Indian Education System

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 03 Jan 2015 01:17

I can answer that question on the right forum. Indian Economy one would be better?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 03 Jan 2015 01:21

Bade wrote:Who will provide for the mass employment needed in India...it is not like we are a 100 million only in population country...Every time I visit India I see the masses and see no hope for them to improve their living standards. With all this automation that is on the horizon, I am more and more convinced that a population culling is imminent...by natural selection if not by choice.

by natural destruction if not by choice would the right word bade sahib!

from >>female infanticide<< to >>female==male<< equations.

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 03 Jan 2015 02:21

Any country that figures out mass manufacturing using fully automated 3D printing will have changed their economics in a completely fundamental way, and it is a one way ticket.

If the policies are designed correctly, it will cause an immediate fall in the prices of everything to the level close to that raw materials. The game after that would not be "cutting the number of man minutes required in making a product" it will be how to design a product so that it can be efficiently manufactured by a 3D printer.

This would create a massive turmoil in countries that have a large part of its population invested in manufacturing. India is not one of them.

In countries like India, what it would do is it will reduce our finished goods import and increase our raw material import (which is already at a high level). It will also flood the market with product, i.e. the supply side will explode, and the prices will fall. So people will be able to afford more with what they already have.

The long term program should be to make mass manufacturing distributed and make the population of a locality owners of one or the other "local manufacturing plant". It is not entirely capitalism and not entirely socialism. But a locally sustainable barter system. The only BIG things left at that time will be design firms and mining.

Socialism and capitalism will collapse if fully automated 3D printing becomes a reality (only a matter of time).

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 03 Jan 2015 06:15

LokeshC wrote:Any country that figures out mass manufacturing using fully automated 3D printing will have changed their economics in a completely fundamental way, and it is a one way ticket.

I proposed this paradigm shift in Indian Economic model few years ago, when I came to learn about 3-D printing. Wish further discussion was encouraged.

3/4-D printing can be the next-wave economic model that Bharat can leapfrog on to. India's strength can come from design (there is lot of creativity even though it isn't nurtured and industrialized like in west).

This technology, if timely research and investments are encouraged, can revolutionize India's mfg, healthcare, lifestyle and even infra development in a way that India can achieve first world HDI with zero additional environmental costs (Modi's zero defect and zero affect mantra).

The biggest stumbling block to this revolution is the west-aping mindset in policy & intellectual circles who always are 20-30yrs behind the curve.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Jan 2015 06:58

3D printing is a lot of hype, at least for now. You want toys? you got them. You want engine blocks that can power fuel efficient automobiles made of composites? think again. Who is going to bear the cost of the research, development, testing, validation, and mass production? All one will get from 3D printing is some cheesy plastic doo-da (may be high - within limits - impact even) but you want a Sikorsky printed and flies itself to your terrace/balcony? think again. I had a friend - very well educated scientists - who told me once "we have to embrace technology" which he saw in best buy on one of his visits. I said fine, we should. I have got a cable high bandwidth internet for my work. He said I do have it too (but not work, just for some Tivo and stuff). And then one fine morn he cancelled his high BW internet connection. When we were talking he says "what the heck, I hardly use it anyways. Why the heck should I pay for something I don't need?". Of course, this was back when cable was 20 bucks PM and internet would bump it up to $50 PM. $20 cable has all you can see national big three channel programming, and about 50-60 other junk channels.

How much would one pay for printing out a pre-teen Pink Barbie Jeep with custom shapes and decals vs. a mass mfgd $230 one which one can get by walking into a local ToysRUs?

Would I pay $100K for $32K odyssey just because I can make the grill shape the way I want, or the console can be some funky B$ shape? No way.

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 03 Jan 2015 07:07

I can answer to that too. But we need a different thread. I think I will post something on the "Technologies useful for Indian problems" when I get sometime to think about it.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 03 Jan 2015 08:15

I tend to agree with matrimc. Every technology has its limitations. It has its place and application. It is not going to be a one size fits all. I may be wrong. We will see as the technology matures.
Definitely it has opened up some new avenues for manufacturing and doing business. It is already being used in organ printing. I hear its future use in on-site manufacturing for military in war zone, on-site manufacturing in some retail industry to make custom size or small items such as nuts and bolts. Interesting it is being talked about 3D printing food. Wonder how that pans out.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 03 Jan 2015 09:24

or is it the limitations determined by our disability to expand our limits?

