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AMT Tech Trends: Inanimated

Episode 66: Ben and Steve are done with crypto and NFTs. Stephen reads the podcast’s first ad: AM Radio! Benjamin opens with laser ultrasound to measure material elasticity. Steve shares his excitement over a new flame retardant additive polyamide ...
Feb 25, 2022

Episode 66: Ben and Steve are done with crypto and NFTs. Stephen reads the podcast’s first ad: AM Radio! Benjamin opens with laser ultrasound to measure material elasticity. Steve shares his excitement over a new flame retardant additive polyamide. Ben discusses the top five robot trends of 2022. Stephen reports on Korea’s development of pain-sensing semiconductors. Benjamin closes with composite automotive anti-roll/sway bars.

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Transcript

Benjamin Moses: Hello everyone, welcome to the AMT Tech Trends Podcast, where we discuss the latest manufacturing technology research and news. Today's episode is sponsored by AM Radio. I am the director of technology, Benjamin Moses, and I'm here with.

Stephen LaMarca: Stephen LaMarca, technology analyst.

Benjamin Moses: Steve, how you doing?

Stephen LaMarca: Doing well.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah?

Stephen LaMarca: I'm excited to be here for another podcast. It's our first day officially back in the office.

Benjamin Moses: Correct.

Stephen LaMarca: We've been here forever, but it's nice seeing other people in the office. I mean still not to 100%, but it's pretty good.

Benjamin Moses: That's pretty close.

Stephen LaMarca: Most people I've seen in a while.

Benjamin Moses: Steve, there's one thing I could do less of.

Stephen LaMarca: What?

Benjamin Moses: Cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Stephen LaMarca: I'm done with it, yes. I think Dan actually hinted at me a little bit to stop bashing NFT buyers, people investing in NFTs in the tech report. I'm going to hurt some feelings. But I actually did see a great meme this morning when swiping through Instagram, trying to get out of bed. This meme said that land, purchasing land is the original NFT because you pay a lot of money for it, you get a paper that says you own it and only you own it, but the truth is anybody can get on your land and like step all over and be like, "Oh, I thought it was yours. What are you going to do?"

Benjamin Moses: What are you going to do? Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca: Land is off far better investment than NFT and nobody will dispute that except for NFT buyers.

Benjamin Moses: It's perpetrated all ways into my life. From video games to my daily feed I just had enough of this. There's nothing I'm going to do with this.

Stephen LaMarca: I prefer crypto. At least people are making money off of it.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah, sure.

Stephen LaMarca: Like there is a ... maybe it was a conspiracy. Let's put on our tin foil hats real quick. Maybe crypto invented NFTs so they can be like, "Look, we're not the dumbest investment on the block."

Benjamin Moses: Look at those guys, we're better.

Stephen LaMarca: We're so much better.

Benjamin Moses: That's fair, that's fair. So you going to tell us about our sponsor today?

Stephen LaMarca: Oh, let's talk about AM Radio. AM Radio is the new podcast from Additive Manufacturing Media. Join editors Pete Zelinski, Stephanie Hendrixson, and Julia Hider. I know Pete and I know Stephanie, those guys are amazing, I can't wait to meet Julia, I don't know who she is. As they share stories of companies succeeding with 3D printing today, talk about emerging trends and discuss future opportunities and potential for AM in the context of the larger manufacturing landscape. New episodes are published every other week, subscribe now on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts like this one, tune into Additive.

Benjamin Moses: Awesome. Speaking of which, we fired up the tested bed.

Stephen LaMarca: We fired up the test bed.

Benjamin Moses: Well you fired up the test bed. I'm your manager, so it's we.

Stephen LaMarca: I'll buy that. So I dusted it off. And at first I pressed power and I was nothing is happening. Like nothing is happening. Somebody unplugged everything. Like everything was unplugged.

Benjamin Moses: That's strange.

Stephen LaMarca: The power supply, which is a UBS universal backups-

Benjamin Moses: UPS.

Stephen LaMarca: UPS.

Benjamin Moses: Protection circuit.

