Wanted to share an idea that i've thought for a long time to see what others think...

I'm big on "automation" and mechanization insofar as possible.  Yes you can do it by hand, but your time is better spent doing other things.  Mechanization is more accurate, more repeatable, and cheaper, making higher order things possible and freeing up time needed.  You definately want repeatability and precision especially for smaller parts, and often larger things are hard to do without machine assistance.  So in the thinking of how to make things sustainable and resilent while maintaining technology of society.   Well I believe that Numerical Control and programmable "machine" tools (technically includes plasticworking and injection molding as well as metalworking or say drilling PCBoards) is fully feasible and is definately the way to go.  Creating all the electronics and motor parts for "robotics" would normally either be too expensive or require too large of a specialized and dedicated society, right?  So what do you do?

How do you automate things without becoming dependant upon certain types of sensors and electronics that normally require expensive factories or might not be available in very deep rural or off grid areas (say saharan africa) or which may be subject to lack of access to markets even if things are for sale elsewhere (say an embargoed country pushing a government whose citizenry is innocent of any crimes) or maybe even some future of social upheaval where some things just arent made or sold anymore, how do you have the benefits of modern technology and automation without making yourself hopelessly dependant?  

Pneumatics.  Not electronics.

I see no reason one could not make a pneumatic or fluidic stepper motor, under specific precise control (ie punch card type control) and with fluidic position sensors modeled after an electrical motor.  Torque can be very high with compressed air, some robotic designs use it for it's power and torque over what electricity allows especially for the size/weight/cost.  You could probably design something makeable with RepRap even since unlike metalwork you dont need extreme heat or hardness to machine things like a handmade servomotor would require.  It may not be as reliable or long lasting but if it works at all it's an achievement in my view as it makes it possible to automate things cheaply and without the requirement for servomotors and electronic control you would normally require.  If it breaks just print out another!  If it's cheap enough it's no big deal.  If it works at all it can be improved over time to last longer and work better.

Pneumatics should not be underestimated in potential complexity or possibility of control if one has ever seen an old style pipe organ, where a single keyboard may do things like automatic octaving (playing an octive up or down along with the note you play directly), control of different instruments (i've seen a wurlitzer can drive the pipe organ, an air controlled piano, brass/horns, all from the same keyboard, while playing rhythm sections with various tempos and styles with a snare drum), etc.  I see no reason that a pneumatic computer (or more accurately microcontroller, for Pneumatic Numerical Control for a homebrew metal lathe/mill/press made out of a pair of old car engines like the depression-era books talked of) could not be created whens omething similar was made by hand in 100 year old pipe organ control systems to simplify forms of manufacturing or more complicated and accurate machine tool repeating cuts for where you need metal parts made reliably and interchangeably instead of eyeballed or by hand.  This should be doable at a far lower level of external technology dependance and many of the parts may well be fully makeable by a RepRap type machine.

Furthermore the benefits this should bring to make it easier to automate the creation of small more precise things that would be very expensive to make by hand may allow you to still make electronic components needed for a handful of critical things (like radio) which cannot be made affordably by hand and really need mass replication to have any degree of accessibility.  It's not that you cant make a resistor, capacitor or vaccuum tube by hand but the radio you build cant be afforded by anyone in terms of hours of work you need.  Manufacturing, factories, automation, robotics - all done with PNEUMATIC assistance and  fluidic controllers instead of electrical motors and electronic or computer based controllers could be fully sustainable, even multigenerationally as far as I can tell, making for an advanced and extremely resilent community maintaining most of the benefits of our modern society. (including radio once components are manufactured locally)

Plus I just wanted to experiment around with high torque servo motors and if they could be printed from reprap at almost disposible cost it would be really cool.  :)

So what do you think... sensible?  Crazy?  Share your views.  :)