Heavy machinery has always been not required. We inherit these legacies from Victorian era industrial engineering.
Woodworking tools are a great example. The benchmark of a “quality” production woodshop have always been planing, and profile shaping. A good shop produces quality with heavy iron backstops and machining. And man hours. Raw power in the axis and feed and heavy mass to resist the “assumed” forces
And to do these at scale and keep the humans safe according to the millwright union you gotta have a lot of industrial infrastructure…. Vacuums system, heavy floor, electrical services, safety and ergonomics.. etc. all these things installed and planned for just to give the millwright a job and keep the crown molding or fancy flooring coming off the line. All of this centered around a high speed axis and small special tooling that the wood is fed into, creating sawdust and noise. All this precision machining and heavy plates intended to produce repeatable quality….
The whole system need not exist.
Consider the trad version of both these activities, hand plane and molding plane. And the downforce that a human body walking can produce…. To drive the plane. You need only two fingers worth of force back n forth, and 120lbs on a feather spring of downforce
Now consider a solid table with clamping and a lightweight track frame system that attaches to the table. You load the board. You load your appropriate plane. You activate the motion control and very low power drill motors run the plane back n forth to save the labor of the millwright and cut or plane the piece. You get the same precision and quality and ease of operation…. You have clean shavings with no dust as your waste product. No noise. No infrastructure needed other than a solid table 16’ long, and frame to hold the motion control. All infrastructure (the table and frame) could be hand assembled by one person on site and packed in the back of a truck in 8’ sections.
The same process goes for sheet metal fabrication: there is no need for a heavy floor break. You need a roller dolly, 10’ track system and back n forth motion control. Combined with profile-specific roller dies that mount to the trolley.
The same can be said for heavy offroad cranes and lifts. For a residential building you can erect a stage/tent truss first, which can handle all lifting and placing with low power electric motors and motion control. We never needed a lull or man lift industry.
Trad Building 