Stephen LaMarca: I forget, man. It's a battery. It looks like a big, heavy surge protector, but it's a battery. Somebody unplugged that. It still had a charge on it, which was nice. Maybe it was making noise for whatever reason, because these things love to beep. I had to plug that back in. And then everything was unplugged from that. The sonic wall, which is our-

Benjamin Moses: The switch.

Stephen LaMarca: Manufacturing cell network. It's not just a switch, it's the entire network.

Benjamin Moses: The whole network was on there.

Stephen LaMarca: That was unplugged, had to plug that back in. And then there was the controller for the robot. And then I needed to steal another power supply for the laptop, my old laptop-

Benjamin Moses: Of course you did.

Stephen LaMarca: ... to plug that in because that thing hasn't been turned on in like a year. It was totally fried. Oh yeah, it's battery isn't long enough to like go 15 minutes anymore. So I had to plug that in.

Benjamin Moses: There's a reason that-

Stephen LaMarca: Then I fired everything up. The PC was the least of my issues, which was nice, which was-

Benjamin Moses: That's refreshing.

Stephen LaMarca: It was a pleasant surprise. It didn't get a bunch of alerts saying, "You need to update this, update that." It was fine. I booted up the robot's software. I remembered how to turn on the robot. So you turn on the controller and then you start up the software. You connect the software on the PC to the robot's controller and then once it says connected and it's ready to go, then you turn off the e-stop and then you get that really satisfying click of all of the joints, like unlocking and re locking.

Benjamin Moses: That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca: Be like, okay, the robots powered up, we're ready to rock.

Benjamin Moses: Startup sequence on most machine tools is fairly critical.

Stephen LaMarca: It's fun.

Benjamin Moses: There's always a nuance.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. It's not quite as cool as I guess a pilot and like a plane gets to flip all the switches overhead.

Benjamin Moses: Nothing's cool as that.

Stephen LaMarca: Nothing's as cool as that, certainly not movie cool. But started it up and then was like, "All right, let's put this other thing that's been collecting dust, let's put this xArm Gripper, which is brand new, new in box, but it's not actually new. It's old, we just haven't [crosstalk 00:05:58], we haven't done anything with it. Plugs it in, works fine. Works great. It's pretty easy to use. The only downside is the software, which is brilliant by the way, the software has a digital twin. So like there is a 3D image of your robot that moves when your robot moves. It mocks everything that it does, it doesn't have a gripper on it.

Benjamin Moses: Oh, it's missing that model.

Stephen LaMarca: And it also ... it's a collaborative robot, so it has to know when it's about to crash and it has to be able to sense like collisions and stuff. The gripper has no collision detection and the software cannot detect where the gripper is. So it doesn't know that it's about to punch through the table that it's mounted to. Apparently it can be. It's that way right now, that's the current state. Apparently it can be programmed to recognize itself and all that, I haven't got around to it yet. The gripper is not even bolted on all the way.

Stephen LaMarca: So the owner's manual, operator's manual really, it prescribes you need four M6 by eight millimeter bolts, counters sunk M6 by eight millimeter bolts to attach it. We got the package from the robot company to have the gripper and a camera, so I go to the hardware store and they only had counters sunk M6 by twelves.

Benjamin Moses: A little too long.

Stephen LaMarca: Little too long, but fortunately it was able to ... that extra four millimeters, four millimeters is a lot, man. That extra four millimeters was able to go through the plate that the camera mounts to, which is not in the instructions, and secure both the gripper and the camera to the arm.

Benjamin Moses: That's good.

Stephen LaMarca: But I still need four more bolts to feel safe, but those need to be by six and not, or by eight and not by twelves.

Benjamin Moses: I was going to mention that the struggle on the shop floor for bolts, that struggle's real, man. I remember a couple of times-

Stephen LaMarca: That's so refreshing to hear.

