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Ramia Lloyd:
Welcome to the TechTrends Podcast where we discuss the latest manufacturing technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by Modern Machine Shop Made in the USA Podcast. I am Ramia Lloyd, and I'm here with-
Elissa Davis:
I'm Elissa Davis.
Stephen LaMarca:
Stephen LaMarca.
Benjamin Moses:
What's up, everybody? I'm Benjamin Moses. Guys, let's talk about a hot topic, EVs versus hybrid.
Elissa Davis:
Okay. I have very strong opinions on this, partially because I've always wanted a Prius, okay?
Benjamin Moses:
Sure. Sure.
Elissa Davis:
A Toyota Prius. I only drive Toyotas because they're super reliable, insurance is low, and all those great things.
Benjamin Moses:
Which, by the way, the new generation of styling looks really, really hot.
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh, it looks good.
Elissa Davis:
Yes, they're gorgeous.
Ramia Lloyd:
I want a 4Runner so bad.
Stephen LaMarca:
Ooh.
Ramia Lloyd:
Toyotas are so pretty.
Elissa Davis:
My sister has a 4Runner, and they're really-
Ramia Lloyd:
I feel like it's-
Elissa Davis:
She got a massive payout during COVID when she got into an accident, so she was able to afford it.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's right in between a Jeep and a Bronco, but where you actually feel like-
Elissa Davis:
It's huge.
Ramia Lloyd:
... you won't die if you get into a car accident.
Elissa Davis:
It's huge.
Benjamin Moses:
Also, a 4Runner is like a heirloom piece where you can pass that car on for generations and it'll last.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's going to stay sturdy. Yeah.
Elissa Davis:
Well, it's the same thing with a Corolla because I drove my parents 2012 Corolla until 2019.
Stephen LaMarca:
Did you know that one of the most popular modifications for a Toyota 4Runner is to EMP-proof them? Because they're that reliable. If a nuclear explosion goes-
Benjamin Moses:
For end of the world.
Stephen LaMarca:
.... an electromagnetic pulse will follow-
Elissa Davis:
Interesting.
Stephen LaMarca:
... to wipe out all electronics, and you can EMP-proof stuff. I don't know how valid these parts are, but people do that because they know the 4Runners are making it through a nuclear apocalypse.
Elissa Davis:
It's going to stay.
Ramia Lloyd:
See? See, I need that.
Benjamin Moses:
So at the apocalypse it'll be cockroaches and 4Runners all over the place.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
The biggest downside to having a 4Runner is it burns all of the gas and it makes no power torque. Super low performance, high fuel consumption, but the trade-offs to those awful things, they're bomb-proof. They are literally bomb-proof. Top Gear has tested the Toyota Hilux which is what the rest of the world calls the 4Runner, and they've dropped it off a building, they've chained it down with boat anchors at low tide and let the tide come in and totally flood the car, and it still starts. These things are obnoxious.
Elissa Davis:
Yes.
Benjamin Moses:
Well, let's go back to EV versus hybrid.
Elissa Davis:
Well, okay, yes, but Toyotas. Toyotas. Yes.
Stephen LaMarca:
[inaudible 00:02:38].
Elissa Davis:
We should just say that Toyota is a great manufacturer. Anyway, but when I was looking to buying a Prius in 2019, when I bought my Yaris, I was looking into buying a used Prius because I was like, okay, it's going to be a little bit cheaper. I can afford that, and when I was looking at used Priuses, this is before COVID and everything, someone-
Stephen LaMarca:
Some would say pre-i.
Elissa Davis:
When I was looking at used Priuses they cost the same amount of money as a brand new Corolla and they were three years old. And I'm like, "Dang, but I would really like a Prius because one, they're quiet, they have great gas mileage, and then they're hybrids." So I know that a lot of people are making the switch to EVs and a lot of major car manufacturers are creating more and more EVs.
Stephen LaMarca:
Blood Diamond on wheels.
Elissa Davis:
But I also know that from AMT forecast and the different presentations there that people just keep running into problems with the batteries. They just keep hitting these walls with batteries. So why are we focusing so much time and money on creating EVs instead of just creating more affordable, accessible hybrid cars?
