How were moldings for a lot of items, e.g. car parts, created for the factory before the invention of 3D printers/computerized designs? Like how were they able to achieve the acceptable precision?
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Precision is just a matter of enough iterations to get the tooling right, then it’s just make-work for the tooling. If you design the tools that make the dies/molds properly, then the precision is built into each die/mold in the process of its creation. You only need to tune the original die/mold making machine to high precision, which can be done manually; how do you think we “taught” the computers to that high precision?
machinists. until very recently, meaning within my lifetime, computer control was actually *less* accurate than a skilled machinist.
as for how. the short answer is levers. using levers to translate motion from a scale where you can be precise down to a smaller scale.
ex: imagine you can move your hand to within 1 inch. so if I tell you to point to 2″ on a ruler, you’ll land somewhere between 1″ and 3″
now imagine you have a lever that’s 10-1. so 10 inches of movement moves the other end 1 inch. with that lever, you can point to anywhere from 1.9 to 2.1 you do that a few times and you get down to millionths of an inch really quickly.
Physical gears, pulleys, levers, etc. Mechanical timing. Carefully engineered and designed machinery.
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