Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects.
I've seen what people go through when they operate 3D printers. The impression I have is that they still make 2D inkjet printers look like paragons of reliability.
I'm not sure if it's that simple. Many space-intensive DIY hobbies are on the retreat simply because more people are moving into cities or very dense suburbs where you have no practical opportunity to, say, build a woodworking shop. Metalworking was even more severely impacted, for obvious reasons.
Also, long before mail-order offshore manufacturing, people have been lured away from most of this by the promise of 3D printing. Every other techie I know owns a 3D printer. Most have not made anything interesting with it because they soon learn that the real difficulty is materials science and 3D design. But as a nerd, it's the thing you're supposed to own. In contrast, I know maybe four people in the SF Bay Area who are into woodworking, metalsmithing, CNC, or stuff like that.
I don't see mail-order prototyping as a conspiracy... it's more of a culmination of the DIY community chasing the mirage they were sold on in the early 2010s. I still remember the HN claims: home manufacturing revolution! It's the beginning of a brand new economy, why would anyone buy anything anymore when you can just click "print"... with some amusing parallels to how some folks now talk about building your own software with AI.
The mail-order stuff isn't evil insofar that it may allow some people to make things they couldn't make before. On the flip side, it's a very inefficient way to learn, so I think it will reduce hardware literacy among those who could afford a garage workshop.
FWIW, I think the same goes for AI-assisted hardware design. On one hand, I see people who otherwise wouldn't be DIYing getting into DIY: "I asked Claude and it one-shotted this rectangular enclosure for me, it's amazing!", "Claude made this RP2350 breakout board for me, how cool is that". But I also see established DIYers getting a degree of brain rot.
we have had a home manufacturing revolution, though, and making every kind of hardware is crazy accessible, look at the explosion of niche products in every single hobby space over the past ten years
I miss absolutely nothing about etching my own single layer PCBs at home
First, PCBs: neither do I, I'm not sure why you're assuming that's the position I want to take. This has nothing to do with 3D printing or mail-order metal parts.
Second, I don't think there's a revolution. Your archetypal middle-aged suburban dad / curious teenager are DIYing less than 20 years ago, which in turn was less than 40 years ago. The stats here are clear, most of "garage" occupations are on the decline.
Third, the "explosion of niche products" - maybe, but I think some of it is just visibility. Kickstarter, HN, Hack-a-Day, and so on. Before that, we had hobby journals for woodworkers, electronics, etc, and they were always full of ads for niche gear.
I feel like this has been a talking point for as long as off-the-shelf printers aimed at hobbyists have existed. Calling them AI factories is a bit off the mark imo, there are plenty of hobbyists that learn CAD and want to make their own stuff, but don't want to build their own printer. The kind of people who are interested in reprap are absolutely still around, and I really don't see that community going dissolving because of the rise of capable commercial printers.
Real bummer I have their manual lathe and mill and have made a lot of things it would have been impossible to make without the ability to machine (even at small scale their machines could do).
One reason why I bought sherline is the company was still in business and creating so many accessories.
I guess I'll be trying to buy stuff off of eBay or something like I would have been doing had I bought Chinese stuff.
Speaking of which does anyone know the details of their small 60 degree carbide inserts? I assume that don't make those themselves.
Unfortunately, the manufacturing environment has changed dramatically. The effects of COVID, increasing manufacturing and operating costs, and significant changes in consumer purchasing habits have made it increasingly difficult for a small American manufacturer such as Sherline to maintain the workforce and production levels necessary to remain competitive.
Can’t help but wonder if “operating costs” include tariffs and other policy decisions by the current administration that have driven up costs for everyone.
It is not just tariffs. The cost of living in the US, especially housing, has approximately doubled in my area since 2019. There is a massive overinvestment in real estate. When housing costs go up it forces companies to pay their employees more to adjust which then drives up the COGS. This becomes a feedback loop because the real estate investors see the prices go up and say "well we have to raise rents because COGS are going up."
Competing with any offshore becomes impossible (especially when compared to countries which subsidize their production). Companies close instead of attempting to compete. Why would you when simply investing in real estate, crypto or AI would net more money? The parts needed to produce in the US are typically not made in the US.
Tariffs hurt...a lot...the companies I work with directly (including mine) have been struggling with them for a decade now. But it is a lot more than that...there is a general lack of interest in making things that are real. Plus, the cost if you attempt to do so puts you in a position where you cannot be competitive.
Wow, what a disappointment. I’ve found it funny over the years when people are shocked to hear me talking about machining, when they themselves have woodworking tools. Cutting metal, cutting wood, even cutting paper - all useful for making and fixing.
I earned an MSME without ever learning to actually make things, so once I could afford it I bought a Sherline CNC mill and taught myself to use it. I made many mistakes but got there. I used it just last week to make a wind gauge mounting bracket for a 70 year old sailboat.
I liked that it was made in the USA and (at the time, pre mainstream internet) had a great community to learn from.
I know there are other options still, but Sherline has a fond place in my heart for how easy they made it to get started.
