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#242
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
New technologies will not make aluminum or plastic cheaper. So what? They don't need to be cheaper. People literally buy millions of items made out of aluminum and plastic every day and throw them out, the material is so cheap. The amount of aluminum in a soda can has decreased dramatically over time. I remember seeing an article on can engineering in SciAm twenty or so years ago. It's probably halfed again since then. Cars once had frames under the body. Now, carefully shaped bodies serve the purpose that once required a frame. New technologies can dramatically reduce the amount of aluminum or plastic that you require to do something. You can overdo it. My mother believed in bulk purchasing and in having suitable treats on hand when the grandkids arrived. When preparing the estate, we discovered a five foot stack of soda in one of the closets. One flat (24 cans) of Costco "Simply" cola had pinhole-ruptured almost all of the cans, but had leaked slowly enough that nothing sprayed and nothing escaped the cardboard flat that the cans were sitting on. The white carpet under the dark brown leaks was untouched. All of the plastic two-litre bottles had lost their pressurization - the CO2 having presumably leaked past the caps in the time since purchase. (She was in various forms of care for about a year before the end, and we held the house off the market for another five months for price-cycle reasons. I don't know how long the soda was there before she went into care.) -- We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current. |
#243
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
On Sun, 16 Jul 2017 06:40:16 +0100, David Mitchell
wrote: wrote: On Sat, 15 Jul 2017 06:36:41 +0100, David Mitchell wrote: wrote: In sci.physics David Mitchell wrote: wrote: In sci.physics David Mitchell wrote: wrote: In sci.physics David Mitchell wrote: wrote: In sci.physics David Mitchell wrote: wrote: OK, what "stuff" would people be making at home? Jewellry, utilities, tools, gadgets. Could you be any more vague? Yes. Yes I could. Things. People will make things. All of the things. Great, yet another techno nerd weenie who spends way too much time watching Star Trek reruns. Bless. It's almost as though you imagine anyone give even the tinest of ****s what you think. It's almost as though you imagine I think puerile techno nerds represent the average person. I think you need to find a better insult - "techno nerd" is a bit tautologous - and I've never made any particular claim to represent anyone. How about pie-in-the-sky dreamer? Like I've said before, most people can't be bothered to make things as trivial as bread and biscuits. Well, lots of people *do* make bread and biscuits; and a series about baking was one of the most popular UK programs for some time. Watching is not making. True; but search for "The Great British Off effect". "In the six years it has been on the air, “The Great British Bake Off” has fundamentally changed the way the British regard baking, dessert-eating and even their own culture of sweets. The “Bake Off Effect,” as it is known, has manifested in a resurgence in home baking, a noticeable increase in the quality of baked goods sold all over the country, and a growing number of people pursuing careers as professional pastry chefs." "The Mary Berry effect: How the Great British Bake Off revived the Women's Institute WI membership reached 211,000 last year, its highest level since the 1970s 22,600 new members joined last year and 144 institutes were created Organisation's chairman said Great British Bakeoff 'inspired' more women to take up home baking" "A recent survey from Waitrose revealed that baking is more popular than ever, with 19 per cent of people saying they now bake at least once a week and nearly half admitted to baking more than they did five years ago." Irrelevant. My wife watches a lot (way too much ;-) of cooking shows and also does a lot of baking but not once has she ever made anything that was on the TeeVee. She does make biscuits, on special occasions, but not bread. As I keep, apparently, having to explain - I am talking about *mature* fabrication technology - something capable of working with multiple materials, and able to fabricate something at the push of a button more quickly than driving to buy it, and more cheaply. Not going to happen. It would be good if you could back that up, rather than simply asserting it. There is no need. There is no efficiency of scale. It's too much work to design things and get them ready (and then the retries). Few will put up with the bull****. No, I don't think people will download designs for plastic jewelry and make it. Well, maybe a few 6 year-olds. We've noted that nearly all technology improves with time, as fabrication technology has, and that prices always fall, and that as that of fabrication technology has; and sales are increasing non-linearly, up to 400000 last year, with projected sales of 1.2 million this year (search "3-D printer sales") - which provides motication for their continued improvement and revenue to support it. Irrelevant. |
#244
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
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#245
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
In article ,
