Horrors of their first budget.

[Gibbon]

Sure but doesn't happen without training, if you sack some low level ops and replace the systems with some high level stuff, the low level ops won't necessarily know how to work them (even with training). It can definitely create jobs, but it also kills jobs.

Absolutely, the challenge is to evolve. Take a lot of the mining towns, one of which I was brought up in; both my grandfathers were pit deputies and they were adamant that their children were not going down the pit. Also what amazes me is both my grandfathers moved into the coal fields for work from else where, but so many in those places still expect the work to come to them?

People also forgot how violent and tribal those places were, with all the expectant sexism and racism. In the town I grew up in every Xmas, bank holiday was like watching the warriors or wanderers with all the pit village boys descending for a fight.

[dsc]

Plenty of companies are competing by better automation

HPC Services | British Manufacturing | CNC Turning Specialists

Evolve

For mass (or partially mass) production, CNC is a must, so there's no denying there you need to upgrade / automate etc. Small runs of parts are not so great for CNC, as there's a fairly big cost upfront to make tooling / fixtures / write code, so the overall cost is high in that case, but whenever you get quotes for parts, compare price per part for a run of say 10 parts vs 1000 parts and you'll see why CNC makes sense. So to compete with...well anyone really, at least in the machining industry, you have to have CNCs, but the issue is hourly rates in the UK, hence places like Poland / Romania / Czechia etc. often beat quotes from the UK (and they often offer really good knowledge base / skills as well).

[DoctorStrangelove]

Absolutely, the challenge is to evolve. Take a lot of the mining towns, one of which I was brought up in; both my grandfathers were pit deputies and they were adamant that their children were not going down the pit. Also what amazes me is both my grandfathers moved into the coal fields for work from else where, but so many in those places still expect the work to come to them?

People also forgot how violent and tribal those places were, with all the expectant sexism and racism. In the town I grew up in every Xmas, bank holiday was like watching the warriors or wanderers with all the pit village boys descending for a fight.

Yet there are posters on the Welsh Coal Mines site I lurk on who seem to miss working down holes in the ground.

I find it beyond my comprehension but there you go.

Discovered the other day that a distant relative died in Ferndale colliery by falling out of the cage at the grand old age of 17 ("in his 18th year"). It would appear that he was a Darwin Award winner, poor sod.

[vetran]

What goldengoose?

Businesses & employees that pay tax in the UK.

[vetran]

For mass (or partially mass) production, CNC is a must, so there's no denying there you need to upgrade / automate etc. Small runs of parts are not so great for CNC, as there's a fairly big cost upfront to make tooling / fixtures / write code, so the overall cost is high in that case, but whenever you get quotes for parts, compare price per part for a run of say 10 parts vs 1000 parts and you'll see why CNC makes sense. So to compete with...well anyone really, at least in the machining industry, you have to have CNCs, but the issue is hourly rates in the UK, hence places like Poland / Romania / Czechia etc. often beat quotes from the UK (and they often offer really good knowledge base / skills as well).

Mass production i.e. 10s of thousands to millions of products you need moulds or custom machines.

CNC is great for custom jobs there is plenty of work going on creating custom cutting boards, mugs on mass produced products bought from China.

In the UK my ex employer still assembles custom jobs from sub assemblies and decals, they just do it in a centralised assembly shop. Customers can still order a short run of customised units. But normally if they want 50,000 units they have to wait until the custom units are shipped from Africa. A hybrid fulfillment solution may also work.

[dsc]

Mass production i.e. 10s of thousands to millions of products you need moulds or custom machines.

CNC is great for custom jobs there is plenty of work going on creating custom cutting boards, mugs on mass produced products bought from China.

In the UK my ex employer still assembles custom jobs from sub assemblies and decals, they just do it in a centralised assembly shop. Customers can still order a short run of customised units. But normally if they want 50,000 units they have to wait until the custom units are shipped from Africa. A hybrid fulfillment solution may also work.

Depends on the product, look at the gun industry in the US, heaps and heaps of CNC machines churning parts day and night. Also don't forget, moulds cost a ton of money, if you want to customise the product, you then need another mould and you've lost money on the first one.

[dsc]

Businesses & employees that pay tax in the UK.

As in they are all going to leave suddenly? and move where now that a British passport needs a visa pretty much anywhere? whoever wanted to leave, left before / after Brexit, the rest are stuck in this tuliphole forever.

[willendure]

On the subject of automation. The Japanese baby boom started 20 years before ours, so their population peeked earlier. Manfacturing was huge in Japan which is why they were so wealthy and powerful up to the 80s. But their country is far more politically unified than the UK, they basically have 1 party in power for long periods of time, and near zero immigration. This meant that they could implement long term plans as their working population peaked in size, and they automated massively. The Seiko watch I am wearing is one of something like 30,000 made every day on a production line that it close to 100% automated for example. Amazing what you can do when you have the money, brains, and dedication to doing it, but above all the political unity that enables a country to keep going after the same idea for long stretches of time.

There are a lot of similarities with the UK and Germany, in terms of our demographics to what happened to Japan 20 or 30 years ago. We still have wealth, and brains. Somehow I just cannot see us having the ability to keep our tulip together politically in the same way. For one thing, we seem to be going down the path of immigration to fill out the demographics.

[vetran]

Depends on the product, look at the gun industry in the US, heaps and heaps of CNC machines churning parts day and night. Also don't forget, moulds cost a ton of money, if you want to customise the product, you then need another mould and you've lost money on the first one.

CNC customising wood / plastic stocks maybe, but for metal barrel or moving parts its likely they will be cast and machined in volume. The tolerances on barrels are very exact.

For a plastic stock then they will be cast and maybe engraved via CNC.

even a modern CNC can take ages so for volume it is not great.

The completely CNC created gun is being used to avoid legal oversight which is not really going to make it the backbone of industry.

A 3d printed low volume mold can cost $100 a conventional machined metal one a few thousand $ and can then create thousands or millions of parts. Its been a while since I cast and machined metal but it is hardly fast using cnc will probably speed it up and make it cheaper.

The machine $50,000.

good guide here:

https://formlabs.com/uk/blog/injecti...SCu5FNtfoauShA

[sadkingbilly]

In the UK my ex employer still assembles custom jobs from sub assemblies and decals,.

were you EVER a contractor??