- This could be the factory of the future. Actually, this could be several
factories of the future. - We have automotive parts
manufactured in the morning, and then aerospace parts
manufactured in the afternoon. - This is called 'roboforming.' It's a new way of shaping metal by using robots and
artificial intelligence. Why do this? - We're still manufacturing things the same way we were making
them a hundred years ago. To make the next leap and keep
up with the digital world, we need to accelerate the physical world, and that requires for manufacturing to go to the next level. - Right now, most metal manufacturing is sheet metal forming, basically, stamping metal into a shape. - Sheet metal industry right
now is a 250-billion industry. Most metal parts you see
day-to-day are sheet metal parts. You're driving in a freeway in your car, you're basically sitting
in a sea of sheet metal. Or you're sitting in an airplane, it's basically a sheet metal aluminum can. Even electronics, all sheet
metal, sheet metal, sheet metal. - Sheet metal forming is fast and cheap, but there's a downside. - You have to build a factory
to manufacture the parts, and most factories are
very specifically built for the design you're
trying to manufacture. It's not easily changed;
it's very expensive. - The uniformity of our world is an artifact of the assembly line and the way we manufacture things. But this technology could create a world where custom manufacturing could be just as affordable and efficient. - I'm working on a product that allows you to design a new car and start manufacturing
it today if you want. - Our scanning technology
allows us to look at the part and form those without
the need for stamping, the same agile way that craftsman did it. - This is some serious metal. Actually, it's heavy metal. No, I mean it's really heavy. It's, it's like a 1/4"-thick steel plate. Stick around to meet the robots
that will build the future. This is "Hard Reset," a series about rebuilding
our world from scratch. We came to Chatsworth, which
sounds like a fancy butler, but is in fact a city in the
greater Los Angeles area. Why here? Because that's where Machina Labs is, a company that is trying to
change the way we make things. This is Ed. He founded Machina Labs
because, basically, he wanted a robot blacksmith. I mean, who doesn't? - Manufacturing used
to be arts and crafts. So back in the day, they
used to 'bomb form,' and bomb forming is a process where a craftsman sits behind
an automated hammer and slowly deforming a
sheet of metal into a shape, kind of almost conquering physics, right? They can incrementally deform with a limited tool set that they have- a bunch of hammers,
maybe few handheld tools- but how can they use the
set of tools that they have in a creative way to get to a final part? So what we are trying
to do now is can we do what those craftsmen did back then, but using robotics and our system, and form those without
the need for stamping, the same agile way that
craftsman did it in the past? Yeah, so- Can you tell Cell 1 folks, when they open the clamps,
they don't drop it? - That's okay. This pause gives us a moment to appreciate Ed's magnificent beard. It's just a masterpiece of beardsmanship. Yeah. Anyway, let's move on. - I come from the additive world. I was in charge of a
team that was building a very large envelope metal 3D printer for aerospace applications. - Ed is being modest. He was helping build a rocket for a little startup called SpaceX. - So when I was at SpaceX, we had this very large,
complicated problem: We were building large tanks. Think of a tank for a
rocket that's 22-feet-tall and 10 feet in diameter. And when we were working on Falcon, and Falcon 9 specifically, the diameter of Falcon 9
tank could never increase, because there was so much tooling
went into that shaft floor that was specifically
built for that diameter. So if you want to add
more fuel to that vehicle, you had to just make it taller. Well, you can never make
it larger in diameter; you couldn't make the rocket fatter. So even a company like
SpaceX is this challenged in terms of like once you
lock in into that design, you kinda have to stick with it. In order for us to build process, we have to take that
concept of craftsmanship and see if we can scale it. And once you're looking at the detail, it's actually very complicated. 'Cause what happens in
the mind of a craftsman or a sheet shaper is pretty complicated. It has dexterity of the robot, so we needed robotics to
replicate the dexterity of their hands, but then we also need to replicate what's happening in their mind. - Instead of just stamping out a shape onto these metal sheets,
these robots push on it to create whatever shape you want. Actually, one robot pushes
and the other supports. The support part is super important, because if you just pushed from one side, you'd get a big stretched out mess. Using two effectors allows
