Kris De Decker of Low-tech Magazine has an article on the sustainability of digital fabrication, from fully automated industrial CNC machines to smaller consumer grade machines used in the digital maker revolution.
From the article:
Digital fabrication is praised as the future of manufacturing. Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) machine tools can convert a digital design into an object with the click of a mouse, which means the production process is completely automated. The use of digital machine tools has spread rapidly in factories over the last two decades, and they have now become cheap and user-friendly enough to bring them within reach of workshops and makers.
While CNC machines have been embraced by many, including some environmentalists who say the technology can be more sustainable, it's important to consider the very high energy use of digital machine tools. Compared to the earlier generation of human-controlled machine tools, CNC machines use much more power, and the potential to improve their energy efficiency is very limited. Choosing fewer automated technologies is the key to sustainable manufacturing.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @03:06AM
You enviro loons may be taken more seriously if you stop resorting to buzzword bingo - "sustainable", "organic", "carbon fooprint", the list goes on and on.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 07 2014, @03:37AM
Reminds me of a conversation smoking pot with my friend's dad many years ago:
Me: " I like to roll joints with a rolling machine, the joints are so fat and tight. "
Him: " Dude, but you're mechanizing away the whole experience when you roll 'em that way "
Me: " Like you're mechanizing it by using that roach clip? "
In case you all were wondering, it's why Blacks (unlike other cultures who grow just a long pinky-nail) grow a long nail on thier thumb as well -- they need opposable nails to safely handle that grape-flavored-wrap blunt roach without burning their fingertips. Though some don't abide by this rule and actually stuff the roach into a bong bowl.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @05:43AM
Well it was fun having you around. High time for you to get permbanned here as well you drunken redneck piece of excrement.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @08:27AM
it would be disappointing of the majority of this community shared your viewpoint
maybe along with rednecks we should "permban" anyone who doesn't agree with us... then the few remaining can circlejerk each other to irrelevance
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @09:23AM
This is not about agreeing or disagreeing. This is about a single fucktard who has had plenty of chances to change his ways but still insists on being a dick. In fact the little shit seems to take pride in it.
Some people never learn.
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Monday April 07 2014, @09:59AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detai lpage&v=2cV_q-mVAAA#t=8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday April 07 2014, @05:09PM
That's an interesting thought. How would someone get permabanned? I guess you could ban a username. Big deal... make another one. Ban an IP? Not exactly a hard thing to change. Ban the IP ranges of every ISP available in the offender's home town? And every proxy server? And every TOR exit node? Come on....
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Maow on Monday April 07 2014, @04:56AM
Dude, it's not sustainable keeping your head so far up your ass.
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Monday April 07 2014, @05:27AM
i'll bite:
sustainable - that which can be sustained long term. means something.
organic - mashed by the marketing machine into a meaningless term.
carbon footprint - eh? lies, lies, statistics and lies. requires placing dollar values on things like rainforests. dumb.
conservation of the natural miracle that is our planet is one of the most important things to me, but you can't succeed on a large scale unless the debate is honest.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @12:05PM
> sustainable - that which can be sustained long term. means something.
No argument here.
>organic - mashed by the marketing machine into a meaningless term.
Agreed.
> carbon footprint - eh? lies, lies, statistics and lies. requires placing dollar values on things like rainforests. dumb.
Disagree. I think the idea behind it is that many of the people who need to be convinced of the value of sustainability have absolutely no concept of value whatsoever, UNLESS it has a dollar sign at the front. Isn't there an old saying about people who "knows the price of everything but the value of nothing"?
You tell the CEO of NoughtPointOnePercent Corporation that cutting down rainforests is bad because of endangered species and global warming and so on: He will call you a hippy, laugh in your face, and probably have your house bulldozed and turned into a power station that burns brand new humvees, just out of spite. However if you put on a suit and tie and present it into terms that he's used to dealing with, tell him that the rainforest is providing $Xmillion of services in carbon sequestration, $Ymillion of pharmaceutical potential.... maybe he will listen. (He probably won't because he's an entitled, arrogant shit, but it's worth a try.)
> conservation of the natural miracle that is our planet is one of the most important things to me, but you can't succeed on a large scale unless the debate is honest.
Agreed. However it's possible to represent things in different ways, or different aspects of the same thing, without necessarily becoming dishonest.
