Latest / The ReForge Podcast / Modernize or Close Your Doors (with Cole Studer) | ReForge 026

Transcript

Modernize or Close Your Doors (with Cole Studer) | ReForge 026 · The ReForge Podcast

0:03
Welcome to the Reforge podcast.
0:05
I'm Matthew Chang, and we're here to explore all things AI, automation, and the American worker, proving that the American reindustrialization is possible, pivotal, and pressing.
0:17
Thanks for joining us today.
0:19
Let's get into the episode Welcome back everyone, and welcome to episode 26 of the Reforged podcast.
0:28
We are getting up there in the numbers now, Matt.
0:32
We're really- Yeah, 26.
0:34
Do any special privileges come with 26?
0:36
Like, we can already drive, we can already- Yeah own licensed guns I mean, we're still banned from YouTube.
0:41
We're, we're still banned from YouTube, so it doesn't really, you know, any, any perks there are- I wanna be, I wanna be banned from YouTube at 100, right?
0:48
I, I, I don't see it at any time soon.
0:50
Cole, if you weren't familiar on the backstory, Colin and I got banned from YouTube around our 10th episode'cause we made a big point to tell young people to consider trade school instead of c- student loan debt.
1:01
Ha.
1:02
And, uh, yeah, they came after us hard.
1:05
Wow.
1:06
People, people don't like that.
1:08
Well, today, on today's episode, joining us, we have Cole Studer, f- you may know him on X as Photoncommander.
1:16
And we are sitting down with him today.
1:18
He's the CTO of MilTech Manufacturing, operating out of rural western Kansas.
1:23
Uh, his AS9100 ITAR registered CNC shop builds for aerospace defense and critical infrastructure from automation to laser processing.
1:33
Cole is in the trenches getting his hands dirty and doing the hard work of scaling American industrial capacity, as well as a couple other cool projects we might get into.
1:43
So Cole, welcome.
1:44
Thank you so much for joining us.
1:46
It is great to, to have somebody fr- on the shop floor, uh, here to, here to chat with us today.
1:52
Yeah.
1:52
Thanks for having me.
1:53
It's great to be on.
1:55
Great to have you.
1:55
And Cole, before we get going further, can you and Colin please just confirm who has the more patriotic flag in the background?
2:01
Um- I don't know.
2:02
I think mine might be bigger.
2:05
I don't know.
2:05
Mine's, like, eight foot long hanging from the ceiling, so.
2:08
You know, if I had- Right a bigger shop wall, I'd have a bigger flag, but they're all kind of used with stuff, so.
2:13
Gotta get a bigger shop.
2:15
Yep.
2:15
Exactly.
2:16
You gotta, you gotta be flag maxing.
2:18
Flag maxing at all times.
2:19
100%.
2:21
Well, Cole, you know, obviously that was a short little intro.
2:24
I know we missed a lot, so tell us a little bit more about you.
2:27
Tell us a bit more about Miltech, your, your, kind of your journey there and what brought you or really attracted you to, you know, manufac- manufacturing and, and building, creating things here in America.
2:40
Um, yeah.
2:42
Let's see.
2:43
Been with Miltech since last September.
2:45
Um, so we're, we're coming up on a year now, um, is when, it's my wife's uncles bought the shop, and it's been quite the wild ride.
2:56
Um, before that I used to work at a company that made forklift forks and hydraulic attachments for literally anything.
3:03
Um, I did R&D stuff, maintenance management, uh, CNC machine repairs.
3:10
Um, I even did a retrofit on a gigantic, uh, horizontal mill.
3:15
That was, that was amazing.
3:16
Brought it from, like,'80s controls up to, you know, 2022 Fanuc controls.
3:21
That was an absolute blast to, to do a project like that.
3:24
Um, prior to that I did, um, metal fabrication.
3:29
I was a welder.
3:30
I did steel and aluminum.
3:31
Um, MIG and TIG, a little bit of stainless.
3:35
Uh, also once a- So you're a masochist Welded a, uh, let's see.
3:41
I used to work for a company that did, built baggage tractors and shipped them all over the world.
3:45
So I was like the R&D guy/warranty tech, so I'd be in wherever, traveling to repair these things or s- talk with customers or be sales support.
3:54
It was, it was pretty, pretty crazy.
3:57
So- Do, can we pause on the baggage tractor for a second?
4:00
Yeah.
4:00
So let me make sure I understand it.
4:02
You, is it one type of baggage tractor that has to work in salty snow, and then pouring down rain, and then also desert heat?
4:11
Yeah.
4:11
No, t- I mean, you add AC to the trucks where it's really hot, the s- customer demands it.
