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I won't hijack texta's thread any further.

No doubt everyone has noticed that I don't seem very excited by Christian's robotics project. I bear Christian no ill will but feel the need to fully explain why I have a negative view of what he is trying to achieve. I believe that after existing for centuries, the writing is on the wall for gem cutting as a profession and that it's demise will come at the hands of inventions like Christian's. I don't think that he is trying to do any harm to anybody - but actions have consequences regardless of whether harm was intended or not.

Just think about what it is you do for a living. Now imagine somebody builds a machine that can do exactly what you do, but it never needs to eat, sleep, take a break, never gets sick, never needs a holiday, never argues about anything etc. They patent this invention and it becomes widely available - what is your labour now worth? You have now been effectively de-valued to zero because you are now obsolete. All the years you may have spent building up and refining your particular skills mean nothing - you are tipped into the garbage can because a machine can do it more cheaply. Neither yourself nor any other human can hope to compete on speed and cost-effectiveness. You aren't even of any real value passing on your knowledge and teaching others what you have learned because what you have learned is now worthless if done by a human being.

This is the future of gem cutting as a profession (among many others) - and I don't think that future is all that far away. Christian's efforts bring that day closer. I think it will still linger on as a niche hobby after humans have been supplanted by machines here but will steadily fade away and the skill set will be lost to history. The other lapidary arts will follow as even custom jewellery making becomes automated, with models being generated on a touch screen and then 3D printed for casting, a machine doing the setting and finishing - thousands of years of history of developing human skills withering away because humans will be deemed unnecessary for the role and will subsequently forget how it was ever done.

So this is why I'm not keen on what Christian is doing. Yes, it's coming anyway but the longer it takes the better from my point of view. Just because something becomes automated it doesn't necessarily mean that it does more good than harm.

The thing with the machine im building is more to combine all my hobby's together, electronics, chemistry, microscopy, programming and robotics to get back to one hobby and that is cutting shiny little facetted stones.

Well I must say, that's a lot of time-consuming hobbies to have on the go at one time :eek: - I can well understand why I've seen so many of your posts in the Lapidary topic for so long without ever seeing (that I can recall) you show us your own lapidary work or comment on anyone else's, you haven't had time to do any. That's why I asked if you really had any interest in it.

Im just currioua if i can manage to cut a stone automaticly and if it can be done as a diy

And when you succeed - what then?

As vonG said to you.....

Im really impressed on how advanced your project is going to be, Im looking forward to see it finished and how good polish you can get with it. If it manages to get competition cut stones, then everybody with a manuell machine can put that on the shelf because they wont need it anymore. big_smile
If one person can build that kind of machine, then others can do it too.

Correct there vonG, with one correction - everybody who uses a manual machine can be put on the shelf because they won't be needed anymore.

Further, he or she has correctly noted that this technology could quickly spread once initially implemented, so anyone who thinks they will have a cosy monopoly will likely have another think coming. Right now, faceting is an uncommon skill set requiring quite a bit of learning and practice - all that will be required under your scenario is a few bucks and virtually anyone will be able to set themselves up as a "gem cutter" without needing to have any ability to cut gems themselves. It will be like the lawn mowing business - LOTS of competition! Has vonG thought this far ahead I wonder?

Once they are in the distribution stage, I could buy one of these machines myself - but I don't think my heart would be in the work anymore, given that the skills needed aren't likely to involve much more than pushing a few buttons - that is not lapidary. In any case "cutters" will be a bob a dozen (in Australian slang that means abundant and therefore cheap).

At the end of the day, I really fail to see how the drive to remove human beings from lapidary makes any kind of contribution to lapidary - or if it can really be called lapidary at all.

Many new advances in technology have lifted millions out of poverty, fed the hungry, healed the sick and greatly improved human welfare - while others largely just wreck things while making no improvement to people's lives overall. Ask yourself which kind this one is likely to turn out to be. :awful:
 
Actually, it might be time to look into working a lease - when automation replaces human gem cutters, it might be a good time to be a sapphire miner.