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Monday April 07 2014, @08:40AM
so... what exactly is the problem with buzzwords again?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by moondoctor on Monday April 07 2014, @03:33AM
void rant(pIrritatingArticle){
all seemed a bit biased to me. waste in manufacturing is a big deal, and shouldn't be misrepresented and seemingly used as a pawn in some eco-war bash piece. i'm a tree-hugger and all the hyperbole on both sides is sad. worse is seeing tools that can make things better beeing pissed on by the people that should be jumping for joy at the progress being made.
first and foremost: when used correctly cnc optimises toolpaths so that machining operations can take *less* time than when operated manually.
the point they so artfully dodge is that a much more powerful machine running the same part in much less time can use less energy. you need high speed control systems to get the maximimum performance (efficiency) from brutally powerful machines. the idea of operating a big 5-axis machine manually is laughable for any production work. otoh, if you've got a moron generating your toolpaths things can use absurd amounts of energy.
portraying casting as a groovy alternative low energy process cracked me up. last i checked it takes a fair amount of energy to melt metal...
Anyway, i have faith we'll get the energy thing sussed, just a matter of time. 3d printing from recycled materials (i.e. literally your trash) from sustainable energy is as goddamn eco friendly as it gets.
}
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday April 07 2014, @03:35AM
Exactly this - the efficiency of large processes depends entirely upon the quality of its implementation, and all other things being equal, larger machines will be more thermodynamically efficient than smaller ones.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 3) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @08:54AM
How's that, now? An electric motor is typically 99% efficient, no matter the size... From the tiny motor in a box fan, to the huge ones pumping water and driving conveyor belts, they're all similarly efficient.
With heat engines that burn fuel, there's some efficiencies with scale, although I must admit that the improvements for diesels aren't too dramatic.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday April 07 2014, @10:14AM
When it comes to cutting, the efficiency of cutting varies dramatically with size - primarily due to waste heat. Ironically, at large sizes the heat maintained in the cutter and part can be come too great that you need to flush it with coolant to avoid melting. Another way to think about it is that larger cutter sever a few bonds and deform large chips rather than sever more bonds in small chips, which requires more energy to do.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @12:15PM
Except milling machines don't need and don't use "heat" to cut the metal, but instead shear deformation force. Torches and lasers, of course use heat, but not milling, so I still don't have a clue what you're talking about.
If you've got a source for increasing thermodynamic efficiency by size, by all means, provide it and I'll take a look.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Monday April 07 2014, @09:57PM
Waste heat - that would be the standard term for all energy losses dissipated as heat. The kinetic energy lost due to friction-braking in your car? Waste heat. The energy lost to ripping apart fibers in a milled material? Waste heat. The fact that you have to sweat to keep cool when working hard? Waste heat. Heat is the final resting place of all thermodynamic losses in the universe. When heating wasn't the intent, it's known as waste heat.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @01:27PM
Think of "fixed costs" like the same PC that runs my desktop Sherline mill (about as small as they get, other than a Taig, maybe) could run a giant bridgeport and make 50 little parts all at once for the same PC power supply power.
Also bigger motors simply are more efficient. Lets say mfgr tolerances mean you build a 1/10th inch air gap. Well thats simply larger as a proportion of the total motor size. Or going slightly off topic a larger ball bearing always has lower proportional friction because it has a superior area to volume ratio.
You can pretend there's no labor costs but they still exist, so a big mill that has 50 small parts strapped to the bed will cost much less than a small mill that can only make precisely one part at a time. More labor for the little machine results in more takehome pay or the equivalent results in more environmental damage.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @01:43PM
Yes, yes, but it's a very, very minor difference... Going from 10HP to 100HP will only improve efficiency by 5%, if you're lucky. Once you've got a big motor that hits the 90th percentile, there isn't a lot of room for improvement, no matter how much bigger you go.
Depends entirely on utilization factors. If you can keep a smaller CNC working around the clock, but the larger CNC will sit idle most of the time, then buying the larger one is horrendously inefficient.
And since you can't rent a fraction of a human, if one person can keep all of your smaller CNCs fed (and maintained), then there's no benefit to switching to a larger one, where you still need someone babysitting, but still have to pay about the same wages.
One of the points in TFA was that most CNCs are quite a bit under-utilized, and wasting power as they sit around, idle.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @02:05PM
Also bigger motors simply are more efficient.
