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Transcript
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'm Ramia Lloyd and I'm here with...
Elissa Davis:
I'm Elissa Davis.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm Stephen LaMarca.
Ben Moses:
And I'm Ben Moses. What's up everyone?
Ramia Lloyd:
Hi friends.
Stephen LaMarca:
We all said our names. Nobody deviated from the plan. Sorry.
Ramia Lloyd:
See.
Stephen LaMarca:
That was amazing.
Elissa Davis:
It doesn't usually happen like that.
Ben Moses:
You got to celebrate the wins when you can.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Ben Moses:
Steve, I know you found an interesting article on history of 3D printers specifically.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. Let me elaborate on that. VoxelMatters published an amazing listicle, say what you want about listicles. This one was fire.
Ben Moses:
Okay.
Stephen LaMarca:
VoxelMatters. Their title is 10 Most Disruptive 3D Printers in the History of Desktop 3D Printing. So we're not talking about industrial, we're talking about consumer and let me just go through this list real quick. So number 10 is MakerBot Cupcake CNC. That one I've heard of a lot of plywood on it. Then number nine, I didn't hear the Up! Plus. Don't know that one. Then number eight, is our first Delta arm and maybe our only Delta arm on the list. The RoStock Delta. Then the Zortrax M200, haven't heard of it. Then number six, Formlabs Form 1. And what's really cool about this, the source of the picture is Kickstarter. So it's like a member company that is major, epic in 3D printing. Now they've got one of the biggest booths at IMTS in the-
Elissa Davis:
Additive.
Stephen LaMarca:
...additive sector, they started on Kickstarter. That's wild to me.
Elissa Davis:
That's so fun.
Stephen LaMarca:
Number five-
Ben Moses:
As you're going through the list, I was looking at the pictures on the article. It is actually useful to see the construction of some of these.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, I implore you to go look at this article to actually see the pictures. A lot of plywood, a lot of pipes, cheap material, zip ties. It's epic. Number five, the Ultimaker. Number four, another MakerBot. The Replicator 2. Number three, Darwin, look at all those pipes and tubes and stuff. Never even heard of this one.
Number two, Bambu Lab, X1. You're darn right that we should be on there as disruptive. This is more current times, but these are insanely good printer. Everything that Bambu makes is insanely good and frankly is the level up 3D printer that everybody should have started at, but probably ends up going to because they're reliable, they're precise. The service finish is incredible. Number one, the Prusa i3. And I think Prusa absolutely deserves to be at the top spot even more so than Bambu at number two or even Formlabs because Prusa is just so widespread. A lot of people, it's the standard to which all others are judged.
Ben Moses:
I see their name a lot on Reddit quite a bit. And also a lot of GrabCAD or Tinkercad are the models and the baseline prints.
Stephen LaMarca:
Well, they had a model repository that got in trouble a few times from major companies like Honda being like, "Hey, you have to take these part designs down. Sure, we don't make them anymore, but it's still our IP and you shouldn't be allowed to print repair parts for your '93 Civic that we don't make parts for anymore."
Elissa Davis:
[inaudible 00:03:19] just a couple of years ago?
Stephen LaMarca:
It's such a jerk thing to do though. And I love Honda, so that hurts. But Prusa, I forget the word that Jules always used to yell, whatever.
Ben Moses:
No, but you do bring up an interesting point because-
Stephen LaMarca:
Decentralized!
Ben Moses:
... we've been talking about the military is trying to print at Ford operating bases and stuff like that. So the IP related to printing a lot of these models or CAD designs, there still isn't a good practice on who owns IP. So specific scenario, Honda's got a thing that doesn't exist anymore. They're not going to produce it anymore and there's no path to go through Honda, go through supply chain, get to who actually made it and say, "Hey, can you make me 10 parts? There's no path for that."
Stephen LaMarca:
No.
Ben Moses:
So this is a problem that needs to be solved in the future eventually.
Stephen LaMarca:
But I will say, one last thing, there should have been an honorable mentions part to this article and 'twas not. And the machine that I would've put on here is an Ender. I don't know the actual model, but it's like an Amazon 3D printer. Chinese company that sells their printers on Amazon. The Ender is very popular. I have seen the Ender referenced and used or attempted to be used in so many YouTube videos and car videos. It's a gateway drug to 3D printing because everybody starts with an Ender because they're dirt cheap and they're very hacker esque, but they never work and they're always broken. And then somebody ends up leveling up to a Prusa or a Creality or which also wasn't on there. Or ultimately you should end up at a Bambu.
Ben Moses:
Can you write VoxelMatters a letter and mail it to them about their need for honorable mention?
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm sure they get letters from so many more people than me and that are smarter than me on this matter.
Elissa Davis:
Can I ask what were the criteria for disruptive?
Stephen LaMarca:
I think we're just talking about these were-
Elissa Davis:
They just listed their 10 favorite 3D printers probably.
