Month: March 2013

Some 3-D Printing Links

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Zenpundit had a recent post on 3-D printing.  I’m only in the very early stages of researching this field, but thought it might be useful to put up a few links on the subject.

An overview of 3-D printing at ExtremeTech

Another overview at PC Magazine

A more detailed view, with a discussion of industrial applications, at the Engineer

3-D printing with metal

General Electric on the significance of 3-D printing, Also, GE Aviation’s acquisition of two 3-D printing companies

CFM International, a joint venture between GE and the French aerospace company Snecma, will be using 3-D printing to make certain components for the Leap series of turbofan engines. They cite an example of a component which previously required the brazing together of  15 or 20 separately-fabricated piece parts and which will now be made as a single printed entity.

Printing a car, and a gun

Motley Food Stock Advisor (video–link via Bill Waddell) asserts that 3-D printing will bring “the end of the Made in China era”. The hype level in the Motley Fool post is pretty high.

Is 3-D printing a huge bubble?, at Seeking Alpha

3-D printing’s intersection of promise and reality, also at Seeking Alpha

A couple of other approaches to the fabrication of one-off and low/medium-volume items:

eMachineShop.com is a service which provides remote (Internet) access to a whole range of fabrication technologies, including CNC turning and milling, casting, extrustion, and waterjet cutting…as well as 3-D printing. A downloadable CAD package allows the user to design a part, get a price quote, submit it for manufacturing (using whatever combination of machines is required for the task), and get the part(s) sent back to him.

Protomold is focused on providing fast turnaround for injection-molded parts. The customer electronically sends them a CAD model and fills out an on-line quote form; after the price and terms are accepted the company fabricates the mold (out of an aluminum alloy) and then makes the parts from the selected resin. You can play with the quote form here.

It’s interesting to note that Formlabs, a 3-D printer venture that Zenpundit mentioned in his post, is using Protomold services to make components for their printers. Protomold sees its services as complimentary to, and synergistic with, 3-D printers

 

Queen to UK: Stay away from the NHS

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The Queen has fallen ill, gastroenteritis to be specific. She has been taken to King Edward VII hospital in London. This hospital bills itself as the leading private hospital in London.

Why is she not staying at an NHS hospital? Gastroenteritis is not particularly complicated or unusual and should be well within the capabilities of any decent hospital facility of the most rudimentary type.

The Queen of England’s main role is to provide an example, a symbol. She is doing so today with the choice of her hospital. But is anybody paying attention?

What country is this, anyway?

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A sign on a fast-food restaurant in Washington, DC:

Beloved Leader

This sign struck me as inappropriate. Since when do Americans celebrate the person of the President? We honor the office, whose occupant isn’t supposed to be a king.

The Obama personality cult is disturbing, as is the (not unrelated) creeping politicization of ordinary life. If I eat at this restaurant am I endorsing its owner’s political views? I hope not. However, my first reaction on seeing the gushing pro-Obama sign is to make a mental note not to eat there, lest my eating there be misinterpreted as a political statement.

This will not end well. The more politicized life becomes, the worse the eventual backlash and crash will be.

Elections Have Consequences

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Worst case is that the sequestration cuts kick in on a month-to-month basis, as the fiscal stand-off between Congress and the president drags on. In early February, in anticipation of having to “operate down” to this worst case, the Navy cancelled the scheduled deployment of the USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) strike group, which was to be the second of two carrier strike groups hitherto maintained on station in the CENTCOM AOR. Secretary Leon Panetta announced at the time that the U.S. would cut its CENTCOM-deployed carrier force to one.
 
A strike group brings not just the carrier and its air wing but an Aegis cruiser and/or Aegis destroyers, all with Tomahawk missile load-outs. In multiple ways, U.S. combat power has now been cut in half in the CENTCOM AOR due to the long-running fiscal stand-off. The level of carrier presence is insufficient today to execute a limited-strike campaign against Iran while containing the potential backlash.

-J.E. Dyer, Dead in the water: Obama’s military and the Iran nuclear threat

The Lost Boys

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UPDATE: Here is one solution.

This week Europe blew up. The media haven’t caught up yet, because they are what they are. But the markets are catching up fast.

This is a huge event for the United States, because our political elite is bound and determined to turn us into Europe. Hasn’t the EU found the answer to war and peace and prosperity forever?

Our Democrats believe it. Europe is their model. Every batty new idea they have is copied from the glorious European Union. Twenty years ago they still celebrated the Soviet Union, until that house of cards crumbled. Now they have shifted their fantasy paradise to Europe.

Over there, fifty years of increasingly centralized control have made it impossible for voters to be heard. The political parties are stuck in GroupThink. Only the fascist “protest” parties agitate for reform. The ruling class doesn’t listen. They don’t have to — they don’t have to run for election.

So European voters fled to the fascists to express their rage and despair. Imagine one out of four US voters going for Lincoln Rockwell, and you get the idea.

Read the rest, as they say.

Belmont Club has an unusually good post for yesterday. I could say that more than once a week, if truth be known. This one is quite to the point on Sequester Day.

The NHS, which its creators boasted would be the ‘envy of the world’, has been found to have been responsible for up to 40,000 preventable deaths under the helm of Sir David Nicholson, a former member of the Communist Party of Britain. “He was no ordinary revolutionary. He was on the hardline, so-called ‘Tankie’ wing of the party which backed the Kremlin using military action to crush dissident uprisings” — before he acquired a taste for young wives, first class travel and honors.

The NHS is dealing with the shortage of funds by pruning its tree of life, so to speak. He also does not tolerate anyone telling the truth about it.

it emerged he spent 15 million pounds in taxpayer money to gag and prosecute whistleblowers — often doctors and administrators who could not stomach his policies.

The public money spent on stopping NHS staff from speaking out is almost equivalent to the salaries of around 750 nurses.

It has recently been noted that NHS staff no longer recommend their own hospital for family members. Also one quarter report being harassed or bullied at work.

The other half of the equation involves the youth.

The European Youth will remain outside the Death Pathways for some time yet. But they will spend the time waiting for their turn at affordable, caring and passionate medicine in poverty and hopelessness. With the exception of Germany youth unemployment in Europe is over 20%. “A full 62% of young Greeks are out of work, 55% of young Spaniards don’t have jobs, and 38.7% of young Italians aren’t employed.”

Unemployment exceeds even our own Obama economy for failure.

Read more