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 03 Jan 2015 09:28

MatrimC garu...

Few links for you:

http://t.space.com/all/27487-nasa-3d-pr ... 0260113110

https://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala ... anguage=en

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/tech/inno ... an-organs/

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/09/2 ... d-printer/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/0 ... 73408.html

Like I said earlier, don't think new technology from existing socio-economic-logistics mindset.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 03 Jan 2015 09:44

matrimc,

The parts we 3D print in house with electron/laser sintering at full melt using AlSi10Mg Al/Mg alloys come in at full strength. With a quick heat treatment at a shop, they can be post hardened to all the normal values possible most far harder and stronger than steel. It is quite impressive how far the technology has come. I can see a time in the future when Steel beams/Columns/Bolts/Moment frames/ etc can all be printed out on construction site to the designers specification. No steel mill required.

To give you some idea of what is possible now take a look at these metal components. This is just first generation stuff. In 10-20 years things will be many fold more accurate and improved.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 03 Jan 2015 11:07

SaiK - My reference to limitations is commercial viability in all cases. We should be open minded and adopt the technology but concerned going over the board and make too much of an investment and adopt a developing technology. First thing we ought to do is manufacture these 3D printers

^^^ LDT above is an impressive demo of the tech. I envisioned 3D printer applicability mainly in the high-end, intricate and precision manufacturing. If you guys think this is going to make big way into all manufacturing, I will take you guys words for it.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 03 Jan 2015 11:30

Right now the only issue is cost. The actual alloy powder is quite cheap, but the CAD modelling and printer cost quite a bhit right now.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 04 Jan 2015 23:21

matrimc wrote:1. D. E. Knuth is from Case Western. Then he went to Caltech and went to Stanford because of whom Stanford CS has become one of the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v678Em6qyzk

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 04 Jan 2015 23:40

We are going OT but a small post.

Let's assume a medium size (1 cu.ft volume) metal printer costs about $20,000 and a wooden CNC and Laser cutter cost another $10,000.

With a $30,000 budget (RS 20L) a village can have local maker lab that serves 90% of building, tools and machinery needs.

Repeat it in every village of India, this is your quick ticket to industrialization.

We don't need a $10,000 per capita GDP so Indians can afford a $10k imported car. We can live with a $2000 per capita GDP if we can make the same car for $1k.

LokeshC garu, our civilizational goal (and purpose of education) isn't getting 1billion people into industrial economy but to get them to achieve inner Moksha.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Jan 2015 00:58

You mean except for the 2% elites, rest can seek moksha as an alternative choice of life, I would rather put it more honestly and say population need to be culled.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 05 Jan 2015 01:07

We may want to look at the typical Total Cost for such a setup. Include factors such as -
.Lifetime of the printer and laser cutter
.Operating costs such as maintenance, the skilled people need to operate it etc
.How many printers needed for the manufacturing needs in a mass scale? The current printer makes only one a time.

The above maybe marginal costs and pale compared to the one time setup costs. But just trying to see through it. Sorry if the questions are too naive/silly for the gurus here.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Jan 2015 01:09

bade commie bhai.. start being realistic by pouring out your strategies for culling.

you are not going sanjay gandhi route.. no?

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Jan 2015 01:12

There is a parallel with the IT/software industry. In principle software development can be a completely distributed industry with no need to have clusters. But it does, same will be true for 3D printing. Everyone having access to a printing device does not ensure a mom&pop manufacturing economy.

I think it was Mao who tried starting up iron smelting in every village and failed miserably.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Jan 2015 01:12

Saik saffron bhau..do you have something to say ..then spell out.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 05 Jan 2015 01:15

Sometimes I too think if the inner Moksha concept is brought up for social harmony and also to keep the eyes off and take the desire away from the elites wealth but still keep working to enrich the elites.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Jan 2015 01:27

The education system everywhere is designed to feed the job factories, whether be it the west or in the east. The few smart ones break the trend and do some lateral thinking on their own as allowed by the system. Maybe the system in the west allows more indulgence for such pursuits, but even here there are limits as money is the key parameter which decides the levels of indulgence allowed.

