On Sat, 30 Oct 1999, Michael Rees wrote:
> As a sculptor I will probably never make a steel mold in my life. I do have need
> regularly for parts, one offs and duplicates up to 100. So I regularly make use
> of soft tooling. Now an rp machine that could soft tool? hmmmm. Isn't there an UV
> cureable silicone out there?
It would be nice...then again, almost anything I can think of to do
with RP soft tooling, it's not that hard to do by hand. Wonderful
stuff, RTV rubber.
> Finally, I think that there is probably room for all of this. High end RP/RT. Low
> End concept modelers for the desktop. Kinko's modelers and 3D portraits, etc.,. I
> still think the real problem is useable, hobby like cad. Fun and competent all at
> once. Hardly any buttons.
Yeah - the input side. I don't know how hard most people tend to find
CAD programs, but I had quite the long learning curve with Rhino, and
I thought I was a good candidate, what with the math degree and the
visualizing practice I'd had already.
And I'd add to the advent of usable CAD, large public-domain libraries
of models to work from. I want a new one-off chair, so I surf to the
library, look at a big list of chair forms, pick the few closest to
what I want, grab a bunch of likely-looking textures, and start
tinkering.
> Fusioneng@aol.com wrote:
> > All of our children will be sending us 3D family portraits. After a short
> > time instead of relenquishing them to a photo album. Their will be a large
> > closet packed full with 3D portraits and busts. I think the need for artistic
> > people (of which I am not) will actually rise. The medium on which they work
> > will be much more efficient, so in turn they will be able to work much
> > faster. But a world without artisitic people would be very bland.
We like to think so. Anyway, you've put your finger on the trouble
with 3D stuff: it just takes up too much space for most people to give
much of it houseroom. How about building those busts in memory foam:
I keep mine scrunched into little boxes and only let them out when I
want to look at them? Like those grow animals you put in glasses of
water.
Aside, if you haven't read _The Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson, you
might like to. It presents itself as speculative fiction about
nanotechnology, but it's really about RP. (There's some plot and
characters too, sort of, but you can read around that part.) That guy
has more ideas per page than I do in most years.
> > The other fork in the road that RP must travel is in the skilled trades.
> > Their is a huge shortage of skilled tool and mold makers in the world. The
> > average age of a moldmaker in the USA is around 50. Currently there are
> > almost no training programs to replace these people. What most people don't
> > realize is without a manufacturing base this country is doomed. Mold and tool
> > makers make all manufactung today possible. Most mold makers today make more
> > than a dentist or a lawyer or even a judge. Just look in any phone book at
> > the listings for Lawyers and Dentists. Then look for mold shops. Yet all the
> > high school counselors and parents are sending their kids to college for
> > these professions in increasing numbers. Many go to school for 6 or 8 years
> > then can only find a job when their done at McDonalds. In my entire lifetime
> > I have only met one black toolmaker, and one female moldmaker why is that. I
> > feel there is something terribly wrong in our education system.
Perhaps this isn't very RP-specific, but I agree utterly. Growing up
in haute-bourge suburbia, I was 24 before I ever saw a machine shop,
or even knew there was such a thing. The moment I saw one (it was the
physics shop at U Penn) I knew there was a whole world of occupations
in there, that I would have been perfectly suited to, but there was no
way to get there from the educational path I had travelled.
Why was I taking stupid courses in "wood shop" in high school instead
of learning something useful? Many programmers of my generation
learned by teaching ourselves on junky old computers, that were
deductible donations from companies which now benefit from our having
had that opportunity: we're their labor pool. Couldn't industrial
companies give their old Bridgeports to schools, or sponsor
internships or something?
I don't know what caused manufacturing processes to be ignored by the
educational system - liability problems? guild mentality? - but it's
time to get over it now. Maybe, as you say, already too late.
If RP/CAD provides an alternate path for young people into the
manufacturing world, one that isn't blocked by whatever obstacles are
in place now, that alone will be an incalculable social benefit.
-Sheba
Bathsheba Grossman (831) 429-8224
Digital Sculpture http://www.bathsheba.com
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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