It depends on your definition of "efficiency". If the task is to spin a very small mill (bit) at very high speed, to do very fine precision milling, a smaller motor will probably do it more efficiently than a larger one. If the task is to remove a lot of material, however, a large motor spinning a large mill will do it more efficiently than a small motor spinning a small mill.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by irfan on Monday April 07 2014, @06:56AM
Interesting points you bring up. I have been reading Low-tech Magazine for some years now, and their purpose seems to be to highlight some older technologies, that we might have forgotten in the race to modernism. Sometimes we can learn from them, and use them for more efficient modern technologies, at other times the low-tech solution might make most sense. Don't get the article wrong. It isn't eco-war bashery, but a needed viewpoint in the discussion about our future.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @08:35AM
The article doesn't seem incorrect, slanted, or unfair in any way.
From TFA:
"in the end a CNC machine might use less energy than a manual milling machine for the processing of a similar part."
I can't imagine why you didn't see it. They mention that part of the subject, repeatedly.
The point seems to be more one of CNC power-usage while idle...
"'significant cost savings can be achieved if the production output is increased'"
I don't see where you could possibly have read that. TFA only once mentions casting, and only for context... The chunk of metal you put into the CNC milling machine was formed to rough dimensions by casting.
How do you think you get that big chunk of shaped metal you put into the CNC? What do you think happens to that huge volume of metal that gets ground-off when CNC'ing an block of metal that isn't roughly the same dimensions as your finished part?
3D printing will never be economical on a large scale. It's always going to be vastly less expensive to make a mold and bulk-inject plastic or whatnot, except in the cases of prototyping, or insanely complex objects.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @11:50AM
>>3d printing from recycled materials (i.e. literally your trash) from sustainable energy is as goddamn eco friendly as it gets.
> 3D printing will never be economical on a large scale. It's always going to be vastly less expensive to make a mold and bulk-inject plastic or whatnot, except in the cases of prototyping, or insanely complex objects.
I think the sustainability comes from the fact that you no longer need to move raw materials from source to factory, and finished products from factory to consumer, and then from consumer to recycling facility/landfill at the end of the product's working life. You just drop some unwanted material (for example, the broken widget you want to replace) into your recycler, which breaks it down into usable raw materials and adds them to your baseblock, then your maker can fabricate your new widget from that. Yeah, locally it's probably going to be less energy efficient on a per-unit basis than mass production, but when you factor all the supply-chain crap into the equation, it starts looking more attractive. Can it break even? Don't know yet. It's certainly worth asking the question and trying it out.
Of course, that's science fiction for now, and I know that cheaply, safely and reliably "breaking stuff down into usable raw materials" is nowhere near as easy as I make it sound (particularly for contaminated materials of high-melting-point materials), but technology has a way of making difficult things easier. For at least a small subset of materials and products, I think this is the way things will eventually go.
The fact that carbon can now be used in so many different ways (including electronics and batteries) is promising - carbon is far easier to safely manipulate than many more traditional materials.
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Monday April 07 2014, @10:07PM
As for casting there's an additional point that should be made - at industrial scales we've made great strides in reducing energy waste. If you want to cast something at home you have to put in a bunch of energy to heat it up, pour it into the mold, and then let it cool, throwing away all that energy you used to heat it. In modern casting facilities though that "thrown away" heat can instead be recaptured and used to pre-heat the incoming material. Obviously it's not 100% efficient, bu it reduces the energy cost of casting dramatically.
(Score: 1) by emg on Monday April 07 2014, @11:46PM
"3D printing will never be economical on a large scale. It's always going to be vastly less expensive to make a mold and bulk-inject plastic or whatnot, except in the cases of prototyping, or insanely complex objects."
Sure, when I need a replacement part for my space station, you can build it more cheaply than I can.
It's the ten million dollar delivery charge that screws you.
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Monday April 07 2014, @08:44AM
from my experience with designing products using 3D parametric modelling software and having programmed and operated a CNC sheetmetal punch machine... CAD/CAM is fucking awesome!
can't wait till 3D/4D printing takes over the world
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 07 2014, @01:35PM
The author's argument seems to hinge primarily on CNC machines being left on but unproductive overnight. While this may be common in small startup shops, it's all but unheard of in a production shop or even a job shop of any significant size. Two or three shift operation is common, as is "lights out" unattended machining, which is the epitome of economic efficiency. When you have a fully automated pallet fed cell of horizontal machining centers with hundreds of tool stations each, they can run unattended for days churning out precision parts by the hundreds or thousands. In addition, any of these parts have geometric complexities that make them simply impossible to make by manual control, which gives the equivalent manual process an efficiency of 0%.