So this seeking alternative to "macaulite" versions of education is a utopian idea. Ideas like social harmony are equally on weak grounds, at most these are states of unstable equilibrium. Just look at nature and it tells you the rules, survival of the fittest by whatever means. All this social engg in reverse people talk about in every thread is another conspiracy only.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 05 Jan 2015 03:18

dsreedhar wrote:We may want to look at the typical Total Cost for such a setup. Include factors such as -
.Lifetime of the printer and laser cutter
.Operating costs such as maintenance, the skilled people need to operate it etc
.How many printers needed for the manufacturing needs in a mass scale? The current printer makes only one a time.

The above maybe marginal costs and pale compared to the one time setup costs. But just trying to see through it. Sorry if the questions are too naive/silly for the gurus here.

Let's think of this concept in terms that everyone is more familiar with. Instead of 3D printers, think of your humble computer printer. When they first came out, people were saying, "but this is much slower than our existing newspaper printers and can't even print to the same quality or volume. How many printers would I have to buy to publish, say 10000 copies, of my daily newsletter."

Guess what? Even today, desktop and office laser printers come nowhere close to mass-printing capabilities of newspaper printing machines invented over 100 years ago. But they were never meant for mass-production, but for one off jobs for individuals and businesses, allowing them to produce acceptable quality paperwork without having to go visit a printer every time. It also allowed people to be more in control of publishing their own stuff, instead of going back and forth with the printer on proof-reading cycles. So, if I had to publish my thesis for my degree, or print letters to various customers for my small business, a laser printer is a real time-saver for me. If I was to print a newsletter for distribution to 10000 people though, I would probably visit a regular print shop.

And that is what a 3d printer is designed to do as well -- small, custom one-off jobs or building prototypes for evaluation. For instance, when I go to get a new crown, my dentist currently shapes my tooth to accept the implant, then takes a mold of my tooth to send off to a third party manufacturer that specializes in making custom implants, and puts a temporary cap in place, while I wait for a week or two for the new implant to arrive back to my dentist (meanwhile I have to watch what I eat carefully, in case I accidentally displace the temporary cap). Then I have to make a second visit to the dentist, where they will remove my temporary cap and fit my new implant (hoping that it is shaped correctly). With a 3d printer, my new implant could be built within about 10 minutes and I'd only need one visit.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 05 Jan 2015 03:29

My response at http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 9#p1774909

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 05 Jan 2015 03:34

ArmenT wrote: And that is what a 3d printer is designed to do as well -- small, custom one-off jobs or building prototypes for evaluation. For instance, when I go to get a new crown, my dentist currently shapes my tooth to accept the implant, then takes a mold of my tooth to send off to a third party manufacturer that specializes in making custom implants, and puts a temporary cap in place, while I wait for a week or two for the new implant to arrive back to my dentist (meanwhile I have to watch what I eat carefully, in case I accidentally displace the temporary cap). Then I have to make a second visit to the dentist, where they will remove my temporary cap and fit my new implant (hoping that it is shaped correctly). With a 3d printer, my new implant could be built within about 10 minutes and I'd only need one visit.

Exactly my point.

India lost the bus to China and EU in products that require mass production. The next wave is customized products, medicine and India can lead this wave because it has inherent diversity/creative/intuitive advantage.

India's education, industry and economy should be Indian. This doesn't mean isolation, the purpose is independence, competitive advantage & eventual empowerment.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 05 Jan 2015 04:14

ArmenT - My view is in sync to yours atleast at the current stage of technology. But I am hearing on this forum that the 3D printing to be used for all products mass manufacturing in future. That is what i am trying a get a grasp at.

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 05 Jan 2015 04:38

gakakkad wrote:@ Amber G , one of problems with IMO is that it involves a lot of number theory which is not really taught in Indian schools...in fact not all that important for jee too..IMO does not have calculus which our kids are good at..out of curiosity , why does not IMO have calculus ?

