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Why Robot Motors Still Come From China (with Mason Hensley) | ReForge 030 · The ReForge Podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Reforge podcast.
• 0:07
  I'm Matthew Chang, and we're here to explore all things AI, automation, and the American worker, proving that the American re-industrialization is possible, pivotal, and pressing.
• 0:19
  Thanks for joining us today.
• 0:21
  Let's get into the episode Welcome back everyone, and welcome to episode 30 of The Reforged Podcast.
• 0:30
  Today, we have a treat for all of you.
• 0:34
  We have Mason joining us.
• 0:36
  You may know him from X.
• 0:38
  If not, you should be following him.
• 0:40
  But we are going to be doing some exciting talking about robots and all those fun things.
• 0:47
  But we have Mason Hensley, founder of Guahire.
• 0:52
  I'm probably not saying that right.
• 0:53
  Robotics- Yeah, Guahire.
• 0:55
  Guahire.
• 0:55
  All right, which is currently focused on improving the critical components of domestic robot production with an initial focus on stators.
• 1:03
  Mason is the former VP and eng- eng- VP of Engineering and CTO at Caris Life Sciences, which provided genomic, uh, genomic sequencing of cancer tumors to get patients the right treatment.
• 1:16
  Very noble, and now he's just moved on to something equally and differently important, robots.
• 1:22
  So Mason, welcome.
• 1:24
  Great to have you with us.
• 1:26
  Thank you.
• 1:26
  Appreciate y'all having me.
• 1:27
  Not all heroes- No- wear capes, Colin.
• 1:30
  Not, and not all of them can be investing in software, so, you know, it is what it is.
• 1:36
  With that, I won't make any more comments about VCs and being national heroes.
• 1:40
  Um, Mason, I always butcher the intros.
• 1:44
  I never tell the full story.
• 1:45
  Give us your background.
• 1:46
  Tell us, you know, what it is you're working on and, and who you are and what led you to it.
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:53
  Well, going back to the day I was born.
• 1:55
  Um, actually, I grew up in, uh, Dallas, Texas.
• 1:58
  Um, went to school in Tennessee, um, and moved back to Texas, met my wife.
• 2:05
  She's a physician.
• 2:06
  Uh, that took us down to Houston for a few years of specialty training.
• 2:10
  Yeah.
• 2:11
  That's my stomping ground.
• 2:12
  Oh, awesome.
• 2:14
  And, uh, now we're in Richmond, Virginia, and, uh, we've been loving it.
• 2:18
  Got two beautiful children.
• 2:20
  Uh, my parents, the in-laws, everyone moved up here, and, uh, just a big old happy family.
• 2:27
  Um, digging back into the professional side, uh, came out undergrad, spent quite a bit of time in software, particularly healthcare software.
• 2:39
  Uh, found myself, um, moving more into the kinda- I hate to say IT, but encompassing, you know, software engineering, IT, uh, in some small healthcare startups, and then landed, uh, through my network at Caris Life Sciences.
• 2:59
  Um, about a...
• 3:01
  Haven't looked at the latest headcount.
• 3:02
  About, about 2,000 employees, uh, primarily, uh, operating out of Phoenix, Arizona with some labs and offices, uh, without labs kind of around the country.
• 3:15
  Um, there did a bunch of modernization, bunch of implementation, uh, of AI du jour, uh, helping with operations.
• 3:26
  We implemented a bunch of robotics and automation in the lab.
• 3:30
  Um, and, uh, left there about two years ago.
• 3:35
  Been consulting, working on various, uh, startup ideas that have led me to where I am today.
• 3:43
  Um, you know, back before bird flu was in the news, uh, someone approached me and that's in agriculture in my network, and was saying,"Hey, we've had this problem.
• 3:54
  We're having to cull all these chickens." And I was like,"All right.
• 3:58
  Well, cool.
• 3:58
  What, what's bringing the bird flu there?" And they said it's ducks and geese was the primary vector of transmission.
• 4:06
  Um, there were some other vectors, but that was the main one that some of these farms were wanting to, uh, reduce the risk of.
• 4:13
  So we went out to essentially build a detection network of cameras to go around these 50 to 7500 acre farms, and the idea was detect these incoming birds and then launch a drone to chase them away.
• 4:32
  Um, through that, I mean, that ended up not going anywhere after we did a couple prototypes and realized the F- the FAA at the time was not- Not as friendly about autonomous, um, beyond line of sight drones as they are now.
• 4:53
  They've come a long way, um, into facilitating that.
• 4:58
  You've seen tons of startups around that space.
• 5:00
  Um, I probably should have transitioned that technology into a counter UAV system.
• 5:07
  Um, but that's, uh- Dang it.
• 5:10
  That's for...
• 5:12
  Hey, Mason, don't- That's for another day don't all the ducks and geese come, that carry bird flu, and I...
• 5:18
  This is a big problem, so it's like- Yeah when you see the price of poultry or the price of eggs spikes, usually it's'cause there was a mass culling'cause there was a, either a current or potential outbreak on the, on bird flu.
• 5:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:28
  Don't they all come from Siberia and, like, fly over the North Pole a- across Canada to the bird farms in the US?
• 5:36
  I never got into that specific part of it.
• 5:40
  Oh, it's'cause the FAA wouldn't let you fly your drone to chase them all the way back up.
• 5:45
  Yeah, basically- Probably too high where I, where I live in Florida, we put up, uh, we put up, like, fake wolves and owls to chase away- Mm-hmm the Canadian geese,'cause otherwise they just take over the neighborhood and, uh- Yeah they're thugs.
• 5:57
  So, um, my understanding though is, like, globally all the birds go back to a central kinda nesting or meeting ground, and it's, I think it's somewhere in Northern Russia.
• 6:08
  Wow.
• 6:09
  And then that's why bird flu is, like, a global thing is'cause the birds all go back to one place and then they re-migrate out and, and that's the transmission and why it's a basically a global epidemic when it happens.
• 6:22
  Interesting.
• 6:22
  So I've, I've got a rabbit hole that I'm, I'm gonna be going down now, uh, to figure out tonight.