4:16
But, like, everything, uh, it's the same truck, same tires, same everything.
4:19
Oh, you could add the AC.
4:20
Okay.
4:20
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:21
That's an option, so.
4:21
Any option you want, we'll build it.
4:22
Just, you know, charge more money.
4:24
There you go.
4:25
So y- you have been deep in the trenches for most of your career it sounds like.
4:28
Oh, yeah.
4:28
In one way or the other, different roles, you've seen obviously a lot.
4:32
Yeah.
4:33
Yeah.
4:33
So what, what led you to Miltech?
4:37
Uh, so- Little backstory, my wife and I were on, on vacation, uh, last July and, uh, her uncle, one of her uncles called me up and was like,"There's this shop that I just went to..."'Cause we were, we were, we were working with, um, trying to get some parts made for, um, someone else, and we reached out to this company over in Norton, which was, uh, Natoma Corp.
5:05
They're like a sister shop in our, in our same town.
5:08
Um, but we don't, we don't work with them or anything, but we definitely compete for employees, for sure.
5:14
Um, and they were like,"No, we, we don't wanna do any one-off stuff.
5:18
Go to this shop." And after one visit, you know, uh, our chief of operations, his name's Roddy Dill, uh, he went and checked the place out, and he's just like,"It's for sale.
5:29
We have to buy this," you know?
5:31
Like, I'm like,"Uh, you're crazy." Like, I don't, I don't even live there, and that's an hour away from you.
5:35
Like, what...
5:36
You know?
5:37
Uh, so a few months after that, we went ahead and bought it.
5:43
Um- You took the plunge.
5:45
Took, we took the plunge, and that was a lot more than I think we were expecting, but we're still here, so um- Did, do you mind taking us through the range of capabilities?
6:00
Yeah.
6:00
Like, what sort of materials you bring in, the value add, transformation, and what goes out the door?
6:06
Yeah.
6:06
Um, so we do milling and turning, um, a little bit of precision grinding, just flat grinder, nothing crazy.
6:15
Um- Most of our customers are in the aerospace world, but we do- there's a product we offer called Micro Line, and that's for, like, natural gas pump engine mount systems for, like, the old style pumps that they're just...
6:28
Basically they take like a 30-foot long gas engine and pump assembly, and they have to level the crankshaft to, like, two thousandths of an inch all the way across that 30 feet.
6:37
So they rip everything out, rebuild these pumps, rebuild these engines, put it back on a brand-new concrete pad with our new mounts under it.
6:44
Um, and it's this whole specialized system.
6:47
So that's, like, one of our biggest products by revenue.
6:51
Uh, and it only goes to, like, two different companies.
6:53
It's a very, very niche thing.
6:55
Um, then other than that, everything else is all aerospace companies looking for parts.
7:00
Um, so we do-- we don't do any Swiss turning, but we have very, very small bar feed capabilities.
7:09
Um, we were running some eighth-inch aluminum shaft the other day to make some little tiny buttons for somebody's, uh, crypto hardware wallet.
7:18
They were needing to reset the PCB, and they're like,"We need tiny buttons." And I'm like,"This is such a Swiss part, but you know what?
7:24
We'll, we'll do it." And it wasn't that bad.
7:28
Um, and then I- That's a rare answer from too many shops is,"Okay, well, this is maybe outside our, our core capabilities of what we're normally doing, but hell, we'll give it a shot.
7:37
We'll do it," you know?
7:39
Yeah.
7:39
Unfortunately, not, not too many folks have that mindset.
7:42
Well, it- Boils down to like how much work we had at the time versus, you know, how easy it was to do.
7:49
It wasn't that bad, right?
7:50
Because the machine could be running making the first op while our machinist was hand finishing on the second op, and he's gonna have to stand there and watch this thing anyways.
7:58
So it wasn't really that bad versus like, you know, like something with a sub-spindle that's gonna grab it and finish it off for us.
8:04
You know, I really do wanna get one of those machines, um, to really help speed up our lathe department, but for now it's fine.
8:11
So then our, in our mill department, we have, you know, a VF3, a 3SS, a 4SS, and then we recently just bought a 9SS.
8:20
And one of the- I know, I'm jealous big reasons for that big behemoth of a machine is that, um, we have some customers that need us to make some very large molds.
8:33
I also have started making connections to people that need very large aerostructures, and I'm hoping to fill it with really, really big parts that they might run for 50 to 80 hours on one single part on one single operation.
8:46
Oh, that's epic.
8:47
That's like- Yeah I really wanna be that.
8:49
I, I, I have CNC envy.
8:51
That, that VF9 is a heck of a machine, and that envelope is massive compared to what's out there.
