Low-tech hi-tech and how to bring manufacturing back

I am writing this while on the plane to OpenSauce (17th June) and going through a list of videos I downloaded for the flight. I do not get as much time for videos as I used to, so I always appreciate the time on board a plane. This time on a tip from Mikolas I downloaded Destin’s video where he documents his journey of manufacturing his product completely in USA. And oh boy it hits hard. We’ve been trying to manufacture as much locally as possible for the better part of a decade. We are already very far along in our EU operations, and now we are trying to do the same again in the USA with a new factory.

Here’s Destin’s video about manufacturing:

I have two quick thoughts I can jot down before I land and join everyone at the event, but I definitely want to explore this topic further in the future - specifically, how to actually make things locally.

3D printing can significantly improve the dire situation in the EU and the US regarding self-sufficiency in manufacturing. We are completely dependent on external manufacturing and the world would grind to a halt if supplies stopped for any reason. I do not have such a hands-on experience with other parts of the world, but I suspect it will be similar in majority of cases. And it’s not just that we’re completely dependent—because of that dependence and industrial espionage, the Western World keep losing our IP rights and our future edge. But that topic deserves its own artic

How can 3D printing help? With the technologies I am working on, I predict that filament extrusion 3D printing will soon become favourable alternative to injection moulding. And projects like Destin’s are exactly at the sweet spot with plenty of headroom to grow. I’ve been printing production parts for the last 16 years and it was very rarely the limiting factor. At the same time we also run an injection moulding shop at Prusa Research. When we consider injection moulding a part? If we know the part will remain unchanged for a long time, it usually starts to make sense after 60000 pieces. Why that number? The mold tooling costs tens of thousands of €/$ upfront. You need enough volume to spread the tooling cost and beat the per-unit cost of 3D printing. That applies to human-operated farms, as well as to those with automation.

And my second thought - the manufacturability itself. To manufacture our machines locally everywhere around the world we needed to adapt to the lowest common manufacturing denominator. When I discuss this mindset, I refer to it as low-tech high-tech. What does that mean? It’s using simple, widely available manufacturing methods such as bent sheet metal and standard fasteners to create an advanced machine. This was our philosophy for the new Core One, and it’s getting very close.

The lesson here is that the added value is not in manufacturing complexity, even though it may appear more impressive at first sight; it turns out that a solid piece of metal can replace many injection-moulded parts. They happen to last much longer and are repairable. The added value as a manufacturer is in the core technology. I often joke with my team that the printer should always be fixable with a hammer and a screwdriver - but it is just a manifestation of our goal to make a repairable machine. With Core One, we introduced our new design technique of exoskeleton (exoskeleton is a term from biology, where the outer shell is the bearing structure of an animal’s body, like insects or crustaceans) from simple bent sheet metal segments. You can make these absolutely everywhere, and they are also the reason we will be able to source a large chunk of the Core One locally in the US once we establish a supply chain. And we didn’t even have to sacrifice the looks, as Core One received a Red Dot Design Award, together with its bigger sister, the Prusa Pro HT90!

Perhaps the low-tech, high-tech approach is a better way to revive some industries after decades of offshoring. Most are now too far gone to bring them back 1:1. Greater repairability will also be extremely important for protecting critical infrastructure, as it makes systems more robust and resilient against potential attacks or failures.

I’ve been on this mission for quite some time. 3D printing is absolutely critical for the creation of new IP, and as such, a strategic industry must be represented locally.