Benjamin Moses: ... trying to mount like ... changing fixtures. You know we didn't have a lot of quick setup back then. You took off the entire fixture, it was attached with long bolts through the fixture with the tee nuts on the bottom through the table's tee slots. And you only have a certain amount of engagement, like the tee nut is probably inch and a half thick, so if you have an inch and a half variance that you could use from bolt to bolt between what fits, so you could feed the six inch long bolt through your fixture and realize, oh no, you're too short. Or, oh no, you're too long. You go back to the bin, you realize you're screwed because that one bolt you need is empty in that bin. So it's both carrying inventory for all those screws and nuts and bolts and maintaining all this stuff, it's a nightmare on the shop floor.

Stephen LaMarca: There has to be more bolts than there are cutting tools on the shop floor.

Benjamin Moses: Absolutely.

Stephen LaMarca: And it's already like ... I think we saw an article earlier this week or last week that we should probably mention, but talking about the headache that it is keeping track of all the cutting tools in a shop floor. But that's so reassuring, because ... and also I was a little peeved because going into the hardware store to buy these bolts, and I know you hold me to go on Amazon or MSC to buy the bolts, which I probably should have done, but hardware stores are so a thing of the past so I try to look for as many reasons as possible to go to a hardware store and always end up being disappointed, by the way. Like it's always disappointing.

Stephen LaMarca: But like I just have these fond memories of being a little kid and going to the hardware store with my dad where we walk into the hardware store and right above the entryway as soon as you walk through the door, there's a sign that says, "Shoplifters will be shot." And there's a picture of a revolver and it's just that wouldn't fly today.

Benjamin Moses: No, no.

Stephen LaMarca: It really was a different time, hardware stores in general. But I also distinctly remember, and now I get, I was a lot smaller then so it seemed a lot bigger, but we went to this place in Arlington called Bill's Hardware and it was like two levels. It was cool because they had like a toy section and my dad would always get me like a cap gun every time we went there. But I distinctly remember like an entire, one of the entire floors was just nothing but aisles and aisles of like loose hardware.

Benjamin Moses: Now that's fun.

Stephen LaMarca: It was they definitely would've had a counters sunk M6 by eight.

Benjamin Moses: Probably had different variations, some coded, some stainless.

Stephen LaMarca: Some stainless, some chrome plated, some subdued like black oxide. And then do you want hex? Do you want torques? Bet you they had all of that, but nope, now you got to go online. Sound like a boomer.

Benjamin Moses: I do miss going to Hechingers with my dad. The smell of wood.

Stephen LaMarca: Was Hechinger a chain?

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: Okay, I remember that name, but like ... cool, that's awesome.

Benjamin Moses: Buying wood that wouldn't fit in our car and otherwise stick out the backdoor.

Stephen LaMarca: That's awesome.

Benjamin Moses: All right, man, let's get in some articles. The first one I got is materials, material science related. World's first way to measure material elasticity using laser ultrasound.

Stephen LaMarca: What?

Benjamin Moses: It's a lot to unpack there. This is from New Atlas. So first, material elasticity, you know what that is?

Stephen LaMarca: Let's not even get to that yet.

Benjamin Moses: Okay, let's get to laser ultrasound.

Stephen LaMarca: Lasers and ultrasound.

Benjamin Moses: Yes, there is-

Stephen LaMarca: Not a laser ultrasound-

Benjamin Moses: Correct.

Stephen LaMarca: Because we're talking about light and sound here.

Benjamin Moses: Correct, correct. So they're using lasers as one mechanic and the ultrasound as a different mechanic to determine-

Stephen LaMarca: And I think you had to correct me because I had it backwards originally.

Benjamin Moses: Correct, yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: They use the laser to make the noise and then the ultrasound to measure the noise.

Benjamin Moses: Correct.

Stephen LaMarca: Which is somehow correlates with the elasticity.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah, let's get into it.

Stephen LaMarca: I said it right that time.

Benjamin Moses: So elasticity it's basically how much the material can stretch and return back to normal shape. You have the linear and the nonlinear section. So basically you're pulling the material apart and you want to see how much it can handle before it breaks, right. So basically the stress strain curve of a part. So the way you'd normally do it if you do it for a lot of material, so you get a mill run from the mill, a giant piece of bar, they'll cut out a specific shape that has a very specific cross section, they'll pull it apart and then they'll measure that cross section before it and they'll pull it apart and see how much force that cross section can handle. And they'll measure the distance that the jaws traveled and then how much force is involved and you get your stress strain from there.