Stephen LaMarca:
But it was probably their 10 favorite... Or whoever paid them, yeah. Their 10 favorite 3D printers from the beginning of at-home 3D printing to now what's the bee's knees? The Bambu Formlabs.
Ben Moses:
And to be fair, some of it is popularity. You do want something to work and the ones that will work will become more popular. So one thing I did like about it is back to seeing the different designs of the constructions of the 3D printers is the evolution of the early printers to ones you can buy off the shelf today it's more of a finished good, like the one that you mentioned earlier. It's like a kiwi crate where you kind of put stuff easily-
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, it's a kit.
Ben Moses:
Yeah, it's a kit.
Stephen LaMarca:
There's plywood with burnt edges. So it was cut on a laser cutter and held together with zip ties. Love that. Love that for you.
Ben Moses:
That's fun.
Elissa Davis:
I'd have a hard time trusting a 3D printer that has zip ties holding it together-
Stephen LaMarca:
That's fair.
Elissa Davis:
... personally.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's fair.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're not wrong, I'm looking at it like...
Stephen LaMarca:
If you look at this list, I can tell you right now you can't go wrong. If the company has "lab" in the name Bambu Labs or Formlab, you're good-
Ramia Lloyd:
Cool. Good to know. I like that criteria.
Stephen LaMarca:
... that's what invest in.
Ramia Lloyd:
Good to know, yeah.
Ben Moses:
I'll incorporate that in my-
Stephen LaMarca:
Go to Formlab, they remember, Bambu Labs, get on that.
Ben Moses:
The company I'm starting, I want to make sure "labs" is in my corporation title.
Ramia Lloyd:
BenLabs?
Ben Moses:
BenLabs.
Stephen LaMarca:
BenLabs. I'd invest.
Ramia Lloyd:
Me too.
Stephen LaMarca:
You go-
Ramia Lloyd:
Me too, immediately.
Ben Moses:
So as we come close to Thanksgiving, one of the things that occurs a lot is making sandwiches from Turkey. I'm completely against that, but I want to have a conversation on sandwiches.
Ramia Lloyd:
Completely against it?
Ben Moses:
I'll get into it.
Stephen LaMarca:
I love post Thanksgiving sandwiches with all of the fixings, but I also agree Turkey... Sean, my housemate and our IT guy loves Turkey on sandwiches. No, no. Turkey's too gross and dry to be on a sandwich. Get out of here.
Ben Moses:
Yes, it's got to be-
Ramia Lloyd:
You guys aren't getting it right.
Ben Moses:
It's got to be deli cut. If I'm going to have a Turkey on a sandwich, it's got to be the thinnest cut.
Elissa Davis:
I'm sorry, what about dark meat?
Stephen LaMarca:
The thin!
Elissa Davis:
The dark meat Turkey is an amazing in a sandwich.
Stephen LaMarca:
Nobody ever slices that.
Ben Moses:
Nope.
Stephen LaMarca:
Nobody ever slices that.
Elissa Davis:
Let me tell you-
Stephen LaMarca:
And it's never consistent-
Elissa Davis:
I mean from the Turkey itself.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's too broken, you can't put it on a sandwich unless it's in pieces,
Ramia Lloyd:
Honey-
Elissa Davis:
Well yeah, but it still works.
Ramia Lloyd:
Honey Baked Ham has a Turkey and it's sliced-
Elissa Davis:
Oh, I thought you were just talking about honey baked ham, I was in it.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's just sliced and that's the best turkey you can get because it's like a thick slice where it literally kind of looks like ham, but it's not, it's a slice of turkey.
Stephen LaMarca:
But the company's called Honey Baked Ham and their ham is what I'm going for.
Ramia Lloyd:
Their ham is good if you eat ham, but I don't eat ham.
Elissa Davis:
But if their ham is good then the Turkey has to be good.
Ramia Lloyd:
Their turkey, we put that on a sandwich, put some stuffing on it. Thank you.
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay. This just introduce so many more parameters to the argument that I don't apply to.
Ben Moses:
If they were Honey Baked Labs, then we'd have a different conversation.
Stephen LaMarca:
Fire, fire.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're right.
Elissa Davis:
Something I'll say is that my family recently started moving away from Turkey. So this year my mom's not cooking anything. She has to get surgery next week. So for Thanksgiving, she's not cooking anything. So we're making a list, me and my four siblings and my brother-in-Law, what we're all going to make and we're going to do a prime rib and then just a Turkey breast. But prime rib is our big family holiday thing now.
Ben Moses:
That's a good call.
Elissa Davis:
And that translates well to a sandwich, ramen. That's also great on ramen a day or two later.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh, prime rib on ramen. Okay. My brain went ramen sandwich and I was like-
Elissa Davis:
Ramen sandwich. Totally down for that.
Ramia Lloyd:
"How are you holding..." We used to do spaghetti-
Stephen LaMarca:
Mac and cheese works on a sandwich.
Ramia Lloyd:
... and bread and you fold it. Yes!
