Re: On what the vendors MUST do!

From: Fusioneng@aol.com
Date: Sat Oct 30 1999 - 21:49:24 EEST


I have read the many interesting responses on this thread. From my
perspective I see the industry having to move in two different directions.
One direction probably with thermojet type 3D printing which will get less
and less expensive as time goes on. I can just imagine someone with a family
business sitting in the mall on the weekends making 3D protraits and busts.
It will still take an artists hands to finish the piece out and paint it to
look like more than a blob of wax. Without the colors and hues anything looks
pretty bland. That is something we all will be dealing with in a few years.
All of our children will be sending us 3D family portraits. After a short
time instead of relenquishing them to a photo album. Their will be a large
closet packed full with 3D portraits and busts. I think the need for artistic
people (of which I am not) will actually rise. The medium on which they work
will be much more efficient, so in turn they will be able to work much
faster. But a world without artisitic people would be very bland.
     The other fork in the road that RP must travel is in the skilled trades.
Their is a huge shortage of skilled tool and mold makers in the world. The
average age of a moldmaker in the USA is around 50. Currently there are
almost no training programs to replace these people. What most people don't
realize is without a manufacturing base this country is doomed. Mold and tool
makers make all manufactung today possible. Most mold makers today make more
than a dentist or a lawyer or even a judge. Just look in any phone book at
the listings for Lawyers and Dentists. Then look for mold shops. Yet all the
high school counselors and parents are sending their kids to college for
these professions in increasing numbers. Many go to school for 6 or 8 years
then can only find a job when their done at McDonalds. In my entire lifetime
I have only met one black toolmaker, and one female moldmaker why is that. I
feel there is something terribly wrong in our education system. The point is
we need Rapid Tooling just to fill the ranks to meet the need for tools and
molds. Currently we pay huge amounts of money for CNC and EDM equipment. A
Makino CNC machine costs between $300 and $500 thousand dollars. A Charmilles
EDM costs about a 1/4 million. You can't get by on just one or two of these
type machines. We have nearly a hundred and we are pretty small. Without them
we cannot do our business. Our moldmakers must work way too much overtime
just to keep up with demand. And there are no more mold makers available. The
shortage is nearly 50% What will we do when these guys retire. With RP/RT I
can effectively sidestep nearly half the demand on those machines and
eliminate nearly half of the labour time our precious mold-maker must spend
on the jobs.This would effectivly double our output with the same workforce
and equipment base. We have proven this beyond any reasonable doubt. What we
need very badly is more machines like SLA which can get better detail and
better accuracy. The cost really doesn't matter to us. I would spend a
million dollars tomorrow if someone had such a machine (it doesn't exist
yet). The 3D Keltool which we use is very good and does the job on may 25% of
our work but I wish had more weapons in my arsenal. The commercial tool
making market today is huge (hundreds of billions of dollars) and if the
right equipment were available every mold shop in the country would have
several machines quietly producing all the consumer items we all enjoy like
keyboards, cell phones, mouses, coffeemakers, automobiles,toys, etc,etc,etc.
The market for this is tens of thousands of machines not just 1 or 2 thouand
like it is now. This I think is the holy grail for the RP/RT industry.
Bob Morton
Fusion Engineering

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