Precious stones will still be precious stones and their availability will still be limited by the fact that they are physically scarce. Every Tom, Dick and Harry with an automatic faceting machine will probably be rushing to try and buy stones in the belief that they will make a killing since they turn them out so much quicker than someone who actually cuts (the fast movers might do just that). But the surge in demand will push the price of stone up (a win for miners) and the new "auto-cutters" will soon find themselves getting less stone for their dollars.

In addition to having to pay more for stone, they will probably have to charge less and less in a fiercely competitive environment where anybody can churn out gems at a rapid pace. Plenty of them will probably end up finding the returns too marginal to make ends meet.

Maybe a few big boys will come to dominate? We've had Jim's Mowing, Jim's Plumbing, Jim's Antennas etc - maybe it will come to pass that "Jim's Gem Cutting" will be the next big thing?

Ahhhh......progress O:)
 
Hi Lefty,

I wouldnt be so concern about automatic faceting! Its not affordable for anyone and for as far i know there are mayby 5 or 10 people that made there own. But i dont know how professional they build theres. What i do know is that they all got a huge problem and that is software and the knowledge of programming/mechanics etc. So these machines are verry limited.

I also think this wont be soon on the marked. Why? Because its toooo expensieve! Even when some one create one for the marked it would be $20k or more. So it wont be available for the public. And again it will be verry limited!

Just dont worry so much!

When i can find the foto's of my manual machine ill upload it even some of the stones. Everything is packed in boxes and is stored.

But i have plenty of time, im at home, helping my wife (she has a left side handicap) and my daugther. I dont have a job and i need something to do other wise i get bored :) At the moment i put all my engergy into the machine to get it working and i dont believe there are manny people in that position that they can build one in a single thought overnight!

Is it the future?! Mayby... mayby not! Sertanly not for the mass! Its not a 3d printer! (A 3d printer doesnt brake bones, mine can!)

Greets,

Christian
 
Cheers Christian :) That's all good to know but I worry nonetheless - after all, the goal is to overcome all the hurdles you mentioned and what you have said has been said about every new innovation that swallowed up jobs. "They'll never make a machine to cut the cane" my mother's cousin said to her many years ago (he was a cane cutter - we grow a lot of sugar cane here). 12 months later the technology was perfected and he was out of a job.

10 years ago I would not have believed that humans at shopping centre checkouts would soon be almost entirely replaced by automation - yet here we are.

So it's coming regardless, the only question is that of when all the issues and problems can be worked out and it can be cost-effectively produced and marketed. I understand that there are still inherint difficulties with the full practical application of the tech - that's the reason I'm still around - but you guys are working on that.

I do appreciate your efforts to placate me though :)

Cheers
 
I really would like to see some photos of your stones to - no hurry - you must have some nice ones :)

Cheers
 
Who knows what it might do to the value of traditional workmanship and skilled people,

My partner just bought our friends new born baby a "Handmade woolen baby's blanket" for $180.00!, when she could have just got a blanket at K-mart for $6 and it still would have been covered in the same spew, poo and goo. She paid a premium for quality and the nature of the way it was produced. The value was seen in the workmanship.

If your'e skilled at a trade these days, People will still pay more for that, than something commercially pumped out in bulk masses. Who knows, If these machine come out and do make it easy for anyone, the traditional skilled hand cutters might be able to charge a premium for their stones... cut half as many, charge twice the price? Spend more time out in the field? Just a thought. Cheers
 
Just when you thought you were indispensable , progress comes along and you are made to realize that everything is temporary.
You need to move with the times or end up left behind.
Life's like that.
The world don't stop spinning for no one.
 
Will never be an issue. Costs far out way productivity as stated. India is quite happy to bang out gemstones for next to nothing already.
Probably about 15 yrs ago National Geographic did an article called 'Diamonds, the real story'.

1536280049_images.jpg


The reporter was able to buy 1ct of round brilliant diamonds made up of over 100 individualy hand cut diamonds, with there 50+ individual facets for $100US. They are on the front cover drizzled over the strawberry.
So the threat of mass producing gem stones has been around for many years and can do it far cheaper than Christian will ever do it. :D
I wish him luck in his endeavour but there are some very big challenges to overcome and it will be interesting to see how he overcomes these problems. :gemstone:
 
By the way my machine is not build for mass production and will never be! :)

And indeed automatic faceting is there for years now, wouldnt it be Nice to do some experiments that you only can dream of? I do!