Benjamin Moses: And that's very, very dependent on that lot of material. It correlates to basically the grain structure, basically what shape the grains are and how the size and how well they're packed together. And you'll see some variation lot to lot and for most cases you take the average of it or you do some type of boundaries of the values that you see from testing or from material data sheets, and use that in your calculations.

Stephen LaMarca: I saw that practice being done in October of last year when I visited Essentium. They make materials, very high quality materials for 3D printing and they do, naturally, they do a bunch of tests on their materials. And while we're in the inspection and QA room, or lab really, of their facility, there was every ... we were recording and we were recording audio because I'm talking to these people and every few minutes you hear this loud snap and we actually got it on camera too, so you'll be able to see it, but I remember that. That was really cool.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah. So it's destructive testing, right, and you get variations from lot to lot basically how that raw material is made. So the question gets into material specific to that specific aircraft or that specific scenario, how do you know what the elastic materials properties are for that? And then understand the life of those parts and then feedback into your design.

Benjamin Moses: So obviously if you're doing destructive testing there's a long lead time. You got to machine it, you got to get on the machine, you got to pull it apart, get the data. So what they're considering is how do you non-destructively test that? How do you non-destructive get that stress strain curve? So what they're using is they're using a small laser, and very tiny spaces of 200 micrometers, shooting a laser at that point and then the sound that comes back, the ultrasound that comes back, they're correlating that to a specific elasticity. So they're able to map this elasticity over a large surface area.

Benjamin Moses: And it's very interesting. So the use cases that they found for this obviously are getting to designer materials. So if I'm trying design 15 different materials I want to be able to measure the material properties for those and the stress strain curve is the first one for those. So I could make those materials, obviously you do some computational design, figure out the type of materials, you down select from there, but then once you actually test it and figure out the ... and make those materials, now you do material testing. So getting to non-destructive testing gets you to that information quicker.

Stephen LaMarca: That's so cool.

Benjamin Moses: It's very interesting, I thought it was [crosstalk 00:15:02].

Stephen LaMarca: I would love to see the physics, like the actual equations behind extrapolating that data.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah, definitely

Stephen LaMarca: That's so cool.

Benjamin Moses: That's fascinating time. You have an article on materials also, but related to additive, right?

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. Yeah, so naturally there's a lot of stuff going on with additive materials. But if you recall back January 11th, I found an article from Airbus. Airbus is using, not only using, but they have a material from Materialise, the company Materialise, Materialise has a polyamide, a thermoplastic that is flame retardant. And Airbus officially qualified it for use in their stuff, their airplanes and whatnot.

Stephen LaMarca: Well there's a new kid on the block, another material that is going for certification, flame retardant certification specifically for use in commercial aerospace. Carbon, we all know Carbon, Carbon launches flame retardant EPX 86 FR, the FR obviously hinting towards flame retardants, 3D printing material. The difference between this one, the one Materialise made for Airbus is a polyamide thermoplastic, this one that Carbon is making is a thermoset. So the polyamide is the material used to print parts via SLA stereolithography apparatus, or DLP, digital light processing, to make a solid part out of additive.

Stephen LaMarca: They're not actually using temperature to form the part and set it in place. This on the other hand, that Carbon has, is a thermoset plastic, so they're applying heat to it like with material extrusion and a heated print head or jet, I think it's material jetting actually, regardless, it's a thermoset plastic and flame retardant.

Benjamin Moses: Nice, that's solid.

Stephen LaMarca: Dude, we're seeing a lot of strong competition for Nomex.

Benjamin Moses: We're seeing a lot of industries certifying material.

Stephen LaMarca: Yes.

Benjamin Moses: That's pretty cool.

Stephen LaMarca: Which, as I keep sounding like a broken record, is one of the bottlenecks holding things back, holding additive manufacturing back from being fully implemented in the production chain. In manufacturing in general, standards and certification is one of those things and we're finally breaking that barrier down.