8:58
So when I, when I saw you sharing those pictures of reorganizing the shop and, and getting that in there, I mean, I was filled with jealousy, but also excitement to see what you guys are able to put out there.
9:08
Yeah.
9:09
It's, it was quite the challenge.
9:11
I mean, it...
9:12
Moving, reorganizing our whole shop cost us a lot in, in June.
9:16
Probably more than we, we had planned for, just from being down and then how long it took us to really rewire everything.
9:22
'Cause I, I kinda had a plan, but once it landed, of course, it, it changed.
9:26
We're like having the dimensions on paper and having everything perfectly scaled and laid out versus this thing's actually in our shop now.
9:34
It's like, you know what?
9:35
We can, we can shift it this way some more, and in doing so, not everything landed where we planned for, but in the end it's gonna work out better.
9:43
'Cause I opened up space to land, you know, maybe two or three smaller machines.
9:50
Uh, or- That's good one larger lathe.
9:52
So I left us more capacity to continue to expand in our existing space.
9:58
If I would've put everything the way I wanted to, we would have no room whatsoever.
10:01
Um, so I definitely packed them in there.
10:04
But like I said- Cole, let me ask you a question.
10:06
Do any of your clients' engineers say the word thou?
10:12
That might just be a machinist word.
10:14
Is it?
10:15
Because- Machine lingo.
10:16
I, I think, I think- I- the engineers definitely y- you say the whole word, thousandths.
10:20
Make me say the whole thousandths of an inch.
10:21
You say thousandths of an inch?
10:22
So Colin, when I, I didn't know what metrology was.
10:25
Okay?
10:25
I'd never heard of metrology.
10:26
Mm.
10:27
And then I built two Airbus factories.
10:29
I became very familiar with- You learn very quick.
10:30
Yeah, yeah.
10:32
Really quick.
10:33
And then everything was the s- the slang, and this might be Wichita slang, but the slang was thou.
10:39
So they'd be like,"Oh, it's, that's gotta be two thou or five thou." I was like,"You can't say the whole word?" No, I guess if you say it 700 times a day, you just kinda shorten it up.
10:49
It, it's one of those, uh- I'm just curious if any of you guys do that it, it's one of those, uh, indicators, like the meme with the guy with the three fingers up, like when, when you say it, you know, who knows w- if you know, you know.
11:00
If you don't, then it's clear too.
11:02
Yeah.
11:02
So- Well, it's like when you say tenths, you know, you're gonna, like, if it's five tenths, we're talking four decimals.
11:08
We're not even gonna say five 10,000ths.
11:09
Like that's, that's just too much.
11:12
Oh.
11:12
See, we never went that tight, so that's amazing.
11:14
I didn't know tenths was tenth of a thousandth of an inch.
11:18
Yes.
11:18
We, we do that all the time.
11:19
That's amazing.
11:19
We get re- customer requirements that are asking for plus or minus two tenths.
11:23
It's insane.
11:25
No big deal, right?
11:27
On a 80-hour build for a part, no big deal.
11:29
Yeah, no.
11:30
No big deal.
11:30
Just extra spindle time.
11:32
We'll charge for it.
11:33
There you go.
11:34
So y- uh, reorganizing a shop, I mean, that's a massive undertaking in and of itself, but I think that obviously speaks to some of what you're doing.
11:42
Y- you know, not just expanding kind of the shop, but you're modernizing and growing a machine shop in rural America.
11:52
I mean, this is not in, you know, the gundo with high density or in, you know, Rust Belt where you have a lot of this density a- and history of it.
12:00
I mean, y- you are in a very, uh, difficult is not the right word, but it sounds negative.
12:07
Very difficult.
12:07
But you, it is a challenging environment.
12:09
I mean, that, that, you don't have necessarily some of those resources, but you're taking on, I mean, a, a huge task.
12:16
That's, which is awesome.
12:17
Um, but I mean, what, what kind of drove you to that decision of, we need to modernize this to, we're, we're gonna grow it, that means new machines, re- reorganizing things, optimizing our layout, kind of that stuff?
12:31
What, what took you to that kind of realization?
12:34
Really, I mean, the market kind of demands that, right?
12:36
We can't- Y- it's very hard to operate the way that machine shops have been operating for the last 20 years.
12:43
It's, it's very hard, almost impossible, especially in a rural setting.
12:46
You know, there's a lot of shops, you know, maybe up around, let's say Chicago, Detroit, you know, Michigan area, they can operate the way they always have been because they have the same parts that they've just always made continuing to just flow to the automakers or whoever.
13:03
You know, but when you're a general job shop, you have to modernize or you're going to close your doors.
13:09
You can't just operate in a single eight-hour window.
