Speaker 0 00:00:00 At Martin Labs, we are developing the next generation of manufacturing floors by making the first ever robotic craftsman.
Speaker 2 00:00:13 Hello everyone and welcome to the Robot Industry Podcast. We're glad you're here. And thank you for subscribing. Mike. Guest today is Edward Mayer from McKenna Labs. Ed Mayer is an entrepreneur and engineer with a background in smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence. He's co-founder and c e O of MENA Labs, a company that's developing next generation of manufacturing plants through the use of robotics and artificial intelligence. Previously at Relativity Space, he led a team in charge of developing the world's largest 3D printer. Relativity Space is working to become the first company to print a rocket on Mars. Before this company, he was c t o and founding member of Aron, an Aron develops fully automated internet authentication solutions that don't require any human intervention. His work's been featured on main stage of Ted TechCrunch Disrupt and CableLabs invocation showcase. Early in his career, he worked as an engineer in companies such as SpaceX, Google, and Microsoft. Edward, thanks again for coming on the podcast and you have some very cool customers. Can we talk about some of
Speaker 0 00:01:21 Them? Thanks, Jim, for having us. Yeah. Um, so we do well for our first application, for our, uh, for our technology is sheet metal forming. And sheet metal forming is a very diverse industries are using sheet metal forming. Uh, we have customers in defense and aerospace like United States Air Force, nasa, uh, some of the popular, uh, aerospace companies that I cannot name. Um, so lots of good companies, uh, in aerospace defense space. Lockheed is one of our investors and customers. Uh, we also have been working with a lot of companies, auto, automotive space. They've had some applications in construction and architecture, uh, yeah, variety of applications. Uh, but you know, our biggest customers are in aerospace and
Speaker 2 00:02:03 Defense. And when you say metal sheet forming, this is like a large piece of metal, right? That you material handle and uh, and you work with?
Speaker 0 00:02:11 Yeah, so I think for everyday people, most of the metal parts you see are sheet metal parts. Like, you know, when you're driving in a freeway, uh, you're basically driving in the sea of sheet metal. Most of the metal parts you see on the vehicle are sheet metal. Or when you're sitting in an airplane, you're basically sitting in a sheet metal can. Um, so it's the largest metal process sector out of all. It can be parts that are as big as a wing of an airplane, or it can be as small as a fender or a case for a laptop or a phone. Right. Every time we have a Sheila Par in closing thin sheet metal part in closing in closings, another um, kind of like, you know, instrument you usually use sheet metal.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 Yeah. Thank you very much for that clarification. So I wanted to kind of step back a minute and ask you from your perspective, what's happening in manufacturing and what's, what's keeping some of your customers up at night?
Speaker 0 00:03:03 Yeah, so I think there is one major problem in manufacturing today, right? Um, and it's at the root of a lot of issues we see. Uh, and it's the fact that every time you have to build a product or a part, um, you pretty much have to build a factory that is very specifically built for that part. Meaning that there's a lot of machinery and equipment that goes into that factory that are very tied to the design and the material you're using. So what that means is that every time you wanna change your design, you almost have to build a new factory. So it's not very flexible, but also it means that one factory needs to make enough parts to pay an enough of the same part to pay for initial investment, which means that the factory ends up becoming, uh, centralized in one location and manufacturing parts for the rest of the world.
Speaker 0 00:03:46 And centralization means that it usually ends up in the location that they have cheap labor. So a lot of time that's Southeast Asia, and then you have to ship the parts to the rest of the world, which means that you're gonna have supply chain challenges, uh, which we have seen all throughout the covid. So that core problem of factories being very product specific is causing a whole bunch of chain reactions and challenges in the manufacturing space. To the point that even within the United States, if you go to areas that used to be centers of manufacturing or still are centers of manufacturing like the, like in Michigan, near Detroit area, there are some ghost towns that used to have a factory that was building certain type of a car, and that car became obsolete. It was cheaper to leave that factory, go somewhere, start from scratch, as opposed to retool and reconfigure that factory. And a lot of, um, kind of jobs and economy around those factories died because of the fact that, you know, factories are very rigid and they cannot change.