Benjamin Moses: Can I talk about robotics?

Stephen LaMarca: I can't wait to talk about robotics.

Benjamin Moses: You and I have been talking about the growth of industrial robots and automation. They continue to see year of year higher demand, higher need. There's a bunch of different reasons this article from Automation.com gets into. The first one is adoption by new industries. Right, obviously where manufacturing centered companies producing durable goods, there's tons of demand for that, but you get into mobile robots, so eCommerce and distribution centers, obviously you're seeing a lot of need for automation there, logistics. We're seeing interesting articles from construction and agriculture. Agriculture's adopting automation a lot.

Stephen LaMarca: And you know who's really doing lot, not just like Korea since they're dominating automation and robotics, Australia. They're all about robot agriculture.

Benjamin Moses: That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca: Did I spoil?

Benjamin Moses: No, no, no, that's good.

Stephen LaMarca: Were you going to talk about Australia?

Benjamin Moses: I hope not, they've already taken over the world at this point.

Stephen LaMarca: They're working on it. And not if Korea, South Korea is going to help it.

Benjamin Moses: That's true.

Stephen LaMarca: Can help it.

Benjamin Moses: And then service industries like medical, right. In hospitals you're seeing a lot more AMRs used in doing various things.

Stephen LaMarca: Right, especially since COVID.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: That Siemens, Siemens designed, developed, and released that AMR for sanitizing hospitals. And it was something extreme, like in two days.

Benjamin Moses: That's crazy.

Stephen LaMarca: They went for the drawing board to here's a production model ready to go, have fun.

Benjamin Moses: They also, this gets right into the next point, robots easier to set up, install, and program and train and soon be able to from basically purchase to getting the first part being used significantly quicker than before. And the idea of humans up scaling. So there's a massive growth on robotic classes, large companies like ABB, FATA, KUKA, [inaudible 00:19:37], they have their own robotics training classes that you can go through for training, but seeing significant growth in participants on those classes.

Benjamin Moses: And also they're talking about how robots can facilitate the digital automation side of it, right. So if you move or the robots are doing the transaction within the cell or moving the part along, you have that digital information of what happened throughout the entire life of the part. So it's fairly interesting when you connect physical automation to how you can manage data and getting data through the ... from carrying the part over to the cell within the cell and then carry the part out, that's a lot of information that you can use for the digital manufacturing.

Benjamin Moses: Speaking of which-

Stephen LaMarca: The robots. We have to mention Korea now.

Benjamin Moses: Okay.

Stephen LaMarca: So the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, K-I-S-T, KIST. KIST has developed a semiconductor that senses pain.

Benjamin Moses: That's worrisome.

Stephen LaMarca: Is it though?

Benjamin Moses: I don't know, get into it. Tell me more.

Stephen LaMarca: So I mean we're talking about physical pain, we're not talking about emotional pain. So the robot's not going to be a good drinking buddy yet, but it's cool to me because it's going to give the robot, the robots, another way to measure sensory data. Like I mean one of the ways that humans are so good at doing things like polishing a car, I talked about that last podcast, is because we have the feel for it.

Benjamin Moses: Correct.

Stephen LaMarca: Like we know when we're getting a hot spot buffing an area in the paint, not when you're using a rotary tool, but like if you're doing it by hand, a lot of things are done in luxury goods by hand because there are sensory ... there's sensory data that organisms can process that robots cannot yet. KIST is breaking down that yet, you know. And I just think it's wild.

Benjamin Moses: You know I do like it because [inaudible 00:21:45] robots the main thing that makes them useful is their boundaries. Right, so this is another way that you can construct layers or boundaries for a collaborative robot or other piece of machinery where you're able to work around.

Stephen LaMarca: Right, right, like if the robot hurts itself it's like, "Oh, this might hurt a human too."

Benjamin Moses: We should ease up.