• 6:27
  I'll be spending time on Reddit, I'm sure, finding conspiracy theories about bird flu.
• 6:29
  Yeah, sorry, we should be talking about the FAA and autonomous drone systems.
• 6:33
  My bad.
• 6:34
  Sorry for that.
• 6:35
  No, it's- Oh, yeah that's a rabbit hole I'll get down.
• 6:37
  So b- so, uh, you're doing the drone stuff, you know, a- and then from there, you know, what kind of led you to robotics?
• 6:45
  Obviously a very- Yeah popular topic now.
• 6:47
  I mean, even just the last few weeks, tons of attention on kinda that supply chain piece.
• 6:51
  Yeah.
• 6:52
  So went to build the drones, and there's some awesome companies out there, like, uh, Ark, that are building, um, flight control systems that are NDAA compliant.
• 7:06
  Um, but it was really pulling on that and realizing, like, hey, I need to build a drone that can land autonus- autonomously on a dock, recharge itself, you know, without going and buying a six-figure, um- Industrial drone you know, full drone box.
• 7:22
  Right.
• 7:22
  Yeah.
• 7:23
  And- That planted a seed around just kind of supply chain frustrations around some of the motors, the flight controllers, you know, all these various parts.
• 7:33
  Um, did another project where I was putting together some open source robotic arms.
• 7:40
  You know, think about, like, the little robot, those little 3D-printed, um, arms you can get for a couple hundred dollars now, and it just kept bumping into, like, hey, I want something a little bit bigger.
• 7:52
  But, you know, for these projects I'm wanting to do, you know, a 20,$30,000 cobot arm is, is overkill, right?
• 8:02
  So there's this gap of...
• 8:05
  And that there are now some open source arms that are built around Chinese actuators.
• 8:10
  You can go buy some Qmars or Dynamo.
• 8:12
  There are all these, um, actuator companies in China, and you've seen some startups come out and raise primarily around drone motors, um,'cause there's a lot of activity with the Department of War right now on that.
• 8:27
  So you know, for most of the people watching this will probably know exactly what a drone motor is and all the components.
• 8:33
  Um, but you take apart- He brought, he brought toys for us, Matt.
• 8:37
  Oh, yeah.
• 8:38
  Yeah, no.
• 8:39
  Lots of props.
• 8:40
  Mason, I would, I would not assume that.
• 8:41
  There are private equity people and CFOs in the audience, so you take your time- Oh, yeah?
• 8:46
  explain it.
• 8:47
  Yeah.
• 8:47
  Okay.
• 8:48
  Well, we'll turn this into a five-hour PhD on, on motors.
• 8:52
  Um, so in a, in a drone motor or a robotic actuator, they're pretty similar.
• 9:00
  There's some little nuances, but at the core of it, you know, here's a little 43, about 40 millimeter diameter.
• 9:07
  So most drone motors are defined as the outer diameter of the stator.
• 9:12
  That's this green part wrapped in copper.
• 9:15
  Um, when you see in the news about rare earth metals and magnets, that's the silver part here in the rotor.
• 9:24
  So this green part with copper windings on it, there are three sets of wires that are wrapped in a pattern.
• 9:34
  There are various patterns, but you think three, three wires coming in, and electricity gets sent through those three sets of wires to cause a magnetic current that causes motion with these magnets.
• 9:49
  So each of these magnets in here is reverse polarity.
• 9:52
  You have a, a north on one, a south on the other, north and south, and the changing in sequence of electricity going through this, uh, these copper wires causes it to spin.
• 10:06
  So if you look at the supply chain for, for this, of course, everyone knows that we have a lot of investment domestically in getting magnets.
• 10:17
  Um- That's great.
• 10:20
  There's a lot more in these motors, um, and the supply chain sucks for it here domestically.
• 10:26
  So pull up a bigger stator here'cause I got lots of props.
• 10:30
  Um, all these stators are made from silicone steel.
• 10:36
  So if you look here, this is not a block- That's super easy to get, right?
• 10:39
  Like, that's just you can go to, you know, pick it up off the shelf at Walmart or something.
• 10:43
  It's getting better.
• 10:44
  Um, or hopefully it is.
• 10:47
  Uh, I've had some really good discussions about it improving, uh, with US melt, uh, steel providers.
• 10:55
  Um, yeah, and we can do a quick side note on, uh, silicone steel in a minute, the coils of it.
• 11:02
  But in these stators there are, in this particular one, there's 50 layers of silicone steel,.2 millimeters thick.
• 11:10
  So these big presses are taking a thin ribbon of coil, and if you think.2 millimeters, that's about two pieces of printer paper, um, are stamping it out, and you need to do this stamping process to reduce what's called eddy current.
• 11:28
  So When these motors are running, you know, electricity's running through'em, they'll get hot.
• 11:36
  And if you did a traditional CNC process of regular steel, um, the motor will get hot faster, kind of in layman's terms.
• 11:47
  Um, so the US historically has not been producing the silicon steel as brushless motors have been offshored to Asia.
• 11:58
  I put it about for sub-120 millimeters, which are about four and a half, five inches in diameter, so this is 100 millimeter stator, um, about 80% are probably coming out of China.
• 12:17
  Um, now that ex- that backs out, like ceiling fan motors, they're usually lower grade steel.
• 12:25
  But if you're looking at, you know,.35 to.2 millimeter, about 80% is coming out of China.
• 12:33
  You got some coming out of Taiwan and South Korea.
• 12:36
  And then stateside, you do have shops that are, that have stamping shops.
• 12:43
  There are a couple in the Midwest, couple in Pennsylvania, New Jersey.
• 12:48
  They primarily will s- be serving, um, automotive and aerospace and defense.
• 12:55
  And the automotive ones have even been migrating over the last couple years more so to Canada and Mexico.
• 13:04
  But there's still some stamping shops that have been surviving.
• 13:09
  Uh, and they'll do tool and die.
• 13:12
  There's some...
• 13:12
  The, the dies to make these are very impressive and very expensive, and will take domestically 20 plus weeks to make.
