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AMT Tech Trends: Pennies from Heaven

Episode 115: The gang talks about dogs and other furry friends. Elissa reports that Japan’s about to land on the moon. Ben discusses stainless steel corrosion. Stephen closes with an “ICYMI” on everything we may have missed with the Boeing situation.
Mar 22, 2024

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Produced by Ramia Lloyd

Ramia Lloyd:

Welcome to the Tech Trends Podcast, where we discuss the latest manufacturing technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by the MFG Conference. I am for Ramia Lloyd, and I'm here with...

Elissa Davis:

I'm Elissa Davis.

Stephen LaMarca:

Stephen LaMarca.

Benjamin:

I'm Benjamin. Hi, guys. Ramia, I heard we did something with dogs and 3D printing.

Ramia Lloyd:

Oh, my gosh. Last week, MC Michael Mark and I took a little road trip to New Jersey. We did a rockstar shoot for the 24 ad campaign, but we also went to go visit dive designs and it was so much fun. They're a 3D printing company and they do 3D pets, and also Willow. I think that's just called Willow, which is very nice, by the way. But 3D pets, I don't know if you've saw the big billboard or the Apple commercial a couple of years ago. They were recording on the phone and the dog, so freaking cute. I got to meet all the dogs and they were so much fun. But they 3D print prosthetics for animals who need prosthetics.

Elissa Davis:

Prosthesis.

Ramia Lloyd:

Yeah. That's the word I was looking for, but I didn't want to-

Benjamin:

I thought you were about to say prostate

Ramia Lloyd:

Low-key, I was about to, but I knew that wasn't right. So, I said pro... Anyway. 3D print prosthesis for pets, and they were so freaking cute. I'm so excited to see them. The whole interview was amazing. The dog trip is the one... He's a Rottweiler. And he's just the fluffiest thing I've ever seen.

Elissa Davis:

Freaking love Rottweilers.

Ramia Lloyd:

He's just walking around with the cutest little face. And then, after we recorded, we all sat down and they were just sunbathing. And I was like, "This is my happy place. I never want to leave."

Benjamin:

A sunbathing dog is very cute to look at.

Ramia Lloyd:

He was so cute. And then, the way they 3D print and they showed us where they print all the stuff in-house. And it's just so cool to see how... They do a...

Benjamin:

A 3D scan.

Ramia Lloyd:

Yeah. The scan. And then, it just prints. It's the fricking, coolest thing. Also, Willow is a new thing that they have. And they 3D print cheese. It's like a 3D printed base...

Stephen LaMarca:

I love this.

Ramia Lloyd:

Right? It's a 3D printed base. And then, the tree itself has a felt and sound absorbing. It's so cool. We're getting one for IMTS and Formnext.

Stephen LaMarca:

What is Willow?

Ramia Lloyd:

It's like 3D printed furniture, technically, for office spaces and hotels and stuff.

Stephen LaMarca:

It's a brand?

Ramia Lloyd:

Yes, it's a brand under Dive.

Stephen LaMarca:

Okay.

Ramia Lloyd:

Yeah. And they 3D print office furniture and stuff, but one of their current things is 3D printed trees, which is so cool. We're getting one, hopefully for the studio, and we're going to put it in the corner and it's going to be on the main stage at IMTS.

Stephen LaMarca:

That's incredible. My dog, Charlie, his first love was another female Golden Doodle named Willow.

Benjamin:

That's interesting.

Ramia Lloyd:

I love that.

Benjamin:

That's a fun connection.

Stephen LaMarca:

But they moved to Richmond.

Ramia Lloyd:

Oh, no. Also, the Reneé Rapp song.

Elissa Davis:

And the Taylor Swift song.

Ramia Lloyd:

Yeah. Look at that. So many.

Benjamin:

A lot of song references. And I do like their life cycle. It's not just the end result of the 3D printing prosthetics. They have to design, and then manufacture and make sure it fits. They're basically making a custom part every single time.

Ramia Lloyd:

Every time it's custom.

