Episode 103: Steve starts with some corrections and clarifications from the previous episode, announces the testbed has a new cobot, and the LEGO is continuing their efforts for oil-free bricks. Elissa talks about NASA’a asteroid sample. Ben closes with the Navy’s efforts to 3D print submarines.
Articles Featured in This Episode:
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/lego-abandons-effort-make-oil-free-bricks-ft-2023-09-24/
https://www.reuters.com/science/nasas-first-asteroid-sample-parachutes-into-utah-desert-2023-09-24/
https://www.naval-technology.com/news/us-naval-industry-integrates-3d-printing/
Looking for More?
Watch this episode on YouTube
Connect with the Manufacturing Industry here https://www.amtonline.org/events
Discover the past, present, and future of American manufacturing with https://www.mmsonline.com/madeintheusapodcast
Explore, watch, read, learn, join, and connect at https://www.imts.com/
Tune in to the AM Radio podcast https://www.additivemanufacturing.media/zc/am-radio-podcast
For the latest in Manufacturing Technology news https://www.amtonline.org/resources
Produced by Ramia Lloyd
Transcript
Ramia Lloyd:
Welcome to the Tech Trends podcast where we discuss the latest manufacturing, technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by a Modern Machine Shop Made in the USA podcast. I'm Ramia Lloyd, producer, and I'm here with-
Elissa Davis:
I'm Elissa Davis, the digital community specialist.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm Stephen LaMarca, AMD's technology analyst.
Benjamin Moses:
And I am Benjamin Moses, the man who didn't comb his hair this morning. That's one nice thing about getting old, is no one will know.
Stephen LaMarca:
I blame it on the motorcycle helmet.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh yeah?
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, I get to do that one. I have that luxury.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh yeah, yeah. That's a good excuse.
Stephen LaMarca:
The big cost is you could die on your way to work.
Benjamin Moses:
In this area that is a high risk. Steve, we got a letter from our editor at large.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. My babe Tom, Tom Feldhausen over at Oak Ridge National Lab, he sent me a text wanting to set the record straight and clarifying the workshop, that I spoke so highly of by the way, on our last episode. The workshop, the Hybrid Manufacturing Workshop at Oak Ridge National Lab... I'm just going to read what he said. "It was a workshop on human factors for hybrid additive manufacturing. How do we train the next generation of operators, designers, and users of the technology for adoption? As well as, how do we develop digital tools to augment the operator?" My favorite line, "We haven't automated machining in its longstanding history. How the heck do we think we can do it for hybrid AM? Thus, we need to train."
Benjamin Moses:
Nice. I like that correction. Thanks Tom.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. If you listen to the last episode and you're like, "Man, this guy's really off his rocker," you're not wrong. But this is the correction to what that workshop was. Again, I hope they invite me back. Probably not now.
Benjamin Moses:
If it took you the last episode to realize you're off your rocker, that's a long time for you to learn. You should have picked that early in the sequence.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's like your car. When the check engine light comes on, just plug into the OBD-II and reset the codes. That's what I do. I just reset.
Benjamin Moses:
I've been doing that lot. Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Nothing's wrong.
Benjamin Moses:
That's good. And actually, hopefully we can meet up with Tom at our next technology use committee in Corpus Christi. We have a joint meeting with the DOD down there. That'll be one of the interesting topics we're going to talk about, is additive. One thing we want to talk about is what is the current state of additive, both on end use and technology. But also, the DOD is going to run in issues on technology adoption. So, knowing what are the technology hurdles, getting into obviously additive, it will be a big part of the defense strategy. But knowing that the limiting factor could be just humans, and how do we support that or prevent that path going forward?
Stephen LaMarca:
Did he agree to it?
Benjamin Moses:
I'm going to talk to him today.
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay.
Benjamin Moses:
Tom, you're going to agree to it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Man, I hope so. I hope I didn't ruin that relationship. But by the way, he also sent us a perfect thumbnail for this episode, which is the hypersonic rocket nozzle with a water bottle in it.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks.
Stephen LaMarca:
So you might not know when you see this, but when you listen to it, you'll know.
