Edward Mehr
@EdwardMehr • 11,036 subscribers
Building high-mix high-volume future with robots and AI @machinalabs_
Shorts
Videos
I want to hear all the competing theses for how manufacturing happens in space. My current view: The first thing we'll manufacture in space won't be spacecraft. It'll be hydrocarbons. We need fuel and food. Survival before sophistication. For a long time, most hardware will still be shipped from Earth. Manufacturing will mostly mean repair, maintenance, and replacement of spare parts by astronauts maybe robots. 1000s of Starships leaving with lots of spare parts every 18 month. So the real challenge isn't producing known parts. It's dealing with the unexpected. Every settlement, station, ship, or habitat will eventually break in ways nobody predicted. New missions will create needs nobody anticipated. Waiting months for a launch window is not a viable supply chain. That implies, space manufacturing cannot begin with giant, specialized factories. It starts with highly versatile systems capable of making many different things from limited feedstocks. Multi-purpose robots. Flexible. General-purpose manufacturing cells. In other words, the opposite of most factories today. My bet is that space manufacturing evolves as a network of distributed robotic job shops and microfactories, not monolithic production plants. The manufacturing systems that win early because they can repair the unexpected will become the industrial legacy of space. When demand eventually grows large enough for mass production, those flexible systems will already be everywhere so that is the paradigm that will scale to large volumes. What's the strongest argument against this?
Edward Mehr16,926 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
There are a few misconceptions about Machina. I am gonna clarify in this thread: 1. “Machina makes Roboforming machines.” Partially true. But that’s like saying Apple makes keyboards. We make the Robocraftsman. A robotic manufacturing platform designed to perform many manufacturing operations with minimal or ideally zero geometry and material specific tooling. We started with forming. Roboforming Today the system also does: - trimming - hole making - slotting - QC/inspection And we’re will be adding: - heat treatment - forging - assembly - additive - and more. The long term goal is simple: One robotic platform. Many operations. Software defined manufacturing.
Edward Mehr21,400 görüntüleme • 2 ay önce
The biggest enabler in hardware innovation is abstracting manufacturing from design. We once tried a lazy solution by offloading manufacturing to China, without fully considering the consequences. Now Robotics and AI offer a long-term solution. It will lead to Cambrian explosion of hardware products. That sets the stage for a diverse, exponential future where humanity explores the universe. Because freedom of expression shouldn’t be confined to words, it needs a physical form.
Edward Mehr17,728 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce
Daha fazla içerik yok.