While you maybe right, consider that as many consumer techmologies trickle down from industrial, aerospace, and military technologies. meaning, we eventually will have access down the road to what the big boys have now, but down the road teh big boys have something far more advanced! It wasn't long ago I dreamed of having a 16GB hard drive, now I have 16GB RAM on my laptop! The military had GPS 30 years or so before it made it to industry and moreso befoe it reached consumer goods, and even then we are only allowed an accuracy of 100 yards where the military can have an accuracy of 1/8".Ah well, high end brushless AC motors - a far cry from this market - all our home machines and refitted BPs etc. Yes, point made that I ignored the high end.
But is my thinking antique? Once, only the rich could afford a car, and they had to have a resident chauffer. Then you had to be a serious mechanic yourself to drive one - adjusting the spark and compression etc. Now - teenagers and little old ladies hop in a compact and away they go. Will the servo industry follow in this path? I suspect so, but of course I am guessing.
I don't think anyone is saying that. The fact is, by the time consumers get "cutting edge" technology, it is no longer cutting edge technology by industry standards.But you can today build a system (or modify an old BP) to get 10 micron or less on an axis, fairly easily. How many people or companies really need better than that? For that matter, how many can hold 0.1 mm consistently on a manual, in production on simple machinery? Sure, an aerospace company might want 0.1 microns ... but there aren't many of those, while there's an awful lot of small engineering shops around. I don't think the low end market is dying.
It's the level of sophistication in DIY machines that is growong. There were quite a few then, but now there are more types of DIY machines out there, from textile machines to 3D printers to pick-and-place machines. I don't think anyone is making CNCs anymore out of garage door track for example. But what was once cheap and commonplace on eBay is disappearing. I've seen the cost of NOS linear rail/block sets go up and transition from aution to "buy it now." Ground ballscrews still can be had relatively inexpensively, as well as precision gearheads though that may change soon as surplus high-end servo systems become more available. I used to see a lot of linear actuator assemblies go for very cheap but now they've gone up in price. Unless you are rich, you end up with the "dregs" of industry - and that is not always a bad thing!Maybe so, but then, 10 years ago, how many 'average hobby builders' even had a CNC? The 'low-end' market grows, in both volume and performance. History tells us this is always the way.
They still use steppers in industry where the requirements warrant it. Most every printer, scanner likely still all use them for example. They're far easier and cheaper to implement.That depends on the specs you want. In many cases a stepper does meet the user's requirements. If you want to go to the shopping mall, you don't need a chauffer-driven 'der grosse' Mercedes.
If someone wants to bequeath me several high-end servo systems (plus a 40krpm spindle drive), who am I to turn them down? But in the meantime...