• 13:24
  Um- Wow we've gotten some quotes from some shops that are saying it'd take them 14 to 16 months, and they've got a backlog they're working with.
• 13:33
  But it's, you know, you talk to a die maker in, in China or Taiwan, and They're saying they can do it in a third to a half that.
• 13:46
  Um, so It's tough to, tough to, uh, compete when we've got that big of a, a, a lead time obviously, not even getting into, you know, the sil- silicon steel supply piece of it.
• 13:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:59
  Yep.
• 14:00
  And, uh, a lot of silicon steel's used in electric car motors, but typically, um, it's a, uh, a thicker gauge and, you know, they're, that's captive.
• 14:15
  So the big thing about these is the dies.
• 14:17
  So you have all these shops that are making stators for, you know, a big aerospace firm will come in with a contract, Department of War contract, and, you know, generally speaking it's cost plus.
• 14:30
  You know, they might be making tens of thousands of a certain stator for an application.
• 14:37
  Um- But that die then goes on the shelf until, you know, Lockheed or Boeing say,"Hey, we need another batch." Um, the script is flipped in China.
• 14:52
  You can call up all these stamping shops and say,"Hey, I need 100 millimeter diameter stator." So this is about it in a humanoid robot.
• 15:02
  This is about a hip.
• 15:04
  Okay.
• 15:04
  And this particular size has a history going back to DJI.
• 15:08
  It's what they used in one of their first agricultural drones.
• 15:12
  So in China, you can go on Alibaba and say like,"I need this size." You know, some of these die shops- So Mason that- Go ahead, yeah that 100 millimeters, that's a big one, right?
• 15:21
  Yeah, that's a big one.
• 15:22
  Yeah.
• 15:23
  Yeah.
• 15:23
  So that's a pretty powerful motor if it's doing a agricultural drone or a humanoid hip.
• 15:27
  Mm.
• 15:28
  Yep.
• 15:29
  Yep.
• 15:29
  Okay.
• 15:29
  Uh, the, uh, yeah, for size this is 40 millimeters and there's 100.
• 15:35
  Um, and if you think about this being a hip, there's 100, about a 81 millimeter is a shoulder, a 60 millimeter would be an elbow or an ankle.
• 15:49
  And then you can take this 40 millimeter and configure it in a way for actuators, like a small cobot arm, it'd be kind of like a wrist.
• 15:58
  So, um, we, we've been working to onshore stator production.
• 16:07
  Um, so that's gonna be shared dies.
• 16:10
  We'll have set sizes kind of across the power band, so to speak.
• 16:16
  Um, and just make those available to, you know, small robotic startups if they wanna buy one of them.
• 16:24
  Um, or, you know, a big scale-up that needs tens of thousands.
• 16:29
  The...
• 16:30
  Going back to the dies, it's not economical for a company to...
• 16:35
  Unless you're doing cost plus and someone else is footing the bill, right?
• 16:39
  Um, it's not economical to have a, a progressive die for these stators unless you're making, you know- Mid five figures to six figure production units of them.
• 16:55
  Um- S- so Mason, let me just- Yeah pause so we have context.
• 16:59
  Like, when I think of machine bolts, and sorry to be reductive here, but- Mm-hmm that's also something we need to talk about, right Colin?
• 17:07
  But when I just think of machine bolts- Yeah they come generally in preset sizes, right?
• 17:12
  You could Swiss lathe your own if you desired to, but generally speaking, machines work off of standard sizing.
• 17:20
  Yeah.
• 17:20
  S- it sounds to me like your work here is to get us to a standardized stator design- Yep so we don't have this 20-week lead time to receive one, and then a minimum order quantity.
• 17:32
  I mean, people could actually keep these things in stock, you know- Yep once you get this.
• 17:38
  And we're hitting...
• 17:39
  We're kind of phase one trying to hit 40, 60, 80, 100 millimeter, and then fill in the odds, so 50, 70, 90.
• 17:50
  And I mean, as you know, there could be...
• 17:53
  There are infinite combinations, but if we're...
• 17:57
  The general thesis is that, you know, and we could talk about the FCC, controlled entity list, but- Yeah.
• 18:03
  We'll, we'll get into that in a second- Um- because that's gonna be a hot topic.
• 18:06
  Yeah.
• 18:06
  As you dive into the bill of materials of robots, and that's, you know, let's just say aligning with FCC, anything over four and a half pounds that has network connectivity, um, if you're trying to hit a bill of materials target of 65, 75%, you absolutely have to have your actuators and motors made domestically.
• 18:31
  Um, and- Right now the, the entire supply chain is coming through Asia.
• 18:40
  Um, I've talked to a bunch of startups that are, that have historically been air freighting in stators, buying Chinese winding equipment from, uh, companies like Vacus and Nide.
• 18:55
  Um, so you have to wind these.
• 18:58
  So if you're doing a couple prototypes or, you know, you're doing a project for your engineering senior project, you can hand wind these.
• 19:08
  Your fingers are gonna hurt, um, but you can get away with hand winding a couple.
• 19:13
  Um- But on, uh, on a production level, I mean, y- you're talking y- y- that's just not practical.
• 19:20
  And the- Yeah, not practical winding machines, I mean, they, they'll, they'll blow through them.
• 19:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:23
  So, you know, it sounds like- Well, so- what I'm hearing you say is we don't have, even domestically from e- the, the components to even make the stators, I mean, we're so relying on Chinese equipment by and large to even get to the point of being able to produce some of this stuff domestically.
• 19:40
  Yep.
• 19:41
  Yeah, everyone's buying Chinese winding machines.
• 19:42
  Yeah, I wanna, I wanna take it back and un- un- Yeah, go a couple things'cause, um, uh, I think Colin and I both just learned about motors.
• 19:50
  I know I did.
• 19:52
  Uh, so you got, let's go back to this silicon steel.
• 19:55
  Yeah.
• 19:55
  A- and you said it, it's like, it, was it 20 layers?
• 19:58
  How many layers is typical in a stator?