Ben Moses:
As we do travel quite a bit and actually the weirdest place I like my sandwiches, they're like gas stations.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, oh, heck yeah.
Ben Moses:
What's your favorite gas station sandwich or a place?
Ramia Lloyd:
Wawa.
Stephen LaMarca:
Sheetz.
Ben Moses:
Sheetz? Sheetz versus the Wawa.
Elissa Davis:
I say Wawa too. One, Wawa's cheap.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, we need to do a poll. Sheetz versus Wawa.
Ben Moses:
Okay.
Ramia Lloyd:
Because Wawa's winning.
Stephen LaMarca:
I have sentimental value with Sheetz because Sheetz, I was introduced to it as a very young child and it was revolutionary to me because you went into it. First off, I couldn't figure out the name. I was like, what do they mean Sheetz? Why are we going to this gas station for food? Because my family did not do that growing up. I was in a friend's car, we were going to his family's apple farm and it was out in the country. So there was Sheetz out there.
Elissa Davis:
That's so real. That's boujee-
Stephen LaMarca:
There's no Sheetz in the city around here. We got to drive at least a half hour to get to a Sheetz from where we-
Elissa Davis:
There's one-
Ramia Lloyd:
There's one in Manassas.
Elissa Davis:
... between Ashburn and Fairfax
Stephen LaMarca:
Half hour away, that's a minimum half hour away. Sorry, proof of my point. But Sheetz, I thought it was like 3D printing or an early impression of what I thought 3D... Was like sheet printing.
Elissa Davis:
I love that even child Steve was like,'" 3D printing."
Ramia Lloyd:
Right?
Stephen LaMarca:
My mom raised me on Star Trek, that one lady would always go to the computer, be like, "I want hot chocolate," and it would materialize in air-
Elissa Davis:
Spy Kids.
Stephen LaMarca:
... and that's where people think the industry is going. But Sheetz, what really blew my mind more than anything was going into this gas station and ordering my food on a computer because now that's commonplace.
Elissa Davis:
That true.
Stephen LaMarca:
That was one of the first places that I saw it-
Ben Moses:
About 20 years ago, that was real.
Elissa Davis:
See, I have the same-
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. Decades ago.
Elissa Davis:
I have the same nostalgia for Wawa. So when I was in fourth, fifth and sixth grade I lived in Fredericksburg and there's a lot of Wawa's down in Fredericksburg and it was cheap. And like I said, I have four siblings so my parents would take us, we'd get a sandwich and chips and all that stuff for 30 bucks and that my parents were good to go. But I should also say that I was a very easy to please child when it came to sandwiches because I like dry sandwiches. I don't like mayonnaise-
Ben Moses:
Oh, man.
Elissa Davis:
... I don't like mustard, I don't like-
Ramia Lloyd:
This is the second episode where my trust in Elissa has gone down.
Elissa Davis:
I know it's a shame. So as a kid this might say-
Stephen LaMarca:
Sandwich got to be wet.
Elissa Davis:
Well this might tell reveal how poor my family was when I was growing up. My sister and I, loved butter sandwiches, which was literally just straight up butter on bread or butter and cheese sandwiches. It was really just butter and cheese on bread.
Stephen LaMarca:
Melissa loves a cheese sandwich.
Ramia Lloyd:
An uncooked grilled cheese.
Elissa Davis:
Something about it just like as a kid I was like, "Oh, this is the greatest thing I've ever had." It's a grilled cheese, but it wasn't cooked. It was just raw. But it's very popular in my family. I will say though, I love Jersey Mike's because they do the vinegar and the oil-
Stephen LaMarca:
What do you think of tomatoes?
Elissa Davis:
... that's probably my favorite. I like tomatoes.
Stephen LaMarca:
Do you like-
Elissa Davis:
I like stuff on my sandwich. I just don't like-
Stephen LaMarca:
... mayo and cheese sandwich, you know what would set that off?
Elissa Davis:
Tomatoes.
Stephen LaMarca:
A few slices of tomatoes.
Ramia Lloyd:
Some balsamic vinegar.
Elissa Davis:
Oh, balsamic vinegar.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's naturally existing. MSG right there on bread.
Ben Moses:
So next time we travel, let us know what your favorite gas station sandwiches-
Ramia Lloyd:
Absolutely.
Ben Moses:
The key thing I picked up was a lot of it was related to nostalgia. Back in my old facility, there was a new Wawa that opened up and going with my friend Tim would get there the first time ordering sandwiches and getting in line and picking up chips and whatever and then checking out. So it was kind of fun experience.
Elissa Davis:
The mac and cheese.
Ben Moses:
The mac and cheese.
Stephen LaMarca:
Really?
Ramia Lloyd:
I would say that-
Stephen LaMarca:
It's like Stouffer's-level mac and cheese.
Ramia Lloyd:
... my first gas station experience that had food, I am still team Wawa, but it was actually a Dodges.
