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Irishman

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This appears to be technology related:  House orders Pentagon to say if it weaponized ticks and released them: https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/house-orders-pentagon-report-whether-weaponized-ticks

Quote

The House quietly voted last week to require the Pentagon inspector general to tell Congress whether the department experimented with weaponizing disease-carrying insects and whether they were released into the public realm — either accidentally or on purpose.

The unusual proposal took the form of an amendment that was adopted by voice vote July 11 during House debate on the fiscal 2020 defense authorization bill, which lawmakers passed the following day.

The amendment, by New Jersey Republican Christopher H. Smith, says the inspector general “shall conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.”

If the answer is yes, then the IG must provide the House and Senate Armed Services committees with a report on the experiments’ scope and “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiments were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design.

The amendment is an attempt to confirm or deny reports that Pentagon researchers — at places such as Fort Detrick in Maryland and Plum Island in New York — implanted diseases into insects to learn about the effects of biological weapons and also looked into using such insects to disseminate biological agents.

President Richard Nixon banned U.S. government research into biological weapons in 1969, but research into protecting U.S. military personnel from such agents may have continued, Smith said in an interview Monday.

A book called “Bitten,” published this year, makes the case that the Defense Department research occurred and hints at a possible connection between the experiments and the spread of maladies such as Lyme disease, which is borne by ticks.

To Smith and other advocates of the Pentagon IG report, studying the past may provide data that can help stem the spread of Lyme disease in the future.

Between 300,000 and 427,000 new cases of Lyme disease occur each year, with further growth expected in the years ahead, said Smith, a founding co-chairman of the Congressional Lyme Disease Caucus, which advocates for greater awareness of the disease and for more funding for research into a cure.

“We need answers and we need them now,” Smith said.

....

 

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1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Pretty much the same operation as mine, only with less people, lol.

 

Interesting video.  Thanks for sharing.  Any idea off the top of your head, or from reading or experience, what's the payback period on a machine like that?

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11 minutes ago, foxbat said:

Interesting video.  Thanks for sharing.  Any idea off the top of your head, or from reading or experience, what's the payback period on a machine like that?

I would have to do some research. Most of the equipment in the video is readily available and most likely operating in commercial shops near you. It's all fairly mature technology as well, the flat bed machining center, edgebander, vertical boring machine, return conveyors, labeling machine, material handling equipment, etc., have been around for many years. The robots are a fairly new technology in our industry. The newer adaptive robots are just now starting to grow in our industry. Earlier robotics were very task specific, expensive, and as processes changed, they were basically boat anchors. 

An educated guess would be this cell is somewhere in the 6ish million range. There are a myriad of factors involved with figuring the ROI on such a system. A significant reduction in workforce to process your parts, could be partially offset by hiring additional workers to assemble all these parts. My biggest fear having a system such as that, is feeding the monster. You have to generate a LOT of work to keep that thing running and honestly at this stage of my career that's one pressure I have no interest in. 

It might be interesting to know, you'll mostly see this type of system being installed in China, rather than the US. The Chinese have been very proactive in investing in technology rather than just throwing cheap labor at manufacturing. They see emerging economies in the Pacific Rim countries and are trying to head it off. Systems such as this also offer quality, tight tolerance, repeatable results, something the Chinese have never really been known for. There is a market for systems such as this in the US, but I would think that's a shrinking market. It's worth noting most of the manufacturers of this type of equipment are either Italian or German. I have a penchant for Italian equipment myself. The Germans are.....well Germans, their engineering is second to none, but you still have to deal with the Germans. 

Every guy in the US has a few tools in his garage, maybe an old table saw he inherited from grandpa or something thinks yea I can build that. It's a new world out there Scooter.   

