Labor-intensive manufacturing has limited the use of lighter, stronger composites but that may change with emerging techniques
By Christopher Mims of The WSJ.
When I taguht the shift factors for supply one of them was technology. The definition of technology that I used came from an economics dictionary. It was something like "our knowledge about how to produce goods and services."
If we get better technology it means it will take fewer resources to make one unit of a good. It costs less to make so supply shifts to the right and more of that good is produced (assuming demand does not change).
People always had a demand for calculators (or calculating services). As time went on, the better technology for producing calculators (needing less material, for example) brought the price down and we bought more of them.
Excerpts from the article:
"When we talk of composites, we’re speaking about such things as the carbon-fiber ones in wind turbines, race cars and the Boeing 787. Such materials have the advantage of being far lighter than the metal parts they typically replace, while being just as strong, and requiring fewer resources to make.
Materials scientists have had limited success making composites affordable and accessible for decades, or possibly millennia—technically, they were invented by the Mesopotamians. The labor-intensive nature of their manufacturing has made them expensive, which has limited their application to a handful of areas where their advantages outweigh their costs, such as the aerospace industry.
Now, thanks to new manufacturing techniques that can churn out composite parts quickly and cheaply, all of that is changing, and the results could be both profound and exciting."
"In just the past couple of years, a number of startups have developed processes for creating all sorts of small objects from composites, in a way that is fast and inexpensive."
"Shifting substantial portions of what we make and use from steel and plastic to composites—which are amalgamations of a variety of fibers, embedded in a variety of plastics—could bring new kinds of transportation, more terrifying weapons of war, and lighter and more durable smartphones, wearables and other consumer electronics."
"composites . . . are often able to perform just as well as high-strength metal parts, but with a fraction of the weight. Composites are the reason modern jetliners are so fuel-efficient"
"Today, you can buy consumer products made with ultralight, ultrastrong parts . . . including Brooks running shoes, spokes for bicycle wheels, and luxury watches."
"technology is being tested by Airbus to replace metal brackets inside its planes"
"Making the shell of a Formula One car, or the frame of a high-end competition bicycle, remains a labor-intensive process, says 9T Labs Chief Executive Martin Eichenhofer. The goal of his company, and of others in his industry, is to take all of the intensive and skilled manual labor out of the process, and to make it as automated as making metal and plastic parts has been for decades."
"modern synthetic composites are often made up of carbon fiber held together by epoxy resins"
"composites can suffer a number of failures, including splitting between their layers"
"the biggest challenge with new composites technologies . . . [is] over time, they can break down because of fatigue"
"Initial tests have shown that these composite bolts [replacements for titanium bolts in airplanes] perform just as well as metal ones when they’re new. At the same time, they’re lighter, easier to make, potentially cheaper, and not subject to geopolitical supply chain issues linked to the world’s dominant suppliers of titanium, Russia and China."
Related post:
A Megabyte Of Memory Costs 10,000 Times Less Than It Did In 1989 (2008)
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