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AMT Tech Trends: Infotainment

Episode 99: Ben and Steve share their adventures in home improvement and find their results illuminating. Benjamin reports that some additive parts made by Pratt & Whitney are under the spotlight.
Jul 31, 2023

Episode 99: Ben and Steve share their adventures in home improvement and find their results illuminating. Benjamin reports that some additive parts made by Pratt & Whitney are under the spotlight. Stephen says affordable robots will take the manufacturing industry mainstream. Ben announces more DoD contracts with AM companies. Steve says large manufacturing companies are buying more cobots. Benjamin closes with potential for cobot day laborers.

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Produced by Ramia Lloyd

Transcript

Benjamin Moses: [inaudible 00:00:13] welcome to the AMT Tech Trends Podcast, where we discuss the latest manufacturing, technology research and news. Today's episode is sponsored by MT Forecast. I am the director in a box, Benjamin Moses. And I'm here with?

Stephen LaMarca: AMTs plus size male model... Stephen LaMarca.

Benjamin Moses: And producer, Ramia Lloyd. Hey Ramia.

Ramia Lloyd: Hi guys.

Benjamin Moses: How's it going?

Ramia Lloyd: Really good.

Benjamin Moses: Steve? We've been talking about automation.

Stephen LaMarca: Yes.

Benjamin Moses: Now it's trickling into the home.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. So, okay. I wanted to bring this up, not because I was looking into home automation. I mean, maybe someday I will, but I used to think of you as a little bit more nerdy than you actually are now in that, there was a few episodes of podcasts where we would banter on home automation and I was like, this isn't a thing. This is, I mean, sure there is actual products out there, but home automation is not a generally accepted term.

This is a Ben term that he got from the industry and I'm sure he calls his network, the home internet of things. The home IOT.

Benjamin Moses: Oh, I got a network.

Stephen LaMarca: And I know you have a server as well, but now that I'm a homeowner and I'm in the hole, I've been adopted or baptized by fire into the home improvement game. I've been making some stomps to Lowe's and Home Depot, and I don't remember which one of them, it was exactly-

Benjamin Moses: One of the boxes.

Stephen LaMarca: ... But I'm walking through there looking for light bulbs and sure enough there's like a sign hanging from a ceiling pointing to a section.

Benjamin Moses: A sign from God.

Stephen LaMarca: And it's a labeled section. And sure enough, home automation was a section of either Home Depot or Lowe's. But it's a thing. Ben's a real boy.

Benjamin Moses: I pat myself on the back for that.

Stephen LaMarca: Home automation is actually a thing and it's not just a Ben term.

Benjamin Moses: The most successful automation. And it's funny, because when I go in there and I browse, because I'm a giant nerd, there's so many things that are just so complex there that I just took a light switch replacement for the bathroom to put the exhaust on a timer. So I said, it's 15 minutes, you got to be done in 15 minutes. Because how often do you go into the shower and you obviously want to turn on the exhaust, but it's a on-off switch, right?

Stephen LaMarca: Right.

Benjamin Moses: And is it going to run the whole day? And that's what one of the easiest things to automate is just limiting time.

Stephen LaMarca: That's a genius idea. It's genius, because there's plenty of times where, I mean, I've never been late to work, but if I was to be late to work, I'm sure the last thing I did at home is get out of the shower. And especially when you own a home and you don't want to grow mold and mildew in your bathroom, you got to get all that vapor out of there from running a hot shower. So you turn on the fan and you want to leave it on. The time that you're in the bathroom isn't long enough for it to evacuate all of the steam from the bathroom. So when you leave the house, you're like, I'm leaving that fan on. But now you're burning electricity. You're going through electricity and I'm not, Melissa works from home, but she might not turn it off. Unless it really annoys her turn, she won't turn it off. So there is a chance that when I get home at 5:00 or six o'clock, that fan will still be running.

Benjamin Moses: That annoys me when me when I walk in the house.

Stephen LaMarca: So that is a genius. Good for you. The home improvement stuff is, I'm not going to lie.

Benjamin Moses: It feels good.