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, that's an interesting conversation because both the whole life cycle of after you buy the car, but also the manufacturing side of it and the ecosystem of batteries versus an EV, or I'm sorry, a full battery versus a hybrid, it's very, very interesting that the shift to all EVs, it still seems like not quite emerging technology, but a technology still has tons and tons of problems with it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Right. Right. Well, I mean, as we know in the manufacturing industry how efficient electric motors are. There's not a single gas engine on a single machine tool. They're all electric motors. We've got electric motors down, but internal combustion engines we've been using on a consumer scale for a 100 years or more, we've perfected it. This is an analogous discussion to the sustainability of additive versus conventional manufacturing. Sure, additive you can use the exact amount of material that you need when you're making a part, but it's still such an early technology that there's still going to be a lot of waste.
As for waste is almost the name of the game when it comes to subtractive manufacturing, but the workflow and the supply chain of subtractive manufacturing has been around for hundreds of years that we've figured out how to not waste the scrap. Scrap is not a synonymous with waste. It's all recycled, and EVs there's still a lot of work to do. I mean, I am not. I love EVs, and I don't think anybody here is. I'm anti-battery. Children in Africa need to stop dying to mine battery material for us to have a new car that the common American replace us in less than 10 years. That's gross.
Elissa Davis:
Have you seen a Cybertruck? I'm sorry.
Stephen LaMarca:
Dumpster on wheels?
Elissa Davis:
I'm sorry. I am sorry if you drive a Cybertruck, but you look ridiculous.
Ramia Lloyd:
Have you ever seen one in person?
Elissa Davis:
Yes, I've seen four in the last two weeks.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh my God.
Stephen LaMarca:
[inaudible 00:06:07] neighborhood now, and I jokingly, but not jokingly said to the owners, "You're bringing down our property values."
Ramia Lloyd:
There's a tweet that I keep seeing and it's no matter how bad a day I'm having, it's okay because I do not have a Cybertruck.
Elissa Davis:
But on that same note with Tesla, in China, Teslas have been recalled dozens of times.
Stephen LaMarca:
China is like, "These things have problems." And you know-
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Maybe they're more strict than we are, and I get that, but also, I remember when I bought my Yaris and we were talking to the dealership guy about electric cars, and this is early 2019, and so Teslas were out there, and this wasn't that long ago, but he was talking about how these batteries, he's heard horror stories of people's batteries blowing up their cars or overheating or-
Stephen LaMarca:
To be fair, any stored form of energy releasing that energy happens improperly it is catastrophic.
Elissa Davis:
No, yeah, but we haven't perfected the EV yet, so why do we keep doing that instead of focusing more on a hybrid-
Stephen LaMarca:
[inaudible 00:07:21] battery. Yep.
Elissa Davis:
Yes. Yes. That's what I mean.
Benjamin Moses:
And I do think there's two intersecting issues that are running too. So the early stage companies that are getting aggressive. So Tesla is still a fairly early stage company, so for them to get over their learning hurdles about product quality design, so aren't a lot of failures, that's kind of accelerating the issues around battery or EV cards in general.
But also I really like the concept of alternative combinations between the two. So we're very comfortable with the internal combustion engine powering most of the car and then the battery/motors complementing it or just running on 10 miles of rain and stuff like that. There's been a couple of new scenarios where the engine actually powers a really, really small battery and you're just using motors to power the vehicle itself.
Stephen LaMarca:
The Chevy Bolt.
Benjamin Moses:
Right. So you're using the IC as a power generation source just to power a small battery, which reduces the battery size, to your point, Steve, of let's not build these massive batteries and then figure out what to do with them later, right? Let's build these smaller ones that if there are issues you can change them out and have a better life cycle for them.
Stephen LaMarca:
The EV market has created a economic battle over natural resources again, and it's we are so beyond that as a civilization, as a species, really we're fighting over natural resources. Gross.
Benjamin Moses:
So I do want to mention, because we were talking about battery storage and stuff like that, so long time ago when I was a youth back in the early 2000s, I was a giant bass head. So I had a Volkswagen Golf and I wanted to get into audio in a Volkswagen Golf so I was like, "I'm going to see how many speakers I can fit in my car." So I had two 12-inch subwoofers that could run on 1,000 watts each. So I was like, "The engine's not going to run this. I need a capacitor." So back then you had a capacitor that could run the speakers, otherwise you'd pull too much amps from the engine, your engine would actually shut down.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, you're going to kill your battery, you're going to kill your alternator.
Benjamin Moses:
So we're talking about this earlier, but capacitors are measured in usually milifarads.
Stephen LaMarca:
Microfarads.
Benjamin Moses:
Microfarads.
Stephen LaMarca:
MF.
Benjamin Moses:
I had a one-farad capacitor in my car.
