Restrictions on traditional product manufacturing
The current methods of manufacturing products from year to year are at an ever higher engineering level. the traditional production process, however, requires relatively large amounts of human labor, money and energy, looking at the whole production process. Especially, it gets expensive when we want to produce small-lot items and quickly implement new solutions. Even when maximizing the automation process, you must first develop and build a specialized production line for specific (types) of components. At the same time, you also have to use very large amounts of energy for production throughout the entire product life cycle. In addition, you need to consider the amount of materials and energy for the entire production preparation process.
Particularly the problems of production facilities are also highlighted when planning space colonization. It is difficult to find an earthly model of space production.
In the face of the last pandemic, broken supply chains have particularly affected us. In addition to the lack of components in the factories, the difficulties in quick commissioning / switching the production profile of the factories also highlighted. There was an urgent need to produce locally the products of the most urgent needs like masks, respirators, etc. As it turns out, starting and even moving production lines requires a huge amount of engineering / design, organizational and executive work.
To produce other products on the same line (if possible), significant hardware and software changes in the production line are usually required. The product design process and the entire technological process remain outside the production process itself. Despite the systems of computer-aided design / production, etc. (CAX – Computer Aided Design / Manufacturing, etc.), design still requires significant human labor.
Is that bad – okay? As humanity, we are constantly improving production processes as the elements themselves, which is obviously in line with the idea of human development. Of course, I do not condemn this progress but would like to consider progress in a slightly different direction. He also does not deny the entire scientific and engineering achievements of mankind, because without this achievement of technical development at this moment we could not talk about this idea of development of production.
A revolution in 3D production and printing?
As a mechatronics engineer, he feels in his bones that a revolution awaits us in changing the level of abstraction in the design and production process through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It also provides completely different production technologies from today. The manufacturing revolution is somewhat started by 3D printing. As you can see over the centuries, certain technologies reach their limits and are often replaced by new “revolutionary” technologies. For example, tube computers (and electronics) because of their limitations have been supplanted by diametrically more efficient and more compact “silicon” computers from which we currently squeeze sweats. Due to our physical performance limitations, “silicon” computers will probably be supplanted by quantum computers that are now far ahead of technology in terms of computing power as well as energy efficiency and perhaps size.
3d printing as a stage transition between belt production and any item creation
3D printing as the assumption of the assembly is to eliminate many of the above inconveniences. The production process is to ensure that one device can produce “any” elements. However, current technologies have their limitations. Only the 3D printing process itself is currently based on the evolution of the well-known engineering standard. That is the project -> production through a device manufactured and using solutions of well-known production methods. The printer is a reverse machine tool (CNC) that removes excess material leaving the expected item, where the reverse process is in 3D printing. However, we still stick to laborious work on the next very small layers / portions of the material.
An unsurpassed ideal
design and production process
Objective? The highest
The unsurpassed form of abstraction of the manufacturing / production process is for it
word (thought). Even leaving aside the theological aspects, it is an unsurpassed ideal of the highestforms of abstraction, the production is contained paradoxically in “non-engineering”Bible, where by means of the word God creates the whole world with definite onesfunctionalities. Going closer to the ground the goal is to get a man usingas little work as possible (in the design and production process)obtained the most functional, durable, etc. product.Perhaps artificial intelligence will even be able to overtake oursexpectations in what we need …
Another unsurpassed goal is to take environmentalists into recycling. So any product that changes its purpose(form, shape of properties) depending on human needs.
2: main production routes products at a higher level of abstraction
Increasing the level of programming abstarking using artificial intelligence
Practice shows that artificial intelligence is now a term often abused in production / design applications. Algorithms predicting various scenarios are still not enough. There is a sure way to a complex abstract process. I mean the ability to process our human commands into their implementation with the help of computers and actuators (executive mechanisms, e.g. a robot frame) controlled by them. I must admit that programming languages slowly increase the level of abstraction, i.e. under one command there are more and more lines of machine code and operations performed. What in the simpler (with a lower level of abstraction) programming language took several dozen lines of code necessary for programming by a man hides in one command. It will show on the simplest example of increasing the level of abstraction programming the display “Hello World” in 2 different programming languages.
For example
#include <stdio.h>
int main (void)
{
printf (“Hello, world! \ n”);
return 0;
}
print (“Hello World”)
Automation of the design process
Of course, we are still far from the level of programming abstraction, where we could describe the desired functionalities in simple words, and the machine would even exceed our expectations. However, we are slowly approaching this stage of human development. This revolution will most likely result from the development of artificial intelligence to increase the level of programming / design abstraction as to the development of manufacturing techniques. Topological optimization responsible for the most optimal construction. The development of artificial, intelligence, genetic algorithms, etc., which would be responsible for the accelerated evolution of the solutions used, shapes, selection of materials and the machining process, etc. will be useful here. Predicting weaknesses, potential threats, etc. The goal is to create such a program where we can quickly ask functional guidelines for the final product.
A revolution in the technology of producing any products. as the evolution of 3D printing.
Standard 3d printing has many advantages as well as many disadvantages.
Disadvantages of 3D printing to overcome:
• Additivity, many solutions are associated with limited strength of the material when the moment acts perpendicular to the level of the layers. Partially one hundred is solved in the method of sintering metal powder. In addition, additivity often limits the speed at which products are manufactured, as well as worsens surface quality. Usually additivity is about increasing the product at one point at a time. It is necessary to increase the production speed by increasing the points where the material will be written / processed. However, the revolution will only be produced truly in three dimensions at once by processing the material in “infinite” (and yet finite) points at once. Or
• Strength is usually limited due to additivity. Strength is definitely lower when operating parallel to the added plane. layers. This is particularly evident in the most popular printing methods from ABS. The solution is:
• printing in many points / planes simultaneously
• Multifaceted printing using a 5-axis “table” or multi-axis head that allows layers to penetrate
• Using reinforcement permeating the printing layer.
• Probabilistic nature of printing at the micro scale combined with optimized structure at the macro scale. Probabilistic out of focus nature permeates layers
• Created items evenly at “infinitely” many points at once.
• Organic printing with the help of directed growth of organic forms as skeletons for metallization, filling with material, etc. More about organic 3D (creation) in the article: https://quantumidea.tech/2019/08/08/stwarzarka-organiczna/
• Multidimensional chemical transformations initiated by waves, such as electromagnetic waves, allowing rapid material growth at an almost infinite number of points.
• Quantum teleportation ………..
Thank you, dear reader.
Eng. Dominik Stepien