To Michael Rees: I didn't intentionally drop our discussion last week, just
got too busy to answer your last message. I thought your arguments were
interesting.
Albert Young wrote:
>By the way, I do not like the word "fabbers". You are attempting to
include
>several skills into one word and this will not work. What are you called
if you
>work if a fab shop doing fabrication of pipe for an erection project? What
are
>you called if you fabricate homes in a shop?
In my usage, a fabber is not a person. "Fabber" is short for "automated
fabricator," so it refers to an SLA, an LOM, an Aaroflex system, or another
"rapid prototyping machine." We also have subtractive fabbers, i.e. CNC
machines.
In the 1940s, when Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were developing the
ENIAC and later the UnivAC, they could not call their machine simply a
"computer" because a computer was a person who operated a special piece of
office equipment, called a tabulator, which was essentially a big,
mechanical adding machine. (Ironically, the biggest vendor of tabulators was
a small but aggressive company called IBM.) So Eckert and Mauchly had to
refer to their machine as an "electronic computer" or "automatic computer"
to distinguish it from the human computers!
We have a similar situation in today's world, where we have people
called fabricators who work in shops with sheet metal or Plexiglas or
various other materials to make models and other custom products. So I have
been careful in the past to clarify that I am talking about *automated*
fabricators. I thought I was eliminating this problem when I contracted the
word to "fabbers," because I had never heard anyone call themselves a fabber
before. But now when I give speeches on this great computer peripheral
called the fabber, invariably someone will come up afterwards and introduce
himself as "a fabber." Sigh.
Here is how it's defined in the footer of every page at Ennex.com: "A
fabber (short for “automated fabricator”) is an ultra-modern device that
makes things automatically from computer data and raw materials." On the
home page, we wax a little more eloquently and say "A fabber is a “factory
in a box” that makes things automatically. It uses digital data from a
computer to “fab” models and products. It’s like a computer printer, but
instead of printing a picture on a flat sheet of paper, it fabs real things
in real, solid material."
That's a fitting description of your Aaroflex machines, Albert. For some
strange reason, everyone seems to still want to call these machines
prototypers, even though they are used all over the world for making
tooling, surgical models, low-volume production parts, and all manner of
other things that are not prototypes. I am a man who believes in using clear
language, and when something appears on the landscape that has never existed
before, clear language sometimes calls for coining a new term. In 1980,
there was no such thing as a fabber (except in experimental stages). On the
verge of 2000, there are over 4,500 of them. In 2010, they will number over
ten million, and no one will call them "prototypers" any more (even though
they will still often be used for that).
Best regards,
Marshall Burns
Marshall@Ennex.com
Ennex Corporation, Los Angeles, USA, (310) 824-8700
www.Ennex.com
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