
A Rust Belt Native and Technologist Re-Thinking American Manufacturing - evilsimon
https://medium.com/initialized-capital/how-a-rust-belt-native-and-silicon-valley-technologist-is-re-thinking-american-manufacturing-b4e0388f8eca#
======
Animats
EMachineShop [1] has been doing this for over ten years.[1] The guy behind
eMachineShop, Jim Lewis, thought he was going to change manufacturing, but
ended up just being a very convenient job shop. eMachineShop, which is in New
Jersey, had a writeup in Wired in 2005.[2] The 2005 hype reads like the 2016
hype for Plethora: "Designing stuff used to be just for experts. We're
bringing it to the masses."

Like Plethora, eMachineShop has a CAD system which can tell you what's
manufacturable and how much it will cost. The main difference is that Plethora
uses a plug-in to Inventor or Solidworks, so they're aimed at pros who have
those expensive packages. eMachineShop has a free downloadable CAD program,
which understands what their processes can do and will calculate pricing. It's
an impressive program, one which will prevent you from designing unbuildable
parts and warn you if you're forcing an unnecessarily expensive operation.

Plethora has the San Francisco location, the cool web site with no pricing
info, the guy with the neckbeard, the funding to lose money on the first
order, and the emphasis on onboarding potential customers for marketing
purposes. Maybe that will help them scale.

[1] [http://www.emachineshop.com](http://www.emachineshop.com)

[2]
[https://www.wired.com/2005/09/fablab/](https://www.wired.com/2005/09/fablab/)

~~~
JeremyHerrman
(disclaimer - Plethora cofounder/CTO here)

Our goal at Plethora is to make hardware as easy as software. One question we
ask ourselves is why can a small team of software devs push out an app in a
few days / weeks when a hardware product takes a sizable kickstarter/VC round
and months / years? It comes down to:

\- great tools

\- fast iteration

\- easy deployment

\- straightforward scalability

To achieve this kind of agility with hardware, this means removing the
friction at every step of the product lifecycle.

One half is in the design & ordering of custom parts. CAD packages today are
powerful and it’s very easy to design beautiful parts that are completely
unmanufacturable. The Plethora add-in analyzes parts in a few seconds,
provides helpful hints on manufacturability, instant pricing and ordering. We
went with a plugin for existing CAD programs because getting people to switch
CAD programs is like asking a programmer to switch code editors - extremely
difficult unless the value of the new tool is orders of magnitude greater than
that of the incumbent.

The other half of the friction in manufacturing is when the part enters
production. Plethora isn’t just a pretty face on a traditional machine shop -
we’ve been working for years to automate the extremely manual process of
converting a 3D model into instructions for a machine to produce. This
automation enables quick turnaround and no minimum order quantities - which
allows teams to have more iterations and faster deployment of their products.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Sorry, Jeremy. Truly, truly sorry. But... Are you fucking kidding me?

Comparing "manufacturing" software products to manufacturing hardware products
is as nonsensical as it can get. One has nothing whatsoever to do with the
other.

Source: Me.

Background: I've been developing software and hardware for over thirty years.
I go back to the days of the 8080 processor. Embedded, system, real time,
Windows, Linux, OSX and iOS software development over the years. Commercial,
industrial, consumer and aerospace environments.

At the same time I have been designing and manufacturing the physical side of
said products for an equally long period of time. CNC, sheet metal, through
hole and SMT electronics, TIG and MIG weldments, plastic and metal 3D
printing, composites, injection molded plastics. All in markets from consumer
to aerospace.

Heck I have a Haas VF2-SS VMC, Bridgeport manual mill, Hardinge lathe, various
3D printers, routers, table saw, half a dozen other saws and metal working
equipment and this is only in my house for my hobby and R&D stuff.

I've been running AutoCAD since inception, Solidworks since inception,
CAMWorks, SolidCAM and MasterCAM for some time as well as Siemens NX
(exclusively for aerospace stuff).

So, yeah, I'll pat my own back and say I know manufacturing. Please stop this
Silicon Valley "we are going to disrupt manufacturing by making CNC machining
easier" nonsense.

Again, I apologize for being a bit harsh but I have to say you don't have a
clue.

OK, here it goes. I can beat anything you can possible put together. How? I
can send a model to China and have part back in three days flat. 5 axis.
Complex. Detailed. Perfectly finished. And reasonably priced. I don't even
have to know how they make it. If you work with reputable contract
manufacturers out there you get great product at fair prices. It's isn't that
hard. I truly don't give a shit what software they use or what machines they
might own. There are great CM's which which you can do $200 to million dollar
orders and they treat you just the same.

Between that and Proto Labs, Protocase, Emachineshop and others the problem of
CNC machining parts and making plastic or sheet metal rapid prototypes is
pretty much solved.

Now, if you want to compete with Proto Labs or Emachineshop and come up with a
slicker path to CNC machined parts. By all means, go for it. But please don't
say you are going to disrupt manufacturing. CNC machining is a small, very
small part of most manufactured products.

Oh, yeah, did some aluminum die casting, custom extrusions and casting as
well.

Sorry, I'm pretty tired of the active rejection of experience, existing
industry knowledge and existing optimized processes by these Silicon Valley
types who are clueless and think everything can be hammered into a software
development model. Not everyone is out there trying to get people to click on
yet another call to action button.

Here, I'll give you a project: Go design and manufacture a motorcycle from
scratch. I mean a real product, not a one-off garage-built prototype. A real
product that can be manufactured at a reasonable scale with decent DFM,
documentation, certifications, component and system level test engineering,
qualification, sourcing, etc.

Do this and I'll bet your view of someone asking "why can a small team of
software devs push out an app in a few days / weeks when a hardware product
takes a sizable kickstarter/VC round and months / years" will land you right-
smack where I started this comment:

Are you fucking kidding me?

