Sanjay Gangal
Sanjay Gangal is the President of IBSystems, the parent company of AECCafe.com, MCADCafe, EDACafe.Com, GISCafe.Com, and ShareCG.Com.
MCADCafe Industry Predictions for 2023 – Bantam Tools
January 21st, 2023 by Sanjay Gangal
By Bre Pettis, CEO, Bantam Tools
Bre Pettis
I predict that 2023 will be a breakout year for Desktop CNC Milling Machines as users explore ways of integrating them into their prototyping and production workspaces. At Bantam Tools, besides the bread and butter use cases of making prototypes and jigs and fixtures with Desktop CNCs, one of the things I predict we will see more and more of is connected fleets of cnc machines. We showed up at IMTS this year making a laserpointer keychain out of aluminum with 3 Bantam Tools CNC Milling Machines. Each machine was set up with a single tool in a single fixture doing a single operation and with the part moving between machines. Because Bantam Tools CNC milling machines are smaller CNCs, each individual spindle might remove less material but collectively they create a network effect that is more resilient for uptime. Beyond Bantam Tools, I would expect this trend to expand into the greater CNC world and I predict we will see software options set up to manage fleets of machines.
In the CAD CAM world we are moving closer and closer to CAM being automatic… potentially harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence. I predict we will see the big players launch beta programs to explore Automatic CAM toolpath generation. I predict these AI toolpathing algorithms will be really bad at first and then surprise us by becoming really good. If a car can mostly automatically drive from place to place today, it seems like Auto CAM shouldn’t be far off.
At Bantam Tools we are dedicated to creating desktop CNC milling machines for skill builders and world changers. I predict more mechanical engineers will become machinists. Our customers at Bantam Tools have historically been heavily weighted toward the education side of the industry, but we are seeing a trend where more and more impatient engineers jump into the world of machining. Impatient engineers need parts now. Impatient engineers have been burned by supply chain problems, shipping problems. and they have struggled to have anonymously-made parts arrive within tolerance. When they find a machine shop to work with, they find that they are often booked out with long lead times because their customers are stocking up for the next supply chain delay. What’s interesting is that these impatient engineers are routing around their purchasing departments, using their company credit card, and we are shipping to more and more of them as individuals inside large innovation companies. More engineers becoming machinists is a great thing for our industry that desperately needs to fill the machinist skills gap.
About Author
Bre Pettis runs Bantam Tools creating Desktop CNC Milling Machines for world changers and skill builders. He was the co-founder and CEO of MakerBot and creator of the Cult of Done Manifesto.
Video of a fleet of Bantam Tools Explorer CNC Milling Machines in action at IMTS
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