building gizmos and a manufacturable hybrid sports car kit
New Hampshire
Joined August 2019
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ok rant
FDM printing is just so easy compared to most other ways of making parts. That's the huge strength of the technology, and it's why it's so popular. the machines are just so cheap and easy to use. i think a lot of people (including myself) would not be involved in manufacturing at all without 3D printing. It allowed me to make parts when I could not before.
The big caveat is that there are practical limits surrounding the technology just by the nature of how it works, and FDM enthusiasts focus (almost completely unsuccessfully) on curing those ailments when they can only really be treated.
If you want to make 3,000 jacket hooks (like the one in the image), FDM 3D printing is probably one of the worst ways to do it. But there's about 1 million different cope methods to try and solve that problem. Some of them are interesting and some of them are frankly annoying.
One that nutshells almost my entire critique of the tech is probably the misuse of "annealing." Annealing is a process used to make metal more formable. FDM enthusiasts use the word to describe putting a benchy into an air fryer.
Their use of the word belies the fact that these people want to be associated with a more serious process. What they're really describing is heat treating, but annealing sounds more serious. It ultimately all just comes off as naive. It also calls back to the idea that they are uncurious about ways to make parts beyond FDM. Some are even dismissive of other types of 3D printing like SLS, MJF, SLA, etc.
I'll just close that thought by saying that, on top of all this, the processes used to make FDM parts marginally more useful or attractive typically add a lot of time to a core tech where that's already a big weakness. Just a shitty situation
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In my head, FDM is a stepping stone towards getting people more broadly interested in manufacturing. It's clear that most enthusiasts do not see it that way, though. That's the disappointing part. It seems like the vast majority of people with FDM machines do not understand/accept the weaknesses--or even the strengths--of the technology. The people who do are building very interesting things.
All of this being said, I started this rant by saying that without FDM, I may never have gotten interested in manufacturing at all. Even if only 1 in 1000 people who get an FDM machine end up, say, learning CAD, isn't that worth it? I would argue it absolutely is, especially now.
Ultimately, it's about reaching a healthy ratio between the number of people who use a 3D printer as a machine to make useful garbage, and those who use it to make just garbage.
i’m trying my best to summarize my dislike of 3d printing because it comes in waves. it boils down to: it’s not a serious process because of simple physics
on one hand, it is a deeply useful technology for non-structural prototyping. but so are hammers and neither are revolutionary enough to “bring manufacturing back to the united states”
it’s anisotropic. e.g. you can’t analyze it to determine requisite part strength against things like yield or ultimate stress
it’s slow - andrew mccallip showed you can CNC parts faster than 3d printing them recently (link below)
it’s susceptible to cold flow (creep) in a way that makes injection molding look like 4340
the unit economics never make sense past onesie-twosies, even if the physical properties weren’t a blocker
it isn’t water tight (i mean, come on)
but my biggest complaint is that it inspires lazy thinking. we live in the most exciting time ever for manufacturing. i can click a buy button on a site like sendcutsend and get production grade aluminum or steel parts in days
note that i didn’t complain about strength - that’s the least of its problems
anyways, to summarize, get better at mechanical design and design with real materials so we can truly reindustrialize. thanks for coming to my ted talk
Peter Holderith retweeted
The world needs honest and courageous entrepreneurs and communicators who care for the common good. We sometimes hear the saying: “Business is business!” In reality, it is not so. No one is absorbed by an organization to the point of becoming a mere cog or a simple function. Nor can there be true humanism without a critical sense, without the courage to ask questions: "Where are we going? For whom and for what are we working? How are we making the world a better place?"
when a kid in a self-driving robotaxi blob stares out the window on the interstate and sees a car that looks like a spaceship scream by them and shoot a flame
*and realize someone is driving it*
yeah, i think it's gonna get easier
It's fundamentally an argument about the future between people who are so afraid to lose that they often don't even try, and people who want something so badly they will do anything to make it real
who could possibly come out on top?
The biggest doomer marker i see on people is judging the world of tomorrow by the technology of today (as they understand it), despite the fact that betting against the advancement of technology is historically the worst bet anyone could make
Batteries is a great example
self-driving cars cant come fast enough, it's gonna get 100x easier to find car enthusiasts and sell enthusiast cars
I’m transitioning from tinkerer to founder @vightaero. More soon
when you develop the necessary processes to break the cycle of hard tooling you can end the enshittification of every fucking product out there