Ben Moses:
Wow.
Stephen LaMarca:
Never heard of it.
Ramia Lloyd:
So we moved from Detroit to Tennessee-
Stephen LaMarca:
I was going to say was that in-
Ramia Lloyd:
... and down the street from my dad's place that he lived in at the time there was a Dodges and we went in there literally just driving in and we were like, "There's food in this gas station." And us being from Michigan, we were like, "Don't eat that, that's gas station food. This is weird and uncommon. Do not eat this."
Stephen LaMarca:
It doesn't feel right.
Ben Moses:
But it feels so good.
Ramia Lloyd:
And then we got these potato wedges-
Stephen LaMarca:
But it also feels-
Ramia Lloyd:
... and it was like a potato wedge, like the size of my hand.
Elissa Davis:
I love that.
Ramia Lloyd:
And I was like, "I'm going to eat this potato wedge." And my dad was like, "All right, if you get sick, you're just going to be sick." Best thing I've ever eaten. So shout out to Dodges in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Stephen LaMarca:
Respect. Respect.
Elissa Davis:
One thing I do want to shout out real quick is in Virginia Beach there's a place called Marlboro Brothers. It's a barbecue place-
Stephen LaMarca:
Like cigarettes?
Elissa Davis:
... down the street. Well I know, I know it's-
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Elissa Davis:
It is spelled that way.
Ramia Lloyd:
Real.
Elissa Davis:
But it's down the street from my grandparents' place and it's a gas station, but the gas station has this barbecue place in it.
Ramia Lloyd:
[inaudible 00:13:08].
Elissa Davis:
It is-
Stephen LaMarca:
Gas station barbecue though? Different level.
Elissa Davis:
Don't me wrong, at heart I'll always be a Pierce's Pit barbecue girl down in the Virginia Beach Williamsburg area-
Stephen LaMarca:
Noted. Remind me of this later-
Elissa Davis:
I grew up going there, but Marlboro Brothers, top five.
Stephen LaMarca:
... because I go there a lot.
Ben Moses:
We'll continue this conversation on gas station food later.
Ramia Lloyd:
[inaudible 00:13:25] invest in this.
Stephen LaMarca:
Just real quick, honorable mentions, again though, we didn't mention Buc-ee's, which honestly kind seems-
Ramia Lloyd:
I've never been to a Bucc-ee's.
Stephen LaMarca:
... like a sin a little bit.
Elissa Davis:
I've never been there either.
Stephen LaMarca:
And then Rofo Royal Farms really known for their chicken. And then last thing that I'm going to mention up in New England, my hunting and fishing buddy in New Hampshire would always tell me legends about Chester's Chicken and they'd find the grimiest gas station and put one of their fast food chicken joints in the gas station. Chester's, fire.
Ramia Lloyd:
I've been to Chester's.
Ben Moses:
I'm going to create a new rule.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm done now, promise.
Ben Moses:
New rule. No honorable mentions.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's fair. That's fair.
Elissa Davis:
Ramia, you and I'll try and find a Buc-ee's at MFG.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yes.
Elissa Davis:
We'll be down in Texas.
Ramia Lloyd:
Perfect.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yes. Can I come?
Elissa Davis:
Yes.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah. We're taking a trip.
Ben Moses:
Before we get into our sponsor, I want to talk about AR glasses. There was a video that we released that was released from Marques Brown, MKHB, I think.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, Marques Brownlee.
Ben Moses:
Marques Brownlee. Thank you. Talk about the next iteration of AR glasses/spatial computing. So he got some behind the scenes from Meta and Snapchat on some... It's tough to call it consumer grade equipment, but they're marketing towards mass consumption. But what do you guys think about that video? Because we saw the Apple vision come out last year, which is not realistic for anyone to walk around in or actually use a true walkabout AR glasses. But the iterations are very fascinating to me.
Stephen LaMarca:
So I'll say as an Apple hater, I did have faith in Apple and I was like if anybody can make AR work because we've seen it, products come to market and then fail almost instantly for the past five years. And it's like AR might just be vaporware. AR might not be for IRL. I thought if anybody can make this work can actually sell products, it's Apple. And they couldn't, which is really upsetting. It was like, "I don't like the guy, but maybe Steve Jobs could have done it."
But anyway, another point I want to mention, Meta has been kind of going for this and so has... The two companies mentioned in this video have silently been working on eyeglass wearables for the past decade. Because one of the first smart glasses that I bought for my now wife was the Snapchat Spectacles. And then literally more than five years later, Meta releases the Meta Ray Bans, which are a direct ripoff of the original Snapchat Spectacles from five years before. And it was only a matter of time before those two were going fist to fist at each other with AR glasses. And I'm really happy to see that here. And I thought it would be Apple, but I was happily wrong and-
Elissa Davis:
Didn't Google do it though?
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, but-
Ramia Lloyd:
Google Lens.