Benjamin Moses:
Also, I heard you got a bone to pick with CAD. CAM.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. So speaking of being off my rocker. Jason Jones, I was sitting next to him at the happy hour after the first day of the event and we got talking, and it's always a blast talking to Jason Jones of Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies. We were talking about something and CAD came up. Or not CAD. Excuse me. CAM came up and I went on the same tangent I almost always do when somebody brings up CAM, and that I think the current state of CAM software and technology today is absolute garbage and these CAM companies should be ashamed of themselves. Because they're constantly advertising on how easy they make CAM today and how even a monkey can do it, and it's saying stuff like that. And it's like, "Well, I guess there's a lot of humans that are monkeys that can't do CAM," because there's a whole engineering role in the manufacturing workflow specifically for doing CAM.
These people never get to leave their desk and they're told, "Hey, we just sold this part, or we just sold a contract for us to make this part for this aerospace or defense company, and we owe them like 100 million of these parts and they have to be made using 5-Axis. Design something, or make this design work." That's what a CAM engineer has to do and they're paid a lot of money to do this. Their job hasn't been replaced by software yet and it's 2023. So, I don't know.
But anyway, Tom and Blaine introduced me to Brad Rooks. I mentioned him last time. He works for hyperMILL. It's funny, they started the second day off by telling Brad this. And Brad, as soon as he came in through the door, he was like, "Steve, I need to talk to you about CAM." And I'm like, "Let me get a drink first." But anyway, great guy. HyperMILL is an incredible company and they've got an awesome product. And he was trying to talk me off my ledge and we came to an agreement about CAM and the current state of it. While toolpath optimization, modern day toolpath optimization software, is incredible. Especially hyperMILL's. Shout out to hyperMILL. But still, going from design to G-code is impossible.
Benjamin Moses:
It's a long process.
Stephen LaMarca:
So, we haven't solved that yet. And he told me some things that made me feel better about it, but it's still awful.
Benjamin Moses:
I'm glad you got that experience.
Stephen LaMarca:
So, that happened.
Benjamin Moses:
And I think that is an important lesson learned in terms of, to your earlier example of signing a contract to shipping parts, the entire process of, okay, now let's define the manufacturing process and then therefore I need raw material, I need tooling, I need workholding; I need all these supplemental things. But it's a circular reference, because I need some of that in my tooling process to design what the CAM looks like to get the G-code. But I have to design that along the way. So it's a very interesting... Take a step back. If you're not in that world every day, if you're in that larger world, it's tough sometimes.
Stephen LaMarca:
And to be fair, a CAM engineer's or manufacturing engineer's only job isn't just to turn a design into G-code. It's to take the design that the sales team and the customer came up with that is nearly entirely unmanufacturable and inconceivable, and they have to make it a feasible program that the machinist can run. And the machinist is going to come back to the manufacturing engineer and be like, "What did you give me? This can't be done." He's like, "We've got to make it work. They've already wrote the check." It's a nightmare. I feel so bad for these people.
Benjamin Moses:
The manufacturing engineer is usually stuck between a hard place. The operator on the floor is like, "What did you give me?" And then he's stuck from what we signed an agreement to. But the most successful companies that I found, especially when you look at high position parts, or parts for aerospace, or defense, or space, they try and get involved early in the design process. They'll see a contract, they may bid for it, but I think a lot of times they'll add the exceptions or provide feedback to say, "If you can do this, this will get you a better yield." So, providing that design for manufacturing feedback, or DFM, as part of the RFP process, that's where I see successful companies taking the next leap into new segments and new sectors. But that's tough, man. Being contract manufacturer in 2023 is tough.
Stephen LaMarca:
And again, a shout out to Brad at hyperMILL, because I gave him a tongue lashing. It was seven in the morning, maybe eight. I don't remember.
Benjamin Moses:
Wait till you get involved with welded assemblies. That's a whole new world. Steve-
Stephen LaMarca:
Are you done?
Benjamin Moses:
Ramia, can you tell us about today's sponsor?
Ramia Lloyd:
Today's sponsor is the Modern Machine Shop Made in the USA podcast. 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 the unique audio storytelling experience to shine a spotlight on the past, present, and future of American manufacturing. Find Made in the USA on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. Follow Modern Machine Shop on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
I read that thing three times and I still can't read.
