Brexit, The Economy and House Prices (Part 2)

setmefree2

I watched a Bloomberg interview with Varadkar this morning. He's been quoted as saying

Varadkar says leaders 'confused and puzzled' over UK's stance on trade with EU

The Taoiseach suggests Britain currently has 'the best trade deal possible' with Europe

TBH I was confused, puzzled and down right astonished at his lack of depth of knowledge abour Brexit.

Varadkar - we're leaving - get your head out of the ground and get your country ready.

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

The difference is that with 3D printers the cost of changing from one design to another on the production line is zero. The cost of changing what you're making on a production line that uses moulds and most other mass production techniques is considerable. Economies of scale are lost if you keep changing what you're making on a mass production line, but that's not true for a 3D printer. 3D printing offers incredibly flexibility and agility - I don't think I need to explain the benefits of that!

But as I have noted, there is very little demand and need for one off items. The two biggest manufactured goods are food and cars and we both agree these 'printers' are not going to do much there as they are very volume businesses

You seem a little obsessed with calling 3D printing 'mini factories' or 'crippled factory lines'... why the need to give it a name that tried to make it sound negative? if you don't like 3D printing, use additive manufacturing. It's the correct term, it's accurately descriptive, and it's a neutral term - far more appropriate for discussing the merits (or not) of anything so you don't sound like you have an odd axe to grind.

They should not be called printers as they are not at all comparable to printing documents

Calling them crippled mini factory lines is a very apt description, they are crippled in that they cant do what the bigger lines can do and they are mini because they are smaller.

Anyway in ten years time we will see one way or another. I doubt they will have made much of a difference at all

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

The difference is that with 3D printers the cost of changing from one design to another on the production line is zero.

No it isn't you need to pay someone to design a new kettle on the software and often you will find your first iteration was a bit !!!! or didn't work or could be better or wasn't quite what you wanted. A few iterations later you might have what you were looking for. So at say $500 a day for a competent professional with 3 days work you have your $1500 kettle. Or if you design the kettle yourself its your own 3 days lost which needs to be factored in

or you could log onto amazon and buy one of the existing 1,000 different kettle designs for under $50

GreatApe

Now if we could build a pizza printer now your talking

Replace all those manufacturing jobs in pizza joints putting pizzas together with a table sized pizza 'printer'. Hopper for the ingredients just hit the desired pizza on a touch screen wait 20 minutes and out pops a perfectly cooked pizza from raw ingridents in the hopper. Make it so it is like a conveyor oven and so it can make and cook 2 per minute and you have yourself a near fully automated pizza restaurant. Make it like a vending machine so it output the pizza in a box for take away and add delivery by a pavement driven mini vehicle drone and you get hot pizza delivered to your door for £3 instead of £13 with no human input at all

Same for all sorts of food. A Hamburger 'printer' to replace all those back of house fast food manufacturing jobs. etc

Of course calling them printers is silly. We should call them fully automated mini factories or assembly lines.

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

But as I have noted, there is very little demand and need for one off items. The two biggest manufactured goods are food and cars and we both agree these 'printers' are not going to do much there as they are very volume businesses

They should not be called printers as they are not at all comparable to printing documents

Calling them crippled mini factory lines is a very apt description, they are crippled in that they cant do what the bigger lines can do and they are mini because they are smaller.

Anyway in ten years time we will see one way or another. I doubt they will have made much of a difference at all

There is a great demand for small batches of parts though, as I keep pointing out using the example of my own employer. A quite sizeable specialist manufacturer. I also work extensively with our suppliers, so know a bit about their other customers too - one of them does machining work for JLR, and suitably advanced 3D printing could easily replace CNC milling which would have extensive benefits, as milling suffers the cost of changing what you're making problem.

You're also wrong about scale, there is no limit to the size a 3D printer can be - stick the right equipment on gantry's and you can 3D print a house.