I also think Sherline machines have good value. Were they the cheapest, no, but they actually worked really well in my experience for their size. I only have their manual lathe, but it was a MUCH higher quality machine than my larger 7x14 from china. It just feels like everything is either a race to the bottom, enshittification and/or both right now.
Guess this is what happens when you elect a group that prioritizes enriching themselves over ensuring you don't starve in the street like a filthy animal.
the sherline designs aren't particularly notable, and they're pretty easy to replicate if you have working machine tools that are larger. any machinist could make a sherline mill or lathe, but without that floorspace and capex and skill, one really can't.
I spent overly long trying to learn on sherline tools and once I gave up and bought a Bridgeport and an old Logan, I realized that I was just banging my head against the limitations of the tools.
the value they had was that they were cheaper than the smaller version of the standard toolroom machines, and they were a way to bootstrap yourself without having the heavy power and the floorspace. so pretty much the storefront, not the IP. I still have their 4" rotary, and its actually not bad. the mill had a huge amount of flex in the column that made it pretty unusable for me unless you took really really tiny passes.
I had an old Unimat for a couple years, and while that was even _more_ dodgy than the sherline the fact that it was all steel and a combined mill/lathe made it a lot more interesting. would rather see some community standards for tooling on a platform like that. maybe a 50% larger so setup isn't so fiddly.
I'm not sure what you are hoping from "free", "community owned", and "open source".
They make mills and lathes. They are really nice little machines, great for hobby use. We have one lathe from them in our hackspace for example, and it is a delight. Of course you have to understand the limitations of the tool, but that is true for every machine.
That being said, it is just a lathe. There is nothing particularly complicated about it. At least not at their complexity level. If you can manufacture machine tools you can make one very easily. If you don't have the manufacturing capability you won't.
The reason i'm saying this is because "free as in freedom" and "open source" are properties of plans / source code. If you happen to have a lathe factory, the lack of a lathe plan is not going to stop you. You are just going to design one for yourself. And if you don't have a factory which can make a lathe, then why do you care about plans for a lathe being open source?
I guess the factory itself could be "community owned". If you have a business plan, or a large pile of cash, now is the time to approach them that you want to buy everything from them. But I'm not sure how "community owned" would even work for this use case.
Basically what I'm saying this is hardware, not software. The terms you use don't make much sense in this case.
Sad news. First, Openbuilds now this.
Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
I've seen what people go through when they operate 3D printers. The impression I have is that they still make 2D inkjet printers look like paragons of reliability.
I wouldn't trade that time spent on my printers for anything. I wrote a post about this recently [1]
There was way more valuable things learned in the process than just making Benchy.
For years I have been trying to tell people this. The value of Reprap was not just "to have a printer".
[1] https://www.robosprout.com/thank-you-reprap-for-all-of-it/
Crazy as it sounds, that’s the opposite of my personal experience.
Yeah in the four years I’ve had my Prusa it’s had basically no problems.
They’re a pain in the ass if you buy bottom of the barrel crap with sloppy tolerances for $100 I guess, but the same is true of regular printers.
I'm not sure if it's that simple. Many space-intensive DIY hobbies are on the retreat simply because more people are moving into cities or very dense suburbs where you have no practical opportunity to, say, build a woodworking shop. Metalworking was even more severely impacted, for obvious reasons.
Also, long before mail-order offshore manufacturing, people have been lured away from most of this by the promise of 3D printing. Every other techie I know owns a 3D printer. Most have not made anything interesting with it because they soon learn that the real difficulty is materials science and 3D design. But as a nerd, it's the thing you're supposed to own. In contrast, I know maybe four people in the SF Bay Area who are into woodworking, metalsmithing, CNC, or stuff like that.
I don't see mail-order prototyping as a conspiracy... it's more of a culmination of the DIY community chasing the mirage they were sold on in the early 2010s. I still remember the HN claims: home manufacturing revolution! It's the beginning of a brand new economy, why would anyone buy anything anymore when you can just click "print"... with some amusing parallels to how some folks now talk about building your own software with AI.
The mail-order stuff isn't evil insofar that it may allow some people to make things they couldn't make before. On the flip side, it's a very inefficient way to learn, so I think it will reduce hardware literacy among those who could afford a garage workshop.
FWIW, I think the same goes for AI-assisted hardware design. On one hand, I see people who otherwise wouldn't be DIYing getting into DIY: "I asked Claude and it one-shotted this rectangular enclosure for me, it's amazing!", "Claude made this RP2350 breakout board for me, how cool is that". But I also see established DIYers getting a degree of brain rot.
we have had a home manufacturing revolution, though, and making every kind of hardware is crazy accessible, look at the explosion of niche products in every single hobby space over the past ten years
I miss absolutely nothing about etching my own single layer PCBs at home
First, PCBs: neither do I, I'm not sure why you're assuming that's the position I want to take. This has nothing to do with 3D printing or mail-order metal parts.
Second, I don't think there's a revolution. Your archetypal middle-aged suburban dad / curious teenager are DIYing less than 20 years ago, which in turn was less than 40 years ago. The stats here are clear, most of "garage" occupations are on the decline.