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41 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

I would have to do some research. Most of the equipment in the video is readily available and most likely operating in commercial shops near you. It's all fairly mature technology as well, the flat bed machining center, edgebander, vertical boring machine, return conveyors, labeling machine, material handling equipment, etc., have been around for many years. The robots are a fairly new technology in our industry. The newer adaptive robots are just now starting to grow in our industry. Earlier robotics were very task specific, expensive, and as processes changed, they were basically boat anchors. 

An educated guess would be this cell is somewhere in the 6ish million range. There are a myriad of factors involved with figuring the ROI on such a system. A significant reduction in workforce to process your parts, could be partially offset by hiring additional workers to assemble all these parts. My biggest fear having a system such as that, is feeding the monster. You have to generate a LOT of work to keep that thing running and honestly at this stage of my career that's one pressure I have no interest in. 

It might be interesting to know, you'll mostly see this type of system being installed in China, rather than the US. The Chinese have been very proactive in investing in technology rather than just throwing cheap labor at manufacturing. They see emerging economies in the Pacific Rim countries and are trying to head it off. Systems such as this also offer quality, tight tolerance, repeatable results, something the Chinese have never really been known for. There is a market for systems such as this in the US, but I would think that's a shrinking market. It's worth noting most of the manufacturers of this type of equipment are either Italian or German. I have a penchant for Italian equipment myself. The Germans are.....well Germans, their engineering is second to none, but you still have to deal with the Germans. 

Every guy in the US has a few tools in his garage, maybe an old table saw he inherited from grandpa or something thinks yea I can build that. It's a new world out there Scooter.   

The newer technologies that are out there in other areas too, such as optics and refined motor movement, are also making this kind of thing transferable into other areas.  Where you used to see the big bandsaw in the mills to cut large rough boards, you are now seeing the cutting done at the near micro-level and with much more refinement in areas like gear production and even medicine.

That's an interesting observation on China too.  There's been a long misunderstanding that China was only a competitor more on cheap and plentiful labor.  I often discuss in my classes that the use of automation and technology need not necessarily lead to workforce reductions, but instead in an increase in added-value services.  If you can "redirect" the workforce into a value-add service as opposed to the sheer manufacturing labor component, you can potentially find ways to "feed the monster."

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28 minutes ago, foxbat said:

The newer technologies that are out there in other areas too, such as optics and refined motor movement, are also making this kind of thing transferable into other areas.  Where you used to see the big bandsaw in the mills to cut large rough boards, you are now seeing the cutting done at the near micro-level and with much more refinement in areas like gear production and even medicine.

That's an interesting observation on China too.  There's been a long misunderstanding that China was only a competitor more on cheap and plentiful labor.  I often discuss in my classes that the use of automation and technology need not necessarily lead to workforce reductions, but instead in an increase in added-value services.  If you can "redirect" the workforce into a value-add service as opposed to the sheer manufacturing labor component, you can potentially find ways to "feed the monster."

This is a pretty simple example utilizing laser sensor technology to measure rough lumber and optimize cutting solutions for a gang rip saw. Some systems use optical scanners, some lasers, it's all pretty mature technology. Koetter Woodworking in Starlight, IN has a pretty elaborate system that goes from skip dressed 4/4 material to cut to sized finished product. It also allows them to sell FAS material that was made from #1C material. I realize our industry has the stigma of clear cutting the entire planet and burning it to the ground, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In large scale operations there is literally nothing wasted. Every part of the tree is used, down to sawdust. When we were manufacturing solid wood parts, we even sold our saw dust to an animal bedding place. Used to be a PITA any time we had to run Walnut, had to disconnect the dust system, use a portable collector, then reconnect everything. 

I could drone on for hours about the Chinese. One item of note however, in the late 90's, as the Euro gained strength against the Dollar, this started getting into the European manufacturers pockets. Most of the big players set up manufacturing facilities in China to take advantage of cheap labor and an artificially low Yuan. And there was clearly a difference in the European produced machines vs. their Chinese counterparts, but they were hitting a price point and that resonated with some buyers. 

 

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