13:12
You can't- Hmm not look at taking on new parts.
13:16
You can't stay with just one or two customers.
13:21
There's a lot of risk in, in doing that.
13:23
You know, we, we've decided to be a job shop and not just tied to, like, one or two big customers where all we do is only their stuff, and, you know, that, that takes a lot of extra resources in, like, the quoting department, um, in our inventory management, our fixture and tooling management.
13:41
It, it adds a lot.
13:42
Yeah.
13:47
So o- o- on that new VF-9, did you get, get a, uh, pallet pool with it?
13:51
We did not, and so that's why we decided to go with spindle grippers from, uh- Okay Gimbal Automation.
13:58
Um- Very nice that's been a fun project.
14:01
It...
14:01
That should actually be hopefully producing chips with that today.
14:05
Um, so another benefit of having a gigantic bed is that you can lay a lot of parts on that thing and use it like a normal mill.
14:12
And I know that sounds really dumb to pay for a big, gigantic machine and just fill it with, like, 1,000 tiny parts But I don't need a robot on the floor.
14:22
I'm not gonna pay$100,000 or$70,000 for the robot- Oh plus an integrator to come in.
14:27
You know?
14:28
You're, you're killing that right now.
14:29
You're, you're cutting them- Workstation stab would be in the heart.
14:30
Cutting is hard.
14:31
You engineered out the robots.
14:33
Oh, my goodness.
14:34
Well, why, why not put the robot- But you're limiting, you're limiting your setups.
14:37
You, you know, you, you set up one big table.
14:39
Your, your work surface has ba- you know, longer set up, a little bit more planning that goes into it.
14:45
But at the same time, you're able to run a lot more pieces- Oh, yeah through that.
14:49
Get, get the touches out of it.
14:50
That's- Yeah that's the name of the game.
14:52
Get the touches out.
14:52
No, that's- So, hey, let, let me ask you a question.
14:56
With this- I mean, that automated that process too with this, uh, expansion that you've done and the, the investment you made in new q- equipment, including setting it up, I'm glad you pointed that out.
15:03
A lot of people think you just put equipment on the floor.
15:05
Plug it in and you're good to go.
15:07
Um, there's a little more to it than that.
15:08
Yeah, you m- might wanna call the electrician, right?
15:10
But when you, um...
15:13
W- what do you estimate in terms of the cur- the new equipment, and you mentioned some future space, what type of revenue expansion, just as a percentage, did that give you in terms of, hey, this is the new capacity of the site?
15:26
Um, we have a lot of room to grow physically at that location, but we've also eyeballed a completely different town where there's a lot more population, but it's still rural Kansas.
15:40
Um, you know, I, as far as revenue targets, I, I don't have any hard numbers, but I can say that our, uh, CAGR was 60% in the business plan a month ago, which is- Beautiful aggressive.
15:53
Yes.
15:54
Let's go.
15:55
I love it.
15:56
60%, Colin.
15:57
Hopefully some very rich people are watching this.
16:01
There you go.
16:01
We, we've had some investment, that's for sure.
16:03
I mean- Capital the work is there, though.
16:05
I mean, y- it cl- the, the work is there.
16:07
It...
16:08
You said earlier, you know, y- you've gotta make these changes, you've gotta go after some of that new work, and yeah, increasing that, you know, mix a bit to, uh, go- going...
16:18
I'm not going to go as far as say high mix, low volume, but rather adding that higher mix to it and diversifying your customer base, you gotta do that in this day and age.
16:28
You know?
16:29
It's y- you don't want one customer being huge chunk of your revenue.
16:34
You don't want, you know, 30% walking out the door because of change of leadership or s- God knows what reason.
16:40
Um, but obviously, you know, that growth is necessary, but it's also there.
16:46
I mean, at least in my personal discussions, the demand is out there, but not a lot of people are, are willing or able to meet that capacity.
16:55
Yeah, I mean, it all boils down to available machinists for us right now.
16:58
Um So is that one of your biggest constraints is, is kind of that workforce side of it?
17:03
Yep.
17:03
Currently, you know, I, I've been able to attract some talent.
17:06
We just got some guys that relocated from the East Coast.
17:10
Um, I even pulled in a, a friend of mine.
17:12
You know, I've known him since, since college.
17:14
He's been in the machining industry programming for, like, 12 or 14 years now.
17:21
And, um He's gonna come in remote and, and help us out remotely, which is a huge benefit.
17:28
Um, we don't need him to be on site to do the programming.
17:32
He sends us the programs or he does the quote programming.
17:35
You know, a lot of guys like to use spreadsheets and just kinda look at stuff and go, oh, you know, and have some machinist just look it over.