• 20:00
  Uh, so for a one centimeter thick stator is kind of the standard size, there are 50 layers.
• 20:09
  50.
• 20:09
  Each is.2 millimeters thick.
• 20:12
  So the, the first challenge is do we have a l- a domestic supply of silicon steel?
• 20:19
  I guess that's the first question.
• 20:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:20
  I don't actually know the answer to that.
• 20:22
  Um- The answer has been no.
• 20:25
  Um- I, well, i- is it one of those things that we should- The answer has been yes if you're willing, if you're willing to pay$35 a pound to get the really thin.2 millimeter from what's called a re-roller.
• 20:40
  Um, you could, you know, if it's for a satellite, and oh, the other thing is there's a You could acquire it very expensively domestically.
• 20:51
  Um, most of the big steel plants were putting out, like, 0.35 for kind of automotive grade.
• 20:59
  Yeah.
• 21:00
  And when you get into these smaller sizes, you need what's called high frequency,'cause it's spinning at a higher RPM, is...
• 21:07
  There's a, you know, ratio of the diameter.
• 21:09
  Um, your angular velocity's a lot faster.
• 21:13
  Um, so the silicon steel supply domestically has been, you know, here's kind of like automotive grade.
• 21:21
  It's thicker, and it's not been good for drone motors.
• 21:26
  Um, so I can't share the, the name of the, uh, supplier.
• 21:32
  Okay.
• 21:32
  That's okay.
• 21:33
  But one of them is, one of them's working actively to get the 0.2.
• 21:37
  They did a test coil.
• 21:39
  So these coils you have to buy too, are 20 ton coils.
• 21:43
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  O- okay.
• 21:43
  So it's 35 bucks a pound times 20 tons, right?
• 21:47
  That's the- For- Mm kind of some specialty batches, but this one domestic producer is working to get that price down to, I think- Where, where do we need to be?
• 21:58
  Like t- below 10 bucks or like what's the magic price point?
• 22:01
  I, I think it's gonna land, um...
• 22:04
  So buying the coil as itself, picking it up from the, the steel mill is one price.
• 22:11
  Then you have to slit it down to the, the width you need for the stator, right?
• 22:17
  So out of a, say, four-foot wide, 20 ton coil, they're gonna cut it up, let's say, 20 times into, you know, this thickness plus five millimeters, whatever the tolerance is to get in the die, and then you need to get it to your stamping shop.
• 22:37
  So- Yeah, so, so we- All four- So we're cutting it down, we're cutting it down to the little p- well, assuming we have the thickness.
• 22:42
  If not, we gotta re-roll it, right?
• 22:44
  Yeah.
• 22:44
  So we gotta thin it out just like aluminum foil.
• 22:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:46
  Yep.
• 22:46
  So, or, uh, steel, steel sheet.
• 22:49
  So we gotta thin it down, then we gotta, we gotta cut it- Mm-hmm'cause it needs to be near net, right?
• 22:54
  Like roughly the size of your stator, but not, you know, enough room to work with.
• 22:59
  Then you're gonna stamp it.
• 23:01
  We have, I'm assuming, a huge amount of waste and scrap at that point in time.
• 23:05
  Like, the majority of the, the surface area is going to scrap, right?
• 23:10
  So that's one of the things I'm trying to do differently, um, and that is nesting.
• 23:18
  Oh, look.
• 23:20
  Interesting.
• 23:20
  Look at this guy.
• 23:22
  Look at this guy.
• 23:23
  So the whole product line we're building is with, you know, this nested in here, this nested in here, um- And that'll get the, the scrap percentage down quite a bit.
• 23:38
  Um, it's a- Well, it's gonna, it's, it's gonna roughly double your yield.
• 23:42
  But if I just look at the surface area, I still have more than half the surface area is going to scrap in the stamp, right?
• 23:48
  Yeah.
• 23:48
  But you're d- I mean, you're taking a huge leap'cause you're getting twice the parts out of, out of one stamp.
• 23:53
  But- Mm-hmm so, okay, so let's...
• 23:55
  So this part, we got the silicon steel, we got a supply issue, we got a, uh, it's, it's manufactured for a different industry.
• 24:00
  It's not, it's not ready for robotics and drones, so there's steps being taken to get us the right thickness.
• 24:06
  Then you're innovating on the, the yield conversion so we have an efficient stamping operation.
• 24:13
  Okay.
• 24:13
  I, I don't wanna take credit for that.
• 24:15
  The, uh, it's, it's genius- But you can.
• 24:18
  You can of the industry.
• 24:20
  Yeah.
• 24:20
  Well, I, I think one of the important things that we do sometimes, and, and the messages Colin and I get privately when we deep dive in industry, is people just didn't know the complexity of the supply chain.
• 24:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:31
  Right?
• 24:31
  That's, that's the case with everything.
• 24:34
  We need more factories, okay?
• 24:36
  W- w- Colin and I were banned from YouTube'cause we said workforce should go apprentice instead of going to college.
• 24:43
  Yeah.
• 24:43
  And then that'll get you a YouTube ban.
• 24:45
  Um, that, you know, that's a missing piece.
• 24:48
  There's the policy piece.
• 24:49
  The supply chain piece is the deepest rabbit hole of all, and it kinda, it seemingly never ends, right?
• 24:55
  We could have taken- Yeah this all the way back to the mines if we had to.
• 24:58
  Um, but so we got, we got our silicon steel.
• 25:01
  Yeah.
• 25:01
  You need it really thin.
• 25:02
  You're gonna stamp it out precisely with great conversion.
• 25:05
  All right, the next step, is it, is the next thing we gotta worry about the, the copper winding?
• 25:10
  Winding- No, the next step is the epoxy, so the green.
• 25:14
  Ah.
• 25:15
  So historically-'Cause I don't see the layers on that.
• 25:17
  That looks really...
• 25:19
  Yeah, so you can really just see the layers.
• 25:21
  I know the camera is the...
• 25:22
  My light is not pointing in the right direction here.
• 25:24
  But, um, if you ru- you have to run your fingernail across it.
