There’s scads of technology we first world countries can’t export to unfriendly nations. We restrict computer tech. We restrict playstations. All sorts of high-tech stuff can be used for nefarious purposes.
A friend’s father sells C&C machines and 5-axis machines cannot be exported while 3-axis ones can.
Is this really a problem for them (our enemies)?
We read about Iran’s test missiles this week. Holy cow, says the news media, they can reach Israel now.
The Germans were dropping rockets on England 60 years ago. The first nuclear bombs were made with slide rules, school-shop-grade power tools, and mechanical adding machines.
Are these restrictions mostly politics rather than practicality?
There could certainly be an element of political posturing here. But I think there would be a real impact of technological sale restrictions on developing higher-tech weaponry.
People have been building shelter for millenia, but you can probably get so much more done these days with rechargeable drills and epoxy and a Home Depot ten minutes away that if for some reason these things were all unavailable for a month you’d probably just postpone the project. Making everything slower and more expensive and less certain would certainly make some kind of difference.
Hate to nitpick, but it’s CNC (computer numerical control).
While I don’t know anything about export restrictions on 5-axis machining centers, there are a number of foreign (mostly asian) companies building these machines, and it’s presumed that someone is selling them to our enemies. China will sell anything to anybody it seems.
Restricting technology might not stop them, but it will slow them down some. The Russians stole an old IBM mainframe, and they had a secret lab which worked on trying to interface freely available PC peripherals to it. I found this out from being introduced to a guy who worked there before the split up of the Soviet Union. It seemed he used some of my graduate school research for it - thus I must give myself some credit for the fall of the Soviet Union.
I think some higher technology things are impossible to duplicate, but the others are rather simple if you break them down, and so restricting them is sort of pointless.
Case in point: I used to work at a clean room, with emphasis on metal deposition. There were several stories of machines like sputters which were sold in China or to someone Chinese, stripped, analyzed, blue printed, then the blue prints later turned up widely available in Mandarin. With a lot of semi electronic equipment, it’s rather simple mechanically. Generally you have to have a near-vacuum, some form of energy, some type of gas mixture, and a chamber. But it’s really in demand for countries wanting to develop nanotech/microelectronics, but no one in China or wherever wants to pay the quarter of a million dollars for the American machine. It’s a lot easier buying one and pressing Cntrl+V.
Once blue prints are out there, there’s really no way to know which hands they end up in.
Thats not a nitpick, thats a petpeeve, cuz doncha know, toss a chunk of metal in, push the button and out pops perfect little nucUlar weapons, no skill or knowledge involved.
Mitutoyo got nailed a while back by the Japanese gov for sending CMMs to Libya, actually the CMMs were apparently fine, it was the software that they were loaded with in some other country on their way from Japan to Libya. Barred from exporting for 3 years.
Mazak, who has 7 plants all over the world, most in Japan, one in China, and one in Kentucky, one in Europe and one somewhere else(IIRC). They are installing devices in their machines to make sure they aren’t moved, and procedures in place to make sure that when they are moved they know where they are. After what happened to Mitutoyo, I don’t blame them.
As for the # of axis, I don’t think that has much to do with it, since I can make almost anything a 5 axis machine can make on a 3 axis given enough time. I’m not sure what the criteria is, but its not a USA only thing, its international. I’m guessing resolution, repeatability, accuracy. I highly doubt there is much restriction on old BOSS bridgeports.
A friend of mine explained it like this: when the technology is old enough that what replaced it is considered an old version, THEN it can be exported. Usually, it’s FAR beyond useable.
Take night vision goggles, for example. What the Army uses is FAR beyond what is sold to other nations, and beyond what’s available retail. So, when going against the Iraqi Guard, I imagine the advanced range and clarity of the US night vision really helped quite a bit.