you to control exactly how and where the metal bends. This is Michael. No beard. - It's a bit of a dance between two very synchronized robot fingers that are slightly offset with each other, and they're kind of gently
pinching and rolling metal and extruding it. And when we actually
form parts on the cell, we're not just moving
the metal out in space, we're actually thinning it
out to achieve the angles that it needs to achieve to form a part. - This beautifully
orchestrated dance allows the robots to slowly nudge the metal into whatever shape you want. You might think this is
pretty straightforward, but people have been trying
to do this for a long time. Well, not quite that long. - This method of sheet forming, you know, people have
started looking into it since the invention of CNC. Have been doing research
in this area for the past, I would say, actively,
maybe past 20 years, but loosely, the past 30, 40 years. - A blacksmith doesn't
just hammer on metal. They are constantly
observing how each blow has changed the object, and adjusting it, changing the way they hold
it or strike it next time. This is a feedback loop that
requires tremendous skill, patience, and intelligence. And until recently, robots
weren't really intelligent enough to both manipulate the metal and observe and adjust to
how it has been manipulated. - From a hardware standpoint, what we're doing has been
possible for a long time, but from a software standpoint
it was very, very hard. So our access to GPUs, our access to neural network type models were incredibly helpful for us in sort of being the
brain of the craftsmen. And we will even touch
material with our robots, sense what's happening, and then feed that back into models that can essentially do
what a craftsman is doing. It's like, "Okay, this alloy is feeling a little bit rigid today. We're gonna have to
compensate in this direction." - The robots here are constantly sensing and compensating for super complex forces, which has only been made
possible by machine learning. In fact, the intelligence
that makes this happen is the real star. These robots are actually
just industry-standard robots. - What we do here uses
a lot of off-the-shelf and commodity hardware. In fact, one of the really
successful cell systems that we have in the building, I'm not gonna point out which one, but we bought it on eBay,
actually, the robot. - I was told you bought these on eBay. - I didn't buy 'em on eBay. - You didn't sound defensive at all when you answered that, by the way. - Well, no, I mean I could have. I didn't buy 'em. The person who was selling
these also sells stuff on eBay. I think that's where probably
the confusion came from. - Someone was just selling
one of these on eBay and we're like, "Okay,
like, let's save some money. Let's try it out." One of the joints has a
bit of a like a lunk in it and it's a little like dangerous to use, but it works, right? The darker orange ones are really old. I think they started
out roughly this color. - But yeah, we didn't buy 'em on eBay. - I got the sense that
the guys from KUKA see what you're doing with their arms, and they feel like you guys are sort of like well beyond
recommended use parameters. - These robots are not created
for their intended use, but yes, definitely. It's not an application
where they're like, "Oh, you can use robots for
sheet forming," you know? And I remember in the first early days, when I started talking
about that's what I wanted to use these robots for, they're like, "Not doable. Don't do it. It doesn't make sense." - So an off-the-shelf robot arm isn't quite everything
you need to do this. You also need an end effector that is strong enough to survive the tremendous amount
of pressure being put on the sheet metal. So you make all these in-house? - Yes. All of these are made in-house. So we are, to some extent,
we are vertically integrated- but allows 'em to basically
iterate on designs really fast. The substrates, usually it's
out of very hard material that doesn't deform under pressure. So think of like carbide and tungsten. - Wow, that's heavy. - They're a pretty heavy material. - Wow. That is not light. One thing I would love for
you to show me, actually, on the arm, is sort of like where does the standard KUKA arm end and your hardware begin? - So you see in this robotic arm, anything after the
orange is basically ours. Now, there are a little bit
of modification we might put in terms of sensors that added
to the rest of the robots, to capture some of the
things we need to capture. Obviously, we also
manufacture the full frame. So everything on the frame,
hydraulic clamps, the cooling, everything is also built
by us and designed by us. - The sensors on these
arms make them sensitive to the amount of force they're exerting and where they are in space. They can even scan the geometry of the object they're shaping to make sure it's coming out correctly. I'm surprised at how
like gentle they seem, although I know there's tremendous
force being applied here, but it's sort of, it's almost