Benjamin Moses:
It's all good. Steve?
Stephen LaMarca:
Yes, sir.
Benjamin Moses:
Test bed. I heard we got a robot.
Stephen LaMarca:
We bought a robot.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh, I know we got a robot. Robot-
Stephen LaMarca:
I bought a robot.
Benjamin Moses:
Tell me about this robot. Do we name it?
Stephen LaMarca:
We haven't named it yet. We're going to wait for Doug to insult it in some way and then we'll turn that insult into its name.
Benjamin Moses:
Perfect.
Stephen LaMarca:
So we bought an Igus ReBeL, 6 Degrees of Freedom. That is the actual name. It's Igus ReBeL, and some of the letters are capitalized in rebel and some aren't. Whatever. And the full name is 6 DoF, for degrees of freedom. So it's a six-joint collaborative robot that has 660 millimeters of reach, with a one millimeter accuracy claim. Which is great, because there's only one other company as we know in the manufacturing industry that has an accuracy claim and that's FANUC.
Benjamin Moses:
That's fun.
Stephen LaMarca:
So, it's like, "We're going go to [inaudible 00:11:02] FANUC on a budget robot." And so I'm like, "Let's do it." But one millimeter of accuracy, 660 millimeters of reach. And then being that it's a collaborative robot, it's limited to 15 newtons.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah. Nice.
Stephen LaMarca:
So get what you can out of that first speed.
Benjamin Moses:
Yep. And I think an important part of this in the conversation of our robot is the constraints. It's got to be able to fit on our table, as it's a tabletop factory, and reach everything we need on the table, which the 660 millimeters will get us. But also, it has to be less than 10,000 bucks, and those constraints is very important for us.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's a tough ask.
Benjamin Moses:
And obviously it's got to have the safety requirements of a collaborative robot, because it's an office environment. We're not putting shielding, we're not putting fencing in an office space.
Stephen LaMarca:
Here's the other cool thing, a really cool purchase point that I appreciated out of it. It's made in Germany.
Benjamin Moses:
That's cool.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's a German made robot that's under 10K. And I compared it earlier this year. Another German, affordable, not affordable enough unfortunately; but another affordable German industrial robot, the HORST by Fruitcore robotics, another German company, they were on the same website that I used to buy it, which is actually an Igus website. They have this website called rbtx.com for sourcing, and it's a supplier of what they call affordable automation solutions and affordable robotics solutions.
It was a brilliant purchase experience. Paid for it on a Thursday, it arrived the following Monday. Was not expecting that in the slightest. I had equipped on the website and in the shopping cart the end effectors or end of arm tooling that I wanted and whatnot, and some of the other accessories and software packages, and some of them weren't in stock yet and they told me about that and they told me, "We're only billing you for the robot right now." But a couple days later they sent me an invoice for, "Okay, we have everything in stock. The second we get a payment, we'll ship everything to you." Or however it goes. It was really impressive.
And I think that they were able to get a collaborative robot made in Germany for such an affordable price for us because, it hit me, Igus is like the MagPole of the manufacturing industry. They really specialize in plastics, where you think most robots need to be made out of metal. And the important parts on this Igus cobot are made out of metal. The drive train and each joint is metal. And also, it's swappable. So when you break it, you order another one and you bolt it in there. And the rest of the robot's body is made out of what I assume is carbon reinforced plastic. Carbon reinforced, glass filled nylon, something like that. And it's very quality plastic that, I don't know if you've handled it yet, but it feels like MagPole plastic.
Benjamin Moses:
It's very robust. Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Which is quality plastic.
Benjamin Moses:
It is. It's very good. Nice.
Stephen LaMarca:
I haven't done anything with it. It's still in its box. I opened the box so people can see that we have a robot. And the day it arrived, I walked it around the office shaking it above my head like a Tuscan Raider. I was going... That's going to be a soundbite. And yeah, I'm just very proud of it.
Benjamin Moses:
It is.
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh, another cool thing about it, the controller box. With a lot of robots, you have a massive controller box that you have to place out of sight. And our last robot, the UFACTORY xArm 7, great bot, had a professional control box with the E-stop button on it that we put underneath the bench. This one's control box is located... They've integrated everything into the base of the bot. It's got a nice wide base for support and leverage, and it is got a remote E-stop button.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh, nice.
