gEDA-user: Universal Turin^H^H^H^H^Hmilling machine

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@twibright.com>]

Does anyone have notion how difficult it woule be to make a universal milling
machine that would be capable of producing other mechanics machines at home,
e. g. PCB drills, ordinary drill, lathes, optical grating generators, cogwheel
machines, mills etc.?

So that one could design independently of these machines.

Just some ordinary user would download Ronja and then type
user@machine$ make depend
detecting available hardware...
drill detected
lathe detected
The following hardware is necessary to be build:
* PCB drill
* etch tank
* through-plating station
* mill
Estimated building time: 1.5 day(s)
user@machine$ make
[...]

Of course, when the user would be building another PCB, the machnies would be
reused.

It's also feasible that an intermediate step would be going to the basement
with a plan in hand and assembling the generated heap of parts into the actual
machine, unless we had an universal assembler machine, which would save us the
work.

Actually, I don't know why do we need the unpleasant commercial products at
all?  One could spend few bucks for aluminium and steel rods and handful of
chemistry, but the rest is technology, and technology is know-how, and know-how
is information, and information wants to be free.

At least, Ronja DIY manufacture would be relieved this way enormously :)

I see the difference on Ronja clearly. Without an exact guide, making the
mechanics is a nightmare. With the exact guide, you almost can watch television
during doing it :) The key in manufacturing mechanics is not the matter, but
the ghost.

If the manufacturers exported their partlists, store statuses and prices in
e. g. SQL, one could even write a portable interface that would automatically
optimize an order from different suppliers and place the order.

I guess the mass-production lines with all the slaves are nice, but this
system would be much more flexible for the user.

Right now I am finishing a water cooling system, which is 100% mechanics, and
again: matter costs NTN (next to nothing), development time cost is enormous.
It's something like 1% material and 99% know-how :)

The consumer frenzy prepared tons of things that are usable for unlimited
possibilities of construction, but actually used in very limitted number
of ways dictated by marketing departments.

Cl<