Something newer.
The reason that 50-year-old machine tools are still around isn't that they can't be replaced. It's that there's often no reason to.
To use OP as an example, in a lot of places, you'll find an ancient milling machine or a lathe that's dedicated to running a single job a few times a year. The machine was depreciated decades ago, but it can still do that job and there's no reason to get rid of it.
What modern tools give you is speed and flexibility. Many shops need neither.
What do all these machine shops without any need for modern machinery and processes actually do?
Seriously though, of course you can make a living with old tools - however, even the village metal workshop around here has at least one big-ass laser cutter and a CNC mill next to all their old(er) lathes, mills, brakes, presses and other toys. Many oldschool fabricators I spoke to over the last few years are quite interested in what laser welding brings/will bring to the table. Basically all smaller fabrication companies I've seen (the long tail of the car industry and other bigger industries, mostly) are continually upgrading their infrastructure with all sorts of robots and other automation widgets. And so on.
No one said that they had no need for modern machinery. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. If you have a manufacturing process that was dialed in perfectly 20 years ago, and your customer(s) is still buying those parts, made on that machine, there is no benefit to moving them to another machine that now has to be set up just right, have the new parts coming off it QC'd to make sure that they are identical to what came off the old one, etc.
It's work that you don't need to do and that you won't get paid for. If the old machine breaks, then maybe it would make sense to move the job to something newer.
I used to work with someone whose entire business was retrofitting old machine tools with modern controllers when the decades-old electronics failed. You'd be amazed how much of this stuff is still out there.
> What modern tools give you is speed and flexibility.
Many of the modern tools can also be grafted onto the old tools. Not just CNC conversions but the biggest productivity boost when I worked in a shop was converting everything to a zero point clamping system.
A shockingly rare question to be asked. As best as I can tell, the biggest threat to civilization isn't AI, it's our culture of "that's not my problem" leaving otherwise patch-able holes in critical systems.
The biggest threat to civilization is, in fact, AI. It's a new problem, and one with an utterly ridiculous lethality at its limit. It makes the atomic bomb look benign.
"That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.
Because fossil fuel is stupid useful and there's no way we're going to stop burning it. And then we get to the climate scenarios that aren't compatible with our current sophisticated civilization, even with the currently accepted climate science (that always seems to underestimate what actually happens).
Exactly: the new process becomes the lowest bid, new NRE goes forward, and the old process finally gets to drift off into the sunset. It happens all the time and people (sometimes the same people) complain about that too.
Something newer. The reason that 50-year-old machine tools are still around isn't that they can't be replaced. It's that there's often no reason to.
To use OP as an example, in a lot of places, you'll find an ancient milling machine or a lathe that's dedicated to running a single job a few times a year. The machine was depreciated decades ago, but it can still do that job and there's no reason to get rid of it.
What modern tools give you is speed and flexibility. Many shops need neither.
What do all these machine shops without any need for modern machinery and processes actually do?
Seriously though, of course you can make a living with old tools - however, even the village metal workshop around here has at least one big-ass laser cutter and a CNC mill next to all their old(er) lathes, mills, brakes, presses and other toys. Many oldschool fabricators I spoke to over the last few years are quite interested in what laser welding brings/will bring to the table. Basically all smaller fabrication companies I've seen (the long tail of the car industry and other bigger industries, mostly) are continually upgrading their infrastructure with all sorts of robots and other automation widgets. And so on.
No one said that they had no need for modern machinery. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. If you have a manufacturing process that was dialed in perfectly 20 years ago, and your customer(s) is still buying those parts, made on that machine, there is no benefit to moving them to another machine that now has to be set up just right, have the new parts coming off it QC'd to make sure that they are identical to what came off the old one, etc.
It's work that you don't need to do and that you won't get paid for. If the old machine breaks, then maybe it would make sense to move the job to something newer.
I used to work with someone whose entire business was retrofitting old machine tools with modern controllers when the decades-old electronics failed. You'd be amazed how much of this stuff is still out there.
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> What modern tools give you is speed and flexibility.
Many of the modern tools can also be grafted onto the old tools. Not just CNC conversions but the biggest productivity boost when I worked in a shop was converting everything to a zero point clamping system.
I had not heard of zero point clamping. This video I found is extremely cool, I can see how that would save a lot of time and money in the shop!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrLri_RdgK8
A shockingly rare question to be asked. As best as I can tell, the biggest threat to civilization isn't AI, it's our culture of "that's not my problem" leaving otherwise patch-able holes in critical systems.
The biggest threat to civilization is, in fact, AI. It's a new problem, and one with an utterly ridiculous lethality at its limit. It makes the atomic bomb look benign.
"That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.
Nah, it's global warming.
Because fossil fuel is stupid useful and there's no way we're going to stop burning it. And then we get to the climate scenarios that aren't compatible with our current sophisticated civilization, even with the currently accepted climate science (that always seems to underestimate what actually happens).
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> "That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.
Yes, and that's why civilizations have kept rising and falling throughout history.
I've seen this sentiment shared before and I just don't get it. What is the logical progression of "AI" to "more dangerous than the atomic bomb"?
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You machine a new part.
Exactly: the new process becomes the lowest bid, new NRE goes forward, and the old process finally gets to drift off into the sunset. It happens all the time and people (sometimes the same people) complain about that too.
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