Stephen LaMarca: It's kind of fun. It definitely feels good.

Benjamin Moses: The other trick I did is going through the garage, I installed a timer switch on that, because when I leave, I turn the light open the garage door, get in the car, and the timer's set for five minutes. So it'll turn off a couple of minutes after I leave. And that feels really good, because I did install some new lights too, which I think you did, right?

Stephen LaMarca: Yes. That's also what I want to talk about. I'm ready to nerd out about some lights. So I wouldn't say I am a lighting expert. I am sure I am far from it. But I will say this, people were trying to turn me into an expert and I said nay. But I knew that I wanted really good lighting in my garage. I've got my perfect dream garage. We've got two sports cars and two motorcycles. And not laminated, it's epoxy floor garage, freshly painted white walls in the garage that the owners did before they left and sold it to us.

But the light bulbs in there, it was a perfect garage except for these way too cool temperature, compact fluorescent bulbs, CFLs, that were this cold blue color. And they took forever to warm up and actually get the full lighting. And it's just like, this is such a nice garage and this is ruined. Had to swap them out. And I'm like at, I think it was at Lowe's and I grabbed the most powerful bulbs that I can and it's not unreasonable. It's not like I overdid it. It's perfect. I've got 5,000 lumens. Yes. I got 5,000 lumens at 2,700 kelvin.

Benjamin Moses: Nice.

Stephen LaMarca: Which is soft white, which is more yellow than it is blue. LEDs just simply can't get right down the middle. It's either blue or it's yellow. But these yellows are very close to center. I definitely didn't want blue. And my friends are telling me it's like, "Steve, you got to go with cool. You messed up buying the soft white, by getting these yellow bulbs. You got to get blue." And my friends telling me this are actual tradesmen. One's an electrician, the other one actually gets their hands dirty working on cars and stuff like that. And they're like, "Yeah, you want blue, because it makes it easier to see anomalies when you're checking fluids and stuff like that."

And I'm like, "Yeah, that's a valid point. But the garage door opener has soft white lights that are yellow-ish." And I wanted cohesion in the lighting coming from the ceiling. I didn't want yellow garage door opener lights with blue lights. It looked really cheap. That's what I had before, just not bright. So I made it nice and even, all the lights are the same color now. And now it's super bright in my garage. And they were like, "I guess we don't know anything. We're only technicians." And that that's the point though.

Benjamin Moses: That is, yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: Like [inaudible 00:06:49] actually working on my cars, maybe I would go blue. But let's be honest, I don't like getting my hands dirty.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca: I really don't like it. I'm here to look at my toys and I want to see my toys in the best light possible.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly. And I think that's a key realization. There's a idealization of how you want to use a garage versus how you actually use a garage.

Stephen LaMarca: Right. It's the whole kitchens with a stainless steel appliances thing. They want it to look like a professional kitchen. It's like you're not a pro. If you want to look like a professional kitchen, where's the nitro gloves?

Benjamin Moses: The industrial applications of all those environments, like kitchens and garages are cold. It's a very, very cold environment. It's using stainless and a lot of harsh lighting. That's not a home environment.

Stephen LaMarca: That's an industrial environment.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca: I work in the industry. I want to come home to home.

Benjamin Moses: So I think go going with the softer light. And also-

Stephen LaMarca: It looks amazing.

Benjamin Moses: If you do work on, you just bust out a flashlight, right?

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah, that's true. You're going to pull in a lamp anyway. You're going to hang a lamp from your hood anyway.

Benjamin Moses: Or if you have a child, say child hold-

Stephen LaMarca: Like your lighting won't be enough.

Benjamin Moses: Child hold this light for me.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. But the color, the 2,700 degrees Kelvin color, excuse me. 2,700 Kelvin. Kelvin is not measured in degrees.

Benjamin Moses: Correct. Give this right.

Stephen LaMarca: Kelvin is perfect. Celsius and Fahrenheit are flawed.

Benjamin Moses: God bless Kelvin.

