At 8:58 AM -0400 4/27/99, Lee Eisinger wrote:
>To the list:
>
>I have been observing these comments for quite some time. Economics dictates
>that the equipment manufacturers build equipment to suit the companies who
>will
>purchase it. The automotive and aviation industries need larger capabilities
>than currently available.Accuracy needs to be improved on larger parts. The RP
>industry will really take off when large single unit parts can be made, and
>durable, accurate Rapid Tools can be made from them. Granted there are many
>uses for small parts but these large industries have the money to advance the
>RP & RT industries at a much faster rate.
>
>The solution for small companies is to purchase older equipment and update it
>if possible.
>
This reminds me of the state of the personal computer @ 16 years ago. Any
of you "dinosaurs" will know what I'm refering to.
I remember running AutoCad r2 on DOS 8088 based IBM PC that had a blazing
16mhz chip with 32K memory and a whopping 20 meg hard drive. This rig, with
it's green monochrome monitor set my employer back over $3500 (that was in
1983 dollars!)
As clunky as this sounds now, it was a quantum leap over hand cutting
rublith traces for the photo etched lead frames we produced. And the
ability to make changes on screen! We thought the genie had gotten out of
the bottle!
I'm just hpping that the RP field has a similar future in store. And, the
sooner the better! If the price/perfomance ratio gets down the point were
small companies can get in, things will be looking up.
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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