Engraving is reportedly the most automated profession
Zoins
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We can see it from coins, but it's an interesting general observation as well from this Quartz article:
I still wonder if we can get the super sharp medallic letters from the 1800s on modern equipment which always seems to produce softer, rounder letters.
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For trophies, anniversary plaques and tombstones, yes engraving is automated. They can't convince me that engraving is more automated than robotics, which is a field that I am involved with.
There is still a lot of hand engraving in firearms and other decorative work, check out the Engraver's Café hand engraving forum and the Firearms Engravers Guild of America. Some of the work on rifles and shotguns is incredible.
The sharp letters and details on coins could be accomplished with CNC engraving of dies, but the chiseled details would wear down quickly on a die. It would be interesting to have a talented die sinker create some limited mintages of sharply engraved designs at the Mint - this won't happen anytime soon.
Hand engraving is tough. I took several silversmithing courses from a professional silversmith in the 1990's that included some hand engraving, I found the raising of silver was much easier than engraving.
@Nysoto.... Firearm engraving is certainly an art...and a current one at that...Your comment about raising silver being easier than engraving, is interesting..... I would like to know more about that. Will see if there is anything available through google... Cheers, RickO
While the article has some good points, I disagree with it.
1) For example, I used to manage semiconductor chip manufacturing. Average chip takes anywhere from 20 to 60 days to make, depending on complexity and how heavily the production line is loaded. All the processes are automated, and mostly the workers do is move material, ensure nothing bad is happening, and runs periodic qualifications on tools. Everything else is automated.
As an experiment, we pulled all the workers out of one area, and using automated material delivery, we were able to run the area with a lower defect rate and better through put for 3 1/2 days without anyone being in the area. I just gave the "computer" instructions as to what to do, and the area ran itself.
Far more complex than engraving.
2) After I retired, I worked for Amazon to learn e commerce. A customer sits at their computer, and places an order. The "computer" identifies what warehouse is most appropriate to fill that order, a crawler picks up the items, another machine is creating boxes, a filler machine takes the items, bubble wraps if needed, puts them in the box, adds the packing peanuts, box is sealed and labeled by a machine, and the boxes are sorted by destination and shipping service, and palletized, all without ANYONE touching the material.
Not sure about engraving, but phone switchboard operation is probably another one.
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