Stephen LaMarca: And the other thing is, it's not to sound all like Terminator 2 or anything, but like seeing this the first thing I immediately thought when just reading the title of this article was I, not me personally, I feel like I have a good amount of mechanical sympathy. I'm gentle with my car, stuff like that. But there is definitely people I know who need to work on their mechanical sympathy. And if this article isn't the best reason yet to start working on mechanical sympathy, start being nice to your electronic devices or your ... just start being nice to things. Because when they rise and they take over, they might remember that.

Benjamin Moses: I can't wait for KIST next album, should be great.

Stephen LaMarca: Shut up.

Benjamin Moses: I got an article from Eureka Magazine on-

Stephen LaMarca: Nice, I miss Eureka. I haven't read anything from them in a while.

Benjamin Moses: ... composite anti-roll bar design. Getting some composites in cars.

Stephen LaMarca: Composites, anti-roll bars. Also known as sway bars.

Benjamin Moses: Sway bars. Sheffield, AMRC stands for Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, over in the UK. And they do a lot of further advancements for groundbreaking manufacturing technology. And what they're working on a lightweight material composite hybrid project. So basically similar to the LIFT project over in the US for the Manufacturing Institute, what they're interested in doing is making vehicles and making equipment in general just more lightweight, weigh less. There's a lot of reasons for that, one is you probably can [inaudible 00:23:48], but the cost and need to operate the machine drops down as you decrease the weight.

Benjamin Moses: So what they're working on is several different ideas to reduce the weight of vehicles. One, they're looking at lightweight alternatives to tubular steel stabilizers in suspension units for trucks and trains, so large scale vehicles. At that scale if you're able to reduce a five inch diameter bar that's probably used on a train to something that weighs a lot less, the operating cost of the fuel to operate that vehicle is going to be much less. So what they did is they made a anti-sway bar 30% lighter going to composites.

Benjamin Moses: And it's interesting, they had several series of projects before they got to this one and then the main issue that they're running into is attaching the composite to the metal. So there's always a transition point from a composite to either another plastic or in this case, a metallic arm that's holding the sway bar. Right, so you have two trailing arms and the sway bar goes across. So how do you attach the composite to that? Aerospace has seen that issue a lot where in the early days of using carbon fiber or composites, like in the wings and structure, how do you attach that wing to the structure? You know they'll bond ports or sleeves or studs, not studs, but attachment points that are drilled out in the composite and then either glued in somehow. But that creates a stress point, right. So because you have this broken down material that you're attaching it to. So that was one of the biggest issues that they ran into is how do you transition from the composite to another metallic structure and keep it attached?

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. Hasn't aerospace kind of like solved that because aren't a lot of wings composite now? Or at least a mix of like carbon fiber or some composite like that and metal? Because it was explained to me at a very young age that the wing is essentially like the shock absorber on a car for an airplane. But you haven't seen a lot of composite springs yet. And an anti-roll bar, whether you like it or not, is a spring.

Benjamin Moses: Sure, it's treated as a spring.

Stephen LaMarca: It's supposed to be a spring, it doesn't do the same spring job as like a shock absorber or the spring around a shock absorber or a coil over on a car, but it is supposed to flex and if anything it's supposed to minimize flex. But it has that purpose, but they've been making composite wings forever with metal parts in the mix.

Benjamin Moses: I think there's a couple of differences. One is the type of loading that they're doing in this case. So how the wings are loaded versus, or how they're attached also versus how they want to attach this. They're probably using traditional methods or they could be using adhesives also. But it's a fair point, you know there's probably some cross industry stuff, but I think the AMRC is cross industry also, they're doing a lot of stuff across-

Stephen LaMarca: I think about carbon fiber wheels as well.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: You know a lot of companies claim to have a carbon fiber wheel, but like as Tim will tell you all the time, it's I bet you the whole wheel isn't carbon fiber. I bet you the hub in the middle is-

Benjamin Moses: Is probably metallic, yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: ... like aluminum or some alloy. Now there are brands that have come out and said, "No, we have a carbon fiber wheel." And then there's other people Gordon Murray, like one of the greatest Formula One car designers of all time until he was surpassed by Adrian Newey, we won't get into that. Gordon Murray, like he still designs cars now and people are really looking forward to seeing the T.50 when it hits. Hopefully they can make more than a hundred of them. But Gordon Murray, when he showed off his ... when he was debuting the car, I don't think it's been delivered to anybody yet, who can afford a $3 million car? $3 million plus car.