• 25:29
  Okay.
• 25:29
  Yeah, yeah.
• 25:30
  Uh, or I need to get a better camera.
• 25:32
  Combination of the two.
• 25:34
  But yeah, if you run your fingernail across it, it's like if you had a stack of printer paper and you ran your fingernail, you could kinda feel it, right?
• 25:40
  A little bit of texture to it.
• 25:42
  Little bit of texture.
• 25:43
  Um- So the next step is this green epoxy.
• 25:49
  3M makes the most popular one out there.
• 25:51
  Um, there's some other domestic producers as well.
• 25:56
  Um, and the interesting part is you notice on the inside there's no green coating.
• 26:04
  Yep.
• 26:04
  And on outside there's no green coating.
• 26:06
  Maybe this one isn't, uh, easy to see.
• 26:09
  Uh, this one's black'cause it's- Right like a galvanizing.
• 26:12
  It's called E coat.
• 26:13
  But, um, so this has to go into a specialized machine that again, only made in China.
• 26:20
  Uh, so we've been reverse engineering, uh, one of these in addition to the winding machines.
• 26:27
  Basically, it does a powder coating process, but you put the stator in a jig and it rolls along these kind of corkscrews, and it's rolling down this assembly line with a brass jig in it because brass doesn't stick well...
• 26:43
  Or powder coat, epoxy powder coat doesn't stick well to brass.
• 26:48
  Um- It wets.
• 26:50
  Yeah.
• 26:52
  And so this is rolling down.
• 26:55
  It has a little preheat, then there's a kind of bubbling of the powder, it's a powder bed, um, that helps get it into all the cracks and crevices.
• 27:06
  All the nooks and crannies.
• 27:06
  All the nooks and crannies as it's rolling down, and then it will go under an induction heating channel.
• 27:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:14
  Uh, so if you think about, you know, like automotive, you have an old rusty bolt, you can get a little induction coil and it'll heat up the bolt.
• 27:22
  Um, this is that kind of a high frequency induction channel, but it's...
• 27:29
  And this took me a while to figure out because there's very little writing out there about this.
• 27:34
  It's just kind of like black magic happens over in China.
• 27:37
  Yeah.
• 27:37
  Induction is black magic, totally.
• 27:38
  Yeah.
• 27:39
  It's, it's, uh- Fun, fun fact, this is to improve on my c- my, uh, Siberian geese thing.
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:46
  Siberian ducks.
• 27:48
  The, um- Airplane brake discs are made by induction heat.
• 27:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:54
  So the brake discs that, uh, th- it's, it's super hot.
• 27:58
  It's like 1,800 degrees C to 2,200 degrees C.
• 28:01
  No one actually knows how it works.
• 28:04
  They just know that it does work.
• 28:07
  That's super comforting.
• 28:08
  But- Super comforting it's not like you're gonna go in there and observe, like, what happened, so the best they can do is kinda theorize on what happened in there.
• 28:18
  But, uh, all we know is if you get it hot enough, you get airplane brake discs out the back end, so.
• 28:24
  Nice.
• 28:24
  Black magic.
• 28:25
  Yeah.
• 28:26
  And is this, is this, like, a lo- a no oxygen environment then?
• 28:29
  'Cause you guys- No or it, it's gonna be ambient?
• 28:32
  Oh, yeah, it can be ambient.
• 28:33
  So the point of that, uh, induction coil is to just kinda glass the powder.
• 28:39
  Oh.
• 28:40
  It's more of an epoxy, so versus like a traditional- So it's not a full bake you know, powder coat that's, you know, making this black, right?
• 28:47
  Um- A- and is that, is that epoxy conductive or is it insulating?
• 28:51
  What's the- It's insulating like- So the point of it is to be insulating, um, on the stator.
• 28:57
  Okay.
• 28:58
  And the copper wire is also insulated.
• 29:02
  It's just, like, it's a really thin, clear insulation.
• 29:05
  If you see how the tips of these wires are probably...
• 29:08
  They're not coppery colored.
• 29:09
  Yeah.
• 29:09
  And this I can see the trim.
• 29:10
  Yeah.
• 29:11
  Yeah.
• 29:11
  So they've been dunked in, uh, like, solder.
• 29:16
  So a solder bath, they essentially- Hmm dunk it in to melt off the insulation.
• 29:22
  So in some motors, y- I don't have one here, um, with all my props, but some motors you'll see instead of a copper look, they look red.
• 29:30
  Um, if you hop on Amazon and try and buy a drone motor, you'll see some red ones, and that's kind of a function of the coating ability and temperature, uh, rating of them.
• 29:43
  But the goal of the induction is really just to kind of flash melt the, the epoxy powder, and then it goes out the end, you take off the jig, and then you bake it in, you know, the kitchen oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and it's cured.
• 30:03
  So that last step is just, you know, essentially putting them on a baking sheet or putting them in a, a big rack to put in a, you know- Put it in the bake oven a kitchen oven.
• 30:13
  And that's, and then you have a finished stator Um, and so just to be clear, so w- while the, uh, uh, epoxy powder, you know, 3M makes that, it's here, the, uh, that process of the coating and all of that we can do here, but it's getting up to that point right now there's generally speaking a pretty big gap.
• 30:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:36
  Yep.
• 30:36
  Okay.
• 30:37
  Yeah, most of the...
• 30:38
  Kind of going back to defense, um, all these stamping companies I've talked to, I've asked them,"Well, can you epoxy it?" They're like,"No, our customers usually hand do it." So they'll typically buy a unautomated machine, manual machine, and they'll have a technician,'cause again, cost plus, right?
• 30:58
  They'll have a technician pick up the stator, you know, spray some epoxy on it, um, put it into a little induction heater, and it's one in, one out.
• 31:12
  Same with these winding machines we'll get to in a minute.
• 31:14
  Um, but that whole flow is broken from just the incentives with large defense companies, you know, if they can bill$100 for a stator instead of really get it down to, you know, get the idiot tax down, right, um, then they can.
