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Factories are just rooms

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Re: Factories are just rooms

#61

Post by robotresearcher »

legitster wrote: post #60

I would argue a fast food kitchen (or any kitchen) is a factory. An incredibly efficient one at that. Things are made and assembled to order from intermediate components. We take it for granted the amount of labor that goes into our food. There's no reason we could not make other consumer goods in the US at such scale - we just have weird, self-imposed constructs that say assembly line workers get more prestige and p…

There's an up-market brand for everything:

https://www.reef.com/collections/mens-best-selling-footwear#...

Re: Factories are just rooms

#62

Post by acc_297 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…

I'll start my first job in an engineering role in a few days and I could reach behind to my bookshelf and flip through "The Way Things Work" right now if I wanted to. Fantastic book that really inspired me when I was younger.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#63

Post by klysm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…

I agree with your premise, but I think it’s also important to reconcile this with the idea that nothing is simple. Everything that’s made is usually much more complex than it appears in the surface

Re: Factories are just rooms

#66

Post by flemhans »

legitster wrote: post #60

I would argue a fast food kitchen (or any kitchen) is a factory. An incredibly efficient one at that. Things are made and assembled to order from intermediate components. We take it for granted the amount of labor that goes into our food. There's no reason we could not make other consumer goods in the US at such scale - we just have weird, self-imposed constructs that say assembly line workers get more prestige and p…

It's all about what transports well and what doesn't.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#67

Post by gumby »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…

> When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles.

Most chem labs re still like this — ours certainly is. Certain instruments you might buy (gas chromatograph, micrometer) but it’s hardly unusual to find them adapted as well. There’s lots of blue tape in the fume hood too.

And our prototypes are all hand made because it’s simpler. Once we’ve worked out the physics of the device (with lots of tweaks along the way) we can then start to think about DFM. You’ve seen a picture of one of those prototypes: the boards were sent out but mostly we did the welding, bending, assembly, firmware etc all ourselves.

And as a startup a small team can move faster and more flexibly than a bigger organization when making these kinds of things.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#70

Post by Animats »

Animats wrote: post #26

See "Maker Movement", 2005-1018. Here's a practice factory that GM operates to train new employees to work on an assembly line.[1] There are plywood mockups of cars rolling on conveyors, and the new employees bolt things on. A useful lesson for kids to get is how you make a hundred of something. The difference between making one and making many is not something most people get. Make something on a 3D printer. Then, f…

2018, sorry. When TechShop went bust.
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