
Open Source Micro-Factory - ph0rque
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2011/03/open-source-micro-factory
======
nickpinkston
There's an obsession to own your own factory - which certainly is sexy, but
this plan is pretty naive to anyone in manufacturing. If you want to prototype
something - there are hackerspaces* and even TechShop - the later investing
$8M and they definitely couldn't make all the systems for a car.

You can't ignore poor process fit - I.e. have fun using a MIG machine to weld
your car together from sheet metal cheaper than GM can stamp it out. And you
can't ignore raw materials - have fun casting your engine block from metal
cans without any alloying tools / testing.

In reality, local production of many things (cars) won't work with today's
tools, and a real mix of general purpose local shops and standardized /
accessible large ones is the real "Industry 2.0" path.

* <http://hackerspaces.org>

Disclosure: I run CloudFab, a cloud-based manufacturing company.

~~~
tomjen3
>In reality, local production of many things (cars) won't work with today's
tools, and a real mix of general purpose local shops and standardized /
accessible large ones is the real "Industry 2.0" path.

Assuming I won/t the same car GM is stamping out, they can beat me.

But what I want is a flying car and an 10.1 inch Android tablet, both of which
are things nobody currently produces.

And tools only improve, so at some point we can defeat the empty leftovers of
the industrialized age.

~~~
bigiain
+1.

I don't want to be able to make my own '83 Pinto, or to have the success or
failure of my general purpose manufacturing tools to be judged on whether it's
capable of producing an identical copy of an Aston Martin DB9.

I wonder how far away from being able to produce all the custom components
needed to build a vehicle that'd run me round my neighbourhood in reasonable
safety running off biodeisel with reasonable efficiency?

~~~
tomjen3
You don't need special tooling for that, just a diesel car.

But you should be aware that biodiesel is a scam, since it takes more gasoline
to create it than it saves your car.

------
ChuckMcM
I've been playing around in robotics for 25 years, and one of the things that
is just as true today as it was in 1985 is that for some mechanical parts,
motors, gears, and other linkages, there isn't any 'there' there. And so the
ability to manufacture small lots of things is appealing on a variety of
scales. That being said, I suspect this particular effort, like those before
it, won't come to fruition. The reason is that manufacturing, while easy to
comprehend, is insanely complex at the nuts and bolts level.

That being said I would love to see this be successful, I've got a simple idea
for a widget and if I could get some time in a factory to make a few thousand
of the structural bits to keep the costs down, I think I'd have a nice little
niche product. While I'm sure I could get it done in China, I'm not interested
in spending the time to learn the way to correctly bribe the necessary people
to get the product I want.

Another risk of this capability is weapons production. Making guns is actually
pretty easy (the California prison population displays great creativity in
this area). So if you create a capability to make small quantities of 'hard
metal' products I would expect that you would be visited often by folks who
would want to insure you're not tempted to become profitable the 'easy' way.

I hope it works though, it would be great to have a field of small factories
bloom.

~~~
nitrogen
Those who really want to make guns are probably already doing so with existing
manufacturing technology.

------
sbierwagen
Microfactories, eh?

See also:

    
    
      Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (2004)

<http://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM.htm>

    
    
      Advanced Automation For Space Missions (1980)

<http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/>

As for the idea, ehhhh. Obviously, companies have powerful incentives to
reduce the price of manufacturing facilities, and yet they still cost millions
of dollars.

Poor nations are not poor because the tools aren't cheap enough, but because
of official corruption, or uncontrolled nationalization, or because the state
can't maintain a monopoly on violence.

If they actually pull it off, it would be great, and might have some actual
commercial applications, (like how the OLPC project resulted in the creation
of the netbook concept, despite the OLPC itself being quite useless) but the
stated use case just doesn't exist.

~~~
kragen
The kids in Paraguay don't seem to think the OLPC is useless; although
obviously the OLPC project has failed to achieve anything like its original
goals, it's still producing things people want.

------
api
Side note but: I've always thought that this kind of technology rather than
rockets/spacecraft is the limiting factor preventing us from being able to
realistically colonize another planet.

When you got to Mars, the Moon, etc., you'd have to be able to unpack and set
up a reliable self-sustaining industrial infrastructure.

~~~
nickpinkston
Yea, I think you're right. You need a real version of a GECK* really. A lot of
this is a material science problem I think - making the Martian soil into some
type of metal / ceramic building material using just solar / nuclear energy.

GECK: <http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_Creation_Kit>

------
billswift
Their claim, " _described best by Jane Jacobs, who claims that the highest
level of evolution (like Maslow’s Pyramid) for cities - is for those cities to
return to local production (import substitution)._ " is false. Jane Jacobs
described import replacing as a stage from importing to exporting. It keeps
capital in the city by not using as much of it for imports, while developing
manufacturing skills suitable for producing exports. Also, as she points out,
it just changes the makeup of imports, you import the raw materials instead of
the finished items.