17:42
We're trying to automate that side of it, as a lot of guys are.
17:44
You know, like, there's paperless parts and all these other crazy things.
17:48
Um, so that's been helpful.
17:51
But machinist has been our, our biggest struggle, and we're continuing to try to hire for machinists.
17:58
And at this point, you know, like we, we have...
18:01
We just got rid of two interns for the summer.
18:03
They're going back to school.
18:04
They were amazing.
18:05
They came in, they'd been in robotics for, since high school and through college.
18:10
Amazingly talented guys.
18:11
They left.
18:13
We brought in two more people that, you know, two young men that wanted to relocate, and we have to train them up again, right?
18:21
So we're kinda like back at that base level, and we're trying to attract talented machinists, and we're willing to pay very nicely.
18:29
I mean, even though we're a rural area, I will pay city machinist wage.
18:34
I don't, I don't care.
18:35
We need those kind of people that wanna be part of something bigger, that want us to grow multi-location, big operation type of place.
18:42
And we are, we are poised to do that if we can chew and swallow all the work that we have in front of us right now.
18:51
I mean, that's, that's exciting, but it's also, I think, huge to, to hear you say y- you're gonna pay the wages that you need to to attract that talent.
19:01
There is so much discourse out there about how nobody wants to work, nobody wants to do these jobs, this is how whatever.
19:06
When you're offering 15 bucks an hour, you know, and somebody you expect to have experience running a machine- Yeah you're not gonna get that labor.
19:16
Like you, you got...
19:17
The reality is, is that experience is valuable.
19:19
It has value.
19:20
You gotta pay for it.
19:21
And so it's encouraging to hear somebody who's trying to rebuild, you know, our industrial base to, who's trying to grow their shop say,"Yeah, we're gonna pay for it." But it's also awesome to hear that you're actually, you know, attracting people, you know, from outside that d- immediate community.
19:35
I mean, that's huge.
19:36
Yeah.
19:37
Well, there's relocation assistance as well that the county provides, especially for out-of-state people.
19:42
And, you know, you got a family with you or th- it pays more, we are willing to match that as well.
19:48
So it's, it's helpful.
19:49
It's, it's not nothing.
19:51
Um, and then, you know, the other thing, and I, I kind of brought this up to leadership the other day, is, you know, the most important person in our building is our machinist.
19:59
That's it.
19:59
Without us all supporting them, without quoting, shipping, QC, office admin supporting the machinist, we all just go home, shut down the shop, and we're done.
20:09
You know, that's- They're our rock stars.
20:12
We have to support them no matter what because if the spindles aren't turning, this isn't, this isn't- You're not making money said.
20:19
If you're...
20:20
What is it?
20:20
There's another podcast, If You're Not Making Chips, You're Not Making Money.
20:23
Um, a- and they- On the first podcast they are spot...
20:25
Yep.
20:26
They, they, they are spot on to that.
20:28
You know, y- you'd...
20:30
Kind of on that topic, one of the things that I've been seeing more discussion about recently is this idea of revenue, um, per, you know, your machinist, not necessarily on a per employee broadly, but on the machinist piece.
20:42
And a lot of that comes back to getting that number up requires you to automate a lot of those back office functions, a lot of that quoting, you know, your, your setup, some of the pieces that are not running the machine.
20:55
How are you guys approaching automation, um, considering your growth plans, considering some of the workforce challenges of, you know, finding enough people?
21:04
How are you guys approaching, uh, automation?
21:07
Um, well, so I've been trying to automate a lot of our finance systems.
21:14
Uh, we used to do a lot of very manual stuff.
21:16
Currently getting, um, Odoo ERP in place to manage our financing systems.
21:21
You know, when you wanna talk about automatic book reconciliation, like that just...
21:25
It takes care of itself.
21:26
Um, a lot of data that we can pull, so we use ProShop ERP, but it, it lacks a lot of stuff, and I'm making up for that with a secondary system that's not horrendously expensive, and then using API connectors.
21:40
I can write any data that I want to from anywhere, and AI's a huge help in being able to do that.
21:46
Um- Cloud NC is somebody that we had gone with, and we went with them over other people purely because they were compliant, you know, for ITAR.
21:57
And that's most of our customers have some sort of export restriction of some kind.
22:02
So I, I have to be very careful about how we use these systems to make sure that we're staying compliant, because there's a lot of systems out there that you use them in default mode, you're in, you're in violation, and you have to do extra workarounds.
22:15
That's just part of being in the defense industrial base, I guess.
22:17
So that, that actually slows us down a lot from doing- Yeah a lot of true automation that, like, a regular non-ITAR, non-CMMC shop can do.
