China is becoming increasingly vulnerable based on strengths. They import nothing they can’t do without that’s not raw materials, where they’re extra vulnerable. So tit-for-tat trade penalties don’t work.
So how energy intensive are these other parts processes? If China produces bronze blanks for eg, can heat-treatment and finishing be done at lower energy/GHG cost near last mile?
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I’m not thinking home scale vs factory. I’m thinking big blast furnace scale factory ops vs plethora type small urban factories. 3dp is just an example of latter scale. But for eg turning and milling mild steel and aluminum with some limited heat treatment has same profile.
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I blogged about consumer 3DP in the early days, then at Wired, I'm with Nick here. It's very easy to tell a broad 3DP story, but then when you drill into specific use cases it largely falls apart. It's really a space that rewards thinking like a factory owner, not a consultant.
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Mass production has far less total energy consumption per unit. A bearing is actually made via a tooled powder molding process to get net-near shape, and then it's machined / ground using systems analogous to a rotary transfer line (very high efficiency): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY1YfwssoaI …
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And these bearings aren't uniquely complex. Most real parts are actually many different processes chained together. Manufacturing processes are an ecology with each "species" best filling an efficiency niche.
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