Comment by zevon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zevon | Hacker News Reader

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What do all these machine shops without any need for modern machinery and processes actually do?

Seriously though, of course you can make a living with old tools - however, even the village metal workshop around here has at least one big-ass laser cutter and a CNC mill next to all their old(er) lathes, mills, brakes, presses and other toys. Many oldschool fabricators I spoke to over the last few years are quite interested in what laser welding brings/will bring to the table. Basically all smaller fabrication companies I've seen (the long tail of the car industry and other bigger industries, mostly) are continually upgrading their infrastructure with all sorts of robots and other automation widgets. And so on.

No one said that they had no need for modern machinery. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. If you have a manufacturing process that was dialed in perfectly 20 years ago, and your customer(s) is still buying those parts, made on that machine, there is no benefit to moving them to another machine that now has to be set up just right, have the new parts coming off it QC'd to make sure that they are identical to what came off the old one, etc.

It's work that you don't need to do and that you won't get paid for. If the old machine breaks, then maybe it would make sense to move the job to something newer.

I used to work with someone whose entire business was retrofitting old machine tools with modern controllers when the decades-old electronics failed. You'd be amazed how much of this stuff is still out there.

Well, you kind said that literally. And I did not say that one should needlessly move processes to different infrastructure without a good reason. Anyway, I don't think our opinions are very dissimilar.

btw: I think I have a reasonably solid idea of a range of fabrication environments, the oldest piece of machinery I'm responsible for in my professional life is about 70 years old (its basic design is decades older) and some of my personal stuff (sewing machines, mostly) is more than 100 years old. I'm really not against using what works at all.

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