Stephen LaMarca: But 2,700 Kelvin whites perfectly reminds me of late afternoon, early evening daylight-

Benjamin Moses: Oh, that's nice.

Stephen LaMarca: In San Diego, California.

Benjamin Moses: Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: Which is the most hippie liberal, awful thing I could ever say in my life. But it's true. And I get a really nice vibe from it.

Benjamin Moses: Had the best octopus tacos in San Diego.

Stephen LaMarca: I bet. Lighting's awesome.

Benjamin Moses: Steve?

Stephen LaMarca: I'm really proud of it. I feel like there was one more thing that I wanted to say, but-

Benjamin Moses: Seen on TV?

Stephen LaMarca: Oh, yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. So one of my friends who's telling me to go with the cool lights and stuff and was like, "Yeah, put those bulbs back, take them back to Lowe's with your receipt and get a refund, because this is what you want." He sends me a link to Ace Hardware. So, okay. Ace Hardware is legit.

Benjamin Moses: Reputable company.

Stephen LaMarca: This is a professional place, not like Lowe's, for somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, owning a home, but click on the link and it's like this three pedaled LED light thing. It looks pretty official. Then I noticed one of the pictures says it comes in a box and the box has that this little red emblem on it that says, "As seen on tv." And I was like, I'll be damned if me, a millennial, buys some boomer like late at night at Sunrise Retirement Community watching the tv, because I can't sleep, because of all the pills that I'm taking, like buys some stuff for my nieces and nephews, or excuse me, my grandchildren from QVC. No, I'm not getting mad.

Benjamin Moses: That's a callback.

Stephen LaMarca: I want want GE bulbs or Panasonic.

Benjamin Moses: I think as seen on TV marker is detriment to a product.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. You know you're not...

Benjamin Moses: You didn't make it full-time?

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. It's not going to be made in Italy.

Benjamin Moses: Although I think we should get podcasters that say as seen on tv. Would that be pretty good?

Stephen LaMarca: Actually incredibly humbling. And I love that. I would love that road tripping with Steve and just-

Benjamin Moses: As seen on tv.

Stephen LaMarca: As seen on tv. It's like, you're right. I'm a ZZ-Lister.

Benjamin Moses: Steve, you want to tell us about today's sponsor?

Stephen LaMarca: Who is today's sponsor, Mt. Forecast. Hold it up for the camera. Mt Forecast brings the latest economic news and industry trends straight to attendees. Industry leaders, executives and key decision makers will explore an agenda that provides a roadmap to better business strategies through customer industry insights, economic forecasting, and deep dives into market data. For years, MT. Forecast speakers have been sharing crucial hooks into the near future. Go to amtonline.org/event to save the date and register. I'm actually really looking forward to Mt. Forecast this year.

Benjamin Moses: It's going to be good.

Stephen LaMarca: It's going to be in Detroit too.

Benjamin Moses: Get some great tours.

Stephen LaMarca: Two reasons to look forward to going on this trip.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah. Steve, I want to talk about, I got two things on Pratt Whitney.

Stephen LaMarca: Talk to me.

Benjamin Moses: First one's not so good. Let me read it directly what they're saying. "Brett Whitney has determined a rare condition in powder metal used in manufacturing certain engines parts will require accelerated fleet inspection under a through 20 line." So they've got a new fleet-

Stephen LaMarca: That's some serious, that's heavy, that's thick, that's thick legalese right there.

Benjamin Moses: That's thick. The interpretation is they have some additive parts that aren't seeing the life that they expected. Am I wrong?

Stephen LaMarca: That is definitely what they are trying to cover up. And the legalese is making it seem like through additive, these parts may be performing better than they're actually supposed to. But we all know that nobody would ever release a statement with a recall, because it's doing better than it's supposed to.

Benjamin Moses: And I think it's fine, because taking a step back, they're taking risk to get in to trying to do some new things.So saying, "Hey, we need to check these parts more often," that could occur with anything but coming out and saying, "We need to do this immediately and change these parts immediately," that's where you see things breaking quickly. But saying, we need to check these, because fatigue, it's hard to quantify fatigue in some certain scenarios.

