That is very cool. But yes, it is extremely unusual. That is, like, the opposite of what most businesses want, which is to standardize the tasks and labor. A cabinet shop has a set of jigs that they use over and over and over.
This thread is about making prototypes which are one time jigs. The reason businesses aren’t making 3-4 jigs a day isn’t because they can’t but because they don’t want to.
But if you’re prototyping, you are literally trying to create jigs.
And this sub-thread is whether you could create jigs before 3D printers existed and you definitely can. Of course, it’s great that now you have both options, speaking from someone with a woodworking shop and a 3D printer, but I wouldn’t say there was such a substantial innovation in physical prototyping.
The purpose of the movie set example was to illustrate that, if you want to, you can create constructions out of wood really quick, not that it’s normal for a business to do.
If anything, the biggest innovation in at-home prototyping was how cheap microprocessors got. Because building circuits is way more painful and expensive than just chucking in a microprocessor.