hypnotic to watch them. - Yeah. I think right now, we're
applying 2,000 newtons on one of the sides. So 2,000 newtons is around,
basically, like 500 pounds. And then on the other side, you have another 2,000, 1,500 newtons. - A newton is equivalent to about 102 grams of weight in your hand in Earth's gravity, which is equivalent to
about 6.58 Fig Newtons. So 2,000 newtons of force is about 13,161 Fig Newtons
stacked on top of each other. I am hungry. When is lunch? Anyway, so now that these robots have the intelligence they need, what will they build? The world runs on heavy metal. Oh sheet, I mean sheet metal. It runs on sheet metal. Actually, heavy metal is a
contaminant in groundwater, you don't want that. Look at the appliances around you. Or look at cars, or airplanes, sinks, bathtubs, ducts, facades, roofing. We use it to make so much stuff. We've been doing it for a long time, and we're pretty good at it. - Manufacturing technologies
that are used widely, most of them haven't changed in the past, I would say 60-70 years. The way we manufactured Model T at Ford, the first mass-produced car, is the same way we're
manufacturing Model S doors. Make it very giant, archaic, press that just does this with a lot of force. Put a sheet in between
it and just stamp it. - Each of the parts that get stamped out
requires a huge machine, which requires a huge investment and a long time to set up. - When we were talking with
some of the folks in automotive, a plant that manufactures a vehicle, we're looking at a $150 million investment in just equipment. These are plants that are like
a half-a-million square feet. And then you need to also
put in stamping presses that are like three-stories-tall, and then three-stories-down in the ground. - A hundred and fifteen million dollars seems like a lot of money just to keep Eminem busy during the day. I don't even want to try and convert that to what it would cost in
terms of Mom's spaghettis. Still hungry, guys. Oh my God, when is lunch? - You kind of need to be a
multinational corporation to make something out of sheet metal. That's boring to me. I don't want the design power for the things that I
use to sit in the hands of probably some of the organizations that might be least ready
to design the next thing. - Ford famously said,
"Everybody can have any car, as long as it's black, because I need to change my factory if you want something custom, and I will never be able to do that." - Manufacturing on an
assembly line locks you into a specific way of doing things. Making adjustments like
changing colors means changing or stopping the assembly
line, which is expensive. The uniformity of modern manufacturing is what has made it fast and affordable. - If you look at World War II, what enabled the United States to win that wasn't necessarily superior technology, but much faster rate of production. We could make tanks faster
than they could destroy it. - But with technology like this, we could see fast,
affordable manufacturing that was also customizable and flexible, even on something that rolled
off of an assembly line. - One of the things we're working on now is the Anvil project: It's our platform for
custom car body designs. So what you're seeing is
like a very early fit up of this hood that we formed. And you can see it's still very raw, but it is our first attempt at actually getting
something on the truck. - The team here is building a totally custom vehicle, replacing all the visible
panels of this truck as a way to see how their
manufacturing process can integrate with existing products. - We're not redesigning
the car from the bottom up. We are doing the thing that most people that are interested in
custom cars wanna do, which is, "I wanna make
the outside look badass." So we're going from a truck
that you would see on the road to a truck that you would see in like a sci-fi movie, basically. - So if you're making a new model of car, you could send the part specifications to a roboforming factory and they could start
making parts right away, instead of taking years and
hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a new factory. And if you want those parts
to be customized or changed, that's as easy as loading in a new file with the custom shape. - By using this type
of robotic technology, we want the cost of this custom car to essentially approach the
cost of a commercial car. - This project is also a way for them to let the machines practice
making parts like this- and I mean that literally. Because these manufacturing
cells are powered by AI, they learn in a way that is similar to us, trying, failing, and trying again. And once they've practiced it a few times, they begin to make it perfectly. - Whenever I interview
candidates to join our team who come from like traditional
aerospace companies that are more research-focused, they are appalled that we
don't like simulate stuff before we do it. - Custom parts have more