Stephen LaMarca:
That is-
Benjamin Moses:
I had the early days double battery in my car. It was amazing. You could kill someone with that thing.
Stephen LaMarca:
12 volts at one farad is insane.
Benjamin Moses:
It also explains why I can't hear very well at my age now.
Stephen LaMarca:
And that's a frequency that made you deaf that you can't even hear.
Benjamin Moses:
Exactly.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's like being blinded by IR lasers. You don't notice that you're being blinded, you don't get a spot in the middle of your vision, but your vision's going to go away. But to your point on capacitors, just to clarify the difference between a battery and a capacitor, a battery charges slowly and releases its energy slowly, but can hold that charge, can hold that energy for a longer period of time with more stability. So it stays charged for longer. They slowly discharge over time due to environmental characteristics.
But a capacitor, you charge it up and it charges very quickly, but once it's fully charged and you remove it from power, it starts to drop pretty quickly. But the beauty of a capacitor, not only does it charge quickly it can dump that energy like that. So it works in something like a demanding audio system, but that makes capacitors all the more of a viable energy storage device for something like a hybrid where power can be generated on site. And this is why hydrogen EVs or hydrogen vehicles are so important. It's an EV. It just doesn't have a battery. It has another new tech that's not relying on natural resources as much.
Benjamin Moses:
Okay.
Stephen LaMarca:
As much.
Benjamin Moses:
Hydrogen's a natural resource. Let's not forget about that.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, but you can create it.
Benjamin Moses:
Fair. Fair.
Elissa Davis:
To bring it full circle, do you want to know a car has a great base?
Benjamin Moses:
So Ramia, can you tell us about today's sponsor?
Ramia Lloyd:
Yes. Tune in for Modern Machine Shop's Made in the USA Podcast to explore manufacturing issues faced by companies making an intentional choice to manufacture in the US. Featuring commentary from OEM leaders, Made in the USA blends its nearly century-long expertise with a unique audio storytelling experience to shine a spotlight on the past, present, and future of American manufacturing. Find Made in the USA on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all major podcast platforms. Follow Modern Machine Shop on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks Ramia. Steven, testbed, robotic arm. We're doing things.
Stephen LaMarca:
We're doing so many things.
Benjamin Moses:
Well, you're doing things.
Stephen LaMarca:
Not doing that many things.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're doing so many things.
Stephen LaMarca:
But we're doing things really well now. So I've got technically three programs, but two important programs that I've successfully written for the robot arm to open and enclose the pocket NC's enclosure, and I'm confident in saying that they are at least 90% reliable.
Benjamin Moses:
And I do want to hit on this is a fairly complex because it's not a sliding door, it's a rotating door so it's the pivot up.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, and rotating upward.
Benjamin Moses:
And it's a little bit of a tight compact. We hit on the singularity issue that we ran into for a while where it's a compact arrangement because the robotic arm has limited reach. And it's tight and the weight-
Stephen LaMarca:
The window of range is so narrow because... You were going and I cut you off. I'm sorry. The pocket NC can't be too close because if it's too close, the robot arm can't get compact enough to reach the door handle when the doors at its closed low position. And if it's too far away, then it can't reach the door handle when the doors open. It's up and high or it's high and far back. So we found this nice little window.
But it's been a headache with the programming. And so I think the last episode I was talking about how well, the singularity. We've got it around the singularities of linear motion by doing either circular motion or joint motion. And we've kind of written off using circular motion because the math is tough, but the joint motions work really well. But because there are so many motions, there are so many little checkpoints that you have to make through the path of travel of the arm that it's constantly stopping.
Benjamin Moses:
Right.
Stephen LaMarca:
And so this was obviously one of the most unattractive things of watching the robot do this because it's like "Beep, beep, beep." It's dial-up modem of modern automation. But then I noticed in the XML code there is a parameter that I hadn't adjusted, I hadn't modified at all, and that's called smoothing, and smoothing was set to 0%. So naturally what do you do?
Elissa Davis:
Turn it to 100.
Stephen LaMarca:
Turn it to 100 on all of the motions. And then the robot's motion looks so smooth and fluid and organic and it looks beautiful, but it overloaded the robot, and I heard the gear skip a tooth because everything's moving at once instead of being locked in one position and stopping every now and then. But fortunately, you can adjust the smoothing at every point. So basically of the opening process, which is 44 lines of code, there's a short 5 to 10 line code window where I have the smoothing dialed back to 0% where it's just going to influence to convince the door to open.