What I found most glaring however, was the authors assertion that "(CNC) machine tools can convert a digital design into an object with the click of a mouse, which means the production process is completely automated." While the article is well written and well researched, the author obviously neglected to talk to anyone in the industry. Perhaps the author assumed that since all it required was a click of the mouse there would be no workers in the industry. I've been a CNC programmer for 18 years, and if all it took was a click of the mouse I never would have had a job. His understanding is self contradicting as well, because if the process WERE completely automated, there would be no reason it couldn't run 24/7/365 and have none of that wasteful idle time.
No, the key to making manufacturing "green" is not to go back to Amish production methods. If you want green power consumption, use a green power source. Recycle your metal chips (most already do, for economic reasons). And use MORE automation, so you can get more production per machine, per hour, per worker, and per square foot (or meter) of building space.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Informative) by modecx on Monday April 07 2014, @04:36AM
Anyone seriously asking this question could get their answer simply by looking at any random photograph taken in the early 1900's, from the inside of any random factory, producing any random widget.
What will you see in such a photograph? Dozens, maybe hundreds if not thousands of people...men, women, oftentimes children...hunched over some likewise numerous variety of machinery, any of which looks like it could take an arm off if you were unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time--and anyone who ever took a shop class in high school anytime since the 1950's know from the slide-projected photos graphically illustrating just how hazardous powered machinery is, that these grave injuries were/are indeed possible.
Yeah. In the old days, if you wanted to machine something, with any reasonable repeatable efficiency, you had master machinists set up a long line of mills (each doing one or two operations to your part) in a factory with tens of thousands of square feet, heated and powered by gigantic boilers, steam and internal combustion engines.
CNC machines need more power? You don't say? They make more chips faster? Huh. So what? Yet he didn't account for the most expensive part (neither economically, nor ecologically) of their alternative human-powered industrial machine. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @01:40PM
I read the article like two weeks ago when it came out (its in my RSS feed) and WTFed the same way until I figured out it all boils down to its traditional/cheaper to leave the CNC machinery booted up and ready to run because nobody has ever cared to optimize energy use so no one has. So that's how you end up drawing 2 KW to keep the controller and servos (steppers?) energized 24x7. 2 KW for 24x7x365 is expensive to the environment when a classic bridgeport draws nothing at all when the power switch is off.
The waste of the article is it is a huge amount of thinking and conclusions about a subject nobody cares about historically therefore blah blah blah in the future but that's all pretty meaningless because they don't understand what they're all worked up about historically and how easy it is to make gains when starting from the level of "nobody cares".
I converted my small desktop mill from the 90s into CNC in the mid 00s. I don't care about time so it takes about 5 minutes to boot linuxcnc and another couple minutes to get ready and run a homing program to "zero" itself. It takes that long because I don't care and no one else in the biz cares either. So in business you never shut off a CNC tool because that would cost you about 10 minutes of non-productive labor. There's nothing inherently technological preventing a mill computer from going into sleep mode and having a home position that's fast and convenient (instead of my easy to wire and test and clean but very slow and inconvenient home switch positions)
Some of the thermal babble about temperature tolerances in the article left me with the feeling a bunch of crusty old machinists Fed with the envirohippies by feeding them a huge line of bull to see if they'd take it. "And we need that hook on the side, to hang the LEFT hand crescent wrenches"
Yes most IBM 360/91 mainframes were booted up and left running 24x7. And that proves what exactly about the feasibility of a macbook? (why, laptops would require 3phase wiring, water cooling hoses, and hours to boot up, so they'll never happen and they'll destroy the planet because of all those water cooling hoses!)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @01:43PM
CNC machines need more power? You don't say?
No, I really don't say. CNC machines do NOT use more power, and anyone who professes this belief is a moron. CNC spindles use the same power as non-CNC spindles, yet are operated for less time since they're under computer control. The only extra power used is for the computer, and modern computers don't use much power. Compared to the spindle-time saved, the extra power for the PC is tiny, so there's an energy savings overall.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday April 07 2014, @12:32PM
While it's not efficient to use a CNC for jointing a board for example, one is able to set up a project so that that isn't needed, creating a huge efficiency and saving a number of steps for traditional wood-working --- pretty much every project I've set up on my Shapeoko (open source/hardware hobby-level CNC machine) has realized similar efficiencies.
I use mine in lieu of:
- drill press
- jointer
- miter / chop saw
- router
- mortising machine
- biscuit joiner
- &c.
The only power tool I have left which I use regularly are a circular saw for breaking down stock and a bandsaw --- can't see it replacing those two, and I'm looking into getting a chainsaw lumbermill.
