Of course compared to what it was before CNC and computers, it’s as easy as queuing up a printer. So what? Compared to what there was 200 years ago, what there was 70 years ago was easy. And let’s not even start on what it took to chip a spearhead out of obsidian, then kill a mammoth with it (and I’m not joking, and there are guys who can make stone knives by knapping today, and they are masters.) Is supermarket steak worse than fresh mammoth barbecue? I am certain it is, from every point of view except the effort expended to get it and the risk of taking a 2 meter mammoth tusk up the ass.

Of course I had an attitude problem. The old boss was a master. But the shit he was a master at was pantograph and hand-grinding bits and the rest of it. He was very skilled and versatile and experienced. But when it came to software, he was using shit from 1993 because too afraid to try the new stuff, and moving points around and tracing a bitmap to a vector file by hand and taking six hours to set a basic job up, and you can say that’s all very good and well, as long as it got the job done-but it severely limited what he could do. So when it came to something more complex than recess this feature .8 mm and this one .4mm, and customers wanted a bas relief in reverse, he was taking their orders and sending them to China, from which they came back fucked up because he was inarticulate+the language barrier, and it took me to get him set up with the modern CAD/CAM shit to make things in true 2.5D (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they went back to the 2/3 level stuff when I left, because nobody else in the whole damn shop was allowed near his domain, and his own son who was pricing quotes for customers had no idea how to mill shit.) Which is fine-the 1850s shipwright would have looked at the punks making Liberty Ships like they were dogshit. But you can’t move that tonnage at those prices at those speeds with wooden ships.

On the other hand, we can say that they went to the moon 40 years ago with log rulers, and the SR-71 was made on turret mills, and where’s today’s SR-71 and lunar lander? To which I can’t say anything except that it’s all tradeoffs and dynamic balance, and I by no means think we are sitting in a sweet spot, but I don’t think the sweet spot will involve turret mills and slide rules.

You’re right on the transit times.

Back in the day, before computers and cnc and dro and all that shit, temperate climate machine shop, in winter you did the precision work in the afternoon, after the tool had had a chance to warm up on lower precision work in the morning, and then 45 minutes to rest and even out temps during lunch, in summer you did the precision work first thing in the am.

I know cunts now with micrometers and they have maybe ever used the reference pieces two or three times, in total, back in the day, they were used every bloody HOUR…. even if you were measuring the same thing over and over, just to catch temperature and handling.

Christ they used to leave the work outside or in the stores on a shelf to “season” (and I’m talking ferrous metals here, not bloody wood) for days or weeks or sometimes even months before even considering putting it in a machine and cutting.

You kids today, don’t know you’re born… lol… now git off my lawn…

Your old boss, maybe, he didn’t have an attitude problem, maybe you did, not appreciating just how truly skilled and careful and versatile and experienced you had to be, back in the day….. just a thought…

Trust me when I tell you, compared to the planning and set-up and tweaking you *used* to have to do, it is just as exactly as easy as queuing a print job on the office printer

Flight time from Israel to Tokyo is 12 hours, when there is a flight, plus customs, lading and unlading, yadda yadda, y’all ain’t getting no 24 hour turn around, from any hour of the day or night pulling the trigger, and it still doesn’t address the issues of proprietary data or materials selection.

If proprietary data *is* your business (eg limited number runs of artwork) then first, second, third, fourth, and so on, 99th, priority is that data never gets out, anywhere, ever, even temporarily, the instant it is even suspected that it *might* have, your entire reputation just went down the shitter forever.

You can do all sorts of tricks, for example map makers include fictitious objects and places, which detects copying, and I can’t tell you how many people do this with stl and dxf files, it’s incredibly common, in fact it is more common than not… I could name you one motor vehicle component, it’s made in one of four different places, and you can tell which one by measuring a particular dimension…. but it doesn’t prevent dupes, it just makes them easy to detect after the event.

Which is fine for mass produced shit, short run is a different world entirely.

Plus, security is modular. If you release an app you wrote in 8 hours, with basic out of the box security measures, and it takes off, you will be taking follow-on funding, and one of the things you’ll be using that for is improved security (along with all the scalability shit, load balancing, etc.)

Let’s keep arguing.

Output beats no output, every time. That guy who wrote the “Yo” app beats the guy who will write the world’s best OS as soon as insert excuse here. Excuses are like assholes, everyone’s got one, and I’ve watched good enough beat best in theory all my life.