Speaker 2 00:04:37 So when you talk about next generation manufacturing, this is what it is, right? It's being flexible, it's being able to turn on a dime. And what are some of the other thoughts from your perspective?
Speaker 0 00:04:49 Yeah, I think, yeah, the core problem, if you can solve in manufacturing, discuss it has gonna have a significant impact is that how can we make the cost of your first part as low as your millionth part, basically take economies to scale out of manufacturing in a good way. Um, right. Um, and that opens up a whole bunch of challenges, right? Um, and removes a whole bunch of challenges because everybody can come up with an idea, tested with the customer's very cheaply, and then use hopefully the same technologies to scale it. So, um, and, and I think that's what's happening a lot in manufacturing today in terms of like developing new technologies that also allows you to kind of reshore, um, a lot of, uh, uh, manufacturing jobs back to United States. Because once you have these technologies that don't necessarily depend on the scale and a lot of labor to be, to be built, then you can actually have them, um, uh, on onshore here in United States and be as, as cost effective as it is outside in some of those cheap areas of layer labor that we have today.
Speaker 2 00:05:44 Thank you for that. Can you give our listeners like a, an idea of a typical, like difficult project that you build? And I'm thinking about the two robots working in concert from some of your videos.
Speaker 0 00:05:55 Yeah, no, before this has worked on some interesting projects. I think we have built parts for rockets. You know, I think one of the interesting challenges, one of the interesting parts that we made very early on was, you know, uh, when folks look at the rockets that you know, that, that, you know, they see on TV or the YouTube being launched, the top portion of the rocket that holds, uh, the payload that is being carried to sp at space is, is enclosed by a thing called faring. These are very large structures that are basically, they're kind of two shells that hold the, the faring, and then in the space they open up and the payload gets detached. So we have been, that was one of the interesting, we've been making those fairings for some of our customers. So that was one of the interesting parts that we have made. Um, so that's on the kind of high tech side. We also have been doing a lot of cool, interesting projects in the architecture and advertising space. Uh, we made a lot of signs of, of, of stores and buildings, uh, for different customers when they wanted to have some custom sign, um, that had some interesting features. So those were also very fun projects that we made. We actually made our own sign. Um, so the sign in front of the buildings made by our
Speaker 2 00:06:56 Robots, I'm gonna have to put some of those, uh, pictures in our show notes. Absolutely. And you're talking about two robots working in concert, right? For a lot of these parts?
Speaker 0 00:07:05 Yes. So the way our process works is very much like how a potter forms a label, right? So there's a sheet of metal, a flat sheet of metal between two robots. These robots have stylist looking, and the factor, it's a little bit more complicated that, but like, you know, for all intents and pepper, they kind of look like a stylists. And what they do is they come from two sides of a sheet of metal, they deform and pinch the sheet and slowly kind of shape it into a final, final geometry. Very similar, like I said, how potter like pinches a clay ball. And as it rotates, it's kind of gives, its, gives it shape. That's what our robots are doing to these parts.
Speaker 2 00:07:38 And what materials are you typically working with? And obviously you're go with more specialized parts, you're working with very, uh, interesting materials, but what's your kind of typical?
Speaker 0 00:07:48 So sheet metal industry generally is like, probably 90% of it is a steel and aluminum, right? So naturally most of the parts that we work with are either different types of steel or different types of aluminum. Um, we have been forming all different types of grades of aluminum from, uh, very everyday aluminum to aerospace grade for parts that goes on satellites. But we also have formed a lot of seal parts. Uh, for example, uh, think of, um, you know, uh, we have used stainless steel, we have used mild steel. But interestingly because we are a new technology, a lot of folks come to us to kind of form things that were traditionally not possible. So, uh, uh, even though 90% of the market is stainless is a steel and aluminum, we have been forming titanium for some of our customers that traditionally not possible. Uh, we have been forming, um, uh, inva, which is a tool that's used for composite processing and it's very expensive alloy, but traditionally it wasn't being formed. We have been forming, uh, refractory alloys that has a lot of interesting in space applications that are very high temperature, all allos that can tolerate very high temperatures that traditionally nobody was forming these, these allos with, with our technology that becomes possible and accessible to form these allies. So those are some of the stuff that, you know, we're kind of like, are enabling for our customers. And, uh, previously they couldn't do.