uses than cool hot rods. This is also important for repairing things like exotic airplanes or equipment that they don't
make parts for anymore. If I brought you in a part where I'm like, "I need this aircraft wing. I can't get it made anywhere," can you scan that and
then kind of create a mesh that then can be duplicated? And what does that process look like? - That's exactly one of
the things we're doing for the customers right now. Sometimes there's a part that comes in that they don't even have a drawing for, we have to scan the part
and rebuild the CAD, and it's part of our stack. You can scan it, it automatically generates the CAD, and we use that to
basically pass it through our path-planning software to figure out what kind of a
path will generate that part. We lost a lot of these
manufacturing technologies. We don't have those manufacturing plans. We went more toward bespoke
planes that are very expensive, and million-dollar fighter
jet that it's very advanced, it can do a lot of things, but once it gets damaged,
very hard to fix it; it'll take years. So what we are working with
a lot of times with DOD is can we bring this
industrial capability back so that we can maintain, like, we can fix a plane
in two days, three days, as opposed to four years. - At this stage, there
are still limitations to roboforming. It's not as accurate as it
needs to be for every job, but it's getting better all the time. It's also getting faster. Beyond just being quick
to adapt to new forms, roboforming can also work
with materials like titanium and other alloys that
were never compatible with sheet metal forming before. That means it'll open up
manufacturing capabilities we've just never had. I mean, if you ever wanted to drive above the speed of sound, you kinda need a titanium truck. So I mean, really, for science, I think it's a necessary
step you guys need to take. - I think so. I think we need to design
some sort of demonstration of titanium and do
something goofy with it. - Yeah. I think it's only, it's only fair. - Yeah, I agree.
- Yeah. - Right now, we work with a
lot of big marquee customers, but ultimately, I think what
our team is excited about is what we call 'democratization
of manufacturing.' Get this in the hands of the people who couldn't make these parts
possible without joining, like, somebody like a SpaceX
or Hondas of the world. Can we enable those guys? Because those are the
guys who's gonna have the next generation of
big ideas that, you know, that we want to look into
and make, hopefully make. Those tools are gonna be very crucial and will change the landscape. - So what will it mean when our factories are as capable and
adaptable as a blacksmith? So, picture a scenario where we rebuilt our manufacturing
capabilities from scratch. That world would include a lot of different ways of making things, 3D printing, machining,
injection molding, casting, you name it. But sheet metal forming will always be a massive part of that world. So, how would it all work? - You know, I imagine a
world where, in the future, you as a designer, you
can go onto a portal, upload your design, get guided through how you can manufacture it in the most efficient way, hit submit and say, "Okay, I
want 20 of these in 20 days in Los Angeles, California." And the right facility, that doesn't look like
traditional factories, it more look like data centers that has bunch of these robotic systems that can be programmed to
do multiple operations. I think that would be the
ultimate vision where we, I think manufacturing needs to go. - But manufacturing this way is about more than just speed and cost, it's also about proximity. Roboforming factories are
smaller and more adaptable, and that could change where we build them. - If you go to Midwest, there are areas where we had large manufacturing plants, manufacturing certain type of the car. Once that car was obsolete, that whole economy around
that whole town died, 'cause that factory could
not easily be retooled. It was cheaper to just let it go and go start somewhere else from scratch. But once we move to this new paradigm where you can configure the
factory to do different things, you can distribute it for one thing, it can be very closer to the consumers because it can be very adaptable. You're gonna have much
more stable communities. They're gonna manufacture
the things they need very close to where they live, and they can constantly be adaptable to changes in needs in those communities. - When it doesn't take hundreds of millions of dollars
to set up manufacturing, smaller companies will be able to make products like cars or appliances. It will mean more ideas, more creativity, and more personality is infused
into the world we live in. - The reason I care about manufacturing is at the end of the day,
manufacturing is still an art. You know, it's a form of self-expression. You are conquering the
physics of the world to create something that
truly expresses what you want and what you are about.