Yes number theory (or many other subjects) are not taught in Indian Schools. (When I went to high school in India, (a long time ago) - I knew all "what was taught in school" in 5th or 6th grade - and was able to tutor high-school kids --- Same with UG math/physics - Physics was mostly historical facts and no modern physics)

But this is not the point of exams like IMO. Problems here (at is supposed to be) do not require established tools so much as how to think to solve kind of problems which one has not seen before. A bright/gifted student - who might not even have gone through much formal education gets those problems right. While most math (as in 99%) professors in universities will not be able to. (I know, I have run some test with Math professors/grad students and median score was zero and 99% will get 1 or less out of 6 problems). Another statistical fact - many countries (even populous countries like Pakistan) kids have gotten routinely zero marks year after year (nearly all kids - and these are top most kids in the country)

What I mean is that these exams are very challenging so in real sense, being "good" in calculus - as measured by regular exams - makes no difference... only difference I have seen which made a difference is good teacher/coach/mentor. (and sadly India (or US) lacks good teachers.

out of curiosity , why does not IMO have calculus ?

My guess is out of tradition. This has been the case for a long time so they do not make a change.

You are right, most IMO participants know calculus much more thoroughly than a typical collage graduate.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Jan 2015 06:29

Theo_Fidel wrote:Right now the only issue is cost. The actual alloy powder is quite cheap, but the CAD modelling and printer cost quite a bhit right now.

Printer and CAD software cost is NRE. Recurring costs are consumables and maintenance contract for printer and CAD software. Anyways people here are missing the plot about what 3D printers are good at and what they are not good at. ArmenT explains it well.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Jan 2015 06:40

bade, we can't do one evil to stop another one. that is a commie route is what I am saying. population control is required but the means you have in your mind is not correct., and anyway OT.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Jan 2015 07:07

What is more evil, bringing in more population that you cannot support and feed and then to tell them sorry, you cannot have as good a life as me so go and seek moksha, as it is good for you or take steps to prevent this unsupportable excess bulge.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 05 Jan 2015 07:09

Moksha = liberty from insecurity (hunger, illness, poverty, ignorance, slavery etc..)

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Jan 2015 07:10

the moksha has to be gotten by expanding on the basis of demand vs. supply. you can't take an orthogonal trajectory for having failed to pursue the right path.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 05 Jan 2015 07:53

Theo: Laser sintering is interesting. But how long deos it take to produce parts vis a vis CNC which is subtractive? In the latter the waste material can be recycled.

CAD software costs $2500 (say a copy of SolidWorks and 25%/PA full support) and CAE costs - if one wanst all the options and readers/writers et al. - ~$40000. Of course for both multi-year unlimited site license option would be much cheaper with the caveat that the customer will have to sign multi-year lock-in with penalties for early cancellation. So it is same same.

In any case, CAD is required whichever path one takes for mfg. - 3D printers or traditional CNC program generation, tool path verification (and more importantly tool path optimization), and CAM simulation on the workstation. I am sure there are lot more Mech/Civili Engg. to it than we non-engineers can guess, but still the economics do not favour 3D printers for now. May be in the not so near future - my guess is that the time horizons are not as short as 10 years but more like 25-50 years).

The real value would be in printing parts with functional material properties, but then they are one off special application stuff only.

dsreedhar · Post by **dsreedhar** » 05 Jan 2015 08:30

Off to another topic - health care. There is a specific thread for this. But from an education system perspective is/can anything here to be addressed to the ever growing medical costs? Cost of everything in the world goes down with time but for health care. Another exception is real estate. For most in India one major medical complication and it costs an arm and leg parting away most of the life savings. Sometimes it feels we work and save for paying future medical needs. See people go bankrupt paying the medical costs, people work to just pay for medical costs. This is an area where we can make a positive impact to the society. We can also develop an economy around this (medical tourism).

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 05 Jan 2015 09:16

I disagree.

Personally I don't see 3D printing as following the laser printer learning curve at all.

3D printing is a lot more complex and complicated and I suspect the majority of applications/printers will never enter the home. When we talk about 3D printing it encompasses a whole range of technologies that are built on the concept of 'Additive Manufacturing'. As sreedhar pointed out now the latest concept is 3D printing organs, which is the logical way to do it, if you stop and think, rather than growing an organ, remember those horrific images of a pig with a human ear on its back... .. the spectrum goes from metal to ceramics to plastics to fabrics to organics. You name it, it can be 3D printed.