And we were also running into the gears skipping in that one particular joint, joint five of the robot arm, because it was just overloading the max payload capacity of the arm. Fortunately, I alleviated that by loosening the two nuts in the hinge of the enclosure to reduce the resistance, and that helped a lot. And before we did that, we were thinking about removing one of the struts that holds the door open because the purpose of the struts, there's two things that struts do well, they dampen oscillations of force.
The purpose of the struts is basically to make kinetic friction and static friction meet in the middle. So instead of two values of friction, now you just have a constant friction throughout the entire range, but that made it difficult on the robot because it has to work really hard to get the door to start opening. And when it's in kinetic friction, which is less than static friction, once it's moving, now the dampers are adding resistance to it. But the dampers are definitely needed because it kind of makes the door lighter when it's moving.
Elissa Davis:
That was a lot of physics words.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm so sorry.
Benjamin Moses:
I do want to hit on another problem that we actually solved. So I designed on the fingers the V channel to pick up the round handle handlebar, but also pick up the raw material. So we're thinking about using the V channel to support both. And we realized in that circular motion to open the door, the V channel is actually binding a little bit and causing a lot of friction on overloading the payload. So we're able to rotate the arm. So rotate the last joint, the wrist, so the fingers were on the smooth part of it, the side of it. And I think that was the kind of breakaway realization is that it needed that smooth surface.
Stephen LaMarca:
Flexibility.
Benjamin Moses:
The flexibility.
Stephen LaMarca:
The smooth surface allows the door handle to slide back and forth on it because as gassed up as I am about my robot programming skills, they're not that precise. They're not that accurate.
Benjamin Moses:
I think that's a key takeaway is allowing some flexibility in the design of it for some type of motion and flexibility. So I think initially I was very excited about being very precise about it, but in going through the process sometimes you need a little bit more fluidity or flexibility in the design. So that was a good takeaway. Also, definitely want to mention as Steve is working through the automating the pocket NC-
Stephen LaMarca:
Tell them why this is necessary.
Benjamin Moses:
But Chloe and the rest of the team are working through the digital side of it. So getting the factory testbed to represent a factory in terms of getting data off it to get us to represent the digital manufacturing side of it, but the long-term goal is to look at what the next potential need in the industry is, and that's looking at open USD. So open standards for the representation of different scenes in manufacturing as we look at potential digital twins or visualizing on the factory floor.
So the overall long game is continue adding value to the industry of standard development using the testbed. So I think there's a very good parallel in terms of the physical side of representing a factory on the floor, and being able to use the testbed to grow standards that's useful for the manufacturing industry. So very excited for that. Elissa.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Give us some NASA and space news.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. So I love NASA. Just FYI, I love NASA. I just like space. I think space is one of the most fascinating things in the world, and I remember that when I read the book October Sky when I was in seventh grade, and it changed my life. And then I watched movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and that changed my life again for a different reason.
Benjamin Moses:
I do like the irony of your statement, the most fascinating thing in the world. Well, it's not in the world.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah, in the universe.
Benjamin Moses:
Okay.
Stephen LaMarca:
There's space in you right now.
Elissa Davis:
Oh no.
Stephen LaMarca:
If we want to get all physical about it.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Ramia Lloyd:
Let's get physical. Physical.
Elissa Davis:
Energy doesn't disappear. So we're all made up of the same energy that we tasted thousands of years ago.
Stephen LaMarca:
Not created nor destroyed. Same as mass. Are they related?
Elissa Davis:
So my article is about NASA awarding 3.8 million to recruit students into STEM. So they granted 3.8 million for its Minority University Research and Education awards, which is MUREP. It's one of their divisions at NASA. So the institutions that were selected were Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Hartnell Community College District, Salinas, California, California State University, San Marcos, Texas State University, San Marcos. Sorry, I just realized, is there two San Marcos? Is there one in Texas and one in California? Interesting.
Benjamin Moses:
Probably.
Elissa Davis:
Tennessee State University and University of Hawaii, Honolulu and University of Texas, El Paso.
Benjamin Moses:
Wow, that's a healthy list.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. So they all got about 480,000 basically. Some of them it's like $479,990, but Tennessee State University got 480,000 even.
Stephen LaMarca:
Who skimmed off the top?
Elissa Davis:
But yeah, so these are all specifically to recruit different students to get into STEM careers as more and more STEM majors are becoming available at these universities, I guess more specific STEM majors, right?
Benjamin Moses:
Sure.