~~~
jayjay71
I was wondering when someone was going to mention Proto Labs.

I don't have nearly as much experience as you, but I think you make a great
point. I tried Plethora about a year ago and was disappointed it couldn't make
a single part I needed, and that it had such limited materials.

Although I wish Plethora the best, they do seem to have fallen into the
mindset of thinking they're different when they appear to be reinventing the
wheel (and making it worse). My guess is Animats has it right and they're
hoping to get acquired by Autodesk. I'm surprised how many startups today are
designed solely to be acquired (I doubt Plethora started with this mindset),
and if they fail at that then they have zero chance of going public as they
have no chance of sustaining profits.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and they know something I don't. I always love to
be proven wrong by someone succeeding.

~~~
rebootthesystem
There's nothing wrong with trying to make things better. There are real
problems in manufacturing. Manufacturing is hard and can range from relatively
simple to mind-numbing complex.

The solutions to these problems are not going to come from sipping latte's in
San Francisco while asking why manufacturing can't be more like software
development.

That's misguided Silicon Valley hubris. It's an echo chamber that funds and
produces tons of bullshit startups and sometimes gets lucky. When it comes to
hardware they almost always seem to be getting it wrong.

This is probably because they insist on rejecting experience and filling their
ranks with fresh grads who know nothing about nothing and can, within their
version of reality, conclude that software will solve all problems.

Here's a hint: Want to make products that truly serve humanity (whether it's
manufacturing or something else) rather than better and more clever ways to
get people to click on buttons, get addicted to stupid games or social
platforms?

Simple. Hire or fund people older than, say, 40 years of age who come armed
with experience and common sense. Yes, give them a team of young hot-shots
with the crazy ideas to try and find some of out-of-the-box stuff. Just don't
setup startup after startup that looks more like a remake of Lord of the Flies
rather than a real business.

You have companies like Google and Facebook who brilliantly showcase how
horrible these young, socially untrained, ethically inept and often
maladjusted people can be. They think it's OK to do such things as to use an
algorithm to completely shutdown someone's business (Google AdSense and FB
Ads) and, at the same time, provide exactly zero customer service or the
ability to have a business-like conversation to try to rectify whatever might
have triggered the issue. This is deranged lunatic territory and it seems to
permeate some of the culture coming out of these startups. They know
everything and they don't want to hear from anyone who might actually know
something. What a waste of human talent.

