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southern MN | Three D printers make stuff out of plastic type materials, they 'print' a thin layer at a time. Creating a real thing, not just a picture, no paper involved.
Now in addition to the raw material, he needs to add time involved and depreciation or cost of the printer, but still makes a good case as to the mark up of stuff.
Three D printers are a a new deal going to change some manufacturing processes a whole lot.
A $500,000 molding machine can make a part for pennies a piece, but only if you are willing to pay for and store a few million identical pieces; otherwise cleaning up, changing over, and storing the molding blanks takes a few bucks a part for all that unseen 'overhead'.
A three D printer costs more and takes a lot longer to make one piece, but the overhead of switching from one part to a different one is very very small - basically only need a bit of computer code.
So to build a million new product a year you want the molding machine. Much cheaper to make oodles of parts.
To supply parts for a 30 year old machine you want a 3D printer with a few 100 computer files of code. Much cheaper to make a few dozen of each of the different parts.
Paul | |
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Hey Case-IH........
