I think paper-folding machines are something of a lost art. They’ve been around for literally centuries at this point, but there are so many interesting and useful things that can be made out of paper. Everything from packaging to envelopes to origami.
I wish there were smaller, cheaper versions on the market.
As a general rule, if you're given a price for something by a company that specializes in that thing, and you think you can do better, you're wrong.
The creator alludes to this when he says not to ask how long it took him to build the machine.
As a corollary to this rule, if you've estimated your costs to do a job, and a company says they can beat it, you should probably do the job yourself. I bought a 3/4 ton jointer four hours from my shop, got a quote to rent a lift gate truck and a quote from a moving company/rigger. They were about the same. There's no way they can pay someone for a minimum of eight hours of time, plus cover their truck and fuel costs for what it costs me to rent a truck. The delta on their truck costs can't possibly be enough to pay someone good for eight hours.
Those guys are very good, well funded, and have access to good CNC machining capabilities. They probably also know people who do automated assembly machinery. This was apparently about two years of work for a small team.
Given they’re near Hangzhou they can source a lot of stock for 1/4-1/40th the price as the US. I would guess $1.5k-$2k for the hot mess they show at 6:06 and $8k for the polished setup plus $0-$850,000 in billable hours to some PLC engineers.
The old school way to learn this field is an Allen Bradley or Siemens certification[1] but it’s pretty dry and tedious [2] with good money [3] because once you have a network you can show up at any factory or bottling line as they all use Siemens or Allen Bradley and they’re always breaking down.
The new school way is AI, raspberry pi’s, and 3D printer tool chains.
It’s worth watching the Valve Steam Controller Factory video to appreciate the scale of these lights off factories: https://youtu.be/uCgnWqoP4MM
Are there any places in the US where you could get the stock as easily? Ignoring the cost differences for now, I'm more thinking about where you might want to be if you wanted to build machines like this as a small business in the US. Of course, maybe the right idea is not to do it in the US.
I've always wanted to build a machine that you feed a block of A4 paper into, and it spits out airplanes as quickly as possible. Seems I could learn a few tricks form HTX Studio towards attaining that goal.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 47.6 ms ] threadI wish there were smaller, cheaper versions on the market.
The creator alludes to this when he says not to ask how long it took him to build the machine.
As a corollary to this rule, if you've estimated your costs to do a job, and a company says they can beat it, you should probably do the job yourself. I bought a 3/4 ton jointer four hours from my shop, got a quote to rent a lift gate truck and a quote from a moving company/rigger. They were about the same. There's no way they can pay someone for a minimum of eight hours of time, plus cover their truck and fuel costs for what it costs me to rent a truck. The delta on their truck costs can't possibly be enough to pay someone good for eight hours.
Those guys are very good, well funded, and have access to good CNC machining capabilities. They probably also know people who do automated assembly machinery. This was apparently about two years of work for a small team.
How much do you think just the BOM for their machine is?
How can I learn to do the same?
The old school way to learn this field is an Allen Bradley or Siemens certification[1] but it’s pretty dry and tedious [2] with good money [3] because once you have a network you can show up at any factory or bottling line as they all use Siemens or Allen Bradley and they’re always breaking down.
The new school way is AI, raspberry pi’s, and 3D printer tool chains.
It’s worth watching the Valve Steam Controller Factory video to appreciate the scale of these lights off factories: https://youtu.be/uCgnWqoP4MM
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/TimWilborne
[2] https://youtu.be/zDmGSHGH_is
[3] https://youtu.be/aLd2Y7pQ79o