22:26
It, it's a lot.
22:27
Yeah, I mean, I, I've played around with, uh, the Cloud NC stuff, which is really cool, but I played around with it in Fusion, and Fusion is an ITAR, you know, re- I, it, isn't qualified for it.
22:38
And you know, it's, you go on their forums they say,"Well, if enough people are interested, we might, you know, release a version." You can do it in- So that's not gonna happen offline mode, but you can't use all the cloud connected stuff.
22:47
E- exactly.
22:48
And so you- Which is half of the why it's great.
22:50
Exactly.
22:51
So it's like, all right, you, you're, you've got these handcuffs there that complicate things.
22:56
So I, I mean, I think i- it, it sound, it makes perfect sense what you're doing.
23:00
I mean, that's where you've gotta try and tighten up some of those activities where it, it's not on the production side of it, but that's where you're costing money if you can't speed up those activities.
23:11
Right.
23:11
I mean, it's, it's exciting, certainly exciting to see.
23:14
So I, I guess, you know, you obviously, again, through your modernization, through kinda the growth, y- you're looking at, you know, uh, y- or you're seeing a lot of kinda this industrial technology that, you know, y- is developed in, I won't go as far as say academic environments, um, but in software environments versus kinda that real world, the, the rubber meets the road type of situation of an actual shop floor.
23:41
What has been your experience with some of that?
23:46
Um, I mean, it's just a lot of these systems weren't designed for a shop floor.
23:53
There's, there's a lot of people out there that are, that are trying to solve those and sell s- serving dedicated things for shops, but they come with a big, big, big price tag, and we're small enough we can't eat that price tag.
24:06
You know?
24:06
Like, I, I would love to have paperless parts.
24:08
I cannot afford them.
24:10
They are way insanely too expensive.
24:12
Um, that would, that would help us out, but it's, it's too much to bite off.
24:17
You know, there's the...
24:19
Like ProShop ERP, for example, they were built by a machine shop.
24:23
They decided to stop being a machine shop and go full software.
24:26
Super helpful in an AS9100 environment, but again, it feels like some of these platforms that exist are just not meant for a modern shop, where we're trying to make all the back-end systems automated.
24:38
So the experience has been build it ourself, you know?
24:42
Interesting.
24:43
That's the other reason of doing, like, Odoo, for example.
24:45
Um, my business partner, Ethan Avalon with Avalon ERP, we've been writing our own modules for Odoo.
24:52
We can host it locally on our own server so it's compliant as well.
24:55
Same thing, like I can't use it just on the web live over the world.
24:59
Doesn't...
25:00
It's not compliant.
25:01
So it's a lot of work Yeah.
25:06
I, I mean, I, I think that's fair.
25:07
We, uh, previous guests, I don't recall who it was, we were having that conversation of you, you have a lot of these systems that are built kind of targeting these major conglomerates, Fortune 500 types, and that's great, and then they decide they wanna go after smaller, you know, segments, you know, that, that kind of small, medium shop.
25:28
But the, the tactics and kind of that price point- That's so hard it, it, it doesn't work.
25:34
Like, it's just, it's not there, and I think you, you made a very interesting point of we're trying to be a modern machine shop.
25:40
I think one of the challenges that we've seen is what the m- modern job shop looks like is not clearly defined or accepted across the board.
25:49
So w- y- you've got a bunch of people trying to aim for different targets.
25:54
Unfortunately, a lot of those are not necessarily on the f- shop floor, really understanding what is required to take it to that next level.
26:03
Yeah.
26:03
I mean, that's, that's really it.
26:04
You get a lot of buyers out there that just don't understand this, the whole thing.
26:11
Like, what we're really trying to do, they just need their parts and they need them now, and they need them at 100% quality.
26:19
But they, they don't care.
26:21
They don't care what we're trying to do, that we're in a rural area, that we are struggling to find enough people, that, you know, we We're willing to take a lot of work'cause it's not the most optimal stuff.
26:31
They just like,"Yeah, quote me these parts." And we're like,"Well, we have nothing better to do, so we're gonna try to make these.
26:37
Probably not the best fit for us." And that's cost us a lot over this year.
26:42
You know, we're, um, we're shifting directions in our sales strategies too right now.
26:47
It's a big, big undertaking of like, we only wanna do, like, orders of 30 parts or more.
26:55
Anything less than that, we're just telling you,"Go away." And I might make exceptions for, like, 10 to 30 parts but, in general- You know, we're, we're finding that in a shop like us where we're trying to serve everybody, when we're trying to serve people that need one part, I, I'm ha- it's a big struggle to serve prototype guys.
27:14
I can't do it'cause I don't have a dedicated prototype division, right?
