[tsmarsh]

Democratising manufacturing.

CAD / CAM is still hard. CAM especially. You have to know a great deal about materials and tools, even order of operations to help the computer build efficient tool paths. There is a lot of scope for process improvement and there are commercial opportunities to sell to job shops who would like have their engineers working more on CAD and less on CAM.

There is also potential here to make it so easy and affordable that having a 5 axis machine on your property is as common place as having a laser printer. 3D printing offers the ability to create more plastic crap you don't want, or prototype things you want made on a CNC in the future. 5 Axis CNC in the home means that you could download a mocha pot, wait a day (instead of shipping) then screw it together. Drones, motors (winding is still hard), car parts could either be downloaded or you take a video on your phone and let AI figure out the CAD / CAM.

[jiveturkey]

this will never happen.

your example isn't very good. you still have to ship the raw materials and -- much worse -- deal with unit volumes of waste.

[crankylinuxuser]

Uhh.... I've heard the "this can never happen" before.

5 and 6 DoF is tough, but there's tons of improvement everywhere in this realm. And we're talking of major improvement.