People here may be more than aware of this stuff, but it amazes me.
I recently saw a demonstration of a CNC lathe. As I understood from what we were being told, the machine turned up a sort of kingpin complete with a bored oilway, chamfer, several different diameters, radii etc along its length (including a cam, I think), and it did it all in a few minutes, to an accuracy of a ten-thousandth of an inch. We couldn't really inspect the billet beforenhand or the work afterwards. Actually I'm not sure if the same machine line-bored the oilway or not.
In architectural model-making, there is a machine which reads 3D images from a CAD file, then uses the heat at the intersection of a pair of crossed laser beams to fuse contiguous spots within a 'sandbox' of powdered plastic. Gradually, a physical, 3D model is created, which can be picked up from the powder, drained (if the design is done competently, and used. I think the surrounding powder stabilises the model and keeps is aligned while this is going on.
Extrapolate each of those processes a few decades into the future. The CNC lathe could become a complete combination lathe, drill, milling machine etc (if it's not already). 'Casting' could be done by the 3D fusion process. No more moulds needed! Perhaps even panels could be made like this, meaning no more pressing.
Ally that with flash data storage and 'solid state' displays you might have, just as one example, a control panel made out of one energy absorbing material with solid state instruments perhaps integrated as a surface film. The instruments would communicate with sensors on the engine, control surfaces etc by wireless.
the next step would be to connect the human brain to the avionics, and to arange for 'mental' adjustment of flying controls etc a la Clint Eastwood in 'Firefox'.