• 31:37
  So, so there, there's a misal- like you said, there's a misalignment of incentives and frankly because of that and just the, uh, the, the demand or ease of being able to acquire these things in China, we haven't really built a mature supply chain or production process for this.
• 31:52
  Yeah.
• 31:53
  So, uh, I mean, obviously huge opportunity.
• 31:56
  Where is it that you guys fit into some of that?
• 31:59
  Is it...
• 31:59
  Are, are you focusing more on just the production of the s- of y- you know, certain pieces of it?
• 32:05
  Are you looking to build out kinda that full here's your stator end of the day in-house, we've developed it end to end?
• 32:12
  W- where is it that you guys fit in that?
• 32:14
  Yeah, so we're going to deliver stators as well as winding as a service, so we are...
• 32:20
  All the customers I've been talking to, potential customers, um, they hate winding.
• 32:27
  Yeah, that sounds- There are multiple variations of it.
• 32:29
  Um, you can get different...
• 32:31
  So your motor performance can vary depending on the thickness of the wire.
• 32:35
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  So you have a couple of variables when you're winding a stator.
• 32:39
  There's the pattern, there's the number of turns, so if you have a much thinner wire you can do more turns around a, uh, an arm, or you can do parallel with less turns.
• 32:53
  So- The end goal is to get as much copper in here as possible.
• 32:59
  Um, there's some- more nuanced discussion about that.
• 33:05
  But high level, you wanna get a lot of copper in here, and whether you're wanting to have a fast motor or a torquey motor, you have some different parameters you can work with, um, when it comes to the thickness of the wire, the gauge of the wi- or thickness is the same as gauge.
• 33:21
  Number of turns, um, if you're doing one strand versus parallel.
• 33:27
  Um, so and then from there you can essentially, you know, get your housing.
• 33:36
  There's the silver part in the middle for drone motor as a bearing.
• 33:39
  If you were to make a full actuator, um, you might have gears inset in the middle instead of just a simple bearing.
• 33:49
  Um- And then you have your rotor, which has the magnets in it.
• 33:55
  Now- So you, you guys are looking to standardize obviously the sizes as well.
• 33:59
  Are you adding on top that what your actual, you know, the, what the coils look like in terms of your gauge, how many turns, that sort of stuff?
• 34:06
  So are, are you looking at standardizing that too to kind of simplify that production process?
• 34:11
  Or are, are you gonna offer, you know, more flavors of kind of design?
• 34:15
  Yeah, more flavors.
• 34:16
  The, the goal is to have kind of a send cut send experience where you pick your stator, you give us your winding configuration, you know, gauge of wire, what order you want them wound in,'cause it's not a simple just A, B, C, A, B, C, A, B, C, A, B, C.
• 34:35
  There's been a lot of research done into different patterns, um, for winding, so that'll be a variable.
• 34:42
  And then, uh, we're building automated load and unload winding machines, uh, that could help automate that.
• 34:50
  Now- Very cool for a winding machine you'll have different fixtures in it for a, a stator this size ver- versus this size.
• 34:59
  Um, but we plan to have a fleet big enough that can smooth over some of the variance.
• 35:07
  So are you, are you the equipment OEM then?
• 35:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:10
  So, so this, this equipment design that goes from, let's call it relatively current state Asia technology, but then gets improved to have the customer experience on flexibility, so we have the, the versatility.
• 35:26
  It...
• 35:26
  You, you tell it what to make and it makes it.
• 35:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:28
  Then the, the automated load and unload, you're not paying, like some of the, maybe the defense contractors, you're not paying a guy to put stuff in and take it out, right?
• 35:38
  Yeah.
• 35:38
  Um, so the whole process end to end is now automated, and you have some degree of, of, uh, flexibility on the SKU mix, the, the products you make.
• 35:48
  This machine set up can do within this band, the next one over can do a different band of products.
• 35:54
  Um, th- and then people can design what they want within your parameters of your equipment.
• 36:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:01
  Yeah.
• 36:01
  Upload it and they get it shipped.
• 36:03
  What, what's kind of the approved design file?
• 36:06
  Uh, is that a human in the loop approved design or is it just fully software automated?
• 36:11
  Goal would be for it to be purely software automated.
• 36:14
  So there'd be validations and DFM checks that give immediate feedback.
• 36:19
  Yeah.
• 36:19
  So they s- they submit a design,"I need, uh, u- I need 100 units," and it's my custom design.
• 36:26
  You go and fabricate it with the automated equipment.
• 36:30
  The software ingests it, then the machines get to moving and they fabricate it.
• 36:34
  What is the end to end time from when they, when it h- leaves the dock door and goes back to the client?
• 36:41
  For 100, our goal will probably be like a day or two Oh, yeah.
• 36:46
  Wow.
• 36:46
  Now we're talking.
• 36:47
  Wow.
• 36:48
  Yeah.
• 36:48
  Yeah, so the stators will be sitting on our shelves ready to go.
• 36:51
  We're gonna just keep- Is that your equipment too?
• 36:54
  Yeah.
• 36:54
  Is the stator also y- your equipment?
• 36:56
  Um, so- Out of the gate, uh, we've got a stamping partner that's gonna be making the dies, and they'll run the dies.
• 37:08
  And the lead time on the stamp equipment, so this is, like, big 125 ton, 600 stamps a minute, uh, super highly specialized, uh, presses, um- From Italy, or where's this stuff from?
• 37:24
  Um, so Minster out in Ohio, uh- Oh was bought by a Japanese company, and- Oh, okay.
• 37:32
  Yeah the particular model we'll be acquiring a few of is, uh, made in Japan.
• 37:41
  Yeah.
• 37:41
  I mean, that tracks.
• 37:42
  I, uh, automation's a global game, machine- machinery's a global game, and you, you find these villages that are amazing at a certain type of equipment.
• 37:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:53
  Um, okay, so, so your stamping partner is keeping you fed with enough inventory.
• 38:01
  Is the, is the epoxy coating happening in your site?
• 38:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:05
  'Cause you, you had to figure that out, right?
