Manufacturing Universalized
Posted : May 30, 2005 at 8:13 pm [IST]
In today’s world, the interest of younger generation in manufacturing as technology has been drying. But some missionary innovations at several universities in US- MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie- Mellon among them-are working to provide technologies and materials that even an ordinary man can use and manufacture the things urgently required by him. Prof. Hod Lipson says, “One can actually ‘download’ complex objects- bicycles, chemical sensors, radios- eventually robots, and may be even prosthetic limbs- much as one downloads music and video-files.”
An article ‘Home Made’ by Prof. Hod Lipson of Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory provides details of one such personal fabrication system too. It has appeared in May 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum.
Neil A Gershenfeld, a professor at MIT in Cambridge has dealt with the vision in his 2005 book- ‘Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop- From Personal computer to Personal Fabrication.’
A typical system includes a milling machine for making precision parts, a cutter for producing simple printed circuit boards, and software for programming cheap chips called micro-controllers.
Today, one of these “fab labs” costs about $20,000. But Gershenfeld predicts that fab lab prices will follow the path of PCs. With volume production, these advanced do-it-yourself systems could plunge to $10,000 and then perhaps to $1,000.
For computer savvy population, it appears so easy and interesting like a toolkit offered in a “do-it-yourself” literature. ” Imagine purchasing a piece of software that encodes detailed specifications of something and then seeing that object emerge from a box on your desk- no bigger than a microwave oven.”
I am very happy. My life long involvement in manufacturing is the reason behind the happiness.
Manufacturing is not dead rather it is thriving and getting universalized. The more interesting part is that anyone can use the facility. It is cheap and easy to operate.
- Indra
Category: Manufacturing |
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