Since starting my musical instrument making business in the early 1970's I have applied computer technology, as I could afford it, to improve efficiency. I've moved on a bit from my first kit-built microcomputer, with its audio cassette storage system. By 1980 I had written a simple relational database system, and was using it to manage our business information. In the early 1980's I designed and constructed my first computer controlled machine tool, a simple drill. In 1985 I started a more ambitious machine project, a 3 axis router, investing in our first full Unix system as the development platform. I wrote the control software for both machines, as well as the part definition software. We now produce some hundreds of different parts for our musical instrument kits using these systems, ranging in complexity from simple rectangular tongued and grooved panels to complete instrument keyboards. As a result of these projects, embracing the supporting disciplines from first principles, I have a good knowledge of practical cad/cam and what it can do. The project will consolidate this work.
Of course, cad/cam/cim (add the abbreviation of your choice) has been well established in the industrial arena for years. But the machines and software are for the most part aimed at high throughput mass production, operated by specialists. They are well outside the pockets of craft enterprises and ordinary people. What I am trying to achieve here is a revolution for manufacture which parallels the desk top publishing revolution. That affordably brought the power of the printing industry into peoples' businesses and homes. The desk top publishing revolution was founded on the simplifying notion of the raster image - processing all images, be they text or pictures, as arrays of dots. This must once have seemed an extraordinary idea, but now the hardware and software to realise it comes rushing out of producers' doors. The parallel revolution requires similar new thinking.
When my interest in computer aided manufacture was wakened twenty years ago there were no affordable machines for craft enterprise. Perhaps surprisingly, the market position today is much the same. Computer controlled machine tools have on the whole remained very expensive, and no significant market has yet developed outside the industrial arena. I'm aware of some very small machines which have been produced over the past couple of years, but they wouldn't solve many problems for me. Having designed and made several conventional computer controlled machine tools I can see why they are expensive. They have little functional regularity - each axis has different problems and requirements. Coping with bending and torsion deformations from cutter forces adds weight and compounds the problems. A key requirement for the project is a regular machine tool architecture which can be produced at substantially lower cost.
Designers and inventors have a pretty hard time these days persuading manufacturers and investors to back their ideas. So many have had their fingers burnt by the erratic workings of the market. I've certainly never succeeded, despite making considerable efforts. I believe that the intellectual property rights issue is more often than not a barrier to innovation. Where money is required for every step, and there is none, nothing moves. By contrast, I'm amazed at the creative power of the IPR-free cooperative development which the Internet has enabled. One of the many free software projects I am benefitting from, Linux, has resulted in a high quality operating system now used by perhaps millions around the world, without money entering the equation. A Usenet announcement just as I write this captures its power: the Siberian Linux User Group, based in Novosibirsk, has just had its first two meetings, with 30 members. This project needs that sort of synergy.
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Computer Craftsmanship |