alt Hacker NewsKinda. What's the lead time on my high precision metal part that needs to be cut on a 6-axis lathe? Or a metal 3d print? Neither of those machines are cheap, so not only is lead time astronomical, profit on them is also pretty great for the machine shop, which implies there's room for more machine shops. There's a lot of red tape for the orders I see, (CMMI etc) so maybe AI will help machine shops get that and be competitive.
that last point doesn't really follow. yes, you can do you ok if you have the kind of expertise to actually make that high end part and the position in the market to get the kind of work, but I think you overstate the margins and its certainly not the 'are you going to drop people or just increase your volume' argument that gp was making.