~~~
fornever
While I'm not sure they are tackling it the right way (haven't really looked
in to it), that manufacturers in the west can't competitively run prototyping
or other small production runs is a real problem. Unpredictable quotes, lead
times, high MOQs, tooling costs in the west or the language barrier and
shipping cost/time in asia doesn't provide any value in itself.

~~~
rebootthesystem
The problems in the West are far more complex than simply making better CAM
software.

Our supply chain is long and expensive. Start there. And by this I mean
everything, from raw materials, components and sub-assemblies to tooling,
equipment and consumables. The length and complexity of our supply pipe can
easily double or triple a manufacturer's costs and impose very high inventory
costs.

Our regulations are crippling. For example, try to get a steel weldment
porcelain enamel coated. In China, no problem. In the US. Nearly impossible
and definitely not even in the realm of being competitive.

Our unions have done of good job of helping kill-off industries. Union leaders
(not union members, leaders) succeeded at pressing companies so hard without
regards for long term viability that they eventually forced some of them out
of business or out of the country.

Taxes are ridiculous. One way to look at it is how much of the year is devoted
to, effectively, working for the government. In other words, in order to earn
the tax money paid to the government you have to work.

Well, at a 39% corporate tax rate the entire company is working for the
federal government for approximately the first 4.7 months of the year. After
that they get to keep their profits.

In Ireland, with a rate of 12.5%, the people in a company work for the
government for 1.5 months and the rest of the year they get to keep their
profits.

So, taxes in the US means you are working 5 months to pay them vs. less than 2
in Ireland. That is horrific.

Liability and tort reform is a huge deal. As a manufacturer you are incredibly
exposed to being sued out of existence (or out of being able to compete due to
financially crippling lawsuits).

Labor force education and availability is becoming a greater issue every year.
Skills development has stagnated over the years. We don't have a modern tech
savvy workforce. Schools don't teach any of that stuff any more. As a software
guy the "hour of code" is great but as a hardware guy I think the "hour of
drilling a hole and cutting wood" is equally important.

So, again, there is so much more to making a product beyond rapid prototyping
that at some point you have to wonder if people understand that there are far
more pressing areas to be optimized, areas with far more significant impact on
the bigger picture.

------
micaksica
> For example, there’s one machine where you typically need to wait five to 10
> years in machining before touching that piece of equipment. But we let our
> entry-level people work with it after 1 1/2 months. There’s this guild
> mentality in the manufacturing industry, that this person needs to prove
> themselves. I do think in certain ways that you should let people document
> their skills and earn certifications. But we need a more lightweight system.
> You don’t need five years to become a machinist.

The guild/apprenticeship model in the 20-21st century has always felt to me
like a thin veil over a seniority-based structure that places strong barriers
of entry on newcomers to protect the jobs of the senior staff. Want to do that
job? Sorry, you can't, kid, until you "pay your dues". Want more money? That's
based on how old you are. It's pretty backward and broken for a capitalist
system that should pay market rates for providing value regardless of age or
guild-proven experience. These types of things irked me as a child.

How much innovation would we have in technology if you had to spend five years
on a starter Internet, or were forced to just use phones from the start? What
if you were only allowed to program in certain languages and weren't admitted
to download a specific compiler?

~~~
shuntress
But the cost of failure is much higher with physical machines in a production
environment.

It seems realistic to want to prevent beginners from touching expensive
machinery that they could break through incorrect use.

~~~
micaksica
It doesn't take _years_ to learn how to use expensive machinery. There's a
bunch of stuff you can touch at TechShop - and potentially break - with a few-
hour class and a review that you actually know how to use the thing.