27:18
I need an available- Yep machinist on an available machine that's not booked for work to do rapid prototyping, and that's very expensive'cause they're just an overhead cost to sit there and exist for very little turnaround.
27:28
A- and y- you gotta keep those spindles moving or else you're not making money.
27:32
No, exactly.
27:33
So it's, it's kinda that, that trade-off of, well, I'd love to take that work, love to support what you're doing.
27:38
The economics just don't make sense sometimes, unfortunately.
27:41
Yeah.
27:42
So there, there's a, another project that you've been, uh, working on.
27:46
You wanna, you wanna tell us a little bit about that?
27:49
Yeah.
27:49
Uh, so it's called Maratron.
27:53
Um, our first chipset we're hoping to do is called the MCM1, and I really have seen the need for an American version of the ESP32, you know, WiFi, Bluetooth chipset that any developer can grab and use in any kind of IoT or automation project they want.
28:14
You know, I've been flashing ESP32s ever since they came out, um, in all kinds of different places.
28:23
And even up to this year, I went to Reindustrialized Summit, and Knox Metals was hosting a hackathon.
28:33
I heard you, uh, did pretty good there.
28:35
Yeah.
28:35
Yeah, yeah.
28:36
Ended up, uh, winning that deal.
28:38
There's a TikTok out there somewhere with me holding a hilariously large game show-sized check.
28:44
There you go.
28:44
Congrats.
28:45
That was a blast.
28:45
Thanks.
28:47
Um, you know, but I did so with this little guy right here.
28:50
That's a Chinese chipset.
28:54
I'm re-industrializing America doing cool things at a place whose whole story is re-industrializing our metal supply with Chinese chipsets.
29:07
And so- The simplest thing out there with everybody else, that's our only choice.
29:10
Yeah.
29:11
There isn't a great choice.
29:13
Like yeah, there's, there's a lot of other chips out there.
29:15
They cost more money or, you know, the same problem is that they are controlled by foreign entities.
29:23
Um, you have like Qualcomm for example, that they're in a lot of defense products, but same thing.
29:31
They're not- that's Taiwan, right?
29:34
Why are we not bringing more of this stuff to the United States, to these foundries?
29:40
And the answer is they are.
29:41
They're building it.
29:42
They're building the capacity.
29:43
That's gonna take a lot of time to shift.
29:45
Yep.
29:46
And in the meantime- It's not a, not a quick switch in the meantime, nobody has something that's available for the next generation of people that are interested in this.
29:55
You know, I want, I want these in the hands of college kids, of high schoolers, of anybody that wants to grab a chipset and play with it because it's fully controlled by us.
30:04
And my biggest goal with it, I think the real innovation, you know, there's, there's a lot of open chipsets out there, but it's old processes, old technology, old silicon.
30:16
It's not modern cutting edge stuff, and it's not fully open source when you get to the radio aspect.
30:22
Everybody's using someone else's radio IP.
30:25
You know, the ESP32 doesn't even use their own radio.
30:28
That's a Fran- a French radio with the company, uh, CEVA.
30:32
Like I'm using a Chinese chip with a French radio because that's the best that there is.
30:39
You know, I can be FCC compliant while giving you the ability to write your own firmware on your own radio while still holding within the FCC grant really.
30:48
I think that that's a new approach, and that's gonna be challenging to get through, but it is entirely possible.
30:55
You know, we're in the middle of raising for this.
30:57
Um, I've spoken with quite a few investors, VCs.
31:02
I have quite a few more meetings coming up this week.
31:04
We're really in the middle of it.
31:06
And- You know, uh, there's, there's an infinite number of applications for this, just like the ESP32.
31:15
You could put it in a smart toaster.
31:17
You could put it in your washing machine.
31:19
You could put it in a, a doorbell camera, or you can put it on a motion controller on your little CNC laser or your industrial automation.
31:28
Like, there's infinite uses And w- and right now we rely on China That's it.
31:34
You know?
31:34
Yeah And if it's not China, it's, it's still, it's an, it's a more expensive chip that is still somebody else's control.
31:39
It's not fully open to the American public to fully audit every aspect about it, where it came from, where it was made, and, and that's it.
31:50
But at the end of the day, I'm still handing you all the keys to your own board.
31:54
You can do whatever you want with it after you receive it, but I'm gonna ship it with the signed keys that I ship it to you with so you know that it left my facility securely before you received it.
32:04
So it's, it's a different approach And I'm not promising that I'm gonna be selling a$2 chip.
32:12
I, I'm not.
32:12
But I think it's totally possible to be sub-20 bucks.
32:17
Wow.
32:17
Yeah.