Stephen LaMarca:
It's wired. It is hardwired, so it's not wireless, which you wouldn't want an E-stop button to be wireless.
Benjamin Moses:
You're losing in here.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's the one thing you want to have guaranteed, a solid connection at all times with like eight-gauge wires. And yeah, we can place that wherever we want. It's a really cool kit.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah. I'm excited to see, once some of the accessories comes in, and get it up and running. That'll be a fun experiment.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Good. I'm glad everything's working out well. And hopefully our Mexico tech center doesn't steal this one for a little bit. If they do, that's fine too.
Stephen LaMarca:
They can buy their own, man.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks, Steve. I'm excited to get that up and running. Steve, you want to tell us about Legos?
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay. Legos. Reuters posted a story about Legos recently. Let me get the actual title.
Benjamin Moses:
And I do like this article, because it fits in our material science section. As we look at the whole life cycle of new materials, but also where there's material to source, that's an interesting place where we're seeing a shift in the industry. I think this hits on a lot of key elements.
Stephen LaMarca:
And I should have an article coming out soon in the MT magazine about sustainability being a bad word. And one of the examples that I use is talking about the type of plastic that is a byproduct of cracking crude oil into fuel. Naturally you get Vaseline out of it and we've got more Vaseline than we can sell. We're pretty much giving the stuff away. And obviously plastic to make disposable water bottles and whatnot. I use them as an example. And Lego's research tapped into, how can we get away from that? And Reuters has the article, Lego Abandons Effort to Make Oil-Free Bricks, Financial Times Reports. That's the title.
To be clear, Lego has multiple products, or projects, excuse me, going on to develop an oil-free brick. Crude oil and just not using any oil at all involved in the production of their plastics to make their bricks. And this article's just reporting on one of their projects to use a different plastic failed because it just... The project failed because they found out that using this plastic would release too much carbon emissions.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh, sure. That's good.
Stephen LaMarca:
It wouldn't be worth not using crude oil plastic anymore to avoid it.
Benjamin Moses:
So they took a step back and said the overall impact is going to be worse. Let's not do this.
Stephen LaMarca:
They tried their best to not cater to big oil and gas, but what they ended up with, their result ended up releasing more emissions into the atmosphere than just taking it from big oil, so they've axed that project. The article also goes into clarifying that the reason why it's so specific to get the right plastic blend to make these Lego bricks isn't for a material science purpose that we think of in the manufacturing industry. It isn't for strength, tensile strength and toughness and whatnot. They're doing it because they need the right amount of luster in the colors in the plastics. And they want even coloring. And it's like, that's fair. You've been doing it this way for, I feel like, almost 100 years now, and they're going to need to put a lot of money into researching a new plastic to replace something that's become a staple.
Benjamin Moses:
I thought you were headed down the point where they need it to be strong enough so when you step on it, it almost kills you.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yes. But there's a clarification, a correction to the article, to state that this was only one project that they decided to cancel.
Benjamin Moses:
And to be fair-
Stephen LaMarca:
They still have many other projects trying to replace the plastic to get a more environmentally friendly plastic in Lego kits.
Benjamin Moses:
Yep. And I appreciate the correction in the article, because Lego does a lot of innovation in their entire lifecycle of a product. From the design, to the environment that they create for their designers, to their products, and even packaging and instructions. Have you built a Lego thing recently?
Stephen LaMarca:
Right behind you, boy.
Benjamin Moses:
Exactly. So back to your idea of CAM. Giving you instructions on how to build this thing, it's very impressive. To go from that design to instructions on how to build it and then manufacturing those products, Lego's doing all right.
Stephen LaMarca:
Also, don't sleep on... Everybody's like, "Oh, Lego. It's a children's toy." Dude, there's CAD software out there specifically for building stuff out of Legos. And it probably doesn't have awful CAM associated with it either.
