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
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
A note that Aerospace has absolutely leaned into 3D printing metal parts since they can make parts much lighter and be just as strong.
The main use of LLMs, as far as I can see, is to replace the very people pushing it on everyone.
lectricleopard@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s about being willing to eat the nre for one-off special purpose parts that have geometries not attainable by casting or machining.
3d printing is not the default fabrication method now that we’re getting good at it. It just shines in certain applications.
AI is often pitched as being able to do anything, eventually. We even try to use passive fail safes over active ones, a century after electricity became commonly available. Because that will always be a better solution by the nature of the options. AI is the same way. It is a distillation of human English language that is written. Why you would think that that could eventually replace all software developers, or any other field that produces text as its output makes any sense is beyond me. I can’t see how that could be true.
kescusay@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Exactly. It’s not true. Any company that fires all of its developers and sets up some poor intern to prompt-engineer updates to their codebase is going to fail spectacularly.
Source: I’m a software developer and use LLMs regularly. There are certain tasks they are very good at, but anyone who commits unexamined code generated by an LLM gets exactly what they deserve.
Fondots@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Getting a little theoretical here
With the current state of the technology, 3d printing lags behind some traditional manufacturing techniques like machining and in terms of speed, cost, quality, available materials, etc. except for some relatively niche cases.
However, that gap is closing a bit every day, it may or may not ever catch up completely or surpass the old technique in those aspects
But if it does ever get close, I could very much see 3d printing being a preferred method
Subtractive manufacturing like machining, by design, creates a lot of waste, all of the chips and off cuts that are removed from the stock are either discarded or require additional energy and/or materials to recycle.
And things like injection molding require custom molds that wear out over time, and can be expensive to design and manufacture
And in either case, you’re largely locked into making one thing on an assembly line at a time, and to switch over to a different product you’re probably going to need to switch out a lot of the molds and tooling, recalibrate everything, etc. which can be time consuming.
With 3d printing, you could theoretically use only the amount of material that’s actually in the finished product (if you design it that it doesn’t require any external supports ) you don’t need any custom tooling or mold, just generic, interchangeable nozzles (for FDM, LCD screens or lasers or whatever the equivalent is for other printing technologies) and you could switch production from one item to another by just hitting print on a different file.
Again, we’re not there, may never be there, but it’s a cool thing to think about
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 weeks ago
Yea, should say: FDM 3D printing a screw with PLA vertically in vase mode.
But thats a bit long winded.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Would that not be ironic indeed? Imagine they go for world domination and extermination of their slaves, only for that tech to be useful only for replacing them, and now it’s open-source.
The “unwashed” use it gladly, and our main problem is eliminated.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
They have but its only for parts that warrant it by combining multiple pieces into one part, or a part that is highly complex to machine. Because its an expensive and time consuming process to print, wash, sinter, and hope the warp is still in spec, and still requires machining for features and faces that mate to other parts