US sanctions
 

Re: US sanctions
 

Will anyone in the rest of the world that wished to purchase a Harley, now purchase a BMW, Honda, etc equivalent?

I find it bizarre that the current Canadian government has the gall to criticize the US in light of the supply management bullshit they defend at every turn. How does that benefit Canadian consumers?

Re: US sanctions
 

America imports far more than it exports, so a decline in exports doesn't affect it as much as the rest of the world, except in the short term as production ramps up in America to compensate for more expensive imports.

And, whatever happens, international trade is about to enter a rapid decline as technology allows us to make more and more stuff ourselves. No point shipping cheap Chinese plastic tat around the world if you can print it out in your basement instead... and cheap home metal printing isn't far off.

I do think Trudeau missed a real opportunity though, he could have found a much better costume for his 'get tough' act. WWE wrestler, maybe?

Re: US sanctions
 

I am starting to agree with you more as I am seeing more and more 3d printed products show up in my fish supplies for my aquariums, one item that has been made in China for eons, now boasts on the label that its 3d printed in the USA, so while I doubt doing 3d printing of such small plastic parts leads to much employment in the US, there does seem to be more and more smaller items being produced in such a way vs being made oversea's, obviously just one small example.

Also notice more and more people 3d printing items from home and custom making products for people in the aquarium trade which has led to innovative products none of the larger companies ever thought of or could make in traditional manufacturing which has led to more independent small companies.

That is just one industry, I suppose this will indeed become more the norm in the future?

Re: US sanctions
 

Maybe a new factory will open in Mexico or Canada to get around the US tariffs.

Re: US sanctions
 

I know Trump doesn't the hotel/building but he must be making money off the licensing of it and of course his company manages the hotel, gov't should add a idiotic high fee to every room in his hotel, say 500% tax. That might get his attention, hit him in his own pocket.

Re: US sanctions
 

Until the US can increase their aluminum production capability their manufacturers will still have to buy all the aluminum they currently do from Canada, and it will cost them 10% more. MAGA.

Re: US sanctions
 

What it shows is that Canada needs to diversify its markets. To have something like 75% of your trade with one country smacks of complacency and laziness. And then to pretend that you are independent...

Re: US sanctions
 

Hence the need for a pipeline/s to the West Coast and Pacific markets?

Re: US sanctions
 

When 100% of a country's land border is with another country that can both buy your stuff and sell you stuff it's common sense that they be your major trading partner.

Re: US sanctions
 

Yes. I've been avoiding buying a 3D printer for years because the technology was still around the equivalent of the Sinclair ZX-80 in home computing: you could do stuff with them, but... why? Now, though, I'm seeing more and more stuff they can make that I would actually find useful. When they can print metal cheaply in a few years, that will cover many of the things I might otherwise buy.

That's particularly true for a lot of the weird stuff I buy off ebay, which would be much cheaper and faster to print here than to buy online and ship from Bulgaria. I hadn't thought about aquariums, but I remember my sister's used to have a whole bunch of plastic bits which could almost certainly be printed these days.

CNC is another thing that's become much cheaper over the last few years, and opened the market to many small companies to produce things that would previously have required a large manufacturing facility. And allows them to customize small production runs, which would have been impossibly expensive twenty years ago.

And all of these things are only going to become cheaper, faster and simpler to use.

Re: US sanctions
 

CNC is in the aquarium trade too making some really nice aquarium lids, a few are just a guy with the machine in his basement making lids to order, and the lids are nicer and slightly more then massed produced ones, but the look is far nicer so for most is worth the slight premium, plus being able to customize the lid for your needs such as specific spots for cords, feeding lids etc you cannot do with the generic mass produced ones.

Re: US sanctions
 

3d printed housing

How is this Printing? It doesn't look any different to a lot of automated production...sausage making, bottling, cars, lots of things from TV's "How It's Made" show.

Re: US sanctions
 

"Additive manufacturing" is a term often used for 3D printing in industrial/manufacturing applications. The difference between this and "regular" automated production is that the raw materials are processed at the point of manufacture and the machine can be programmed to produce many different things. In a bottling or canning line, a complete bottle, its contents, the bottle cap, and the label or shrink-sleeve are all brought together on a production line in the right order. The bottles and caps will have been moulded elsewhere using whatever blow-moulding or injection-moulding technique is appropriate. The plastic for the labels or sleeves will have been extruded somewhere and printed somewhere else. The machines that produce these do nothing else but make bottles, caps, labels, etc.

Even though they may be made of the same material, you couldn't make a bottle in a bottle-cap machine. But a 3D printer with the correct polymer as its raw material could be programmed to make either - or anything else.

In additive manufacturing, you use a machine that can produce a variety of different components depending on how you program the "print head." In the case of the concrete houses in the video, the print head pours a carefully controlled strip of concrete in a pre-programmed pattern to build up the layers of the walls of the house - that's the "additive" part. The path that the concrete dispensing head follows can be programmed to build something in almost any shape.

The game-changer in all this is that it's cost effective to 3D print components in much smaller quantities than the break-even point for designing a single-purpose machine. So, for a niche market like aquarium parts - or, my favourite example of 3D printing, replacement string-plucking picks for an 18th-century harpsichord - it makes economic sense to produce small volumes of parts that would otherwise have been either impossible to find or exceedingly expensive to make.

For another extraordinary application of 3D printing, check out "Team Unlimbited" - a small team in a shed in Wales making custom prosthetic hands for children at a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional prosthetics. http://www.teamunlimbited.org/

Re: US sanctions
 

or you can use your 3d p[printer to build a working R2D2 (its taking a LOT of filament)