Stephen LaMarca:
Google did have the Google Lens or Google glasses and man-
Ben Moses:
So the early iteration, Google had one.
Stephen LaMarca:
Those people got beat up.
Ben Moses:
Microsoft had the HoloLens, they still have it.
Elissa Davis:
I've never heard of that. So I guess that says enough about it.
Ramia Lloyd:
[inaudible 00:16:29].
Ben Moses:
[inaudible 00:16:29] Google, that's a big massive headset.
Stephen LaMarca:
These are for people who are from Silicon Valley that never touch grass, not tech bros. These are tech nerds.
Ramia Lloyd:
No, I agree. I feel like Apple's, whatever those things are called, were not for the normal consumer. They're for people with throw away money who can just-
Ben Moses:
Youtubers.
Ramia Lloyd:
... do things with it. Like influencers.
Stephen LaMarca:
This is a wearable Cybertruck.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, exactly. Wearable Cybertruck.
Elissa Davis:
Just as ugly. Just as ugly.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're a hundred percent correct.
Ben Moses:
I do want to hit on the video hits on a couple of solutions because the previous designs that we can talk about, the HoloLens, Google glasses, even Apple's current iteration, Apple Vision, they had a lot of problems. One was computing power. So where do you process information? So if it's on the glasses, right, you're wearing a big helmet-
Stephen LaMarca:
The thing looks like GPNG-40s.
Ben Moses:
And on the video-
Elissa Davis:
They should put a built in [inaudible 00:17:24]. And then it's just wired and there's a base and I think that's the solution.
Stephen LaMarca:
So, the very best night vision goggles you can buy as a civilian costs you $40,000 and they're the GP NVG-40s. There's a big battery pack on the back of your head and then four image-intensifying tubes on the back. That's what the Vision Pro looked like, but wasn't anywhere near as cool.
Ben Moses:
And in this next iteration from Meta and Snapchat, they actually have off glass computing. So Marquez had a wristband that helped with detection, hand controls but also had some computing power built into it too. So you hit on a key point, right? The battery life. So towards the end of the video it mentions, I think it Meta glasses were like an hour long. The Snapchat you can get like 45 minutes because the battery's built into the glasses, which you have limitations on size and the heat-
Elissa Davis:
That's what I'm telling you, [inaudible 00:18:21].
Ben Moses:
... and all that stuff. That's one of the drawbacks they currently have. But the iterations are slowly getting there. And the new thing that Marquez hit on was instead of using optical sensors to see hand motion and stuff like that, particularly if you have an app that's on your glasses and you're just scrolling through it, say you've got TikTok or something like that, you're scrolling through it using optical sensors to see your fingers and stuff like that. What they're picking up or the electrical sensors within the muscles from that sensor. So the evolution of how these glasses are integrating into the humans, it's very fascinating to see. You don't always have to have a single sensor to solve all your problems. You get into a sensor fusion where you can combine the kind of signals and things like that.
Stephen LaMarca:
Not everything needs to be done with a vision system, Elon.
Ramia Lloyd:
I just want to put out one point for the Vision Pro. In the commercial, their advertising was that you can have a Slack in your face and I don't think anyone needs that.
Elissa Davis:
No, no.
Ben Moses:
No, we don't need that.
Elissa Davis:
It's already in my face enough.
Ramia Lloyd:
Exactly. That's kind of rude and disrespectful.
Stephen LaMarca:
Want AR for two reasons-
Ramia Lloyd:
I don't need to read my Slacks like that.
Stephen LaMarca:
I want AR for two reasons. I want the time and the lower right hand or left hand corner of my vision so I don't have to check it. I think that would be cool. And I want a crosshair.
Elissa Davis:
Don't you love watches though?
Stephen LaMarca:
Crosshair-
Ramia Lloyd:
Watches.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, I do love watches but-
Ramia Lloyd:
You know like in video games-
Stephen LaMarca:
... it's like the ultimate watch is one constantly in your vision.
Ramia Lloyd:
The video games, they have your lifespan and stuff. That's what I want. I want my personal battery, I want-
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh, a social battery so I can show people "I'm dry, you need to leave."
Ramia Lloyd:
"Stop talking to me at the time-"
Elissa Davis:
"Time to go."
Ramia Lloyd:
"My social battery's at 2% actually, I think I need to go home," that's my favorite excuse.
Elissa Davis:
You don't have to go home but you got to get the heck out of here.
Ben Moses:
So the video talks about the pros and cons. Right now they're not for release just yet, but if they did they have to go to market obviously, that's the question. Well the one glass is $25,000. So clearly-
Stephen LaMarca:
Which one?
Elissa Davis:
That's a car.
Ben Moses:
I don't remember. They only mentioned the price of one, but realistically it's not at market yet.
Elissa Davis:
That's a down payment on a house.