~~~
akiselev
Techshop is a hacker space, not a commercial machine shop. A machinist with a
few hours training could bankrupt the average manufacturer within a matter of
days, if not hours.

Based on my experience, equipment at Techshop is, on average, an order of
magnitude or two cheaper and a decade or two older than what you'd see at a
commercial manufacturer.

------
msvan
Interesting quote:

> By the way, I actually think that computer programmers are not going to be a
> white collar job in the long run. Machinists were the programmers of 100
> years ago. It was a highly paid job, and can still be one even today. My
> grandfather had a great job. He was almost a petty bourgeois guy after being
> a prototype machinist. That’s not true for that job anymore. I actually
> think software programming will go the same way.

~~~
pjmlp
> That’s not true for that job anymore. I actually think software programming
> will go the same way.

It already did, it is called globalization and outsourcing.

Business love the wonders of Internet and remote working, paying a dime per
hour that they would pay back home, without any of those worker rights guys
nagging them.

Specially in any business domain that doesn't focus on selling software.

Consulting, architecture (domain, technical, business), integration and
customer management is were software development is going to.

Pure code writing has become like factory work on a distant country, connected
by an IP address.

~~~
fjrieiekd
And the quality of that code is usually crap, so you get what you paid for as
the more talented of these offshore workers will go to the US or another
country with high salaries. This quality may be "acceptable" in enterprise
contexts, but in small business or selling direct to the customer it's still
much better to hire local devs.

There is also a project management overhead cost to outsourcing that must not
be ignored and is prohibitive for smaller companies.

If we want to get anecdotal, across many different companies the only place
I've seen outsourcing work is in a huge enterprise and only with several
expensive and highly trained local devs cleaning up the crap. Otherwise it's
just not worth it. AI will take our jobs long before outsourcing does.

~~~
pjmlp
For those doing Fortune 500 consulting, outsourcing and offshore is
everywhere, there is no way to avoid it.

I used to be very critic of the quality, specially since I happen to do
reviews of delivered code, but then I also have seen the quality of some
internal developers at those customers.

All because selling software isn't their core business, so as long as whatever
is running on their servers, desktops, tablets, phones, helps to sell their
core products (not software), no one cares one single second about code
quality and how it is written.

Just like 99% of people don't care how the goods at their local stores are
produced.

------
steveklabnik
Nick is a very smart guy, and has been doing stuff in this area for a really
long time. Long ago, we co-founded CloudFab, which is mentioned in the
article. It was a bit too early for its time. Plethora looks very interesting!

~~~
JoelMcCracken
Its cool to see Nick is still at it!

------
Animats
I just tried it out in Autodesk Inventor 2016. It installed without difficulty
and connected itself up to Inventor as an add-on, appearing in a pane. It
wants a login before it will do anything. After login, it will price machined
parts.

The minimum price for a machined part (a 2" x 3" x 0.5" piece of 6061 aluminum
with no other machining) is about $95. The soonest available delivery date is
7 days away. The price goes down slightly if you select a date further in the
future.

The plug-in will detect and report un-machineable situations, such as square-
sided pockets and narrow slots into which a tool could not reach. Holes cost
about a dollar each, and a machined pocket costs about $10-$20. Adding a
pocket on the reverse side of the part, which requires a second setup, added
about as much cost as a front side pocket, which leads me to suspect that the
program doesn't figure out how many setups are needed.

Chamfering a top edge added another $100. So curved surfaces really cost. The
plug-in doesn't give any hints on cost reduction, unlike eMachineShop. You
don't get told the operation sequence; that's a black box to the user.

Overall, it seems like a useful basic machining back-end program. Has the feel
of eMachineShop circa 2003.

------
Animats
Jim Lewis of eMachineShop also tried to do the same thing for printed circuit
board design and assembly. The result was Pad2Pad, which would make blank
boards and put the parts on them. The assembly part didn't work out
commercially, and the board-marking service became one of many such services.
Making PC boards is a well-organized industry - you send in files and get
boards back without much difficulty. One-off boards are no problem.