Elissa Davis:
So things that are robotic specific or things that are aerospace specific or things like that.
Benjamin Moses:
I do wonder if this is very similar to manufacturing where I think NASA and the government's looking ahead a little bit. They're seeing significant growth in space exploration. Private industry, different companies, and we're seeing the manufacturing side of it growth also where I think they're going to hit a really big bottleneck in terms of supporting space industry in terms of talent. So it's an interesting look on parallel where manufacturing has a parallel growth and I think we'll continue seeing that growth for a long time in terms of space manufacturing.
Elissa Davis:
Well, if you've seen October Sky at the end of the movie, he's recruited by NASA to science fair.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh, nice.
Elissa Davis:
So bringing it back to October Sky. But I did also want to touch on that NASA did award 1.25 million to three teams for the Deep Space Food finale.
Benjamin Moses:
NASA is all in the competitions now.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Which is these teams which are developing ways to make food creation and nutrients sustainable in space environments. So the winner was... Let me find this. Was the... Let's see. The Interstellar Lab of Merritt Island in Florida led by Barbara Belvisi. They combined several autonomous phytotrons and environment controlled greenhouses to support growth system, a growth system involving a self-sustaining food production mechanism that generates fresh vegetables, microgreens, and insects necessary for micronutrients. And the two runners-up created-
Stephen LaMarca:
Space bugs.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. The two runners-up created. So there was Nolux University team led by Robert Jinkerson, which I love that last name. Constructed an artificial photosynthetic system that can create plant and fungal based foods without the operation of biological photosynthesis and SATED, which is what stands for Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient and Delicious is a one-man team of Jim Sears who developed a variety of customizable food from pizza to peach cobbler. The product is fire safe and was developed by long shelf life and in situ grown ingredients.
Benjamin Moses:
That's fascinating.
Stephen LaMarca:
Wow.
Benjamin Moses:
That's cool.
Elissa Davis:
So maybe think of the movie The Martian with Matt Damon where he has to grow his potatoes.
Stephen LaMarca:
Ben knows what this makes me think of.
Benjamin Moses:
What's that?
Stephen LaMarca:
We're bringing bugs to space and back home on the planet earth we're all getting into AI. This is literally the beginning of the timeline of Helldivers.
Benjamin Moses:
We'll see in the future. I like where this headed. Thanks Elissa. That was great.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
I've got one on industrial PCs. The reason I want to bring up industrial PC, so we got something-
Stephen LaMarca:
A new graphics card.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, I would love a new graphics card. From the robot report, I'm talking about ruggedized edge computers. And I think a parallel is for digital manufacturing and the growth of, there's just a lot more data on the shop floor. How are we both processing it and also conveying it? And this article hits a lot on the need for that.
And we're actually just published an article about edge computing and being also progressing security in the factory. But edge computing is coming more and more relevant not only for AGVs, which this article hits on, but back to robotic arms and vision systems and all the processing power required to make a decision close to the point of views. And that's kind of the big takeaway here is, their example on AGVs and AMRs where they're looking at integrated real-time edge AI performance for robotic vehicles, AI processing.
So not only for vision systems, but also LiDAR, radar and all the other sensor fusions that they're incorporating on the device itself. And also it talks about IoT connectivity, right? So yeah, the edge computing is great, but also has to convey information back to the fleet management software. So how does the software or anyone else know where that machine is and the health of that system? So that's a growing trend is now I need to worry about my IoT infrastructure in the factory floor. And then it gets into the hardware itself. Fanless versus cabless design. And you all listed-
Elissa Davis:
How can it be fanless because I know isn't overheating an issue? So how do you work around it?
Stephen LaMarca:
It's thermal capacity. Throw metal at it.
Elissa Davis:
Okay.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah. So passively cooling system with giant heat sinks. So those a fun article and the applicability not just for AMRs back to if you're looking at vision systems, if you're looking at more robotic arms, any level of automation, to be honest, I think taking a step back and look at your IoT infrastructure and how you're computing on the edge is definitely worth your time. And Steve, you've got some YouTube content to talk about.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, I saw this YouTube video, popped up in my feed one morning when I was struggling getting out of bed and it worked out because this guy's channel, DIY with Dave, has a video called The decline of a Great American Tool Brand: What happened to Craftsman Tools? And I just thought it was a fun topic, but it brought up some other keywords. But before I get into it, let me explain. Craftsman Tools is a classic tool brand since 1927, were bought by Stanley Black and Decker in 2017.