I do know what 24 hour turnaround means. In this case, the dentist in Japan orders the implant at 9 in the morning, by 5 PM it’s on the plane, tomorrow morning it’s in the customer’s mouth. That IS what you were talking about, no?

Now, what I used to do was not running the office copying machine. I used to make the cutting bits by hand, take a 2D pdf design and turn it into a 2.5D relief, pick a cutting strategy, etc. CNC is not 3D printing, no matter what you do. Not saying I was a genius at it, not saying that I came anywhere near the boss, who had done the whole apprenticeship dodging wrenches while using a pantograph (WHAT THE FUCK, BOY, DIDN’T HAVE NO PANTOGRAPHS IN MY DAY!” *wrench comes flying by*)but “ensure tray A is loaded with A4, hit “print”” it was not. So I do actually have a bit of a clue here.

I’ve never owned any kind of tailored suit. The one guy I know who was a tailor his whole life, started out long before any kind of laser cutting, advised me to stick with high-end storebought machine-cut and sewn, and have the suits tailored to me after purchase. Said the whole bespoke suit thing was a bunch of marketing horseshit. I don’t know or care one way or the other. But I do know that the Liberty ships you bring up as an example of worksmanship were known for being considered by pre-war shipwrights as shoddy work, a compromise of speed and price for quality, welded instead of riveted, unsafe deathtraps, etc. How true was that? Well, there was some truth to it, but not all. It’s always a tradeoff between craftsmanship and price/availability/speed.

Now, as for proprietary info. This is not a problem exclusive to this situation. The second you deploy a design, it ceases to be proprietary. Even a bomb fuse-it works 99.999% of the time? The 100,000th one will get dug up and taken apart. I know a CNC/engineering shop run by a no shit mechanical engineer luminary, classic X+operator case. They make unique stuff. But guess what-the second the demand curve takes off, China copies it. There’s always a tradeoff between secrecy and deployment.

I hope there is a big enough niche for you to survive, and that it doesn’t turn into a marketing operation, which you’d hate. But, if the only way to find out is to find out, it’s a fools rush in type of deal. But then again, the guy with the Yo app made it big, without any kind of testing. No way to find out how many people would use an app that just let you say “Yo” beforehand.

PS-technically, by your lights, I AM in “Palestine”, whatever THAT is. We don’t let those guys have CNC machines, fortunately, they cause enough problems as it is.

Anyone setting off on creating their own business must also have all their ducks in a row when it comes to navigating the legal environment, tax codes, permits and restrictions, etc. Those administrative burdens only become more complex when employees are added into the mix. You could be a hard working and honest businessman with many satisfied customers, but if you’re encroaching on the big boys and you’re in violation of any minor aspect of the esoteric zoning, health and safety, or tax codes, get ready for business-crushing compliance and legal costs.

Even if you can make a profit, as a clever and enterprising individual cutting your own cloth and selling a product or service to willing buyers, you are already starting from the inside of a deep pit that you must climb your way out of. Maybe the above is an over-exaggeration. I’ve never set out on an entrepreneurial pursuit, but I suspect it’s not so far off the mark based on what I’ve seen from small business sentiment surveys; I have also noticed increasing vacancies in commercial real estate on well-traveled high streets. It has almost gotten to the point to where every 4th or 5th unit is vacant in some areas. I simply can’t imagine that many businesses can turn a profit with leasing costs as high as they are, and with the decreasing disposable income of the western consumer. Who knows how many would-be entrepreneurs this asset bubble has crushed.

If one were to put forth a conspiracy theory, perhaps the big businesses in the industry have pushed for things to be this way. Increasing administrative burdens and leasing costs means that only those who can afford to hire compliance accountants and legal aides as a small fraction of their entire operation can navigate this environment and remain profitable. I think I recall Amazon saying something to that affect a year ago.

Slightly off topic, but this whole subject brings the concept of the sari-sari store to mind. A sari-sari store is a small window store often on the side of the road or out of a home that sells common goods like food, medicine, coffee, and candy at a small markup to locals who can’t afford or can’t be bothered to travel to a mall or grocery store to get the goods. They are common in the Philippines, and allow poor people access to food and medicine without going through the trouble and cost of traveling to a major point of commerce, and the seller the ability to make a living income providing for their neighbors. This kind of arrangement would be illegal in the west, and the business owner could potentially face jail time. An arrangement of individual sovereignty is long overdue in this backward society.