Seeed Studio in Shentzen finally got the assembly thing working. They make
blank boards and will put parts on them if you pick the parts entirely from
their Common Parts Library. You can make most simple digital electronics
projects using that library - analog and power, not so much. Seeed Studio has
good prices but requires you to release the rights to your design, so others
can copy it. Sort of like Github for hardware.

------
rebootthesystem
>For example, there’s one machine where you typically need to wait five to 10
years in machining before touching that piece of equipment.

For good reason. If we are talking real production, not 3D printing a bust of
Beethoven for fun of buying a Shapeoko to cut a little bracket. If that's what
we are talking about, well, you are not going to take someone who hasn't
proven themselves trough years of training and learning on the job to run
something like my Haas VF2-SS, VF3-SS or VF4-SS.

One mistake could cost tens of thousands of dollars in damage to the machine
and untold losses due to disruption to production. This can include damage to
very expensive tools (we are not talking about $0.50 Home depot drill bits
here). And then there are such things as optimizing tool wear and throughput.

Despite what is said in this article real machinists don't sit there guessing
at what to do. They know because they studied, learned and made enough
mistakes.

Fields such as manufacturing highly accurate medical, optical or aerospace
parts require real skills.

Can all of this be automated to the point of eliminating both human CAM
toolpath programming and the machinist? I'd say in a very limited set of cases
and with restrictions that do not make for efficient manufacturing.

This is one of the problems with Proto Labs. They can machine quite a range of
parts but they are very, very expensive for what you get. Sure, for quick turn
"I just need a part" manufacturing (and, to be fair, more than that) they work
fine. For anything else, no way.

Here's an example from a couple of weeks ago. I needed a half dozen copies of
a part made out of mild steel. We needed to send it out because our machines
are busy. Proto Labs could make them for $300 a piece. I called a couple of
local shops. I had them made for $20 a piece and delivered to us overnight
(one of the guys from the shop drove them over). They used their waterjet
machine to cut the basic shape quickly and then threw it on a VMC to square-up
and finish all the other features. Twenty bucks.

Yes, we will eventually succeed at automating the CAD-to-Machined-Part process
to a significant degree and with good results. This will require AI, Machine
Learning and a lot of the knowledge accumulated out there encoded into these
systems. You need to be able to make real parts with real manufacturing
problems. Any part. Some parts require designing new parts to make them, whole
machines even (fixtures, jigs, clamping and alignment systems). It isn't a
simple problem.

