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Amazing On Demand Manufacturing
More Lies, Abuse, Other Reprehensible Practices from the Copyright Cartel
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Peculiar Genius of Personal Fabrication
As a follow-up to my emachineshop post a few weeks ago, there's a great article in the September issue of Wired (on your newstand now, not yet online) about mini fabrication labs popping up all over the place. These labs use the latest in affordable, computerized tools to build one-off devices and parts. Author Clive Thompson interviews eMachineShop founder Jim Lewis and uses the eMachineShop software to create his own one-off guitar to test the process. The author also discusses MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld's worldwide network of fab labs and spends some time inside Saul Griffith's California-based SquidLabs.While the equipment isn't cheap, it's not as much as you'd think. Everything in the shops discussed in the article - vacuum formers, laser cutters, milling machines - could be bought for between $50,000 and $100,000. Further, software like eMachineShop makes using the tools possible for anyone. After each one of Gershenfeld's mini labs opened, people showed up to create an amazing array of things. Among the samples in the article:
- A Norwegian sheepherder built GPS-enabled tags for his flock
- An Indian businessman created and electrode-driven device to measure the fat content of milk
- A Boston teen created a motion-detector security system for her dairy.
The implications for this - the idea that the cost of prototyping is dropping to near zero and tools for design will be understandable and available to anyone with high school-level computer skills - are profound. Today the market is for one-offs - things no big company will make. But in the future this may well replace the R&D and design departments at many, even most, product companies. What has begun to happen to software - small, innovative (and often open source) software companies spring into existence to be quickly bought by big behemoths who can no longer innovate on their own - could well become the norm physical products. Have a better idea for a derailleur shifter on a bike? Prototype it on your own. Designed a spiffy new fuel injector nozzle to drive up fuel mileage? Crank out a few and see if they work.
There will likely never be anything as cost effective as mass production, and there will remain a need to understand materials science, engineering, etc. But today the understanding isn't enough. You need access to massive amounts of capital to test and develop new products. It's this accumulation of capital that allows big corporations to make the rules about what is saleable, profitable, and appropriate. In the future your knowledge of some basic engineering principles combined with a good idea may be all it takes to completely remake a product category. That has to be a scary idea for big corporations everywhere.
Terry Frazier at 2:22 PM
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Thursday, August 4, 2005
Amazing On Demand Manufacturing
If you’re worried sick about all the outsourcing to China, losing sleep over the wholesale shift of manufacturing jobs to the Asia-Pacific region, and constantly banging your head on the wailing wall of “free” trade please have a look at the future – www.emachineshop.com.
A friend in the modeling business pointed me to this site and it is, in a word, amazing. If you’ve ever tried to have any custom manufacturing done you know what a nightmare it is just to get someone to quote your project. Getting it approved – i.e. making sure it can actually be done the way you want it done – is nearly impossible. It doesn’t matter where you do it – here, Singapore, China, wherever – it’s all the same. One giant, expensive, unreliable pain in the ass.
CAD programs made it possible to design complex objects via computer. CNC machines made it possible for those drawings to become complete machining instructions. 3D printers made it possible to build accurate models without investing in tooling and dies. But none of these things were connected in a way that helped the small innovator get to market. And none were especially affordable.CAD programs are renowned for their steep learning curves and hideous license fees. 3D printers still run close to a half-million dollars. And getting a CNC shop to talk to you about your small project? Priceless.
eMachineShop has automated this error-prone process and removed the need for human intervention in the frustrating estimate/quote/approve cycle. They provide a free, – yes, free – CAD program you can use to design your project. When you submit the drawings you get an automatic approval. If the machine you want to use can’t do the job you get suggestions on how to change it. You can do one, or thousands. And you get a quote right away. You can do what-if scenarios to your heart’s content and no snarky sales guy is going to bitch about your changes.
I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing – this CAD software must be crap. Well, eMachineShop is the brainchild of Jim Lewis, founder of Micro Logic Corp. and developer of the venerable PIM Info Select.His software is not crap. And this idea could change everything. All kinds of niche products become viable, and the information gap between regular people with ideas and manufacturing specialists with access just got crushed. This is what happens when smart software people put their minds to things, and it’s why all the moaning about outsourcing and China may be moot in the long run.
I can already think of at least two dozen people who, with a few thousand dollars, can now launch new businesses around cool ideas they’ve had for years. If you ever had a product idea but didn’t know where to begin you owe it to yourself to check out eMachineShop.com
Terry Frazier at 10:13 AM
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Sunday, May 22, 2005
More Lies, Abuse, Other Reprehensible Practices from the Copyright Cartel
A lecturer at Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV in Spain has lost his job and been asked to remove all record of his employment at the university for giving a lecture on the legal uses of P2P networks.
Jorge Cortell has been lecturing on intellectual property at the university for five years. Earlier this month Jorge was asked to give a lecture on P2P as a part of Free Culture week. But Jorge made the mistake of telling Spains copyright cartel SGAE, the National Police, and the Attorney General in advance.
During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings). I was even going to use the network to "prove" that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society "SGAE" had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that "P2P networks are ilegal" (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it.
The aforementioned agencies informed their cohorts in the industry cartels and shortly Promusicae the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA and our very own MPAA were pouncing on the Dean, the University, and everyone they could find with threats, warnings, lies, and abuse to stop the lecture.
The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association "Promusicae" as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.
Later on that day (May 4th, I will never forget), I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to "make sure I did not teach there again", and on a second call saying "it's your choice, but also your responsibility".
The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.
Once again we have morally reprehensible actions being used to stifle the spread of legal technologies, and justified on the claims of stopping piracy. Mr. Cortell was not engaged in piracy, nor was he promoting it. He was demonstrating the effective use of technology for legally sharing both copyrighted and non-copyrighted works. And once more we have examples that nothing the Copyright Cartel tells us can be trusted not their numbers, not their judgement of technology, not their interpretation of whats legal. Lawrence Lessig reports today on how Bilboard magazine legal affairs editor Susan Butler has written a piece grossly misrepresenting Copyright, Creative Commons, and an authors right to choose:
As Creative Commons chairman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig travels the world encouraging international adoption of Creative Commons, the movement has begun to arouse concern in the music business. Some industry leaders say that the group's approach -- applauded by many -- is in effect a Trojan horse that could erode copyright protection or harm unwitting artists."My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former chairman of the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force.
The Cartel has shown a complete lack of integrity, ethics, and honesty in their actions on Copyright, and they will continue to act this way as long as it works. We need to make sure our legislators know were watching, and we will no longer tolerate the making of bad legislation and support of corrupt business practices as a quid pro quo for nice contributions and rubbing elbows with stars. EFF has an action alert on the Broadcast Flag. Thats a good place to start.
The lawyers and lobbyists are moving fast, but you can move faster. Tell your representative you don't want Hollywood to hobble your digital media devices, and knock out the Broadcast Flag for good.Make your voice heard with the EFF Action Center:
Terry Frazier at 10:43 AM
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