Third, the "explosion of niche products" - maybe, but I think some of it is just visibility. Kickstarter, HN, Hack-a-Day, and so on. Before that, we had hobby journals for woodworkers, electronics, etc, and they were always full of ads for niche gear.
I feel like this has been a talking point for as long as off-the-shelf printers aimed at hobbyists have existed. Calling them AI factories is a bit off the mark imo, there are plenty of hobbyists that learn CAD and want to make their own stuff, but don't want to build their own printer. The kind of people who are interested in reprap are absolutely still around, and I really don't see that community going dissolving because of the rise of capable commercial printers.
Real bummer I have their manual lathe and mill and have made a lot of things it would have been impossible to make without the ability to machine (even at small scale their machines could do).
One reason why I bought sherline is the company was still in business and creating so many accessories.
I guess I'll be trying to buy stuff off of eBay or something like I would have been doing had I bought Chinese stuff.
Speaking of which does anyone know the details of their small 60 degree carbide inserts? I assume that don't make those themselves.
Can’t help but wonder if “operating costs” include tariffs and other policy decisions by the current administration that have driven up costs for everyone.
Speaking from my personal observations...
It is not just tariffs. The cost of living in the US, especially housing, has approximately doubled in my area since 2019. There is a massive overinvestment in real estate. When housing costs go up it forces companies to pay their employees more to adjust which then drives up the COGS. This becomes a feedback loop because the real estate investors see the prices go up and say "well we have to raise rents because COGS are going up."
Competing with any offshore becomes impossible (especially when compared to countries which subsidize their production). Companies close instead of attempting to compete. Why would you when simply investing in real estate, crypto or AI would net more money? The parts needed to produce in the US are typically not made in the US.
Tariffs hurt...a lot...the companies I work with directly (including mine) have been struggling with them for a decade now. But it is a lot more than that...there is a general lack of interest in making things that are real. Plus, the cost if you attempt to do so puts you in a position where you cannot be competitive.
Wow, what a disappointment. I’ve found it funny over the years when people are shocked to hear me talking about machining, when they themselves have woodworking tools. Cutting metal, cutting wood, even cutting paper - all useful for making and fixing.
I earned an MSME without ever learning to actually make things, so once I could afford it I bought a Sherline CNC mill and taught myself to use it. I made many mistakes but got there. I used it just last week to make a wind gauge mounting bracket for a 70 year old sailboat.
I liked that it was made in the USA and (at the time, pre mainstream internet) had a great community to learn from.
I know there are other options still, but Sherline has a fond place in my heart for how easy they made it to get started.
I also think Sherline machines have good value. Were they the cheapest, no, but they actually worked really well in my experience for their size. I only have their manual lathe, but it was a MUCH higher quality machine than my larger 7x14 from china. It just feels like everything is either a race to the bottom, enshittification and/or both right now.
the current white house really fucked over all the smaller domestic manufacturers. and scientists. and um america basically
Everything.
If you are a builder, there is no sane way to bid on contracts with such hugely variable COGS.
And how the HELL do you even attempt to fix the US housing supply if you are tariffing Canadian lumber? You can't.
Guess this is what happens when you elect a group that prioritizes enriching themselves over ensuring you don't starve in the street like a filthy animal.
Sad.
Is there a free alternative to this ideally community owned and open source?
the sherline designs aren't particularly notable, and they're pretty easy to replicate if you have working machine tools that are larger. any machinist could make a sherline mill or lathe, but without that floorspace and capex and skill, one really can't.
I spent overly long trying to learn on sherline tools and once I gave up and bought a Bridgeport and an old Logan, I realized that I was just banging my head against the limitations of the tools.
the value they had was that they were cheaper than the smaller version of the standard toolroom machines, and they were a way to bootstrap yourself without having the heavy power and the floorspace. so pretty much the storefront, not the IP. I still have their 4" rotary, and its actually not bad. the mill had a huge amount of flex in the column that made it pretty unusable for me unless you took really really tiny passes.
I had an old Unimat for a couple years, and while that was even _more_ dodgy than the sherline the fact that it was all steel and a combined mill/lathe made it a lot more interesting. would rather see some community standards for tooling on a platform like that. maybe a 50% larger so setup isn't so fiddly.
I'm not sure what you are hoping from "free", "community owned", and "open source".
They make mills and lathes. They are really nice little machines, great for hobby use. We have one lathe from them in our hackspace for example, and it is a delight. Of course you have to understand the limitations of the tool, but that is true for every machine.
That being said, it is just a lathe. There is nothing particularly complicated about it. At least not at their complexity level. If you can manufacture machine tools you can make one very easily. If you don't have the manufacturing capability you won't.
The reason i'm saying this is because "free as in freedom" and "open source" are properties of plans / source code. If you happen to have a lathe factory, the lack of a lathe plan is not going to stop you. You are just going to design one for yourself. And if you don't have a factory which can make a lathe, then why do you care about plans for a lathe being open source?
I guess the factory itself could be "community owned". If you have a business plan, or a large pile of cash, now is the time to approach them that you want to buy everything from them. But I'm not sure how "community owned" would even work for this use case.
Basically what I'm saying this is hardware, not software. The terms you use don't make much sense in this case.