Benjamin Moses: You'll see video on Jay Leno's channel if you do.

Stephen LaMarca: But like you look at the wheels on it and one of the first things is how come it doesn't come with carbon fiber wheels? Gordon Murray must have seen some stuff in his time in Formula One, he's like, "I will never put carbon fiber wheels on any car. That is going to go under some sort of load."

Benjamin Moses: Yeah, that's interesting. So in this project they produced four anti-roll bar prototypes using MF Tech filament winding systems and impregnate resin. They wound around rotating mandrel to get the shape and then they inspected it using CT. It's fairly straightforward, they have existing technologies. I think the application here is making it robust enough. The environment that the train's going to see that's rough, man. It's going to go from hot Arizona, sandy environment to Canada's Rocky Mountain. So I think that's one of the slight differences there too. So I think there's got a lot of environmental testing to-

Stephen LaMarca: For sure.

Benjamin Moses: ... before we get certification or buy-in on this. But it's exciting.

Stephen LaMarca: It is.

Benjamin Moses: I can't wait to buy one for my car.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah.

Benjamin Moses: I feel like it's [crosstalk 00:28:39].

Stephen LaMarca: I can't wait to afford a car that has carbon fiber anything.

Benjamin Moses: I did a carbon fiber hood once on my Volkswagen Golf. It was okay.

Stephen LaMarca: My motorcycle has a heat shield that's carbon fiber.

Benjamin Moses: That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca: I have one piece of carbon fiber somewhere.

Benjamin Moses: You got one. I'll look on my cars.

Stephen LaMarca: And my cars has a mark forged key chain that was printed with single filament carbon fiber.

Benjamin Moses: I like it.

Stephen LaMarca: So I do have that. Going back, I'm sorry, I don't mean to go back to my article I was talking about before, but the word I was looking for and I totally paused on and had a blue screen of death internally was inanimate.

Benjamin Moses: Ah, got you.

Stephen LaMarca: Putting a pain sensor on an inanimate object where now it feels like we're getting close to the brink of artificial intelligence.

Benjamin Moses: We're out in iRobot world.

Stephen LaMarca: Computers can't feel pain. Maybe they can. I don't know, you're not in the head of a computer. But inanimate object was the thing I was looking for before. Imagines pain. Be gentle to your inanimate objects.

Benjamin Moses: That's a big takeaway.

Stephen LaMarca: They'll remember us.

Benjamin Moses: Just be gentle.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah, be nice.

Benjamin Moses: That was a great set of articles, man. We covered a lot of different materials.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah, we did.

Benjamin Moses: Awesome. So thanks to the sponsor, AM Radio. Where can they find more info about us?

Stephen LaMarca: They can find more info about us on AMTonline.org/resources. Like, share, and subscribe.

Benjamin Moses: Bye everyone.

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Benjamin Moses
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Episode 115: The gang talks about dogs and other furry friends. Elissa reports that Japan’s about to land on the moon. Ben discusses stainless steel corrosion. Stephen closes with an “ICYMI” on everything we may have missed with the Boeing situation.
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Episode 112: The Tech Frends reintroduce themselves, the purpose of this podcast, and walk through each of their backgrounds laying out how they got where they are today.
Episode 111: Ramia shares her excitement as the team’s new studio is coming together! Steve notes that Modern Machine Shop has been on a roll releasing banger after banger articles. Ben closes with an attempt to redefine robotics programming.
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While additive manufacturing has significantly matured, further development depends on the current market evolving, which will require developing opportunities to showcase it as well as changing how we think of it – that it's more than 3D printing a part.

6 min
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Technology
By Stephen LaMarca | Mar 15, 2024

A new bot has joined the chat. Versatile robotics control. Advances in multi-material AM. Everybody works better in denim.

6 min