Speaker 2 00:09:04 So you're, you're all over like aerospace, defense, rockets, drones, uh, is there any other industries that you're, or I'm just trying to count the ones you're not in.
Speaker 0 00:09:14 That's a, that's a, that's a thing with sheet metal. It's, like I said, it's the biggest metal processing sector out of all. So like everywhere you look, there's a sheet metal part and it's very hard to make it today. So if you want to traditionally make these parts, you usually go through a process called stamping that ne requires these giant dyes, usually like a male and a female dye in a giant press machine. You put a sheet in between them and you have to stamp it in kind of a brute force fashion into shape. And those dyes are very, very tough to build, take a long time to build, and they're very expensive. But the applications are all across. I think we worked with seven different industries when we started. There are certain industries that obviously like we have much better re much better presence in them, like aerospace defense, but sheet metals everywhere. I don't know if there's an industry, you know, I really wanna get into entertainment industry. We haven't gone there yet. You know, folks like Disney or Universal, the, and their theme parks, that would be an interesting application for us that we haven't yet, uh, cracked.
Speaker 2 00:10:08 Yeah, no, it's must be kind of an interesting wife that you lead because people call you up and they're like, uh, where did you hear about us
Speaker 0 00:10:16 <laugh>? It's funny. Yeah. And so I think early days it was a lot <laugh>. There's a lot of like our own internal network, but now I think our videos have been a huge kind of like a viral factor. So a lot of folks just see it online and they're like, okay, that I just got mesmerized by your video. It seems like a part kind of magically appearing out of a flat sheet. And there's a part that I want, uh, that wanna do. Like we've had like artists reaching out to making very interesting, um, parts, some of them for Burning Man and other places. So yeah, we definitely get those interesting requests.
Speaker 2 00:10:46 Yeah, I bet you, like you say, YouTube is kind of a channel for you because a lot of people share these things, right? And they're like, have you seen this?
Speaker 0 00:10:52 Yes, yes. No, it's like magically a part kind of deforms out of a flat sheet. So it's a, it's a, it's a very pleasing and entertaining thing to see
Speaker 2 00:11:00 When in the robot industry, of course we, we call these machines sometimes robot cells, but you've, you've said robot cells are craftsmen, and what do you mean by that?
Speaker 0 00:11:09 Yeah, so, you know, we talked a lot about our sheet forming, uh, capability today. But really a core what we're trying to build is a platform that works very similar to how a craftsman works, right? The way to make manufacturing flexible in some sense for us is going back to how craftsmen were making parts. You know, if you go back to 16th, uh, and 17th century when we were making parts, um, uh, doing manufacturing mostly through blacksmith and craftsman, they were actually very flexible. The craftsman could pick up a hammer one day, make a sword with that hammer, and the next day uses the same hammer to make a shield, right? So super flexible, but unfortunately they didn't have scalability. They couldn't, they couldn't make a lot of parts. So what we're kind of a core building is a platform that works very similar to a craftsman that can pick up different tools.
Speaker 0 00:11:54 In our case, in the first case for us, is she forming, so pick up, pickup, sip forming tools, um, but they can easily drop that tool and do the next operation, right? And we are already doing that. So the same platform that forms can also do trimming. So after it's forming, it changes tool to a trimming tool and creates holes in the part or creates slots in the part and cut the parts out. So we really, uh, we are trying to build this platform that can do many operations without changing any hardware and just changing the software. And for us, that's very akin to an inspiration came from how a craftsman works. That's why we call it a robotic craftsman.
Speaker 2 00:12:27 That is very cool. Thank you for that, uh, analogy. So you must drive your own plant manager a little crazy, right? It's like we're making rocket parts today. Oh, tomorrow we're doing, uh, drone parts.