What 3D printing can do is recreate the entire physical world around us in ways the present technology never can. For instance you can now 3D print an entire glass window, hermetically sealed with the frames included as one piece entirely on a construction site. 2 people + 1 truck driver can create the 3000 glass windows of the Leibskind One world trade center. This will replace the 600+ workers at the glass factory who had so much difficulty following shop drawings. A large scale 3D printer machine can one day conceivable print the entire steel skeleton of a building on site. No Welders or Iron workers required. Reduce waste steel/effort to 0%. It can print the entire shell of your car or print your entire house but now I'm reaching a little too far ahead....

Once we become dependent on the technology our world itself will have to change to accommodate the technology.
-------------------------------

Matrimc,

The CAD software is a lot more expensive, $50,000+ per seat, but the real expenses come in getting a qualified person to create the full model file and the specifications that go with it. Internally the cost is budgeted at $120-$200 per hour per person. So annual billing can easily exceed $500,000 per person. The printer we have is very expensive and tends to break down very often. Over time the printer expense may go down. I don't see the design costs reducing dramatically. If anything we attempt more complex components all the time, because now we can...

..all I can say is, it is no longer a one off situation. In fact if you live in the bay area you have walked into buildings that have 3D printed components holding them up...

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 05 Jan 2015 11:44

Theo: thanks. Never knew things were that advanced in construction and civil engg. Which cad sw costs 50k per seat? Even the high end mechanical CAD is not that expensive unless one includes cae and cam song with several readers/writers, special modules. Are you including material databases, supply chain connectivity, life cycle tools? End-to-end tool chain may cost as much. Just cad itself should not be that high given the act that solidworks costs ~3k even if one buys it in single seat quanties.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 05 Jan 2015 12:04

Right now we use CATIA5, because it is cross platform and dimensionally accurate and interference based. Fewest problems so far. I think most .stl files of any complexity use CATIA or similar advanced software. We have have been told solidworks sometimes gives unprintable files. REVIT Struc has given me fits as it is not inference based. we may move to digital project this year, which is additional cost to CATIA IIRC....
------------------------------

Here is a structural piece a certain engineering company did recently. Laser Sintered.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Jan 2015 19:50

simply awesome design.. I'd not mind buying one such piece of artwork for home.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 05 Jan 2015 22:45

Theo: that makes sense.

Solidworks is of course medium level cad, catia is the high end and the most expensive. The former U.S. known as solidsometimesworks. Autocad is the low end but due to sheer numbers they have the money to invest to atleast come to the level of Solidworks. In any case Solidworks is owned by catia whoch is owned by dassault. They would have to charge premium for their high end. Of course they own ACIS, I.e Solidworks. Catia uses a different internal format than ACIS.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 05 Jan 2015 23:12

SwamyG wrote:A good read: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-pa ... 751908.ece

The Indian History Congress (IHC) recently held at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi passed a unanimous resolution condemning “historical distortions” promoted by the ruling party at the Centre or its associates. Several articles that appeared online and in the print media (for instance, The Hindu of December 31) have reported criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent mention of Ganesha’s head transplant as proof of advanced surgical expertise in ancient India.

It is hard to decide whether Mr. Modi expected his listeners to take his pronouncement literally or as a metaphor, but it remains true that a number of publications and websites abound in grotesque claims: ancient Indians manufactured advanced aircraft, while Vedic rishis went about in automobiles and knew all about the heliocentric system, nuclear weapons and the Theory of Relativity.

But is our job done when we have righteously condemned such childish daydreaming and conflated all “historical distortions” with it? I take the view that the kind of historiography that the authors of the IHC resolution represent is, partly at least, responsible for this situation. Most mainstream history books on classical India, such as D.N. Jha’s Ancient India (revised edition 1998) or Romila Thapar’s Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2003), are almost completely silent on Indian scientific achievements. Professor Jha does briefly mention Aryabhata (whom he has clearly not read, as all his statements about him are factually wrong) and Varahamihira, but not once Brahmagupta or Bhaskaracharya, classical India’s finest mathematicians, or their many peers from Bhaskara I to Sridhara, Mahavira or Narayana Pandita. Curiously, Professor Thapar also limits her discussion of Indian science to a couple of paragraphs on Aryabhata and Varahamihira, conveying little of the former’s real breakthroughs.