Benjamin Moses:
Let's get to some NASA sample parachutes. Elissa, you contributed something today.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. So, this is from the same source, but NASA Asteroid Sample Parachutes Safely Onto Utah Desert. This is about the OSIRIS-REx. It was a collaboration project between NASA and the University of Arizona and a bunch of other entities, and we have gotten the biggest sample that has ever been taken from an asteroid. It ended up being 250 gram sample. And that's 8.8 ounces, which doesn't seem like a lot, but compared to... This is almost, in some ways, an extension of a project that Japan did about 10, 15 years ago. Well, most recently they had one come in in 2020 and that only had five grams. So, we had a substantially larger sample than they did. Excuse me.
Yeah. The asteroid is Bennu and it's one that constantly circulates the earth. It's one of the few asteroids that could potentially hit the earth, but they're like, "Nah, it's a near zero possibility.
Benjamin Moses:
When do we call it a moon if it keeps rotating around us?
Elissa Davis:
I mean-
Stephen LaMarca:
Doesn't it have to be big enough?
Benjamin Moses:
I don't know.
Elissa Davis:
Well, the asteroid is as wide as the Empire State Building is tall.
Benjamin Moses:
There you go. That's a big boy.
Elissa Davis:
But it is still substantially smaller than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Stephen LaMarca:
Nuke it.
Benjamin Moses:
I do like-
Elissa Davis:
It's one of many that's actually orbits the earth frequently.
Stephen LaMarca:
I don't like it. I don't like it rallying around the family with a pocket full of shells like that. Nuke it.
Benjamin Moses:
I do like this article on a couple layers. One I think you mentioned early on is the collaboration between NASA and Arizona. That's where I found a lot of innovate... We were talking about this earlier, how some of the other collaboration, like students and other companies, they're able to put stuff in space. Like Arizona students and some of the other contributors towards this. They contribute earlier in their career, and that's where I found a lot of innovation of being able to propose a problem statement to either students or a group that's not familiar with that environment and get some really wacky ideas. You're going to get some wacky ideas. And maybe one of them might actually make, but that wackiness gets you innovation and further ideas that will get you pretty far.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of the pieces that were actually on the OSIRIS, they were either developed by U of A, ASU. And then, like you said, the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer, which is also called REXIS, that was a student experiment between Harvard and MIT.
Benjamin Moses:
That's cool.
Elissa Davis:
Students actually... And another fun fact, Brian May of Queen was also on the OSIRIS-REx team.
Benjamin Moses:
Wow.
Stephen LaMarca:
Wow.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. So he just creates top hits for 50 years in his spare time and is an astrophysicist as his day job.
Stephen LaMarca:
How did this thing collect the soil sample? So we had to launch this, it had to successfully and safely land on the asteroid, scoop up its little dirt, and then launch and fly back and safely land here. And this is entirely automated. We didn't send a monkey up there.
Elissa Davis:
No. Yeah. A lot of the pieces were actually the first of its kind, including one which is the TAGSAM, which is the touch and go sample... It's the arm. It's the robotic arm that Lockheed Martin developed in order to collect the actual sample.
Stephen LaMarca:
They develop it or they white label it?
Elissa Davis:
No, they developed it. It's at their center in Denver. They have a ton of innovative 3D printing and stuff going on there too. So yeah, it's called the TAGSAM, which is the Touch And Go Sample Arm Mechanism. We're the first to land on the actual asteroid and collect the sample and then relaunch into orbit.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's right. Catch up, India.
Benjamin Moses:
Could you imagine if we put the US flag and we see that thing passing every once in a while? [inaudible 00:25:05]
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. And then I know we talked about the parachute too, that they were worried it didn't deploy. Because they were getting consistent messages as they were expecting. It's called the drogue parachute. They didn't get a message that it deployed. Then once it had entered a certain point in the earth's atmosphere, they got the message it deployed. And Dante Lauretta, who's the head of the project, he said he burst into tears.
Stephen LaMarca:
I bet.
Elissa Davis:
When he heard. Because this project, it originally launched in 2016.
Stephen LaMarca:
This is a generational project, isn't it?
Elissa Davis:
Yes. It launched in 2016, it reached Bennu, the asteroid, in 2018, then it spent two years orbiting. And then in 2020 it collected the sample, it left in 2021, and then it had to travel 1.2 billion miles back to earth.
Benjamin Moses:
That's a great project.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Talk about reliability.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Ramia Lloyd:
The dedication.