Ben Moses:
But the problem is Marquez hits it on a little bit and the reason why they want to go to market now is they need a bunch of use cases. So Meta and Snapchat don't fully understand the end use case. What they're doing is technology preparation where they say, here's the ecosystem, figure out what are the use cases. And he actually hit on two parallels that I think translate to manufacturing. One was he's interested in learning how to play the guitar. So using the VR glasses, right, the VR glasses could point or provide a recommendation on how to play a guitar. I think that's fairly straight forward. And the parallel would be training and manufacturing,-
Stephen LaMarca:
[inaudible 00:20:47].
Ben Moses:
... if you have a new operator, then you could easily have the glasses say "Push this button, don't push that button. Stay out of this red zone," right?
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah.
Ben Moses:
The other scenario, which he talked about this on a plane, which the parallel would be kind of in-situation information. So the scenario he talked about was if he was on a plane and it's like, "Oh that's a cool mountain range. What is that mountain range?" Name will pop-up and a topographical map or something like that, information related to that. I think that gets into manufacturing. What is that part? What's that part number? What's that serial number? So that actually went through a scenario when in the video he looked at a table, it had a bunch of food, it was laid out and it was well-lit. So it was kind of playing to that scenario, but it had a name of each of the items like a pineapple, a box of cereal, the serial name and stuff like that. And he asked, "Okay, what can you make for me?" And it came up with a list. But that type of information on demand, I think that is growing relevancy for us.
Elissa Davis:
I'm sorry this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but that seems like so much work, but at the same time, so lazy. I don't know how else to describe it.
Ramia Lloyd:
Think about it in a way for people who have gluten-sensitive sensitivity or something like that,-
Elissa Davis:
That I can see.
Ramia Lloyd:
... you can look at an item and be like, "No, this has gluten in it."
Elissa Davis:
But if you're just the average Joe-
Ramia Lloyd:
Underlying issues, stuff like that.
Ben Moses:
But if you're on a manufacturer floor, "What is that part?"
Elissa Davis:
No, yeah, that would definitely be useful. Yeah. I agree.
Ben Moses:
I thought it was a fun video. I definitely would recommend taking a look at it. Before we get into the rest of the content. Ramia, you want to 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.
Ben Moses:
Thanks, Ramia.
Ramia Lloyd:
Anytime.
Ben Moses:
Before we get an article, Steve, I know Kyle was up here from Georgia Tech-
Stephen LaMarca:
A while ago, pre-IMTS,
Ramia Lloyd:
Cyber Kyle.
Stephen LaMarca:
No. And after IMTS.
Ben Moses:
It was after IMTS.
Ramia Lloyd:
Cyber Kyle.
Stephen LaMarca:
It was such a blur. Honestly, I have such a brain fog from IMTS honestly.
Ben Moses:
And he was helping out helping us with the automation process on the pocket NC and the testbed. Do you want to tell us what he's been up to?
Stephen LaMarca:
That's right. While I don't have any personal updates with the testbed other than you know what I mentioned last time that the computer's up and running, we built it successfully. We did it. Yay. He is brainstorming and working on planning some automation solutions for our testbed to minimize the human interaction with it. Obviously we want to use the testbed to learn on it, but we want to in meantime, our goal is to create a fully autonomous manufacturing cell with our testbed just to show that it can be done and on a budget and with the tools that AMT has.
Kyle has been helping us greatly with that but one of the roadblocks that he's ran into with designing, one of the things that we need to automate is just he determined that it would really help if he had the exact same pocket NC model down in Georgia Tech. So they ordered one, the exact same model that we have. It has been taken a while of ship, but it finally got there last week and I didn't realize it until I was on a call with them this past Monday and he's actually assembled a total replica of the testbed that we have.
Ben Moses:
That's cool.
Elissa Davis:
What a copycat.
Stephen LaMarca:
Then I realized that's the idea. The whole point was we made this test bed on a super limited budget so nobody has an excuse not to do the exact same thing that we did.
Elissa Davis:
I take back my copycat comment.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm glad you say that because there's rationale to it. So that's the update right now. Kyle's sending me some things, some ideas that he has that I'm going to share with the rest of the team and yeah, things are moving forward-
Ben Moses:
That's good, that's exciting.
Stephen LaMarca:
... I just don't know exactly what in specific.
Ben Moses:
I've been exploring some of the websites about automated fixtures and clamping, stuff like that. It's back to our boundaries. So we don't have an air compressor running an air compressor in office doesn't make sense. So some of the workholding was looking at required air. So I think the iterations and the fact that Kyle was able to copy and paste with that. He spent one day up here basically and he flew back and I know he's got work to do, he's actually doing work. So I know there was a delay in where he got started, but for him to just replicate what he had, what we had down there with no interaction from us, he just saw the equipment that we had and then bought everything online from us
Stephen LaMarca:
And now they're using a much nicer robot. Not to say that there's anything bad about the [inaudible 00:25:44], but they have robots lying around. They don't need to worry about the budget for buying. I wouldn't say lying around-
Elissa Davis:
But they're called Georgia Tech so it-
Stephen LaMarca:
They've got $70,000 robots on hand and have a coalition of the willing.