Christian
 
Goldface said:
Who knows what it might do to the value of traditional workmanship and skilled people,

My partner just bought our friends new born baby a "Handmade woolen baby's blanket" for $180.00!, when she could have just got a blanket at K-mart for $6 and it still would have been covered in the same spew, poo and goo. She paid a premium for quality and the nature of the way it was produced. The value was seen in the workmanship.

If your'e skilled at a trade these days, People will still pay more for that, than something commercially pumped out in bulk masses. Who knows, If these machine come out and do make it easy for anyone, the traditional skilled hand cutters might be able to charge a premium for their stones... cut half as many, charge twice the price? Spend more time out in the field? Just a thought. Cheers

Yes, I'd like to hope such a niche will still exist! Might be hard for people to tell the difference by looking though, the only real difference will that done by hand will be slower and therefore more expensive. But people might still appreciate it, you never know.

Cheers
 
moeee said:
Just when you thought you were indispensable , progress comes along and you are made to realize that everything is temporary.
You need to move with the times or end up left behind.
Life's like that.
The world don't stop spinning for no one.

Yep, that's how it goes. But the current argument making the rounds is that automation is simply becoming so advanced and so cost-effective that there will be a huge surge of jobs currently done by humans that will become automated over the next few decades without equivalent replacement. Tech Gods like Elon Musk believe that this will be the case and are calling for governments to introduce a Universal Basic Income, since if this comes to fruition many people will never work again or may never work at all.

This is obviously a problem since it is participating in the process of production that gives people the income they require in order to consume (I know, I'm going much more broadly than the particular niche issue I brought up here). Make them obsolete through automation without equivalent replacement - and how are they supposed to be able to afford to consume the output of the machines that replaced them? Yes, the automated production will be cheaper but it will need to be as margins in consumer-driven economies like ours are damaged and squeezed by mass-unemployment or mass under-employment.

So Elon Musk et al - as the owners of the capital - want government to be the ultimate consumer of last resort, ensuring a ready market for their goods and services remains by massively expanding the welfare system, as they themselves invest in replacing the labour of humans - who fill the dual role of both producer and consumer - with automation which is faster, cheaper.......but which can only produce and does not consume.

Might sound pretty cruisy to be paid an actual full and proper wage to exist purely for the purpose of consumption :cool: but I think that rather than the "explosion of human creativity" that it is argued will occur, many people would find a life where they are not actually needed for anything by anybody to be unfulfilling.

All sounds a bit dystopian but there are many captains of industry (especially in technology-related fields) who believe it to be likely. As the day approaches where machines can do a majority of things better, faster and cheaper than humans can, mankind will have some choices to make. I don't know to what extent this is actually possible but we certainly seem headed in that direction.

But I've digressed :cool:

Cheers
 
Mr Magoo said:
Will never be an issue. Costs far out way productivity as stated. India is quite happy to bang out gemstones for next to nothing already.
Probably about 15 yrs ago National Geographic did an article called 'Diamonds, the real story'.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/3008/1536280049_images.jpg

The reporter was able to buy 1ct of round brilliant diamonds made up of over 100 individualy hand cut diamonds, with there 50+ individual facets for $100US. They are on the front cover drizzled over the strawberry.
So the threat of mass producing gem stones has been around for many years and can do it far cheaper than Christian will ever do it. :D
I wish him luck in his endeavour but there are some very big challenges to overcome and it will be interesting to see how he overcomes these problems. :gemstone:

I think though MM that if I had a dollar for every time that had been said, I would never need to work again and could join the worlds top 10 rich list, going for a swim each day in an olympic-sized pool freshly filled with French Champagne every morning :cool:

Every innovation that achieves dominance starts out that way - riddled with bugs and prohibitively expensive. Someone always ends up cracking it. In addition to the two examples I posed, there are countless others. Things that were widely accepted as unchangable fact - ie, man will never fly in a heavier-than-air powered machine or man will never set foot on the moon were quickly consigned to the dustbin of history as reality overtook them.

Thirty years ago, sitting in front of my clunky museum piece of a computer (a TRS 80 - yes, 80k was a BIG memory for a home computer back then, lol! :lol: ), who would have guessed that computers would become so advanced that nowdays even the best human grandmasters are no match for them in strategy games like chess and go.