• 38:07
  So you got, you had to go- Yeah figure out how we're gonna automate this, you know, by, with the, uh- Yeah next So typically with the epoxy they'll have, like, in Asia, they'll have some very low-skill laborers that are, like, they're like two rods with imagine plates, masks, and they'll twist lock it on, and set it on this corkscrew conveyor.
• 38:33
  And someone on the other end is undoing them, putting those jigs onto a little conveyor belt that takes it to the front of the line.
• 38:41
  So, um- We haven't finished this yet, um, but there's, there's some predicates in Asia that basically take those jigs from the conveyors and do some automation insertion, and then a robotic arm puts like 10 of these onto the conveyor.
• 39:02
  So it's a closed loop, and then at the end- Yeah the stators are getting popped out into trays.
• 39:07
  S- so- So that's our goal.
• 39:10
  Yeah, so we...
• 39:11
  Well, a- and not to be a total factory dork here- Yeah for people in the audience who don't do this for a living, but- So you're gonna...
• 39:19
  You're, you're getting a bulk from your supplier, your partner- Mm of the, the finished stamped stators, but they have not- Yep been coated.
• 39:27
  Yeah, that's a big part.
• 39:27
  You're then gonna do an automated decant, is, is the word.
• 39:31
  You're gonna automate a decant, and you're gonna put it on the tooling, uh, run it through the epoxy coating line.
• 39:38
  It's gonna do the first step, then that goes to the furnace, so it could do the slow bake, right?
• 39:45
  Easy bake oven.
• 39:46
  Like a- Yeah.
• 39:46
  Easy bake oven, and when it's done with that, you keep that in your buffer inventory on hand so that you can fill in a day when somebody orders a winding pattern.
• 39:56
  Yep.
• 39:57
  Love it.
• 39:57
  Love it.
• 39:58
  What's- Awesome what's the end, end time from stamping to get to your inventory?
• 40:01
  Is that a couple weeks, or is that a day?
• 40:05
  That, that's a function of batching a LTL shipment, um, you know, 500 miles.
• 40:14
  So...
• 40:16
  But yeah, that- Not, not, not- I'm, I'm- super slow, but not necessarily, you know, same afternoon.
• 40:20
  Yeah, so, so stamping- So, so Colin, your job should be to out of stock Mason- for like a week while he's waiting on the next truckload of stamped, stamped stators.
• 40:30
  There you go.
• 40:31
  He could just put a surge order in.
• 40:33
  He's like,"Dude, I don't have 1,000 of those." And you're like,"Well, you should've had 1,000.
• 40:36
  Now you're out of stock.
• 40:37
  Give me the 700- Yeah you got on hand." That just in time isn't working.
• 40:41
  Just in time- Yeah isn't working.
• 40:43
  So with these presses, um, you can get about 10 of these a minute.
• 40:49
  Wow.
• 40:50
  Coming out from coil to stator, uncoated stator.
• 40:55
  Um- Yeah,'cause you're doing the, you're doing the 600, but the 600 have to be plied to the 50 tall, right?
• 41:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:01
  Yeah.
• 41:01
  Yep.
• 41:01
  You got it.
• 41:02
  Exactly.
• 41:03
  So I- So- By calling, by the way, that's what I do with everything.
• 41:05
  I, I gotta calculate.
• 41:06
  I gotta see it with the unit rate end to end.
• 41:09
  You gotta, gotta get the full picture, right?
• 41:11
  That's right.
• 41:13
  Now we just gotta calculate- But then the epoxy- the power load and we're done.
• 41:16
  Yeah.
• 41:16
  Yeah, the epoxy machines can generally do about 700 an hour.
• 41:21
  Love it.
• 41:22
  Pretty good.
• 41:22
  Yeah, I mean- How can we help?
• 41:26
  That's my only question.
• 41:27
  I know we gotta wrap the podcast up, Colin, but how can we help?
• 41:29
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:30
  So, well, so that, that, that was gonna be my question.
• 41:32
  I mean, what is next, you know, for you?
• 41:34
  Where, where are, you know, you kind of at in this journey?
• 41:37
  And obviously, I mean, this was incredibly educational.
• 41:41
  I, I'm sure our audience loved it.
• 41:43
  Um, you know, but, but what is next?
• 41:45
  I mean, this is critical, and I love that we got into it a bit, but, you know, what's the next hurdle that you have to jump over?
• 41:51
  Yeah, I'm sorry if I was talking too much and didn't give y'all much, uh, much word.
• 41:55
  Oh, you're the product, dude.
• 41:56
  You're the product.
• 41:57
  It was great.
• 41:59
  Uh, I'm working on building out the order book, uh, for next year.
• 42:03
  So, um, that's my main goal right now, and I've pretty much got a design lock on all the stators, about to pull the trigger on, um, on the dies, put the deposits down for those.
• 42:17
  But, uh- No doubt been really focused on customer development, uh, making sure that I'm aligned with everyone's needs and not just, you know- Yeah, build it and put it on the tens of thousands of stators in my garage for the rest of my life, uh, upsetting my wife.
• 42:36
  So, so- But, um- Where, s- somebody, if somebody's watching this and they're thinking,"Oh my God, this is great.
• 42:40
  I can finally get- Yeah what I need," how can they find, where, where can they find you?
• 42:44
  How can they get in touch?
• 42:45
  Yeah.
• 42:46
  You can find me on X, um, Mason Hensley or yeah.
• 42:51
  Here we go, americanstator.com.
• 42:53
  Uh, americanstator.com.
• 42:55
  American Stator is our core brand.
• 42:57
  Gwaihir's the, so that's the eagle that saved Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, so we're getting our little Silicon Valley Lord of the Rings, uh, checkbox here.
• 43:06
  There we go.
• 43:06
  Um, and then probably be hitting the fundraising trails here, here shortly.
• 43:11
  Um, been really focused on product and customer development lately.
• 43:14
  But, um, yeah, need to be making...
• 43:17
  Our goal is to help make 100 million stators, you know,'cause- I love it we, we're gonna need that many for the robots.
