How to manufacture a product in the USA

[Robert Teeter]

Here is an article about what can be done.  Just needs money.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/0026245/a-us-apple-factory-may-be-robot-city

Bob Teeter

[John Griessen]

On 12/09/2012 01:29 PM, Robert Teeter wrote:
> article about what can be done. Just needs money.

Money and product are one and the same. Money holds place for
time and effort. Product does same. "Just" needs a little justification
or it's just a circular argument.

It *will* be fun to see what Apple spends on today for a robot city.

[Cube Spawn]

I laugh at them, 

Just like Microsoft blew mind boggling sums to "capture" the server market by building thier own "silo-server-software" which linux ignored and ran right by - if and when manufacturing gains traction as open source, the level of automation will make thier efforts look "quaint"  and generally laughable - if they have any vision, they'll sponsor open source initiatives to bring this about....

Who wants to bet they wont instead try to do it all themselves? -- it'll be shiny and flashy, and look like scrap metal 5 years later....

Been running through the ROS tutorials this week, I'm now totally on-board - just looked at a couple initiatives to apply ROS to industrial automation...,

 making more Cube parts to finish up the last couple mechanical details on the ultimaker module.

Realistic or not - I'd like to present a 6 cell CubeSpawn array (3 movers, 3 machines) at a maker faire somewhere late next year. 

[John Griessen]

On 12/09/2012 05:04 PM, Cube Spawn wrote:
> I'd like to present a 6 cell CubeSpawn array (3 movers, 3 machines) at a maker faire

What does a cell mean in that sentence? I thought movers were in rows or tracks as you see it.
Were you using cell like the word item -- a place holder word, or meaning cell as in bolted down work cell?

John

[Data Pathway]

I use the word "cube" a lot and its not very descriptive, I like to think of a functional cube with a processing module installed as a work cell.

So in this usage it does, in fact mean "work cell"

the analogy is also biological since the "movers" are in rows with "cells" on each side...

very similar in form and purpose to a circulatory system.

I really wish I were a better documentor, the wiki looks pretty sparse compared to the piles of scribbled matter lying in my study.. ;-)

eventually!

[John Griessen]

On 12/09/2012 06:09 PM, Data Pathway wrote:
> it does, in fact mean "work cell"

But that space is an aisle, rather than a squarish zone?
Overlapping the other two "cells"?

What would that look like? 3 movers, that is?

[CubeSpawn]

I'm drawing the answer to this question... forthcoming...

[James Jones]

So this is what I have in mind for a maker-faire showing:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103828779781480193226/albums/5810419303650014753/5821091409974670594?banner=pwa

the yellow cubes are motion, the "open" frames are a load/unload station, 3 functional cubes in the back row - hopefully a mill lathe and 3d printer module...

I'll add the motion for the pallet movers next - I'm totally guesstimating, but the materials and motors for the pallet mover motion cubes should be less than $300 each...