Stephen LaMarca: You're absolutely right.

Benjamin Moses: I think it's fine.

Stephen LaMarca: They're not necessarily trying to, they're wording it in a very positive way, which good for the writers by the way. They're doing it as a means of customer service and quality assurance and quality control. And they are making sure that this part is sufficient.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca: Without any failures. It's not a major recall if, it might not even be a recall at all. It's just they're letting you, it's a nice honest move from such a large company, because they're basically saying, "Hey, this could happen. We want you to hear it from us before you hear it from a technician or a dead pilot."

Benjamin Moses: And also engine aircraft engines do go through a series of inspection intervals and I think all they're doing is pulling it up to a previous interval. So it's like it's taking a car for oil change at a regular maintenance. Aircraft engines go through a regular inspection cycle, a certain amount of hours, and they just bring it up, it's fine.

Stephen LaMarca: When I submit a oil sample to Blackstone Labs for my car or motorcycle for an oil check and they do mass spectrometry on it to see what's in it and make sure everything's wearing fine. Talk about this a million times. Sorry. They do have you specify on the slip that you write all of your notes to them so they can know what to expect.

And if you have any questions, they can answer them. They have you log how many miles are on the engine and how many miles are on the oil, but not necessarily miles. You can choose kilometers, miles, and hours.

Benjamin Moses: Oh, okay. That's interesting.

Stephen LaMarca: And I just think that's cool.

Benjamin Moses: No, that's a good segue, because to follow up-

Stephen LaMarca: I like how aviation measures things in time.

Benjamin Moses: To follow up. Pratt Whitney, they've developed a turboprop a number of years ago and they've been using that. So it's gone through this turboprop, called the PT six. It's gone through several iterations on version E now, but the total accumulation for the fleet of total props has hit 500 million flight hours.

Stephen LaMarca: 500, not thousand, 500 million flight hours.

Benjamin Moses: Half a billion flight hours. That's a big number.

Stephen LaMarca: That is, and we did the math before this, 57,040 years.

Benjamin Moses: It's almost old as I am.

Stephen LaMarca: That's the cumulative amount of time that... I'm slow to react to that. That's amazing. That's how much cumulative time all of these products that they've made at this particular time.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah. It's crazy. And they delivered more than 61,000 of these engines. So the OEMs celebrating 60 years of that specific engine.

Stephen LaMarca: Almost 60,000.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah. And it's pretty cool, because they talk about some of the iterations. They're at version E right now and they've been able to reduce the number of maintenance by 40% and things like that. So both the longevity aerospace, that's one thing that I found very interesting, that early design being part of the early design and new product development for aerospace, a lot of times it'll project the aircraft to last 30 years, which is very interesting, because you're producing parts for 30 years. But then you see a little bit of turnover towards the end.

Stephen LaMarca: Well, I also remember when we went to Boeing and like a air carrier, when they order a plane, they're going to take delivery of that plane 10 years later.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca: So there's a lot of time going on.

Benjamin Moses: There's a bit of lead time.

Stephen LaMarca: There's a lot of waiting.

Benjamin Moses: And it is mind-boggling when you talk about planning something out for that long and having to support that. Can you imagine?

Stephen LaMarca: Oh my God.

Benjamin Moses: Just thinking about the whole home automation experiment, we were just talking about, having to support that little switch for another 30 years. That's pretty wild.

Stephen LaMarca: I wonder how... There must be some position in an airline company that is looking at, we're waiting for our next plane, we just placed an order. It's going to be 10 years. And meanwhile we've got customers complaining about a 30-minute delay. The difference in levels of entitlement, but on different planer levels of existence almost are wild.

Benjamin Moses: See if you have a article on robotic arms and Prime Day specials.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah, so okay. As it turns out, the company that this article is talking about is Wlkata, W-L-K-A-T-A. That company that I talked about last time or the episode before last time. But what's cool about this article advertisement, this artitisement, if you would, the people who published it, the New York Post.

Benjamin Moses: Oh cool.

