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"About Ingenious Machines and Methods"
The factory  technology trail.  Who held it, what was it, 
and where was the trail of technology started. 

12 Chapters of 
solid industrial insight compiled into one 
comprehensive understanding of the machine...


~Know your tools~

We have an enormous advantage in America with all of our technical resources. In most countries it is still difficult to find even the tools and machines that we take advantage of in America. For example home woodworking is not even recognized in many countries. Woodworking is as rare in most countries as silk production is in America. Usually, anyone who has a table saw in a foreign country is in business in one way or another. Here in America we have millions of idle table saws. To add to that, it is probable that the owners are unaware of the mass production capabilities of these machines.

Others just have artists; we have the machines and the methods....

For example, an artist develops a work of art. He holds onto his image of what he wants to create, and then he creates it using his material of choice, individually and masterfully. An engineer, machinist, or toolmaker takes his image, then employs machines, a process or standardized method, and produces millions of identical copies. In America we need bring forward more people loyal to this mass production process. We need to open the doors of mass production to more people, which fuels more and better efficiency and automation improvements.

Efficiency and automation is the gateway to improved mass production, robotics, and wealth. People, children, and students first need to grasp the concept of mass production. This is what drives the urge and the motivation to deal with the basics of mass production. We don't necessarily need more people devoted to just making things, but to the pursuit of technological solutions which need to start with the basics. It is all about the gateway! Math and science can then be introduced, but the basic principles, the urge to create needs to start with those who have access to machines. The love of machines is the first and foremost necessity and cornerstone to mass production. Success first begins with an incentive, or an inspiration to rise above the rest who are content with a permanent, often meager prosperity.

The future......

Without some sort of stimulus or incentive, fresh recruits never enter into the technical fields. The current stimulus is foreign competition. I have heard it before that, in China for example, it doesn't matter how low the cost of labor is. Sure, robotics are a monumental challenge and can be crushingly difficult for some manufacturers. But a country that can build robots, and fully automate will soon overproduce many operations that rely upon human labor. If you have ever seen the movie Irobot, they have developed a domestic army of robots, which do the manual work and the work for those in the upper class. Robots are the future. Robots will one day be an industry as big as the auto industry. Just repairing them will be a huge business. It will need designers, mechanics, machine operators and millions of human workers.

We only need the wisdom to understand our often faulty, narrow passion for "Hand Made". Hand made goods will become mostly a luxury, with use in limited, low volume, highly laborious applications. Sure, mass production is all about value, plastic, sometimes synthetic imitations. That is where we get a negative stigma. We relate mass production with cheap, synthetic and cookie cutter methods. But whoever designs a product needs to specify quality material, not abandon mass production! In most cases customized, hand made products will be a much smaller and insignificant factor in the economy. Precision made, automation, quality, and machine accuracy can carry an economy to new heights, but the traditions and superstitions keep newcomers constrained inside the “making just one, only custom, well built” myth. Everyone else will then beat us to the prosperity that will unfold in advanced mass production automation and robotics.

We have a divided outlook of Robots to this day. Sure, some see them as a threat to manual labor, but others will only advance upon our fears and our economically based prejudice of technology. Robotics always seem to threaten those with a stake, an income or a lifestyle done without technology. Personally I don’t want computers recording my automotive speed, or my how many red lights that I might go through. I don’t want computers rating everyone, monitoring everything and so forth. I do want robotics, high quality materials, and standardization.

Those who look at the larger picture, the incredible potential and accuracy of machines will discover, and follow through with the possibilities. Some will still say that mass production is merely cookie cutter junk, but it is all in the specification of the materials. Take a Rolex watch, or even a Bose product. They are mass produced, but the materials and processes are specified with scientific care. Those who require cheap materials, cheaper quality, may do it out of pressure and for economic reasons, but in the long run, it derails the pursuit of perfection in the manufacturing industry. In the space and robotics industry, there will be no material quality options, no alternative. The standards and materials for making a robot for example, or a production machine will not be compromised, and if they are, the loyalty, stimulus, and the goals could wither. Productivity would then suffer as we will be forever fixing robots. It all starts when we discover the basic capabilities of a simple machine. Basic, simple, gauging, locating and standardized production methods centuries old, put to use along with ever advancing machines materials and methods. It starts with having a machine, then realizing it’s possibilities.

I'll see ya later, I'm going to oil and hug my Robot, I mean table saw, before someone without a single clue comes by to haul it away for scrap or for storage. If you really want to exercise your power, focus on the full potential found in our readily available machines.  Leave the nanotubes, the smart dust, nanobots,  and hybrid machines for the kids.  

George....woodjig.com

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