Ben Moses:
I want to get into some ai you pass along an article about, it's an interesting conversation. So the title is Perplexity CEO Offers AI Companies Services to Replace Striking New York Times Staff.
Elissa Davis:
I'm so sad about this.
Stephen LaMarca:
This is such a spicy topic.
Ramia Lloyd:
Messed up.
Ben Moses:
So the reason this comes up was-
Stephen LaMarca:
I have a 40-day streak right now.
Ben Moses:
We like Perplexity, some of our staff has been using it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Love Perplexity.
Ben Moses:
And the idea was the New York Times Tech Guild announced a strike, which is fine. That's the whole point of a union.
Ramia Lloyd:
As they should.
Ben Moses:
As they should. There's been a lot of strikes recently, so it's in the news. The workers-
Stephen LaMarca:
[inaudible 00:26:39] being bought by Amazon.
Ben Moses:
The workers provide-
Stephen LaMarca:
Who bought it?
Ben Moses:
... software support and data analysis for the Times, and they're looking for wage increases and some other benefits. Your standard reasons why you see a strike, right? The reason it escalated quickly was Perplexity is a growing and useful AI tool that we see a lot of trust being built into it. And then the problem is they got into a Twitter war, Twitter war with the CEO and the interpretation of where they're headed.
And the reason I bring this up is the interpretation of AI is a very similar parallel to automation and robotics where the CEO specifically said, "Perplexity is on standby to ensure your essential coverage is available all through the election, DM me anytime here." And that get interpreted as "we don't need the staff, Perplexity is going to fill what they need." Obviously it got blown out of proportions, the image and the sentiment related to it. And then later on he clarified that, "No, we're just here to support because election is important, we want to make sure New York Times provides the valuable information to their readers." But the sentiment to AI, the use case that we have now is very similar to automation where "Let's take the jobs away," no, AI's not meant to do that.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's a tool.
Ben Moses:
Just want to-
Stephen LaMarca:
First off, I would like to apologize for interrupting you while you were trying to lay everything out, claiming that Amazon and Bezos had bought New York Times-
Ramia Lloyd:
They bough the Washington Post.
Stephen LaMarca:
I just corrected myself.
Ramia Lloyd:
Microsoft, X-
Stephen LaMarca:
And I feel very bad about that.
Ramia Lloyd:
Microsoft, X, Notion and OpenAI approached Perplexity to purchase though.
Ben Moses:
But they haven't been bought.
Ramia Lloyd:
They haven't been bought yet.
Stephen LaMarca:
To purchase Perplexity?
Ramia Lloyd:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen LaMarca:
Damn.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. I'm really sad about it because I love my New York Times games and-
Stephen LaMarca:
I just took-
Elissa Davis:
... if I play them, it's crossing the picket line. And that's real complicated for me.
Ben Moses:
That came up also, the technology to support the industry as they're going on strike, was... Which people do cross the picket line. My wife was a nurse in the hospital and she was part of the union and was like, "These patients need to be helped." So she crossed the picket line a couple of times. There's nothing she could do about that. But the fact you have technology-
Elissa Davis:
But my New York Times, times games aren't life or death.
Ben Moses:
Right. It was an interesting conversation related to the perception of AI and how we talk about it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Well, I'm glad you guys and I had to check myself on New York Times because I like them-
Ben Moses:
Good for you.
Stephen LaMarca:
... because they're not owned by Bezos. And I respect them. And I respect Perplexity too but I also hope the strikers get what they want.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Ben Moses:
I think this is a good feed in because Elissa found a really good article about Apple and, I think, the future of AI and I'm nervous about not necessarily the use cases of it, but the underlying thing where AI comes from.
Stephen LaMarca:
But if it was the Washington Post, no, pound sand. Perplexity move in.
Ramia Lloyd:
Pound sand.
Elissa Davis:
So, Apple has offered up to $1 million to anyone who can hack its AI servers.
Stephen LaMarca:
Old.
Elissa Davis:
So Apple has obviously been talking a lot about the new AI features for the 15 Pro, Pro Max and iPhone 16 and a lot of people... So I know when we were at IMTS, Sean did it. So he changed it so that the AI was updated or he bought the new phone so he could have the AI update.
Ramia Lloyd:
I signed up for the beta.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah, it summarizes your text messages, your Slack messages. It does all that for you. It was funny though because I did see a tweet where someone's mom texted them and was like, "This hike nearly killed me." And then the person's AI was like "Mother tried to kill herself," or something.
Ramia Lloyd:
And it was like "Went on hike, suicidal," or something like that. I was like wild.
Ben Moses:
That's fun.