And actually, they are like printing documents - the extrusion nozzle places a layer of material across the surface.The difference is the 3D printer repeats this moving up vertically. Different material, sure, but other than that....

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

No it isn't you need to pay someone to design a new kettle on the software and often you will find your first iteration was a bit !!!! or didn't work or could be better or wasn't quite what you wanted. A few iterations later you might have what you were looking for. So at say $500 a day for a competent professional with 3 days work you have your $1500 kettle. Or if you design the kettle yourself its your own 3 days lost which needs to be factored in

or you could log onto amazon and buy one of the existing 1,000 different kettle designs for under $50

Right... you make kettles using moulds, I use 3D printers.

How much does it cost each of us to design a new product? Whatever it costs to higher a suitable engineer to use CAD to do so. The marginal cost of a new design for either of us is exactly the same.

Now how much does it cost you to switch between designs on your production line?

How much does it cost me?

What about when it's not just kettles, but a factory that I want to produce a huge number of different products? What about when agility allows me to massively reduce inventory and still meet customer demands?

You are so wrong on this one, it's not even subjective. The theory around this is unbelievably provable. It might help you to stop thinking in terms of kettles and think in generic 'widgets' like any business/economics course would when examining such a relationship. You're getting hung up on what you (think you) know about kettle manufacturing, rather than considering manufacturing theory. Think about where the costs actually are in the processes, and compare on like for like terms.

always_sunny

setmefree2 wrote: »

I watched a Bloomberg interview with Varadkar this morning. He's been quoted as saying

TBH I was confused, puzzled and down right astonished at his lack of depth of knowledge abour Brexit.

Varadkar - we're leaving - get your head out of the ground and get your country ready.

EU member states have acknowledged the UK imminent departure, no one is holding the UK back. I am puzzled as why there is so much attention and opinions towards other EU member states:

You're worried about the Irish economy "we're leaving - get your head out of the ground and get your country ready".
Conrad is worried about the Dutch Economy "9% of Dutch exports come to the UK...."

Then the plethora of articles about French farmers, German cars makers, Spanish tourism, Italian prosecco and god knows what else.
It's like Brexit Project Fear in reverse. Worry about the UK, you have 'nuff stuff going on as it is!

Varadkar is right to be puzzled, the UK wants to Brexit and yet it's pressing the EU to speed up trade talks. Didn't you want to trade with all these other countries outside the EU? The current deal is the best deal and that's what the UK has been told many times.

Rusty_Shackleton

GreatApe wrote: »

Of course calling them printers is silly. We should call them fully automated mini factories or assembly lines.

no, we shouldnt. The terms 'factory' and 'assembly line' have quite specific definitions, neither of which apply to a 3D printer

Factory: A building or group of buildings where goods are manufactured or assembled chiefly by machine. OED

Assembly Line: a sequence of machines, tools, operations, workers, etc, in a factory, arranged so that at each stage a further process is carried out Collins

Conrad

I would think the market for 3D printers will be huge in the same way as firms like AT&T and IBM found out in spite of their experts telling them the global markets for computers and mobile phones would be tiny, things suddenly shift.


In case you manufacturing guys missed it, this video here about disruptive technology explains how Electric car drive trains/engines have some 18 parts compared with combustion engines having over 2000 parts, thus electric car will deffo taker over once cost comes down as they will require virtually no maintenance.


FFWD to 25 minutes


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M27KECEL5Zo

Conrad

always_sunny wrote: »

You're worried about the Irish economy "we're leaving - get your head out of the ground and get your country ready".
Conrad is worried about the Dutch Economy "9% of Dutch exports come to the UK...."

Then the plethora of articles about French farmers, German cars makers, Spanish tourism, Italian prosecco and god knows what else.
It's like Brexit Project Fear in reverse. Worry about the UK, you have 'nuff stuff going on as it is!

Brains, it's not about my worrying about these other nations, dohhh! It's about citing THEM saying they are concerned about disruption to THIER sales to the UK.


Penny dropping yet, no, oh well.