Steelmakng Conference in Shenyang

I have just returned from Shenyang in Northern China where I was an invited speaker at the 4th Australia-China-Japan Iron and Steelmaking Conference.

 

Shenyang is a city in transition. Everywhere you look, construction and business of every kind is thriving. The air is thick with the sounds of welding, cutting machines, trucks and workman yelling. The roads are jammed full of cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes and road bikes. There are also strange odours in the breeze and a small park near my hotel looked somewhat unloved surrounded by cranes and temporary housing for the many construction workers. One morning I walked through an area close to the Hun river where makeshift warehouses had been sat up in the car parks of building and even on the footpaths. Literally thousands of boxes of various retail goods were moving in and out by a combination of trucks and homemade trailers hitched onto bikes. Another street I came along was full of large shops selling every conceivable type of electronic goods.

 

In the midst of this industrial revolution, people were working hard (I was told that 6 day working weeks were the norm), in conditions that many workers in the west would find unacceptable. It was an extraordinary sight.

 

 

                                         View from the Centre of Shenyang                                         

 

The conference was held at the Northeastern University, which is one of China's leading technical Universities. My hosts were friendly and enthusiastic about Australia (our wines in particular). At the conference, the technical level of the papers varied greatly but it was obvious that great efforts were being made in China to increase the scientific knowledge of this crucial industry, in line with the huge importance of the steel industry to China. My own paper on modelling of Oxygen Steelmaking was well received and I was greatly flattered to meet Chinese researchers very familiar with my work.

 

 

                        Presentation at 4th Australia-China-Japan Iron and Steemaking Symposium

 

If there is a downturn in the Chinese economy, there is no evidence of this trend in Shenyang !

 

 

Makers: A New Industrial Revolution ?

“Makers: The New Industrial Revolution” is a highly readable book with many stimulating ideas. At the heart of the books is the initially startling idea that the small scale community based manufacturing is due to make a massive comeback in the western world via revolutions in computing and fabrication hardware. Chris Anderson visualizes a new manufacturing age where highly personalized objects are designed by the end user (or perhaps an online community of kindred spirits) via advanced design and visualization tools and then produced at relatively low cost by the user or by a specialized fabrication shop. He argues that this approach will bypass the current paradign where factories producing relatively consistent products at large numbers win out because of the advantages of scale. With great audacity, he asserts that such a model will even work for car manufacturing and other well known high volume industries.

Desk Top 3-D Printing (Image from scienceprog.com)

Anderson’s heros are the people who run the community based facilities at the “Fab Lab” in Manchester, the geeks at MakerBot Industries in New York making low cost fabrication equipment, the CAD software developers at Autodesk and the DIY community around the “Make” magazine.  He also details the efforts of Local Motors do develop a viable community based car design and manufacturing system. Anderson’s also see Elon Musk, the driving force behind the Tesla electric car and SpaceX,  as a kindred spirit, though I think Musk is far closer to the corporate end of business model than Anderson’s other heros. What is true, is that Musk has shown that low cost high quality items (even spaceships !) can be made in the USA i.e. being clever an innovative can beat the “it’s cheaper to build in China” mantra.

The technological back drop to Anderson’s vision, is the rapid development in 3-D design software, prototyping equipment and additive manufacturing equipment. All of these technologies have clearly become cheaper and more accessible in recent times; 3-D printers were once highly expensive tools only available to large companies and institutions, can now be purchased and successfully operated by home enthusiasts.  He argues that these developments mean that small scale operators can quickly progress from vision to production with much greater ease than previous generations of inventors who had to struggle with the costs and complexities of patenting and developing production lines. Indeed, Anderson believes that because computer based design is so open to web based community involvement, that more creative and diverse objects can be developed away from the more rigid traditional product development procedures of large corporations.

The book is not a celebration of critical analysis and the author, Chris Anderson, doesn’t pretend that he any other than a well informed enthusiast but I think his assertion that small scale community based designers can out do large corporations in key products areas is overly optimistic. Large corporations have well develops techniques to improve quality, access to funding so they can readily invest in new equipment, use their weight to put pressure on suppliers to lower costs and improve quality, and run funded and effective marketing campaigns. All of these activities are likely to be more difficult for smaller operations, who will have other advantages, such as operational flexibility, low overheads and the ability to satisfy market niches.

What are impressive about Anderson’s story, is that he has literally put his money where his mouth, as he has apparently successfully established a small robotics business following the principles he espouses. He describes how he managed to turn a kitchen table hobby into a 5 M$ business by involving an online web community and partnering with a 19 year old recent immigrant with a genius for design and innovation.

I’m not convinced that this new world of low cost design and fabrication will be the revolution described by Andersen but I do think the books successfully advocates “let’s build something, its fun and you might make some money”. Does anybody know where I can get a cheap 3-D printer?