Elissa Davis:
By contrast clues, that's what the AI thought. So I'm just going to say that that's another reason why I don't think AI is going to take over the world. But yeah, so Apple is, they're continuing to roll out their AI features. So it's offering bounties from $50,000 to up to $1 million to anyone who finds a bug or a major issue. So this is for hackers as well as privacy and security professionals and researchers to verify the security claims it's made. So yeah, bottom line Apple guarantees it protects all the data on your iPhone by keeping it on the device, which is known as on-device or local processing. If a complex AI task needs to be handed off to more powerful computers in the cloud, PCC servers running custom Apple chips, the company promises it'll "Use your," this is in quotes, "your data only to fulfill your request and never store it. Making sure it's never accessible to anyone including Apple."
Stephen LaMarca:
Wow.
Ben Moses:
So taking a step back, right, offering bounties for finding bugs, that's existed for a long time, right? Apple's not innovating in that space there.
Stephen LaMarca:
No they're not.
Ben Moses:
But they're doing a traditional path.
Stephen LaMarca:
They're claiming they did as per usual.
Ben Moses:
That side of it's fine, but I do like the idea because the concept that we've been talking about a little bit early days of the podcast was security and manufacturing. There was a project a long time ago, Virginia Tech was interested in industrial security and they did a couple of tests. One was the idea of how do you bring down a manufacturing line? You have the brute force of, it's a business you can inject with ransomware, which you see cases now of just shutting down the business operations, cascade and manufacturing, which is fine. But the subversive context of that was, what happens if I induce a flaw into the part?
Stephen LaMarca:
Like [inaudible 00:32:21]?
Ben Moses:
So if I'm 3D printing a part or I'm subtracting the manufacturing part, have it build a flaw, a bubble or a defect that, not detectable, but that's not part of the design process. So you mask it in the manufacturing, then you mask it in the quality side of it and the metrology and now you've got a defective part in the field that they're hoping for fails and use. That's the super villain type process. But they did demonstrate that it is possible to kind of mass those processes in the manufacturing process line.
And I think this gets into where we are today of obviously I think they're interested in the data related to processing AI, but I am very interested in where they're interested in protecting, what do I call it, the training sets or the core information that the AI is feeding off of. To your point of the hike, the AI model assumes someone's trying to kill itself. That training set to achieve that has real life... That existed somewhere.
Elissa Davis:
Someone had to type that out in the AI.
Ben Moses:
Exactly. Right.
Elissa Davis:
Sorry.
Ramia Lloyd:
[inaudible 00:33:30] beware.
Ben Moses:
And that's what I'm concerned about. And I think Apple's taking a very good approach of test everything we can and then protect the core side of it, both the data side of it, the personal data, because that's easily extractable. Another scenario that came up was when fingerprinting was a thing on phones when it first came out, that was fairly easily hackable at the university level. We went to a couple of university resources, like "Yeah, yeah, I could do that." I was like, "Well that's not cool."
Elissa Davis:
That's not good.
Ben Moses:
But stealing that biometric information is a cause for alarm. So stealing the surface information but also getting to the core to feed other things that will steer you wrong in the future. That's what I'm very nervous about.
Elissa Davis:
I feel like the more secure we make things, the more accessible we make them,
Ben Moses:
The more trust.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking-
Stephen LaMarca:
It's a shift in trust.
Ben Moses:
Yeah.
Elissa Davis:
I'm like, "If I just put in my code that could be hacked," but I feel like it's almost easier at this point in time to replicate my face than it is to replicate the code.
Ben Moses:
Yep, yep.
Ramia Lloyd:
Have you guys seen that thing where the Smile movie, Smile 2, where you smile, there's a thing going on where you can watch-
Elissa Davis:
You can watch for seven minutes?
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, if you smile the whole time and people are like, "They're just stealing your face." Come on. There's no other need for that. They're stealing all of your facial identities. So it seems easy enough to get it. Why not? People are just giving it away.
Elissa Davis:
Exactly.
Stephen LaMarca:
My take on this article, because you definitely asked for it, is that-
Elissa Davis:
I brought to the podcast.
Stephen LaMarca:
... number one, it's not new. Many companies have asked people to "Try, give us your best shot, try to hack us." And then saying that it's a $1 million bounty and it's like that's chump change for Apple. That's really nothing for them. So either there's a lot of people who are going to be cashing out on this or... I don't know. I just feel like this is an interesting way to spin and market the fact that Apple was hiring contractors to do QC.
Ben Moses:
I mean that's one take. That's fine. That's the way of the gig business though.
Stephen LaMarca:
Honestly, make it not feel like a job or sound like a job.
Elissa Davis:
They're technical mercenaries.
Stephen LaMarca:
This is the job.
Ben Moses:
Today is the episode sponsored by Apple.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Apple's like, "If you bring us the head of our technology, we'll give you $1 million."
Ben Moses:
And with that, Ramia, do you mind telling the people where they can find learn info about us?
Ramia Lloyd:
Amtonline.org/resources. Like, share, subscribe.
Stephen LaMarca:
Bing bong.
Ben Moses:
Bye, everyone.
Ramia Lloyd:
Bye.