This is because Sears, who was the primary retailer of Craftsman Tools ran into some financial difficulties and went bankrupt, and Sears basically no longer exists anymore. They tried to bring some manufacturing back to the US in recent years, but the factory that Stanley Black and Decker built, massive facility in Texas, closed in 2023. They blame it on the pandemic. I'm sure the pandemic had something to do with it, but could have also been capitalistic corporate greed.
Elissa Davis:
Amazon.
Stephen LaMarca:
And while they-
Elissa Davis:
Tell us how you really feel, Steve. Yeah. He's intense.
Stephen LaMarca:
While Craftsman as a brand still offers a lifetime warranty. They're currently sold. Their biggest retailer chain is Lowe's. They still offer a lifetime warranty on the older tools, but a lot of those older tools just don't really exist. If you break a crescent wrench that you had made by Craftsman from the '60s, you're not going to get a new one. And the one that they give you is not going to be made in the US, it's going to be made in Taiwan, which is not bad, but there's a lot of nostalgia to the old made in the US Craftsman stuff.
Some fans and tool owners of Craftsman Tools are worried about the quality and the brand's future. But the video brought up, because we talk about how Craftsman was vilified for a while from being this great American Made in the USA brand to being cheaply outsourced overseas and wherever, the attempt that Stanley Black and Decker made at bringing Craftsman back to the United States specifically to make these tools in Texas, that concept is one that we talk about a lot, at least the industry talks about a lot, which is reshoring.
And Mr. Dave from DIY with Dave, brings up how reshoring while it's great and it would be theoretically awesome for our economy, there's some dangers to it. If you cut off certain countries that might not be as friendly to US politics, that's really unfriendly. And so reshoring always the answer. And he also talks about some other concepts of outsourcing and moving manufacturing around. And when I was discussing this with Russ earlier, he brought up near -shoring.
So a lot of car manufacturers, US car manufacturers and Japanese for that matter, instead of building cars to be sold in the US in the US, which a lot of foreign manufacturers actually do. There's a lot of foreign cars that are more American than American car brand cars. But that's called near -shoring, which means it's offshore, but it's near, Mexico or Canada. And he brought up another fun term called friend-shoring.
Benjamin Moses:
Friend-shoring.
Stephen LaMarca:
So we're not the tightest with China, but we're tight with Taiwan and Japan, so let's move the manufacturing from China to Japan or Taiwan or somebody like that.
Benjamin Moses:
That's a fun term.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's just something cool to think about.
Elissa Davis:
I love it.
Ramia Lloyd:
Friend zoning manufacturing.
Stephen LaMarca:
Friend zoning manufacturing.
Ramia Lloyd:
Manufacturing in the friend zone.
Benjamin Moses:
It is fascinating. The geopolitics related to manufacturing, I mean, to your point, Steve, when Carrier moved from Mexico back to Texas and the whole controversy related to that-
Stephen LaMarca:
Like the AC condensers?
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
No way.
Benjamin Moses:
There was a big controversy about them moving around a little bit. There's very interesting look at these large corporations and how they're moving around the world, and I do like the concept of friend-shoring, but the small contract manufacturer, I think they have a lot more flexibility. So being able to go to near-shoring or supporting what is their strategy and how fast they want to be in turning parts around, I think that's a lot of different options now.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. Wow. That's fascinating. I'm going to Google Carrier now because they were manufacturing for a long time in Mexico and they've since moved to Texas.
Benjamin Moses:
You should look it up. There's a story behind it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay.
Benjamin Moses:
And it relies on the government at that time too.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's big because those AC coils are heat sinks and radiators and those are typically manufactured using a manufacturing a metal working process called skiving, metal skiving. And metal skiving is not very common in the United States. We typically leave skiving to East Asia. And somebody from the government recently reached out to me about metal skiving because he was worried about it being a threat to US manufacturing and the-
Benjamin Moses:
Sure.
Stephen LaMarca:
... supply chain so-
Stephen LaMarca:
Here in America we do Thanksgiving.
Stephen LaMarca:
... this is fun.
Benjamin Moses:
This is fun.
Stephen LaMarca:
Thanksgiving.
Elissa Davis:
Stop, that was so funny.
Stephen LaMarca:
Stop.
Ramia Lloyd:
Stop.
Benjamin Moses:
Ramia, where can they find more info about us?
Ramia Lloyd:
amtonline.org/resources. Like, share, subscribe.
Elissa Davis:
Bing bong.