Can't recall who it was but not so long ago I read an article in which an Australian Air Force top brass hinted that there would be no more purchases of regular piloted fighter jets after the current bloc because "human pilots will simply be no match for a computer piloting the exact same aircraft".

Many production jobs were offshored to developing nations decades ago in order to take advantage of the very low costs - it's now projected that automation will become cost effective enough to compete with cheap second/third world production in an increasing number of areas.

How far it will get seems uncertain but I'm quite convinced it's coming to some degree.

Cheers
 
Nena said:
By the way my machine is not build for mass production and will never be! :)

And indeed automatic faceting is there for years now, wouldnt it be Nice to do some experiments that you only can dream of? I do!

Christian

I know - but somebody will crack it.

Cheers
 
Mods, I've probably led this issue on a bit of a tangent - go ahead and move it to General Chat if you think that's a more appropriate place for it.

Cheers
 
I'm not totally disagreeing but the fact remains fifteen years ago kids could hand cut more than a hundred individual diamonds and sell them for $100. Yet fifteen years later we still have diamond cutters.
Automated faceting machines have been around with success for many years. The Jang is one example. But we still cut a lot by hand.

Yes, someone, somewhere, sometime will crack it. I'm not denying that but what I can be certain of it's not going to effect me any day soon. I have far bigger concerns of high quality fraudulent natural rough coming onto the market which would make the value of stone so worthless the trade of gem cutting can not survive. No money in cutting glass.
Ever looked into the products of the Anahi mine operated by Minerales y Metales del Oriente.
 
Well I hope you're right there but I'm a bit less certain. Remember my mum's cousin? Swore black and blue that it was impossible to make a machine to cut the cane - they had apparently had quite a few attempts at one and made a helluva mess - but a year later they achieved just that.

It's coming, I just hope it doesn't come too soon. The important consideration is whether or not something new represents a game-changer. A machine that could spit out competition grade stones at a rapid clip at a much smaller scale than the current behemoths that exist would represent a game-changer once the costs were managed down.

But no, I don;t really think it's going to happen tomorrow or next week or even next year - beyond that time frame becomes a bit less certain I think.
Cheers
 
Lefty said:
Well I hope you're right there but I'm a bit less certain. Remember my mum's cousin? Swore black and blue that it was impossible to make a machine to cut the cane - they had apparently had quite a few attempts at one and made a helluva mess - but a year later they achieved just that.

Yep. I went through the same thing. I worked in forestry and remember the first tree processor that came out of Sweden. The inventor/designer brought it to Scotland to trial and we felled the tree's for it. How we laughed at this machinery making an absolute dogs dinner of the timber. We were confident that was the last we would see of it.
Seven years later I was virtually without a job on all except the most inaccessible ground. And even then the processor had morphed into a harvester which meant it could fell its own trees. It could do in a day what I could do in a week.
Although in saying all of that, the old ways of the timber industry still operate in small pockets including using horses to extract the timber. Admittedly in a very niche market.

Sorry. Drifting waayyy off topic here.
 
Yep, thats the sort of thing I'm banging on about, thanks texta.

There you go MM - the work of about 100 cutters done by a single machine - you and I are already obsolete.

Well no, not quite yet - for one its obvious by the way he just plonked them on the dops that they were low-value gems, probably synthetics. There would be a lot of waste in truly precious stones that way. They're probably all identical bits of synthetic rough, all the same size and shape and fairly predictable - so very unlike natural stones.

Also, its rather bigger than the set up I was imagining, so still quite expensive - although it's not so big that it would require a large corporation to stump up the funds to make it happen.

But lets be honest with ourselves - if they can do that now, how long before what I'm talking about becomes feasable? I really don't think it would be too much of a stretch to think that the demise of professional lapidary as performed by humans is just around the corner.
 
Again, I might be able to buy and operate a smaller scale version of that when - not if - it becomes feasable and cost effective to turn them out.. Bu Jeez, what a soul destroying job from what I can see - that is NOT lapidary. There would be no more satisfaction in that than pushing buttons to churn out bottle caps. Ok, so its still being polished by hand but you can bet that they are currently working on ways to remove the human from that part as well.
 
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