Elissa Davis:
It's wild. So yeah, I mean-
Stephen LaMarca:
Catch up, Toyota.
Elissa Davis:
No, I mean, I love space and I think it's completely fascinating that we were able to do something like this. Considering where we were even 50 years ago. We were just... I say just going to the moon. But we were going to the moon in 1969 and now we're able to send a fully automated robot, basically, to an asteroid and have it send back samples. Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
NASA's great, because prepping for this, earlier when we were talking about their design process, how they incorporate various simulations and prepare for this, they launched it, what, six, seven years ago? There was a lot of prep before that. NASA does not say, "Let's do this tomorrow." The journey itself was seven years, but realistically it's probably like a 10 to 15-year journey from inception.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Well, and the source you sent me for the jet propulsion lab, they said that parachutes are the hardest thing to test.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, definitely.
Elissa Davis:
Because it's a textile and it's the hardest thing to predict. The parachute is always kind of left up to chance no matter what, I think. They design it as best they can, then they're like, "All right, fingers crossed."
Stephen LaMarca:
That makes sense. I mean, having seen somebody go skydiving before... I went. I did not actually go up in the plane and jump, but I was there for emotional support.
Benjamin Moses:
You witnessed it.
Stephen LaMarca:
And I think most of the time while we were there was signing all the documents. It's like buying a house. There's a ream of paper that you have to go through.
Benjamin Moses:
Come on, guys. Get some DocuSign.
Stephen LaMarca:
It is wild.
Ramia Lloyd:
Get some DocuSign.
Benjamin Moses:
The last topic I want to talk about is 3D printing for submarines. It's interesting timing when we get to this article, because we were contacted by an organization that's looking at the industrial base just for submarines. On the podcast we've been talking about the different divisions and their area of focus on how to improve their supply chain. And how they can incorporate automation, or at point of use manufacturing. And this article talks about the need for catching up on the supply chain to catch up producing number of subs. Over the past couple of years we've been delayed a little bit, both on the ship building, but also the supply chain to support the ships being built.
The article from Naval Technology talks about US Naval Industry Integrates 3D Printing Methods for Submarines. I like it because it's two layers. One, they're using marine based alloys, so stuff that's very corrosion resistant, copper nickel alloys and copper nickel castings. And the last part is very important, because they're trying to replace difficult castings with additive or 3D printed parts. And I think that's an interesting approach, short term at least. Where we can start seeing value is the change of the designs, so to harness the full value of additive. But I think they've got a couple years catch up.
And part of what the defense is trying to do in this particular area is being more prescriptive about their scheduling. The article talks about their inability to actually schedule when a ship will be complete. So, being able to catch up the supply chain to accurately predict their production schedule will allow them to better improve their components in the future.
I thought it's a pretty interesting article, both on the materials and where the defense is headed for getting these parts. And of course they're looking... Obviously you're going to 3D print these big parts. Now you've got to machine them. So, I think it's using a very similar infrastructure that they would for castings, just changing the source of the raw material from a pour to 3D printed part.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Hopefully this turns out well and hopefully you see some cooler technology come out of this.
Elissa Davis:
It's interesting seeing that basically all branches of the military now are embracing the 3D printing in some way, shape, or form.
Stephen LaMarca:
They really are.
Elissa Davis:
Not just the air force, which is always on the cutting edge, but all of them are really starting to embrace it. I mean, if it works, it works. Right?
Benjamin Moses:
My favorite is still the T-handle to adjust the front sight post. It works.
Stephen LaMarca:
It works. And they had a great point for doing it at the Oak Ridge workshop. There was a military boy there who explained how important that actually was to me. I'm like, "I apologize."
Benjamin Moses:
You did a lot of apologizing at Oak Ridge.
Stephen LaMarca:
Often wrong, never in doubt. But that's science for you. You'll never know unless you get things wrong.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks.
Stephen LaMarca:
I guess.
Elissa Davis:
That's beautiful.
Benjamin Moses:
Ramia, where can they find more info about us?
Ramia Lloyd:
Amtonline.org/resources. Like, share, subscribe.
Stephen LaMarca:
Bing bong.
Benjamin Moses:
Bye everyone.