32:18
I, I think it all boils down to who I get for customers and chip volumes.
32:24
I mean- That's the name of the game with this stuff there's no reason I couldn't have it near ESP32 pricing.
32:29
But it, it all depends on who the buyers are.
32:33
So I, I, you know, I know, uh, w- we could go on on this for a bit, but, uh, kinda last question on this is what led you to, to this new mission?
32:42
What, what led you to kind of deciding, hey, we've gotta address this too?
32:45
'Cause you're busy, you know, with Miltech.
32:47
I mean, you, you got plenty going on there, re-industrializing and rebuilding our, our actual machining capacity here.
32:53
But to take this on, it's huge.
32:55
It's awesome.
32:55
I love it.
32:56
But what, what drove you to that?
32:58
Um, well, yeah, it's, it's a lot, but I have a great team around me at, at Miltech.
33:04
Um, you know, as the CTO there, I'm, I mean, I'm not on the shop floor pushing buttons.
33:08
Honestly, I don't know how to run a CNC machine.
33:10
I know how to fix them.
33:11
I know how to change the parameters.
33:13
I know how to maintenance them.
33:14
I don't know which button to push to actually run it.
33:17
I know everything else about them, and that's why I rely on my team.
33:20
Do you know what?
33:20
Those are all pretty important tasks, though.
33:22
Well, yeah, it is.
33:23
You know, and so one of the biggest things that led me to this, you know, I, I've had some development projects lately where I ran into the absolute limits of what I could do on an ESP device, and I was hitting a firmware wall.
33:36
I, I couldn't do anything further.
33:38
I was like,"Well, darn this black box closed RF thing that I can't..." Like, I wanna do more.
33:44
I was doing some Wi-Fi sensing stuff, pretty, pretty state-of-the-art things, and, and I was just limited.
33:51
So I really got into it, and I was just joking, well, with my co-founder at the time.
33:55
I was like,"Well, what if we built our own ESP32?" And he's just like,"We should do it." I'm like,"That sounds really stupid.
34:02
What?
34:02
Like, why?" But like also- Absolutely, though like he says, we really should do it, but also, you know, there'll be a lot of pushback on, like, why are you bothering with this?
34:12
And, you know, it, it just kept going.
34:17
I, I think when I got to re-industrialize, I, I had just mentioned this idea to a lot of- A lot of people that I, I now call my friends that I met, there, either it was a large crowd from SF, a lot of founders there, a lot of industrialists there.
34:32
And when I just briefly mentioned that like, you know, I'm interested in trying to do this, they're like,"You have to.
34:37
You can't not do this." And I'm just like,"Well, okay." You, you've been drafted.
34:43
I've been drafted.
34:44
You've been drafted.
34:45
Well, that is awesome.
34:47
I, I mean, I'm, I, I'm excited.
34:48
What, you know, when we exchanged messages the other week and you had mentioned that, I was like,"Holy cow, this is gonna be awesome." I'm al- still just blown away with how much you've got going on.
34:58
But, uh, you know, really, really incredible stuff.
35:02
Um, I know obviously, I, I'll throw the, uh, websites up here on the banner for everyone to see, but for anyone looking for another way to get in touch with you, other than the websites, where can they find you?
35:15
Hit me up on X.
35:17
Um, you can find me@photonCMNDR.
35:20
You can find me on LinkedIn too.
35:22
Um, or if you go to the MilTech or Americron website, you can, uh, hit that button to talk to us.
35:30
S- I'll get your messages.
35:32
Awesome.
35:32
Awesome.
35:33
Well, Cole, thank you so much for joining us today.
35:36
This has been awesome.
35:37
I can't wait to see, you know, what you're, what you end up doing with all your projects with MilTech and the boards.
35:43
Uh, this is gonna be, you know, y- you're doing big things, so thank you for that, and obviously thank you for joining us today.
35:49
This has been great.
35:50
Yeah.
35:51
Thank you.
35:51
Appreciate you having me.
35:52
And, and to all you listening, thank you for tuning in to the Reforge podcast, whether we're talking robotics on the factory floor, policy that actually moves the needle, or the next generation of American makers like Cole, our goal is always the same: to prove that reindustrializing America isn't just possible, it's happening right now and it's pivotal.
36:10
If you enjoy the episode, make sure you subscribe and follow@thereforgepod everywhere and check out thereforgepodcast.com for more, including our Seven Steps to Reindustrialization.
36:21
Till next time, I'm Colin, and this is the Reforge podcast.
36:29
Thanks for tuning in to The Reforged Podcast.
36:31
Make sure to like, subscribe and follow us on all of our social media@thereforgedpod.
36:37
We will see you next time