Examples could easily be multiplied A recent exception is Upinder Singh’s History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (2009), which devotes over five pages to a more substantial treatment of scientific and medical advances, including Sushruta’s surgical techniques to reconstruct a severed nose or ear lobe and remove a cataract or bladder stones — admittedly better examples of surgical skills than Ganesha’s head transplant. That is indeed the whole point: if our history books did justice to genuine, well-documented and well-studied scientific and technological accomplishments, there would be no room left for the fantasisers. And it is not just mathematics, astronomy or medicine that have been blanked out by mainstream Indian historiography: chemistry, metallurgy, agricultural and veterinary science, water management and irrigation techniques, textile manufacture and dyeing, construction and transport technologies, perfumery and cosmetics, numerous crafts, and a few intriguing technologies from ice- making to weather prediction and water divining, are all equally worthy of study. They are part of India’s considerable heritage of indigenous knowledge systems, beside an equally extensive intellectual field ranging from grammar, prosody, philosophy and logic to literature, plastic and performing arts.

Any study of classical Egypt, Greece or China would naturally include accomplishments in all those fields, so why are most of our Indian historians so shy of dealing with them? I believe plain ignorance of India’s traditional knowledge systems is one factor; this attitude is largely a subconscious relic of the colonial era, which had decreed that India’s literatures were vehicles of superstition rather than of any genuine knowledge. As a result, most scholars prefer to confine themselves to an overview of literature and the arts. Yet scientific and technological advances are of equal importance; ironically, we owe the first studies of them to a few fine European scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, G. Thibaut or Léon Rodet.

Indian scholars followed with major contributions, but Independent India did little to promote the field: no Indian university has a department of history of science. Search the Internet for a substantial resource on past Indian mathematicians and you will soon reach the website of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. Indeed, scholars from the U.S., France, Japan or New Zealand have in recent years contributed important studies to the field. On the other hand, most of their Indian colleagues — thankfully there have been quite a few and of a very high order — have worked with little or no institutional support. It is hard to understand why our educational system and intellectual circles have failed to realise the importance of history of science as a full-fledged academic discipline. And a very enriching one, too, for it deals not just with the evolution of scientific ideas but with the interface between many civilisations and cultures.

This lacuna is what needs to be addressed. The historians behind the recent IHC petition should realise that some of the blame for the distortions they object to lies at their own door. Their resolution is titled “In Defence of Scientific Method in History,” but what is “scientific” about suppressing the genuine achievements of Indian science? If our students had substantial exposure to them, they would feel no need to let their imagination run wild.

(Michel Danino, author of books on ancient India, is guest professor at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. micheldanino@gmail.com)

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 06 Jan 2015 02:10

Theo: That said, let me say something a little provocative (I mean intellectually, a thought experiment, if you will).

I hold that we had 3D printing technology already. Some examples follow - not in any particular order.

1. Concrete pouring using wooden boxes - pillars, foundation.
2. Road laying machine is a very big additive 3D printer.
3. Tunnel boring machines are subtractive machines.
4. Plastic Molds for molded plastic parts are of course 3D printing machines.
5. Extremely large VLSI is very close to 2D until recently. But they are/have to move into 3D due to finfets having better electrical properties (or whatever the metric is).
6. Casting of mechanical parts is what exatcly, if not 3D printing?
7. ... <add your own favourite gee-gaw here.

Even if 3D printers take off in a large way, who would make the money?

1. Entrenched CAD/CAE companies or new CAD/CAE who can make their interfaces lot more ergonomic and linked into the Supply Chain Systems seamlessly. CAM will still have their traditional customers like auto, and Aerospace companies, and heavy machinery.

2. 3D printer makers

3. Holders of IP rights of the IP created using 3D printers

4. Owners of 3D printer farms - if such a business comes into being ever.

3D printer operators will make as much money as any factory/assembly line worker. No extensive retraining is needed to use the existing CAD resources.

Now let me say why my post is in the Education thread. It is my case that education takes two forms - classroom and practice. Both need to go hand in hand from Kindergarten through 12th grade. That grounding is necessary. Only after that kind of grounding, students are ready to tackle theory and practice from vocational training in trades all the way to advanced research. Teaching CAD this or 3D printing that before they are mature is going to give the students a false sense of learning and push them into jobs which do not really suit their interests nor their intellect.