.

Regardless of the technology used at the tool’s point of production, the issue of setup always remains. Millwrights, machinists, electricians, network architects, programmers, and many other types of specialized, skilled people (with many, many years of training and experience) will be involved in the setup of a production line, or plant.

The ultimate product of this Machine Tool Principle is the increase of “Potential Relative Population Density” (the power of Man over the forces of Nature) and thereby an increase in the creative powers of individual people in particular—but also of society in general.

The Machinist/Tool and Die Maker Gap

Our problem is that as a nation we have been running in reverse for decades. Instead of accelerating our research and development (R&D), and improving our classical educational processes; for the most part we have allowed British Imperial and Wall Street influences to undermine R&D, cut maintenance of even basic infrastructure, shut down productive plant and equipment, and promote an array of self-hate ideologies instead of classical Socratic scientific education. So, we are left with some skilled and capable old timers, some really smart and motivated young people, but a huge shortage of the skilled machinists, tradesmen, etc. we require to make America a manufacturing superpower. Without intervention, the Labor Department expects that the number of American machinists and tool and die makers would remain flat past the end of the decade. Much of the gap could be closed with application of the proven educational methods developed in the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps and the World War II mobilization. Brian Lantz has updated these methods into a program now called the Space CCC.

However, even with the Space CCC we would still be way behind where we need to be. Over recent decades, improvements in design and manufacturing were made with the introduction of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) control systems. However, the process of setting up tools for production is still a laborious process requiring experienced and skilled human intervention.

Remember how computers used to be: a few banks and government institutions could afford to build giant mainframe systems which could only be commanded by the programmers who knew all of the commands and all of the secrets to achieving the desired outputs. It was Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center which showed the way into the world of graphical interfaces and many of the digital capabilities which allowed the power of computing to be rapidly spread among the entire world population.

Could there be a way to bridge the gap between product design and specification and the tedious, knowledge-and-skill-intensive process of setting up machine tools and production lines? Something like what PARC did for computers? Can we find a way to leverage the limited skilled manpower we have (and will soon have) and leapfrog into the status of manufacturing superpower?

Can We Leap to the Next Level to Bridge the Gap?

A group of startup companies claim that they can use machine learning (Artificial Intelligence, or AI) and robotics to quickly set up manufacturing plants in a way similar to the way that fast food franchises, or Amazon fulfillment centers, are quickly replicated around the world. According to Aviation Week and Space Technology’s Garrett Reim, “Using sensors, servers and software, they are attempting to codify the craftsmanship of hundreds of thousands of American machinists.” They claim to be able to economically automate production runs of even a few dozen parts. Up until now, the high costs of setting up automation on small production runs made manual production methods the most economical method on small batches.

Companies like Hadrian Automation are pairing the most experienced machinists with software engineers in order to develop systems of software/machine integration which will allow complex setup processes to be automated and easily controlled by workers with less experience. When a Hadrian CAM program takes a Hadrian CAD design and automatically designs a tool path, the Hadrian software takes note of the modifications to the path made by the experienced machinist. Hadrian claims that through this process of machine learning, tool setups which would require 40 to 80 hours of work are now reduced to about 2 hours of work. They are creating the software to link together the CAD/CAM and computer numerical control (CNC) machines from the typical tool manufacturers.

Another established CAD company, Autodesk, is working along the same lines. Avalon Manufacturing, a CNC machine shop and automation developer, is working on creating centralized factory feedback systems which can, for example, recognize the change in sound emitted by a machine when it is no longer properly functioning. Even the manufacturers of industrial robots are working to simplify the process of setting up their robot routines.

Complete success is not yet achieved, but the aim to leapfrog over current methods is right on target. And sometimes a rough problem spurs on the solution.

Hadrian is planning to build several more small batch factories in other states, and says that it now only takes 20 days to train workers without previous factory experience to run its software and machines.

Physical Economy and Technology Report for September 5, 2024: Two Important Space Events Tomorrow

In this edition we cover several upcoming and important space events, the introduction of space-based cell phone service, humanoid robots in the home, the curtailment of irrigation in California, and the danger posed by continued consolidation of dairy farms.

Promethean ActionMichael James Carr

As for your dishes, you will only solve that conundrum once you get your home humanoid robot. But that is also coming sooner than you expect! That will be part of Making America Great (Not Same Old) Again!