Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
I think maybe your view is too narrow? It's not that people don't want to make a machine, it's that now they don't have to.
When I started hobby CNC a few years ago, the only compact or desktop CNC machines were flimsy Chinese things made entirely of extrusion, expensive machines made for education/prototyping environments and the Carbide3D Nomad (which I ended up buying).
I ended up building a machine from scratch because the original Nomad was too flimsy to really cut metals, even Aluminium.
But in the last few years companies like Makera came along and sell desktop CNC machines that can cut metal for under $6k USD and there's even a toolchanger.
For just a little more, there's a Kickstarter for a 5-axis machine with mist cooling, ATC a wireless probe and it can cut steel and titanium.
And for those that want a DIY project, there seem to be plenty of folks doing CNC conversions of second-hand manual mills.
Ccecil · · focus · HN ↗
Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
Youden · · focus · HN ↗
When I started hobby CNC a few years ago, the only compact or desktop CNC machines were flimsy Chinese things made entirely of extrusion, expensive machines made for education/prototyping environments and the Carbide3D Nomad (which I ended up buying).
I ended up building a machine from scratch because the original Nomad was too flimsy to really cut metals, even Aluminium.
But in the last few years companies like Makera came along and sell desktop CNC machines that can cut metal for under $6k USD and there's even a toolchanger.
For just a little more, there's a Kickstarter for a 5-axis machine with mist cooling, ATC a wireless probe and it can cut steel and titanium.
And for those that want a DIY project, there seem to be plenty of folks doing CNC conversions of second-hand manual mills.
Ccecil · · focus · HN ↗
They use a fork of Smoothieware. [1]
We were happy/surprised to see they shared their mods. It is rare.
[1]<a href="https://github.com/MakeraInc/CarveraFirmware" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MakeraInc/CarveraFirmware