• 43:26
  So- You're gonna need, yeah, I mean, I think 100 million is good for plant one, right?
• 43:30
  You're gonna need more than that because some of these, some of these, even just in the Pentagon arena, some of these large format drone orders are, they're gonna, they're gonna take your entire offtake, you know, just with the Pentagon orders, so you gotta leave some for the common man too.
• 43:47
  Couple closing thoughts.
• 43:48
  Number one- Yeah, yeah if it's not too much to ask, Colin and I would both like American Stator Christmas tree ornaments.
• 43:56
  Of course.
• 43:56
  Yes.
• 43:57
  Right?
• 43:57
  Would that not look cool on a Christmas tree?
• 43:59
  That would be amazing.
• 44:01
  Um, uh, if, if you can make that happen, we'd like to be in the first release- Yes along with your family.
• 44:06
  Uh, your, well, your wife probably is using them as coasters right now, but, um- Then, uh, number, the, the second thing, I just, I was, uh, reading your timeline, and you've got a lot of activity around there around the federal actions, um, FCC 232s, that type of stuff.
• 44:23
  You know, Colin and I talk about that.
• 44:26
  Um, how important is that for the formation of this business, for this industry to take off, for you to be able to build it up?
• 44:33
  How important is it that those enforcement actions, especially on the maiden USA component, stay in place?
• 44:42
  Huge.
• 44:42
  Um- I've been getting a lot more inbound over the last two weeks because of that.
• 44:49
  Yeah.
• 44:49
  I think people are starting to realize as they look at their bill of materials and just, like, ask their teams the questions, like,"Okay, can someone just put a country next to the core materials in our products?" I think it's really- People are finally paying attention to that stuff they're paying attention.
• 45:05
  Yeah.
• 45:06
  You know, the goal is, uh, and I've bought a couple shirts over the last couple weeks, um, if y'all have any Bayside shirts, but- They're awesome.
• 45:15
  Woo they basically say, you know, I'll read it off now.
• 45:18
  Uh,"Cotton harvested in USA, cotton grown in USA, yarn spun in USA, knitted USA, dyed in USA, sewn in USA, made in USA." You know?
• 45:29
  All of our robots need to follow that the same thesis.
• 45:34
  So, I mean, it, it comes down to building out that transparency, and as much as people, you know, get frustrated by changes in policy and whatnot, the reality is until, you know, a- after decades of basically shipping things offshore for the cheapest whatever, people don't pay attention to it.
• 45:51
  And- Yeah one of the, I think one of the biggest takeaways and opportunities of these, you know, rules being passed, these new orders, is it is getting people to recognize w- where these little pieces, you know, where, where each link in the chain exists.
• 46:08
  And until we have, I think, a much broader understanding and appreciation for how little of that chain exists domestically, we're not gonna have people who f- can fully appreciate the importance of rebuilding these things.
• 46:23
  Yeah.
• 46:23
  Saying that,"Hey, we're, I'm building motors," like, okay, that's great, but what we went through today shows that, hey, there's a lot of these pieces that go into just getting to that.
• 46:34
  Yeah.
• 46:34
  And this isn't even, when we get to ro- robots.
• 46:38
  I, I wanna close with kind of a statement, too.
• 46:41
  So, you know, we talked about technology coming in.
• 46:44
  We talked about Chinese technology, Japanese technology.
• 46:47
  Uh, the Europeans are great at this type of precision manufacturing.
• 46:51
  So it's, it, it is, uh, global, but there is a, a large Asian tilt to it.
• 46:55
  Uh- Mm-hmm over the last, I'd say 10, 15 years, it's really pivoted to Asia.
• 47:01
  However, that equipment and that basis of technology that you're kind of using as a starting point is not automated.
• 47:10
  This is something I wanna drive home with the audience, and Colin and I talk about this all the time, is it's not automated.
• 47:16
  When you accomplish your vision of the, you know, short duration, you know, from steel coil to stator, and then, uh, one to two-day w- you know, wound coil from internet order, um, the, the other countries that participate in this arena will not be able to touch your cost basis.
• 47:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:37
  Your cost basis, end to end, once you've got the automation to run it, you know, this, this is the type of leap that makes America relevant in the manufacturing, because there's, now there's almost...
• 47:48
  I mean, I heard nearly zero humans in the loop.
• 47:51
  This is an automated plant.
• 47:52
  The people working in the plant are there to keep the plant running.
• 47:55
  They're not handling little, tiny drone motor components.
• 47:58
  Um, so that's why I think it's so important, is when it comes back, it's gotta be totally automated.
• 48:04
  Absolutely.
• 48:05
  'Cause then America's an export market, right?
• 48:07
  'Cause we have the lowest cost on a global basis.
• 48:10
  So way to go, Mason.
• 48:11
  I'm super excited for what you're doing.
• 48:13
  And I, I learned a lot today.
• 48:15
  Absolutely.
• 48:16
  Mason, thank you so much for joining us.
• 48:18
  This was incredibly informative.
• 48:19
  We're, we're gonna have to, uh, definitely have you back, and we'll get into more of the, uh, supply chain and production piece of it,'cause this is...
• 48:26
  I love these types of, of these conversations.
• 48:28
  I think it helps to really shine a light on some of the challenges that we're facing.
• 48:32
  But it's great to have somebody like you join us who's working to, uh, to, to solve the problem and, and obviously address a, a very critical need, uh, domestically.
• 48:41
  So thank you so much for joining us, and to all of you listening, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Reforged podcast.
• 48:48
  As always, whether we're talking latest reindustrialization news, robots on the factory floor, the stators that you're gonna need to make those robots, or just catching up with people rebuilding American industry, our goal is to show you that reindustrializing America is possible.
• 49:02
  It's happening right now, and it is pivotal.
• 49:05
  Make sure you subscribe and follow the Reforged podcast on all of our socials, and be sure to check out thereforgedpodcast.com for more, including our seven-step guide to reindustrialization.
• 49:15
  Until next time, keep building.
• 49:22
  Thanks for tuning in to the Reforged podcast.
• 49:25
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• 49:30
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