And, even as these problems are solved the totality of manufacturing isn't CNC
maching aluminum. Not even close.

~~~
cranialdivot
I have had a large professionally equipped CNC shop in my home shop for a long
time as well with a similar array of equipment you mention. I use it
intensively for product development for my own company and others. I also have
an equally electronics fab lab and a range of other work centers. I have also
been programming since CP/M days, but I hate coding, so whatever. I do my own
injection molds, boards, as well.

I've taught a number of people to use 3-axis CNC equipment more or less safely
if not capably in several evenings, including Solidworks introductions. I
don't have patience for people telling me how hard it is to learn to use
machinery well.

I have less patience for the guild system. It takes something pretty straight
forward and whines about how hard things are to keep prices high.

The best tools for learning to make your own electronics, machined parts,
code, and actual products is the right attitude, some intelligence, and the
right tools that don't require months of intense tolerance to bad tool design
that require you to have months of knowledge to make basic models or parts. It
takes a while to learn to machine well, but not years for crying out loud.

Rather than expounding on all this experience you have and all the effort and
blood and sweat and tears it took you to gain those skills, it might be better
to acknowledge that a lot of the hurdles are bad systems. Myself and a lot of
other people have gained these skills with a lot less frustration than perhaps
many others. There are a lot of smart people out there. They don't need Proto
labs. They won't need this offering really, either. But some will, and a
broader swath of the product development public will have greater access to
more options with good free CAD, automated post processing, or better/easier
PC layout tools.

The app kiddies aren't going to take the manufacturing world by storm. But the
guilds are basically watching themselves get eaten alive, and that is a good
thing. Let product developers do this stuff themselves. The mythology of it
being so hard is a fantasy, and a lot of people are starting to realize it.
Any young ME who doesn't have strong EE chops and vic versa already has a
harder time making a career these days, and frankly, any engineer without
strong fab skills now is definitely less valuable.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I have no love for what you call "guilds" either. That said, there's a huge
difference between learning to run machines casually and through some
combination of schooling and supervised hands-on.

Example: TIG and MIG welding. I have both. I can make decent welds. They look
pretty. Learned on my own just futzing around here and there. Yet, I would
never, in a million years, trust my welding to, say, build even a light
aircraft. I, objectively speaking, don't know what I am doing when compared to
the aerospace certified welders I walk by every day.

> The mythology of it being so hard is a fantasy

I disagree. Perhaps scale and application is the difference here.

A gadget for a Kickstarter campaign? Sure, anyone can screw around at a maker
space and get one or a few done.

Something like a Dyson vacuum cleaner that needs to be designed and
manufactured at scale and be safe and durable in the field? No way. This
requires experienced engineering specializations from EE, ME design to
manufacturing engineers, materials engineers, test engineers, machinists, mold
makers, process engineers, etc. Way different reality.

Move up another level to Medical or Aerospace and things get even more
interesting.

And some industries are just awe-inspiring in terms of their manufacturing
process. One such product are LCD displays. A typical factory for the LCD
displays on your computer costs somewhere in the range of two billion dollars
to build. Two billion. It's a massive undertaking. Automation, clean rooms,
robotics and all kinds of specialized processes designed to optimize quality,
cost and yields. To compare that to the software "manufacturing" process is as
silly as one can get.

Will AI help streamline some of these processes over time? Sure. Of course.
You are still going to need a two billion dollar plant to make LCD's and
similarly scaled facilities and equipment to make cars, radios, batteries,
ovens, etc.

Look at making cars as another example. Even if the CAD-to-CNC process was
completely automated and perfectly executed it would still be less than a
rounding error in the context of the cost, processes and complexity of
manufacturing a car.

------
keithpeter
_" These automation integrators are going to adapt to do the on-boarding and
training. I think we’ll see more of this — kind of a “blue collar programmer”
— as more of the industry digitizes."_

UK: HPGL and a bit of autocad. The lads (and ladesses) with the utility
trousers and steel toecapped boots round here (motor vehicle supply chain) all
know that. What else can you show us?

~~~
Animats
Looking at this, I wonder if the real plan is to be acquired by Autodesk for
the software. Autodesk Inventor is good, but its most available back ends for
CAM are not that great. InventorCam is too manual, and SprutCam is smarter but
too buggy. (I've used both.) HyperMill is supposed to be really good, but it's
over $20K per seat, and unless you're doing 5-axis sculptured surfaces with a
tool changer, overkill. Autodesk could use an entry-level fully automatic CAM
package that did the whole job from model to machine tool for simple jobs and
helped the user avoid fabrication problems at the design stage.

(Here's an example of Hypermill at work.[1] This is what the high end can do.)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqDMwQOc2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqDMwQOc2w)

~~~
bigger_cheese
Is Pro/Engineer still around? I used Pro-E when I was at University (along
with Solidworks) at the time it was my preferred package.

~~~
sanarothe
I'm doing an ME degree right now, and they teach us both Solidworks and Pro-E
(now Creo Parametric.)

If I remember the results of googling 'Creo vs Solidworks' correctly, Creo is
better at handling really big assemblies and is used extensively in automotive
industry. Most of my peers prefer Solidworks.

------
catacombs
The Washington Post published an interesting take on manufacturing in America:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/manufacturi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/manufacturing-
in-america/)