Given the carbon footprint of creating machinery, CNC certainly comes out ahead.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @02:27PM
You've got to be kidding. I have most of that woodworking equipment, and a CNC router that puts your Shapeoko to shame. While I could use the CNC router to do some things, setting up the CNC router to do anything is generally a PITA: you have to deal with generating G-code, coming up with ways to hold the workpiece, etc. With regular tools, you just do it. The CNC router is generally more accurate and far more repeatable, but for a one-off project, you don't need that.
And there's plenty of stuff you just can't do on a CNC router. Can your CNC router drill holes in a small, flat workpiece? Sure; just clamp them down, generate some G-code (which takes some time), and hit "go". Can you use it to drill holes in the end of a 3-foot piece of wood? No. There's no way to do that. On my drill press, that's not so hard. With a hand drill, it's downright easy (though low-accuracy). It's not impossible for any CNC machine to do such a thing, but on a small benchtop CNC router, it is; these machines aren't made for that kind of work. Or, how about drilling a 6-inch long hole? Again, totally impossible; that's longer than the distance between your spindle and the table, and your spindle isn't made for bits that long (nor are there any milling bits that long that I've ever seen). The idea of jointing with your Shapeoko is also ridiculous in the extreme. Let's see you joint a 6-foot long board on that thing. The whole machine only looks to be 2 feet long at the very most. And let's see it do so without leaving tooling marks requiring a lot of sanding. A proper jointer with sharp blades leaves a completely flat, smooth surface, requiring only very minimal finish sanding. And a biscuit joiner? Are you smoking crack? How do you propose to get your Shapeoko to cut biscuit slots in the edge of an 8-foot-long sheet of plywood?
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday April 07 2014, @04:28PM
I specifically noted that jointing a board wasn't efficient (If I wanted to do it, I'd use a set of hand planes, but if I had to do it for some reason on my machine, I'd pass the board in from the side, one small section at a time, then make a final pass all-at-once as if it were a router table --- I'd do something similar to put slots in a large piece of plywood) --- I didn't mean to imply that it was suited to production use for all of those tasks, merely that for a hobbyist, it was adaptable enough to do them, and one could, for one-off jobs, avoid the need to purchase special-purpose tools, hence avoiding the expense / carbon footprint.
Funny you mention putting holes in the end of lengths of wood --- I spent part of the weekend cutting a hole through the torsion box base of one of my machines so that I could do just that --- next free weekend will be spent enlarging the holes at the bottom so that I can present two pieces of wood at 90 degrees to each other so that I can cut a blind joint of some sort.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @01:49PM
One problem with the article as I read it, two weeks ago, is a commercial mfgr has a motivation to value engineer to maximize future replacement sales, but most digital fabrication types theoretically orient values such that a guy making something at home doesn't want it to be value engineered to maximize future replacement effort.
So, thinking of say, the plastic gears in my garage door opener designed to only last five years. I could make ones in my basement (well, at this time I can't make involute compatible helical gears, or don't know how, anyway) that last 100 years at maybe 4 times the environmental cost of the plastic gears and still come out way ahead.
If "the market" will only sell dishwashers designed to last a decade, but I can make one designed to last 100 years, I still come out ahead even if the factory has a dramatically better lifecycle cost than my home built washer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 07 2014, @03:21PM
I rather like the advent of ad-hoc manufacturing/3D printing. Now when something breaks I don't have to go out and buy a whole new machine because I can create the replacement part myself. That's awesome. Little plastic do-hickey that keeps the whole complex device working the way it ought to? Current options are, go buy a whole new device at retail or, if still under warranty, find a damn box big enough to ship the thing back in, wait 8 weeks, then maybe get your device back. Or, suck it and go without forever forward. Future option with 3D printing? Print it out yourself, insert in machine, back to business. Even if you're talking about one of the glasses in your 8-glass set that your 5-yr old breaks, you either go out and buy another new set of 8 and wind up with 15 glasses, 7 of which you don't really need, or you give the 8th person at your dinner party a mis-matched coffee mug instead. Future option, print it out and away you go. Add in a recycler to return waste material as feedstock, and you have a beautiful future of perfect, or near-perfect, recycling.
To go even more sci-fi, it would be great to reclaim some of that carbon surplus in the atmosphere and use it as feedstock to create your own graphene and carbon nanotubes for computing/electronic/structural applications. How great would that be?
Washington DC delenda est.