Stephen LaMarca: This came out in a major publication that learned more robotics and engineering with this mini robot arm, now $92 off. This is not cheap. This is after $92 off is a $1,700 robot, still.

Benjamin Moses: Not bad.

Stephen LaMarca: So hopefully you have a few kids to learn off of it.

Benjamin Moses: Amortize the cost over a few kids.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. Spin that out. Spread it out a little bit. But what's cool about this is that a mainstream news organization has taken robotics, which is a subdivision of manufacturing to the mainstream. It is accepted in education that they know that people want their kids to learn about robotics, because there is a lucrative future in robotics. I think it's fast. So in the next year or so we could see some Willie Nelson song about having your kids be doctors, lawyers and roboticists and such.

Benjamin Moses: That'd be cool. Yeah. It is interesting that manufacturing is seeing a lot more exposure mainstream. We were just briefly chatting about Oppenheimer, the just release and the manufacturing involved in developing those.

Stephen LaMarca: It's very dark.

Benjamin Moses: It's very dark, but manufacturing in the film industry has grown a lot both on camera and off camera. Excuse me. And I definitely agree with you that the exposure and developing tools like this to have parents say, okay, lawyer may not be a future for you, doctor may not be a future for you, how about manufacture roboticist? Roboticist is a very cool title.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. Oppenheimer may have, I don't want get too deep into it, but Oppenheimer may have done the opposite of this. There was around 450 machinists were involved in the development of the atomic bomb. And when I was in college and we were studying radiation in the physics program, we took an entire semester before we started that stuff, an entire semester to understanding the safety and why all of the safety is necessary with radiation. And it is generally accepted in the scientific community, the academic community, that radiation poisoning is one of, if not the worst way to die. You will not have a long life and it won't be a peaceful death.

And Oppenheimer, the 450 machinists involved in milling and turning those slugs and donuts of radioactive cores for these bombs-

Benjamin Moses: They were exposed to.

Stephen LaMarca: Did not live long. And it's messed up, because not only is it an awful death, but it doesn't just affect you, it affects your future generations too. Or generations that you plan to have might not exist, because of that exposure. It's really scary. Yeah.

Benjamin Moses: That was interesting.

Stephen LaMarca: Become a machinist, but don't machine radioactive material.

Benjamin Moses: Approved. Steve-

Stephen LaMarca: If your boss comes up to you and say, "Oh, it's just a special alloy," and they say nothing else, find another job as a machinist.

Benjamin Moses: And it's glowing like the tesseract.

Stephen LaMarca: Nice. Nicely done.

Ramia Lloyd: Beautiful.

Benjamin Moses: Steve. I've got one, it's related to the military, but I really like this article, because it talks about how connected the military is with fairly small businesses to grow technologies and the business. The defense is very interested in growing the industrial base for several layers. One, we've shrunk a little bit and be able to produce end goods for Department of Defense. They want to grow that more. They see more usage across the world and they're interested in growing new technologies, but also the capability and capacity. So this article talks about a startup receiving a 1.5 million contract to help look at in-situ inspection for additive. And it talks about basically the timeframe and a 1.5 million injection. For a lot of companies it's great, but it talks about they have a specific use case of potentially repairing large scale parts or cladding parts very quickly.

So the use case I'm very interested in is parts can fail crack or get to a point where it can't be used. So for example, like a rail for a missile launcher. One specific use case I saw was the end of those tend to crack. So they take off the whole rail and they replaced with a new rail. It's a single piece rail. But if you could machine that crack out and reclad it and machine it back, repairing those type of parts, gets your service pool back up and gets you back on.

Stephen LaMarca: ... Advertises that. DED especially, Metal DED advertises that all the time with ship screws.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly. Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: Propellers.

Benjamin Moses: Yep. And we see that occurring more on-

Stephen LaMarca: Is the propellers are on planes and screws are on ships?

Benjamin Moses: I think that's right.

Stephen LaMarca: Or boats.

Benjamin Moses: Also, you have a screw compressor on a [inaudible 00:22:49].

