RP leveling the playing field

From: Steven (themissinglink@eznetinc.com)
Date: Sat Dec 05 1998 - 18:39:50 EET


I received this response from a gold investor forum where I was explaining
CAD/CAM and it's implications:

"I wonder what the Abyssinians will do now in the great jewelry arms race.
Can you imagine one of these ancient artists squatting in front of his
charcoal fire, blowpipe and clay crucible in hand carefully sintering layers
of gold? It strikes me as odd that an artisan would want to mimic mass
production process, but then a lot strikes me as odd in the world of gold
and silver. I guess one has to eat and wish you well but your art is so
beautiful I wish there was a way you could keep doing it the right way and
hire someone to mass produce it. ( 8..^ ( ) "

My response:

You know, I started out wanting to be a goldsmith in the idealistic hope of
being handsomely rewarded for creativity but this competitive marketplace
and the ugliness of overhead forced reality on me. I still get to be
creative but must employ all manner of modern tools to increase my volume.
This 3D solid modeling and stereolithography is but the next tool.

I always stand in awe when I go to the museum and see chain mail armor and
jewelry made over 100 years ago without bottled gas, flexible shaft motors,
and electricity in general. I know that the craftsman must have spent half
a year on a single project whereas I can afford to spend 8 to ten hours on a
typical project that the consumer is willing to pay a little extra for over
a mass produced "equivalent". There are not many patrons left willing or
able to support a craftsman in a six month project.

I really dont have any intentions of mass producing things but these tools
will give me the edge up against the mass producers pricing power and I will
be making unique designs as I always have. I will be able to take a
successful design and customize it to the individuals need without spending
an additional 6 hours hand carving a new wax. I can produce magnitudes more
volume of my unique designs at the same level of model uniformity as the
mass producer with the aid of CAD/CAM.

So I look at it as efficiency and volume enhancing more than a watering down
of my craftsmanship and design. Further, this will allow me to produce more
of what I want instead of spending so much time doing contract jobs for
customers. Now, almost 90% of my time is spent doing custom work for
customers and the other 10% is spent designing for stock, doing office work,
and posting on Kitco. The custom orders tend to not be very creative as
most customers base the design on something in the store. In other words,
most are not willing to give me much creative freedom.

Now I can whip out their custom orders in 50% of my time and be able to
devote more to the designs which pop into my head all the time.

The mass producers are going to be in for a rude awakening as they realize
that they cannot thrive on cost cutting, just in time, and strong managament
of resources. Now they must go back into the marketplace and pay dearly for
design talent to compete with the likes of the small talented individual
with tools such as CAD/CAM.

Consumers will notice that designs will get less boring and redundant.

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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