Hans raises a long term ethical question often not addresses in the engineering community. Without going into great detail, in the US the engineering profession has professional ethics that deal with the way they provide their professional service. The one thing that has never really been addressed is what responsibility an engineer who develops a new manufacturing process has to the employees who might be displaced because of it.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Hans Pizka Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 3:50 AM To: The Horn List Subject: Re: [Hornlist] Is this the future? Hello Ricardo & William & others, it would be too nice, but ...... we would lose all the knowledge & all the improvements found out by the many instrument makers around the world, if all be mass produced. Technical parts of our instruments are mass produced without problems or can be produced in greater series (means quantities of hundreds or thousands) like valve cylindres, rotors, axles, bearing plates, raw valve caps without engravings (but even that can be pre-ordered), bridges, finger plates, horse-shoe-plates for the valve stopper, etc. These mechanical parts can be produced by automatic or semi-automatic lathe. The production of these parts in quantities for worldwide demand could be produced by a specialized company (well, just a small department of the company) within few days. Basta. Result: the knowledge how to make these parts in case of a repair of an instrument with other dimensions than standard will be lost by the time, also the knowledge how to adapt these parts to non-standard requirements. And the bending ? Fine, getting fast bent tubes. But, dont we complain about extremely sensitive points where finest irregularities might influence swinging knots (I do not know any better term, please correct me) might be influenced negatively ??? If you watch these video clips carefully, you might spot irregularities on the tubings. What do they require ? Calibrations. What does that process require ? Single forms, where the tubing pieces be placed and calibration balls be used for (inside) calibration. And there we are. The higher costs of the additional equipment & working effort would weigh out the cheaper production costs. Dont we complain for the slightest irregularities, just to get a bargain, just to have a welcome excuse for personal failure in ones own playing technique ? Soldering by using inductive circuits (technicians will understand) is fine, but the preparation for the single piece costs too much time compared with traditional soldering, if we think about brass instruments. It is not the process itself, but preparing the machine. What will be the effect of all these mass productions except cheaper prices ? The same as with other mass products. Uniformity, boring, loss of working places, buy-use-throw-away-society, loss of skill. How to have more cheaper instruments for less fortunate young people ? If our children & youngsters would be educated better & would care more for their instruments, these instruments would last for two or three generations of students or more. These instruments would be replaced by the time anyway & could be passed on to countries where parents could not afford new instruments. It is up to us, to educate our younger generation to care more about. We would still have this great choice of different makes. We would not lose the individuality. We would remain humans and not just functioning living robots. Just imagine a meadow full of perfectly the same blue flowers of perfectly the same size & shape. How boring, - but easier to calculate. Do not forget INDIVIDUALITY. Please. ########################################################## Am 16.07.2011 um 23:10 schrieb Ricardo Matosinhos: > For sure the top instruments will be made on the same processes and today, but would be fine to reduce even more the costs of instruments for young students. By doing this more people can start to learn the horn specially on poor countries > > - Ricardo Matosinhos > > > > On 2011-07-15 18:58, [email protected] wrote: >> >> This is a great idea, and could be used to manufacture a lot of horns in a certain part of the world where a lot of manufactured horns come from. There is something to be said about tubing that is bent by hand, and then you have the problem of assembling the tubes so that they not only fit together, but are soldered well together. Plus, the bell, and the valves, are very tricky to get just right I think. >> >> Still, I'm all for progress, and assuming you can get the design of the horn in the computer somehow this could speed up the process. The equipment probably costs as much as a new Mercedes, though. >> >> -William >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: rrgriffin <[email protected]> >> To: horn <[email protected]> >> Sent: Fri, Jul 15, 2011 1:56 pm >> Subject: [Hornlist] Is this the future? >> >> >> >> >> From a long-time lurker and one-time hornplayer with hopes of retrieving chops >> >> in retirement. >> >> >> >> The following could be the future of horn manufacturing. >> >> >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGHALB4_hQ > _______________________________________________ > post: [email protected] > unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/hpizka%40me.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/bgross%40airmail.ne t _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
