LOS ANGELES, CA (WESTEC), March 30, 2009 - The bright spot in this economy may be really, really small. To be precise, it is smaller than a thousandth of of an inch and goes by the name of micromachining. The market for micro machined medical devices alone is predicted to be $44 billion by 2011, according to Micro Manufacturing magazine.
I've just spent a day at WESTEC in Los Angeles. The isles at the LA Convention center were far from packed. There was not even a line at the inhouse Starbucks -- a sure sign the show is hurting. Most of the show is devoted to the machining market in the US, an industry most have conceded to overseas firms.
I scooped up a bunch of publications for the flight home, including Micro Manufacturing. I was fascinated. Micromanufacturing is a true frontier. When the parts are so small, people can't even figure out how to hold them, much less assemble them. A Timken ball bearing assembly fits into a workspace of 0.025" -- how do you deburr that? How do you hold it down when you machine it? How do you measure to see if it is within spec? Holes in molecular sieves defy even the drills bits that are pictured next to matchheads and dimes that, by comparison, look as big as Jupiter.
So why is working at a such a tiny scale -- orders of magnitude smaller -- so very promising. Because that is the scale in which so many important things are happening. Cells problems, laser surgeries, imbedded drug delivery machines, many such examples are listed -- enough to make you fell like a giant with clumsy tools. A doctor's scalpel looks is now a blunt object.
What's the alternative? It may not yet exist. Is that not a frontier? A place to make a million, or millions, a way turn around your company. We as a country may be dying trying to make good cars, but maybe we're just thinking too big.
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