Stephen LaMarca: Supercharger. A positive displacement supercharger. A twin screw.

Benjamin Moses: That's a tangent.

Stephen LaMarca: We could talk about force induction all day.

Benjamin Moses: So I thought it was very good.

Stephen LaMarca: All day.

Benjamin Moses: Very interesting use case of the Department of Defense looking at growing a small business, but also developing new use cases and technology, because those use cases, the value of that is the rest of the defense seeing those use cases and bringing that into those applications. Because they're very application specific, right? Someone, this is sponsored by the Air Force. Someone in a different branch needs that exposure to say, yeah, we could do that for tanks, we could do that for other rotary aircraft. So I thought it was very, very cool. Very interesting.

Stephen LaMarca: Can you imagine if additive got super small enough and precise enough that gas port erosion on like an AR-15 was able to be repaired through additive?

Benjamin Moses: That'd be cool.

Stephen LaMarca: They sent a little teeny tiny 3D printer down the barrel to the gas port and see where it's worn away from thousands and tens of thousands of rounds at 60,000 PSI and replace that material.

Benjamin Moses: I mean, to be honest, a quick fix is drill a bigger hole and just weld it and then drill another hole.

Stephen LaMarca: New barrel. Just get a new barrel.

Benjamin Moses: New barrel.

Stephen LaMarca: You know you want a fleeted barrel with one in eight inches of twist.

Benjamin Moses: Steve, tell me about cobots.

Stephen LaMarca: Oh my god. All right. I already told, no.

Benjamin Moses: We have another one on cobots.

Stephen LaMarca: Another one on robots. Okay. So this one last one was the New York Post. This one's the Times of India.

Benjamin Moses: Nice.

Stephen LaMarca: Five reasons larger companies are turning to robots and we get a lot of news. I get a lot of news in my feed, both tech trends and my personal feed that come from Times of India. I really like their manufacturing look on stuff. I mean, they're a major manufacturing country. They know what they're doing about manufacturing. But what was really cool about this five reasons larger companies are turning to robots, of these five reasons, a few of them we already know, because the industry has been pedaling them as a advertisement, a feature towards why you would want to adopt cobots? Mainly the one being safety to humans. You don't need to do repetitive hard labor tasks if you have a cobalt. And that saves the future of your joints and bones. So you can live a happier, longer life if you employ more cobots to assist your human laborers. Well, apparently that's one of the big selling points that they have verified does in fact is the case.

But this one was really cool. We think about cobots when we think collaborative robots. We think of a robot that is competent and capable of collaborating with a human being. But the larger companies that are adopting cobots see the collaboration more as an advantage of them, of these new cobots collaborating with older, industrial, non-collaborative robots.

Benjamin Moses: Interesting.

Stephen LaMarca: You don't have to reprogram the industry. It can keep doing what it's doing. The collaborative robot is programmed to work around it, which I thought was really cool.

Benjamin Moses: That's clever.

Stephen LaMarca: It's in the name, we should've thought of it. It's collaboration. Why should it only be exclusive to humans? But it's really cool. And there's three more reasons on there and we'll have the link in the description, but it was just really cool article.

Benjamin Moses: That's good. And yeah, that is an interesting use case of constantly retrofitting a manufacturing space. We talked about airplanes lasting 30 some years, but if I buy something by old company, we would plan for that thing to keep running and running till it physically can't run anymore. So being able to augment around that, have a fairly deprecated piece of equipment, but upgrade around that, that's a fine plan.

Stephen LaMarca: And to your point, without leaving the listeners hanging either, the other three points that large companies have adopted, cobots one of course being a simpler user interface.

Benjamin Moses: That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca: Easier to pick up and learn. It helps close that skills gap a little bit. But to your point about upgrading, collaborative robots are more easily adapted to the implementation of AI and AI software with robots, which is what this article claims. And lastly, smaller companies, larger firms, like smaller companies, larger firms benefit from improved productivity and quality consistency. So didn't necessarily have to be cobots, they just want more companies just want more robots.

Benjamin Moses: More robots.

