Listening to another pitch about how AI can empower workers at various jobs across my industry, I was striken by the comparison in the title
3d printing, just like generative models, have it’s actual niche uses, where it’s obvious downsides are irrelevant and they come handy, e.g. prototyping, replacements, small-series production
Where it comes to the top-down AI promotion trend, it feels not unlike the idea of printing the whole product - a car, or a house, from the smallest details - applying the least effective method, doomed to have a worse than average outcome due to technological limitations
And screws, the thing that we nailed down long before, and that is completely incompatible with that mode of production, is a screaming, growling, shrieking example of how helpful tech can be mispurposed in the most stupid way
I 3d print screws all the time. They are fine for many uses.
But would you advocate for trying to integrate 3D printed fasteners into bridge construction?
LLMs do actually have a lot of use, asking it to rephrase an email or report to make it more concise can save a considerable amount of time but trying to get an LLM to perform complex calculations isn’t what it’s made to do and it fails at it.
Also just to be pedantic but do you use 3D printed screws or 3D printed bolts?
That would be like: a human taking a calculator and then installing a human emulator on it, just so that it can make mistakes that feel similar to human mistakes, just taking much more energy and making the mistakes more frequently.
Like a 1/4 20 bolt? Or and m3 screw?
Or are we talking about spiral threads incorporated into your design?
They’re great when you need one or 2 and they’re used properly.
But if I need 2,000 screws, I’m going to the hardware store instead of spending 82 hours printing screws.
Can you elaborate further? What conditions make your usage fitting? I guess it’s about having other materials made from plastic as well.
As someone that also 3d prints screws, I can share my reasoning.
I am a westerner living in a non-western country. Communication with local people can sometimes be difficult, especially on the acquisition of technical components, including with screws. Often I need a specific kind of screw for a specific task, and often the screw does not need to be particularly strong. I would rather communicate exact specifications to a computer and get exact results than be at the mercy of polite miscommunication, and have to adapt all my printing to what is available locally.
I would also rather keep production as local as possible instead of outsourcing it to people I don’t know, or having it flown overseas.
In general, if I can 3d print something I need, I will. Having a database of parts, components, and tools is very helpful, even if it takes less time to just order it. There is a reproducibility, security, and satisfaction to doing it all yourself.
As an aside, I have learned something. 3d printing has enabled me to live better than I did before leaving the western world, because I can make things now I never dreamed of before. This makes me realize that we can distribute and localize significantly more production than previously possible.
I now believe every household should have a 3d printer and a laser cutter for this reason, and houses should be built with techniques and components that utilize both automatically as largely as possible. By democratizing production, power becomes much more distributed and equitable, without any claw backs of the old mechanisms of doing things.
This also allows easy repairs or expansion of a house. Something breaks? Print or cut the part and replace it from a library of parts. Everyone can understand raw materials no matter where you go, so the standard of living becomes planetary.
That is a part of the real change.
I have also done this. But it’s because I was too lazy to go buy a screw