I will disagree on your size point, There are some who claim they are building 3D printed houses and structures of commercial building size, but as a rule in today’s production or manufacturing, the quantities only justify robotics unless the are very small in size items requiring high accuracy.
Once case in point. We had a customer come to us to help in reverse engineering an aircraft engine part that the high precision casting and the company no longer existed.
We used our laser scanner and its accompanying software to re-create the surface features to a parametric 3D model. Being there was a hollow feature in it as well, we sawed the piece in half, rescanned the wall feature and combined the scans.
It was then redesigned in two parts that were CNC machined and then joined together by a weld that we needed a magnifying glass to really see as it was less than 1/32”.
That weld was almost not detectable to where it started and ended but it was virtually perfect all the way around the roughly 3 inch diameter of the joint.
The customer is back in business rebuilding the jet engines that he could no longer obtain the repair parts for it before we used technology to create them again.
Now, as for hamburgers and restaurants, try going to a WAWA and ordering a sandwich from a live person. I have also started to see the iPad style devices for ordering everything at places like Chili’s and others as well.
Perhaps I didn't word it very well, but I don't think we have a disagreement. This is the same point I attempted to make - the larger the pieces get, the more difficult/expensive it becomes to build the jigging necessary to keep them in the kind of alignment and exact positioning required for robotic welding.