[justicezyx]

Apple case is not exactly abandoning design for assembly. The advancement of electronic and metal machining allows smaller and more integrated parts, which allows cheap labor to beat the machine. If the electronics and metal machining did not advance, I am guessing the resultant production cost would not be this low.

[varjag]

Machining is more or less in the same spot it's been since late 1970s.

[542458]

I don’t think is true at all. CAM is dramatically more advanced than it was in the 70s - easier to use, and better algorithms mean much faster pathing. Costs are way down. Tooling is cheaper and more reliable.

[varjag]

Of course there's been quantitative improvements, but fundamentally everything that can be designed and machined today could be designed and machined in late 1970s using very similar tools, processes and control systems.

[morcheeba]

Yes, the technology is the same. But how many machined products were available for the consumer to buy in 1970? I was excited about the Macbook Air not because it was thin, but because it was CNC made, just like the aerospace products I designed. Injection molding remains dominant, but over the last 15 years CNC has made a lot of progress.

[varjag]

I dunno, by the end of 1970s most high end camera lenses were CNC machined with bezels and scales CNC engraved. My 1980 Summicron 35 is certainly one, although the optical stack sits in an injection molded envelope.

When it comes to MBA enclosure it's likely the infill or separation problems with long thin walls that led them to abandon injection molding. Even then it's not done on a mill in one take. Things like speaker grilles are probably something like EDM or etching rather than 8000 operations with 0.2mm drill bit.

[Animats]

You could not have done this with 1970s tools and CAD.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w

[varjag]

This was absolutely machinable with late 1970s CNC mill. Probably pain in the ass to design with then existing CAD/CAM but ultimately this demo runs on same G-Code that was there in 1970s.

And as far as parlor ticks go this is not particularly impressive, compared to old ones like turning cube inside a cube on a lathe.

[542458]

That’s a bit like saying “most large modern systems are written in C which was invented in 1972, therefore software engineering has not changed since the 70s/80s”. That machine is also probably not running a gcode flavour that would have made sense in the 70s anyways, with additions for active sensing, macros, etc.

Tools like UNISURF would probably not be able to handle the extreme level of detail on most of that model. The very long tool lengths you see in the video are much more complex than they look and require effort both from software and hardware to prevent chatter and breakage on titanium. The clearances in the video are also extremely tight in places, and while you could have guess-and-checked that in the 70s, it’s a very different workflow than the simulators that are basically standard use today.

CNC machining is a multi-billion dollar industry populated by smart people. While the fundamental technology of “spinning cutter driven by computer controlled motors” hasn’t changed in 50 years, the R&D departments aren’t asleep at the wheel.