Microfactories are a neat idea for several reasons, there is no need to
misrepresent their benefits. I have been playing around with the idea since
the late 1980s, the technology still has a good ways to go before it is
practical though.

------
kragen
I think Marcin and his crew are doing fantastic work, and their simple, low-
cost designs could make a real difference, especially in the case of places
that are poorly served by current mass manufacturing.

One of my first kragen-tol posts [http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/1998-Novembe...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/1998-November/000299.html) predicted mass adoption of this kind of thing
within ten years. So far it's taking longer than I expected, although it's
happened in a few niches:
[http://www.cleggind.com/specialstructures/mobilepartsmachine...](http://www.cleggind.com/specialstructures/mobilepartsmachineshop.htm)

One thing that some may not appreciate is that a local micro-factory doesn't
have to run cheaper than, say, GM's body panel stamping machines in order to
be economically beneficial.

To be concrete, consider the case where you need a certain screw. The screw
that holds the left wheel of your push lawnmower on, which fell out in the
grass somewhere. It needs to be a countersunk head to fit, and it has a much
narrower thread pitch than most screws that size. None of the hardware stores
in your area carry any screws in the right diameter and thread pitch, let
alone a countersunk head. What do you do?

Well, at the time, I lived in Dayton, Ohio, one of the machining centers of
the world. So I went across town to a company that manufactured screws and
spent about US$5 to buy a pound of the right kind of screw (I think it was
about half an inch diameter and half an inch long, with a humongous
countersunk head). Here in Buenos Aires, I imagine I'd just be screwed.

Now, I don't know what kind of process you use to manufacture a big machine
screw like that. Do you cold-roll the threads, or do you cut them with a die
from a cold-forged blank cut from bar stock, or what? I'm sure that, whatever
it is, it _isn't_ cutting it out on a lathe, or they'd be sold by the screw,
not by the pound.

But you _can_ cut one on a lathe, except for the slot in the head, of course.
If my local hardware store had had a fully automatic CNC lathe and the
appropriate software, they could have punched in the numbers and cut me the
correct screw in about five minutes. Maybe it would cost me US$10, but it
would have saved me hours of shopping and driving.

(I probably could also have mail-ordered it from McMaster-Carr, although that
still leaves me without a lawnmower for a few days.)

Custom automated manufacturing isn't competing economically just with mass
production, even for clearly mass-producible goods like machine screws. It's
competing with mass production, plus the costs of its supply-chain management
and its wholesale and retail channels, plus the delays implicit in the same.

~~~
noonespecial
That's why I bough one of these:

[http://www.harborfreight.com/7-inch-x-10-inch-precision-
mini...](http://www.harborfreight.com/7-inch-x-10-inch-precision-mini-
lathe-93212.html)

Now lets be clear, this is a horrible little heap of Chinese junk. Its about
as rigid as wet toast, the gears are _plastic_ and the motor is about as
strong as a cordless drill. But it was $500 and I can pick it up and stash it
under my workbench when I'm not using it. In short _its not as bad as it was
cheap_.

The upside is that I get super powers.

I've made everything from car parts to pluming fixtures. I no longer even
bother going in to the auto parts store or hardware store to be laughed at by
the $7/hour flunky as they incredulously ask why I'd even want a part like the
one I'm looking for. I just grab some round-stock and whip one up.

~~~
kragen
That sounds really interesting! Do you have photos of some of the things
you've done with it? I'd love to have more details.

~~~
noonespecial
I found out after I bought it that this design as been rolling out of china
for nearly 20 years under hundreds of different names. There's a giant
community built up around modifying this thing (and its cousin the mini-mill)
in order to get decent results.

Start drinking from the firehose here:

<http://www.mini-lathe.com/>

------
johnohara
While I think I understand the localization goals of this project, I find it
interesting that the project makes use of contributors from all over the
world.

Like it or not, we are a diverse global community and we all benefit from each
others skills and abilities.

Food, energy, replacement parts, etc., are all good localization goals.
Locomotives, aircraft, sea vessels, automobiles, farm and construction
equipment, and such, are a different matter.

------
samatman
This is the same project earlier known as RepLab:

<http://www.replab.org/>

"Open Source Micro-Factory" is perhaps more descriptive, which is good for the
goal of a Kickstarter campaign.

disclosure: I am one of the moderators of the RepLab list.

~~~
kragen
One of the problems with this project is that it has too many names. Open
Source Ecology, Openfarmtech, the Global Village Construction Set, RepLab,
Open Source Micro-Factory...

------
ph0rque
I wonder if YC would consider a startup application, and if anybody here would
be interested in starting up something, based on this tech.

------
mangirdas
Very good ideas, but too early.