says... In sci.physics Jeff Findley wrote: In article , says... The point is that CAD on minicomputers was very minimal. It was the domain of the mainframe. Rubylith was the tool of choice for the electronics industry. I've worked on CAE software that's tightly integrated with CAD my entire professional life. Back in about 1988 our CAD/CAE software still ran on mainframes (IBM, DEC, and etc.) but the transition to Unix workstations was in its infancy. Back then, PCs were "toys" that quite simply couldn't handle professional level CAD/CAE software. In the early 1990s Unix Workstations dominated for running CAD/CAE software. A good SGI "box" would run you about $20k in early 1990s dollars (about $33k today). Today, you can comfortably run CAD/CAE software (at least the CAE pre/post) on a sub $2k PC running Windows OS. But many customers will go quite a bit over $2k with things like solid state drives and 64 GB or more of RAM coupled with the best professional graphics card money can buy (no, they're not quite the same as consumer/gaming cards). Still, the most "decked out" PC workstation today will still cost a fraction of what a Unix workstation used to cost in the early 1990s. So again, we see yet another example of improving technologies driving down costs in a market. Nope, what we see is yet another example of consumer demand driving down manufacturing costs by encouraging high volume, automated, manufacturing. Bull****. The technology in a PC today is quite different than that of a PC made in 1988. Nothing in a PC from 1988 would even "plug into" a PC bought today, except maybe the keyboard and mouse. And the PC today is literally orders of magnitude faster. Jeff -- All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone. These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends, employer, or any organization that I am a member of. |
#246
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
In sci.physics Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says... In sci.physics Jeff Findley wrote: In article , says... The point is that CAD on minicomputers was very minimal. It was the domain of the mainframe. Rubylith was the tool of choice for the electronics industry. I've worked on CAE software that's tightly integrated with CAD my entire professional life. Back in about 1988 our CAD/CAE software still ran on mainframes (IBM, DEC, and etc.) but the transition to Unix workstations was in its infancy. Back then, PCs were "toys" that quite simply couldn't handle professional level CAD/CAE software. In the early 1990s Unix Workstations dominated for running CAD/CAE software. A good SGI "box" would run you about $20k in early 1990s dollars (about $33k today). Today, you can comfortably run CAD/CAE software (at least the CAE pre/post) on a sub $2k PC running Windows OS. But many customers will go quite a bit over $2k with things like solid state drives and 64 GB or more of RAM coupled with the best professional graphics card money can buy (no, they're not quite the same as consumer/gaming cards). Still, the most "decked out" PC workstation today will still cost a fraction of what a Unix workstation used to cost in the early 1990s. So again, we see yet another example of improving technologies driving down costs in a market. Nope, what we see is yet another example of consumer demand driving down manufacturing costs by encouraging high volume, automated, manufacturing. Bull****. The technology in a PC today is quite different than that of a PC made in 1988. Nothing in a PC from 1988 would even "plug into" a PC bought today, except maybe the keyboard and mouse. And the PC today is literally orders of magnitude faster. Jeff So what? Nothing from a 1988 Ford F150 would even "plug into" a Ford F150 bought today. BTW, a current Ford F150 costs about the same (in adjusted dollars) as a 1988 Ford F150 and does not perform significantly differently. -- Jim Pennino |
#247
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
In sci.physics Greg Goss wrote:
wrote: How much better, faster, and cheaper has the pencil become since it's invention in the 16th century? Pencils that don't need to be sharpened are only about a century old. (Electronics company Sharp started that way.) They are a different thing but they haven't changed much since invention either. When I was a kid, my mother had one that cost $18 and took a minute or so to withdraw a new lead into its body. Other than lacking the magnet (hers could be stuck onto stuff for convenient access), better pencils are now about the price of six wooden pencils. I haven't sharpened a pencil other than on an "emergency" basis for 45 years. Pencils were a nickel when I was a kid and a dime now. Since I was a kid, the value of that dime has decreased tenfold. So pencils are now five times cheaper than in the sixties. I assume technology did it. (Perhaps containerized TRANSPORT technology to bring us the product of chinese semi-slaves.) Mass production in huge quantities by automated traditional manufacturing techniques and cheap shipping from China. -- Jim Pennino |
#248
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
Jeff Findley wrote:
Bull****. The technology in a PC today is quite different than that of a PC made in 1988. Nothing in a PC from 1988 would even "plug into" a PC bought today, except maybe the keyboard and mouse. And the PC today is literally orders of magnitude faster. The original mice I first saw plugged into a special jack on a card that plugged into the PC. I had mine on a combo card with video. The technology to allow a mouse to run on the low power in a serial connection came later. And serial connectors vanished around Y2K. I don't know how the data signals in the PS2 mouse connectors compared to the 9 pin serial connectors. Keyboards plugged into a large DIN connection. This was gradually replaced by the smaller PS2 connection, then again with USB connections. I don't know if any desktop computers still provide PS2 connectors. I don't think so. I'm still using my 1994 laser printer. It plugs into a centronics-parallel to USB adapter. I guess similar adapters are available for serial ports and PS2 connectors. Hmmm, come to think of it, the Centronics port was designed for the 1988 TRS-80 computer. A printer from that era would probably plug through my adapter into any modern Windows computer. And at least the MX-80 and its clones are probably still driver-supported. -- We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current. |
#249
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
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#250
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Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.
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