Mind you Barry that robots in 2005 had macros and you could run all the programs with the background macros, so that in case you had to move machines the values are modified global and not local, keeping all the programs still usable ;)
Our company has been wrapped around Lam research’s finger. About 90% of our workload, and it almost put us out of business , we’re trying really hard to diversify for that reason. Putting all your eggs in one basket at first will make an insane amount of money but it’s not reliable long term
A major player in the marine propulsion field I was working for in 2018 decided to make some large investments on our shop floor. Our hairbrained CEO (1-yr before he retired) decided he wanted to go to "lights out" manufacturing on our biggest 5-axis mill, a DMG 160U Hy-Dyne where we cut our biggest customers propellers. We purchased a fully automated FASTEMS tombstone pallet changer system on a trolly with 12 locations/stations. All of the older employees and engineers urged our CEO to instead invest in replacing a few of our older machines, including 2-1970's era Nakumura Tome Slant-4's that had constant work and had paid for themselves more times than can be counted, we were still running these lathes off tape drive! I believed in the process and would back up the CEO while BS'ing with the guys on the floor. We purchased our 1st and only integrated pallet changer and I spent 18+ months trying to get that thing running to the automated level our CEO wanted. Once he retired our new CEO had it immediately pulled from the shop floor and it's now under a tarp in the parking lot. Good times 😑
Omg!! That is terrible! What machine and pallet system? Not surprised the Naks are still running, those are incredible machines, but way past their prime!
Automation technology in the shop is going to do what the introduction of the cnc did 30 years ago to the industry. It gives you the ability to do more with less manpower. Shops that haven't adopted cnc technology by now are either struggling to stay afloat or are out of business. It will be the same story for machine shops in the next 5-10 years if automation is not adopted and embraced. Jump in and learn it!!
“We need to bring production back to this country “ is kind of like saying “we need to go back to being an agricultural economy “ I think the cat is out of the bag, we’re an infosec economy now, we need to figure out hot to package and sell the labor of offshore more efficiently is what I think we need to do
Interesting perspective. There's a whole lot of technology left to uncover in manufacturing that can keep manufacturing relevant in the US for a few decades. Additive manufacturing is still developing, as well, and composites are entering a whole new era that can't be exported for 30 more years.
