3D Printers; deficit debates; poor enough Mail 683 20110719

Mail 683 Tuesday, July 19, 2011

· 3D Printers

· Deficit Debates

·

3D Printers

Jerry,

We bought a 3D printer from Z-Corp about 5 years ago ($70,000) and it does make the models. The problem we have with the printer is that if we make scaled models of our structures the models break before we can remove the powder. Unless they have improved the binder I don’t see how it’s possible to reach into the powder and remove the wrench without breaking the model. The binder is used to hold the powder together then the extra powder is removed an super glue or epoxy is applied. If you want, I can send some pictures of the models we have made, it’s no hoax.

Regards,

Curtis Owens

I never seriously thought it was a hoax or that it would not prove to be important. The news to me is how far along we are already.

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3d printing

They are called Fabers. One of my USB core customers is Stratasys which makes the competing product to the one on the you tube video. Both companies have made products for several years in the 100K class price range. Both companies are pushing the price point down. We will all have one on our desk sooner rather than later. A friend of mine makes high end telescope mounts. His newest model was completely designed in Solid Works, a 3D cad program for mechanical design. He designed and simulated the mount before the first piece of metal was cut. He did not use a faber, but he could have used one to "print" his design and have a working model. The model, of course, would not have been made of metal and would not have been suitable as a heavy telescope mount, but he could have printed an accurate model that would have moved.

Phil

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Dentistry and 3D Printing

My dentist has a system (for a couple of years now) that works like this:

For crowns (I have had four done this way) he uses a scanner to map the surface contours of your existing tooth. This is done with some datums taken for use later. He then manually, and in about 10 minutes, touches up the contour scan to eliminate/check for spurious artifacts.

The next step is to mill down the tooth to prepare for the crown. The scanner is synched to the existing datums and maps the recontoured tooth.

The software then mates the inner and outer contours to produce a 3D model of the crown. A CNC control file is then generated, which is fed to a small machining center. The machining center, about 1 ft by 1 ft by two feet in size, has , I think, about 7 degrees of freedom and uses small ball end cutting tools to mill out the crown from a block of green ceramic which is premounted on a spindle. The machine has two cutting spindles and cuts from two sides at once. Fascinating to watch! When finished the crown is separated from it’s mount and fired to proper hardness in a small oven. Elapsed time is about 50 minutes for the machining and firing.

In my case, two crowns fitted and finished, with excellent matching against the mating teeth, in about 4 hours. The machines and software, all PC based, are about $450,000 as a complete system. Charge for the crowns is about $1600 each. The dentist can run about 4 patients a day with proper staging of the appointments, so it is a money maker with good patient results.

Best regards,

John Witt

And the conclusion is that we are closer to Minsky’s ‘Thingmaker” than ever we thought.

Deficits History

Jerry,

RE historic deficit sizes, the chart at http://logisticsmonster.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/deficitgraph.jpg is worth a look – it gives deficits by year through 2010, in both dollars and as a percent of GDP.

That "Largest Deficit In History" (less than a third of current levels) under Bush was in 2004. Interestingly, and little-mentioned, deficits dropped steadily after that through 2007.

Things started heading skyward again in 2008, allowing Dems to say "this started under Bush", but I expect the key factor there was actually Pelosi-Reid taking over the Congress in 2007. Congress writes the checks, Presidents only cash them. FY’08 was the Dem Congress’s first budget, and it shows. Then in ’09 we added Obama in the White House asking for a stimulus, and the era of trillion-dollar deficits had arrived.

My take is, Bush gets more blame than he deserves, and going along with this only helps the Dems obfuscate their responsibility for the current mess. Which in turn only encourages them in their current campaign to extend the mess till after the election next year.

Henry

I do not see this as a blame fixing thing. I have no brief for the Country Club Republicans with their crazy spending spree, and the fact that it wasn’t as bad as it could be, and that the Left predictably spent even more isn’t as important as that nothing seems to be halting the trend. Either you believe in liberty – which is to say that government isn’t the optimum means of allocating investment – or you don’t. More and more don’t. The argument that government ought to take any money lying around to spend as government wants, and that this is ‘fair’ so long as it soaks ‘the rich’ seems to be gathering strength.

I don’t want to fix blame, I want freedom back. Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

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factcheck.org

I offer this:

http://factcheck.org/2011/07/fiscal-factcheck/

“Washington’s spending has recently been higher as a percentage of the nation’s economic output than at any time since World War II. But by the same measure, Washington’s revenues are the lowest in more than 60 years.

“So does the U.S. have "a spending problem," as Republicans keep repeating in the current debate over how to reduce the nation’s record deficits? Or is the problem that taxes are not high enough? Those questions frame a long-running partisan debate, and as usual we won’t offer an opinion one way or the other. But for those seeking their own answers, we can offer some fiscal history and factual context.” <snip>

Mark

The argument is essentially that revenue as a percentage of GDP is very low, and more taxes are fair: we can afford all this spending, we just need to raise taxes in order to pay for it.

Obviously I don’t believe that, but the argument is made. As for me, I want to eliminate the bunny inspectors, and a great deal of other stuff that the government is doing for us. I want to restore the Republic of de Tocqueville in which citizens and associations did most of the civic functions, not government. Give me liberty…

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The Debt Ceiling debate in US

Hi Jerry

I came across this blog recently and have found the content riveting. From the global warming climate debate, to war in the Middle East and central Asia, to the domestic concerns of the USA. As a Canadian living close to the border, local news from New York often times feels like local news just down the block from Oakville where I hale from (just west of Toronto).

Here is my take 2 cents for what it is worth, as an outside observer. Obama is well on his way to herding the GOP elephant into another political box, in which it will be perceived by the independent vote — which seems to control all Presidential elections, but not the Congressional majorities — as close to treasonous.

History operates in a long arc, and as you point out on your site often, in the greater sceme of things this too may pass.

But as a fiscal conservative what is happening in the US makes one apprehensive. That a great nation and the last defender of free market principles is being hurt in the process only renders the tragedy more painful.

Gold at $1600 an ounce may be a commentary on the behaviour of the Fed; but you can’t eat the stuff. One must take with a grain of salt any politician who says we have a plan to balance the budget in five years. What can one say about politicians who have no plan to ever balance the budget?

My best to you….

Sam Mattina

They show no means for getting rid of the bunny inspectors, either. And it’s a joke that the shovels weren’t as ready as we supposed. Let’s go borrow more mone. We are only borrowing $180,000,000 an hour now…

The article puts an important point most clearly

Being poor in America is NOT being homeless on the street. It’s just a whole lot better than being poor in Brazil or most any other country.

63.7% of our "poor" have cable service. 38.2% have computers. 48.6% have coffee makers.

Being poor isn’t what it used to be http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/07/being-poor-isnt-what-it-used-be

If I recall correctly the official definition of "poor" in America is the bottom X% of the nation’s incomes set as a dollar figure. If it is set as a percentage of all incomes you can never spend you way into being a nation with nobody in poverty. You’ll always have X% poor. So poor that 78.3% have air conditioners. 32.2% have 3 or more TVs.

Click through to http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty to see a full report.

This is nonsense. We need to set the bar at say "air conditioning" rather than at jacuzzi (0.6%). They can bloody well do their own dishes (25%).

{^_^}

I would go further. While no one should be starving, poverty is primarily a local problem, and is best left to civic pride and charity. It is not charity to send the public hangman to collect money to give to the poor. We can institutionalize a safety net, but what we are building is not a net.