Stephen LaMarca: And cobots are available.

Benjamin Moses: Nice. See, the last one I want to talk about is also related to cobots or robots, but it's more in the field. We've been talking about automation for construction. So being with 3D, print a house, that's the thing we've seen. We've seen a couple of demonstrators of brick laying robots. We're seeing a lot more automation in real world now outside the factory. This article talks about a couple of them. One is manual turbine blade inspection. So the wind turbines, massive 300 foot blades, previously was manually inspected. Cleaning, repairing was done by hand. This one, they're talking about adding a cobot. Basically the picture shows it's a cool cobot. So it's got a motion device that crawls along the blade and a UR arm on top of that to do the manipulation. It's complimenting transportation of the robotic arm itself.

Stephen LaMarca: That's really cool.

Benjamin Moses: And it's a cool picture that it's crawling along, obviously inspecting and potentially repairing the blade as it goes around.

Stephen LaMarca: I'm jealous, because you know one of those manual turbine blade inspectors gets paid a lot of money. That is a specialized profession. And now you're implementing robots to help it out, help you out and make your job easier. But adding that to your repertoire also makes you a specialized roboticist. So now you're getting paid even more.

Benjamin Moses: Exactly. The article goes over a couple of that examples of what they're doing, but I thought it was fantastic. And the other examples they talk about are in construction companies like Hilti, they're developed-

Stephen LaMarca: I love Hilti.

Benjamin Moses: They're doing some really interesting-

Stephen LaMarca: They do, yeah.

Benjamin Moses: ... Coop powered drywalling solution. Then some vision systems that helps you define the quality of the skim coat coat. I thought that was very interesting.

Stephen LaMarca: That's really cool.

Benjamin Moses: And they talk about the different levels of quality that they can achieve.

Stephen LaMarca: Dude, automation is just like a one-upping technology.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: We'll see an article about, oh, Florida's now has a company that 3D luxury barns for you. And here comes Hilti, be like, we got robots that'll build your house. That's sick.

Benjamin Moses: And the last one, last example.

Stephen LaMarca: What a time to be alive.

Benjamin Moses: They talk about, or also along the finishing. So painting, coating, plastering, drywall. So actually screwing and drywall. When was the last time we did something on ceiling? That is a nightmare to work on. I painted a couple of ceilings in my time-

Stephen LaMarca: Three nights ago I was looking up at the vent in our owner's suite and because we had a leak coming from it. But all I did was look at the ceiling.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah, I'm sure you got a crick your neck for just one looking up.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah. I needed a robot to do that for me.

Benjamin Moses: I thought it was a very interesting look of the shifting-

Stephen LaMarca: Thank God we got Hilti.

Benjamin Moses: The transition of taking inside the factory technologies to go outside the factory. So that was cool.

Stephen LaMarca: Yeah.

Benjamin Moses: See? That was a great episode.

Stephen LaMarca: This is a great episode. This was educational.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: And I think we brought the humor.

Benjamin Moses: Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca: Infotainment baby.

Benjamin Moses: Where can they-

Stephen LaMarca: Infotainment sells?

Benjamin Moses: Where can they find more info about us?

Stephen LaMarca: Amtonline.org/resources, like, share, subscribe.

Ramia Lloyd: Bing bong.

Benjamin Moses: Bye everyone.

Stephen LaMarca: You've got the best sign off in the industry.

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Benjamin Moses
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Episode 118: Ramia is back from her travels in Japan, and the tech friends pick her brain about the trip and her culinary experience. Stephen didn’t appreciate a clickbaity title from a NASA article. Elissa reports that NASA has a new Chief AI Officer.
Episode 117: Speaking of amusement parks last episode, the tech friends will be at MFG in Orlando this year for a live podcast! Ben gets into machine learning for robots. Elissa shares a new found excitement for robot vision ad object recognition.
Episode 116: The gang shares their love for amusement parks. Stephen is happy to announce that there are a lot of testbed updates. Elissa presents further evidence that Elon Musk is dumb. Ben closes with an allegedly new method of 3D printing.
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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