Brexit consequences

[al_yrpal]

Yes, too many folks in the non productive public sector, retail, elf and safety, etc etc. Get more into highly productive export industries where you have to compete to survive. Spent half a lifetime in such enterprises. Both my kids work in foreign currency earning jobs. That I am very proud of, and more of that is what will solve the problem. Export or die was our chant in the 60's. Britain was broke back then, more on the edge than we are now.

Al

[kwackers]

We should engineer more, but it has to be highly efficient because in today's world labour costs are the killer when you are competing with other $5 a day economies. If impossible, design it, make it in $5 a day economies and market it like Dyson. Its R and D and Marketing where the margin is. Just watch the naysayers and cynics get confounded in the next few years.

Most manufacturing these days is automated and fast becoming even more so. Labour no longer is the defining cost for a lot of stuff, raw materials and the cost of shipping them around is what really costs.

You can of course save a few pence, possibly even a pound or two on more expensive items by having them made somewhere with cheap labour (as Dyson demonstrated when he moved his production out of Wales despite very obviously 'coining it'. You didn't see the price drop when his vacuum cleaners started rolling out of the far east did you? )

[al_yrpal]

I read this in The Telegraph's Android app and thought you'd like to see it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/201 ... dal-table/

Europe is winning the Olympics! (According to the EU propaganda unit)

Mass produced items are produced by automated processes but high value special purpose machines cannot be produced like that. You cannot make blanket statements about the sort of stuff we should be concentrating on - main added value ingredient, innovation, main characteristic, unique.

Al

[kwackers]

Mass produced items are produced by automated processes but high value special purpose machines cannot be produced like that. You cannot make blanket statements about the sort of stuff we should be concentrating on - main added value ingredient, innovation, main characteristic, unique.

Actually that's where a lot of the innovation in mass production is. Automated equipment that can produce one off's that are commercially competitive.

You should take a trip to one of the trade shows, they're a bit of an eye opener. There's some very cool stuff out there.
What's more it's 'enabling' folk further down the food chain.

[kwackers]

I read this in The Telegraph's Android app and thought you'd like to see it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/201 ... dal-table/

Europe is winning the Olympics! (According to the EU propaganda unit)

Perhaps we should knock off any medals won by immigrants, how many generations should we go back?

[matt_twam_asi]

I read this in The Telegraph's Android app and thought you'd like to see it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/201 ... dal-table/
Europe is winning the Olympics! (According to the EU propaganda unit)
Al

I dunno man, having taken roughly ten seconds to look at the source of the story it looks more like a couple of EU loving Germans than a sinister all encompassing EU propaganda unit. Whoda thunk?

But I'm sure the Torygraph have a very good reason for spinning it in the way you took it...

[SpannerGeek]

Like most things post deregulated Brexit I've been expecting a slide to the far right in the UK press and so far the Torygraph has not disappointed.

Children up chimneys and Workfare programmes coming to a headline near you. Though, now the kerfuffle about immigration has all but evaporated, they seem to clutching at any story to keep the pot boiling. Predictable and boring. You get the newspapers you pay for.

[al_yrpal]

Mass produced items are produced by automated processes but high value special purpose machines cannot be produced like that. You cannot make blanket statements about the sort of stuff we should be concentrating on - main added value ingredient, innovation, main characteristic, unique.

Actually that's where a lot of the innovation in mass production is. Automated equipment that can produce one off's that are commercially competitive.

You should take a trip to one of the trade shows, they're a bit of an eye opener. There's some very cool stuff out there.
What's more it's 'enabling' folk further down the food chain.

If you are talking about Stereolithography, Rapid Prototyping or what is now termed 3D printing which is so heavily hyped. I was designing equipment that did that in 1979 and selling industrial machines that did it in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. I am well aware and still involved in high tech manufacturing albeit on an infrequent part time basis. Back in the early 70s I worked for a multi millionaire who advised that the way to manufacturing success was innovation and uniqueness. Whatever the whingeing critics and naysayers assert James Dyson is living proof of that despite the copyists multiple attempts to steal his ideas.

Al

[syklist]

With every day that passes the more pleased and relieved I am about Brexit.

That's because of the reaction of many losing Remainers.

Their apocalyptic predictions and their antipathy towards their opponents increasingly resembles the behaviour of members of a religious cult.

Ah yes, what is the quote that this post reminds me of...

"In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will."

It's nearly two months since the Leavers "won". The Remainers are doing their bit by remaining defiant. So how about a bit of magnanimity from the "victors" for a change?

[kwackers]

If you are talking about Stereolithography, Rapid Prototyping or what is now termed 3D printing which is so heavily hyped. I was designing equipment that did that in 1979 and selling industrial machines that did it in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s.

Of course you were. I'm pretty sure hi resolution LASER sintering machines existed back in '79 beavering away making aircraft grade components...

My point is that this technology is available to anyone that wants it. You can run a high tech manufacturing industry from a garage these days producing stuff that's both cheap and accurate that your average machine shop would've struggled to produce back in the 70's with negligible labour costs.

Consumer 3d printing is overhyped btw. Sticking a glue gun on a cnc machine doesn't amount to much, but it is an interesting technology. Not least because it shows how accurate motion controllers and hardware are now at pocket money prices and how sophisticated 3d CAD software is becoming. None of the horrific g-code nonsense folk were using up until quite recently (well still using, but thankfully mostly out of sight these days).

[al_yrpal]

Stereolithography started from the production of Stereos, printing blankets produced as moulds from repeated layers of UV cured laquer. These were originally used to laquer book covers and record sleeves, as well as make printing blankets for web presses. All further developments of stereolithography including laser sintering owe their origin to these ideas. We even had one '3D printing' process that produced models from laminations of sticky paper! Laser sintering came later. Parts produced by these processes still cannot match the properties of those machined from solid or in some cases cast or forged and therefore have limited applications.

Al

[kwackers]

Parts produced by these processes still cannot match the properties of those machined from solid or in some cases cast or forged and therefore have limited applications.

No, but they're getting a lot better some now produce parts that are okayed for use in aircraft.

If you want machining from solid, £40k will buy you a good 6 axis machine you can run from your garage.
It'll produce highly accurate and consistent parts for your business and with little labour input.

I think one of the main changes in industrialisation these days is the move towards smaller production runs resulting in more consumer choice whilst maintaining cost/unit and allowing smaller manufacturers to get in on the act.
One of the reasons the Chinese are so good is for exactly that reason. Small scale manufacturers who got in on the ground floor, took some investment, modernised and then were able to compete globally whilst remaining small and dynamic.

Around the corner from me there's an engineering firm that still does most of it's work on several capstan lathes and floor standing mills. They've got one modern CNC mill...