Speaker 0 00:12:38 Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm, I'm glad that our VP of production also comes from a very agile company. He used to work at SpaceX, so he's familiar with, uh, with the, with the type of the payload and the differences in the parts that we are getting. But I think that is the future of manufacturing. I think in order to build factories that are flexible, you shouldn't care about what is the part that you're building, right? You should be able to like just through changing the software, change the cell to do in a different operation and manufacture a new part. So I think, yeah, it's a lot of work and it's a new paradigm and a lot of stuff that used to work before, like, you know, thinking of linear production lines and tack time are kind of like thrown out the window. But I think at the same time, everybody's excited about what this can be, uh, you know, in the future and what kind of a benefits it can provide for the, for the, you know, next generation of manufacturing. Of course.
Speaker 2 00:13:23 And you, well, you and I talked before about dynamic load and what does that mean?
Speaker 0 00:13:27 So when our robots are forming sheets, right, they're, they're, they have an interesting job because as you're going through this process of forming sheets, they experience different forces coming from the sheet, right? And traditional industrial robots are not used to that. They're not used to the load changing, which we call a dynamic load as they're doing their operation. Uh, what end up happening is that because the load is changing throughout the operations, they actually deflect in different ways and makes them very less accurate than they're supposed to be to form these parts. So there's a lot of work we do on our control side to make sure that robots, as they're experiencing these dynamic and changing, uh, force from the sheet, they can still stay accurate and still go move fast and form parts to a great accuracy, um, and kind of, um, account for those type of deflection that we see because of these varying dynamic loads.
Speaker 2 00:14:17 Thank you for that. You, uh, probably get the really tough automation jobs cuz that's kind of what you've picked, right?
Speaker 0 00:14:23 Yeah, no, it's um, you know, we are kind of like pushing the boundary of what has been done with the robots before, right? You know, traditionally when people think about robots, it's usually about like, okay, doing the same operation over and over again, right? Like a lot of pick and place application or spot welding applications, what the robot basically does like three moves over and over again for the same product. So, um, but the way we are using robots are completely kind of dynamic. Basically the robot is adjusting itself to what it's seeing based on the forces, for example, it sees in the process or based on the defamation it created in the sheet, it's constantly adjusting. So they're very much, you know, if you look at 'em, they do work like a craftsman. So again, going back to that analogy, the robot looks like it's doing something creative almost. So in that sense, yes, you know, the type of automation we are bringing is very, uh, in a sense kind of dynamic and changing, uh, which is traditional robotic is not, uh, designed for. Um, so that's why a lot of like, um, kind of modeling and automation work goes towards in our engineering team to make these robots very reactive, uh, to their environments, um, and, and the type of process they're doing as opposed to doing the same thing over and over
Speaker 2 00:15:32 Again. Yeah. And you're eating your own dog food, right? So that's, uh, that's a really exciting part about your business. So what other technologies do you use other than robots?
Speaker 0 00:15:40 Yeah, so obviously robot is our kind of the hardware, uh, underneath, uh, basically what controls it's the mind of that robotic craftsman that's is a lot of software that we were building. And that software can be from, uh, manipulating geometries so that they become something that can be formed. Um, you know, like when we get the geometries from the customers, changing them to something that can be actually formed or creating instruction sets for the robot, uh, to the software. For example, we do use Ross, which is a very well known software and robotic, uh, um, framework to control robots on the software side to, to accurately, uh, uh, implement this, uh, the, the way that we want to control robots. So that's on the software side. We also develop a lot of interesting me mechanical and defectors and tools that the robot use. So we have a big mechanical engineering team as well in addition to robotics and software. Um, and then big material size team too. So folks thinking about, okay, how are we, this is a completely new process, how are we gonna, um, deform these sheets because, you know, traditionally nobody is forming them this way. Uh, and what are the recipes that we can use for each of the material? Um, so we have a big material size team as well.
Speaker 2 00:16:50 Thank you for that. Do you have a, any thoughts maybe on the future of manufacturing, like even the future of your manufacturing, right? Because you're gonna have to scale, uh, your own business. Uh, how, how's that gonna look?
Speaker 0 00:17:01 Yeah, um, I think we are gonna see more and more distribution manufacturing as, uh, you know, in, in the next few years. I think what we have seen in the past, um, kind of couple of years is that supply chain is a big issue in manufacturing even for us. You know, you pointed out like, you know, we have been some of the parts we ordered for like, especially for like, you know, electronic parts that we ordered for our cell, they're taking like year, year and a half before we can receive them. So we had to come up with like ways to kind of go around it, use maybe consumer grade products so that like for now we can kind of like, you know, get by until the actual like, you know, industry grade products come in. So, so I think because of that fact manufacturing will adapt and it's gonna become more distributed, meaning that we're gonna have more of a, uh, micro facilities as opposed to large centralized facilities that are shipping to the rest of the world, gonna have a lot of smaller micro facilities, different parts of the world, which is good news.
Speaker 0 00:17:57 That means I think a lot of, a lot of manufacturing will be coming closer to home and gonna be closer to the communities that gonna be using them. Um, because the cost of shipping now becomes, is becoming significantly higher. There are some parts that be manufactured, let's say the part costs $20,000 and it costs us 14 to $20,000 to ship it across the world because it's a big part. So now you're thinking about, okay, does it really make sense to ship these things anymore? Um, so I think that would be a big, big, big wave, uh, I think in the next, next few years for sure.
Speaker 2 00:18:25 You've got lots of things going on and I think you're on the right track. Certainly. I I love this idea about, about creating, uh, products very close to the consumers so that you don't have to spend more than the product's worth as you mentioned. So when you're not building robots and such, what do you like to do?
Speaker 0 00:18:42 This is a good question. I think, so like I said, I come from engineering background, um, mostly on computer side, but my hobby always was building things. You know, I used to do carpentry, so I was younger, um, did a lot of metal processing and metal kind of blacksmithing when I was younger as well. Um, I used to apprentice as a sheet shaping shop that manually was forming sheets, um, to, for, for hot rods, for example. Um, so I think once I started the company I had this magical kind of moment where like I can finally combine the stuff I care about, which is forming things with computers, um, which is robots. Um, and you know, that almost consumes all of my time <laugh>, so doesn't leave a lot of, uh, lot of room for, for doing those hobbies that I care about. You know, every once in a while I try to sneak in kind of like work on a sculpt or metal sculpture or something like that. But now it's mostly like, you know, just relaxing on the weekends, you know, going on a hike, uh, you know, staying, you know, spending some time at the, on the beach. But that, that's about
Speaker 2 00:19:39 It. No, that's great. And how could people get ahold of you if they're interested in finding out more?
Speaker 0 00:19:44 Yeah, no, we are, uh,
[email protected] is our website, uh, at Marketa Labs, M A C H I N A L A Bs ai. And we can, we are also on different social media platforms. LinkedIn is very, are very active and they, they can look us up there, but we also have Twitter and Instagram. Um, and then if you wanna send us an email directly, just send an email to
[email protected] and we'll get back to you within the day.
Speaker 2 00:20:10 That's great. And thank you very much for coming on the Robot Industry podcast.
Speaker 0 00:20:14 Thanks Jim. It was, uh, it was a good conversation.
Speaker 2 00:20:16 Our sponsor for this episode is Erhardt Automation Systems. Earhart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing and project management delivering world-class custom automation on time and on budget. Contact one of their sales engineers to see what Earhart can build for you. Their email is info airhart automation.com and earhart's hard to spell. It's E H R H A R D T. I'd like to to acknowledge a three, the Association for Advancing Automation. They're the leading automation trade association for robotics, vision and imaging motion control and motors and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies. Visit automate.org to learn more. And I'd like to thank Painted robot, painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. There are web development firm that offers seo, digital social marketing, and can set up and connect c r m and other e r p tools to unify marketing, sales, and operations. You can find
[email protected]. And if you'd like to get in touch with us at the Robot Industry Podcast, you can find me, Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by Customer Attraction Industrial Marketing. I'd like to recognize my nephew, Chris Gray, for the music, Jeff Bremner for audio production. My business partner Janet, and our sponsor, Earhart Automation Systems.