Benjamin:

So, it's fascinating that they're able to capture what the negative should be, and then they reverse engineer of what the positive should be. And then, they print from there. So, it's a really interesting process.

Ramia Lloyd:

One of the coolest shit I've ever-

Elissa Davis:

And I think as it becomes more mainstream, it could also be really helpful for animals in shelters because animals with things like missing limbs or things where they need a prosthetic are harder to adopt because they have medical issues. Or the person has to pay for the prosthetic out of pocket. So, yeah. I volunteer at the animal shelter, so I'm all for that.

Benjamin:

Nice.

Stephen LaMarca:

Back in the day, I went to a conference called East Conference in Arkansas, that was basically a really advanced public school science fair using manufacturing technologies. And I think one of the winners, at least in the top three, was this little boy named Arkhem. He only has one leg, he was born that way. And insurance is really tough these days and he was only granted by his insurance company a new prosthetic every three years.

And when you're a little kid, you're constantly growing and every three years isn't going to cut it. You're going to want to print... Anyway. His teacher helped him get into 3D printing and learn CAD. And they did a 3D scan of his shorter leg and he's been printing a prosthetic for himself every couple months instead of every three years. It was really cool. I wonder where he is now. I hope he's doing manufacturing things.

Benjamin:

I think he is.

Ramia Lloyd:

Hopefully.

Stephen LaMarca:

Something similar.

Benjamin:

On a related tangent, I need some help naming a future dog. There's a dog on the horizon. Where in the horizon is, I'm not sure yet. But I was wondering, what are your thoughts on naming pets? Let's talk about that.

Elissa Davis:

There's a multitude of factors.

Stephen LaMarca:

Oh, man.

Elissa Davis:

One being breed. Second being, is it a rescue? Is it a purebred? Because rescues come with names.

Stephen LaMarca:

That's true. So, mine will be a rescue.

Elissa Davis:

And some names fit, right? My parents' dog, his name is Rex. They got him when he was about two years old. He came with the name Rex, and it fits him. It's great. His sister's name, not his biological sister, the dog we adopted a few months later, her name is Regina, but her original name was Chicago, and we changed that. And then, there's also... My cat. My cat's name is Boots because she has a disability, which means she walks kind of funny. She lifts her feet when she walks, and so her name is Boots because she walks like she was wearing boots on. So, I think when you look at an animal... One, when you look at it, you'll know when it's the right animal. You will know when it's the right-

Ramia Lloyd:

Absolutely.

Elissa Davis:

And two, you'll know if their name fits them.

Benjamin:

Okay.

Elissa Davis:

That's my opinion. But just don't give it a weird, human name.

Benjamin:

Jim?

Ramia Lloyd:

Kevin.

Benjamin:

Kevin?

Ramia Lloyd:

This is a shout-out to Melissa.

Benjamin:

That's the dog from Up.

Ramia Lloyd:

Mo named her dog Kevin.

Elissa Davis:

It is.

Ramia Lloyd:

My best friend's husband name is Kevin.

Benjamin:

That's weird.

Ramia Lloyd:

So multiple times, I'm like, "Kevin." and everyone's confused.

Benjamin:

Okay.

Stephen LaMarca:

When we got Charlie during the pandemic, Melissa had wanted a goldendoodle for a very long time and I wasn't ready for another dog after my family dog's passing. But when I finally came to terms for us getting a dog, I came to it because I had recently heard the name Rakesh, which is a very common Indian name. And our friend and colleague, Shara, had told me one time that all Indian names have a meaning. So, I decided to look up the Hindi meaning for the name Rakesh, and I found out that the name Rakesh means Lord of the Full Moon.

Benjamin:

That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca:

And I'm like, "That is an amazing dog name."

Elissa Davis:

Absolutely.

Stephen LaMarca:

And I went to Melissa and was like, "We can get a dog under one condition. I get to name it." Because I was going to name this dog Rakesh. But to Elissa's point, we learned very quickly on the way home with young Charles, he was not a Rakesh.

Benjamin:

He's a Charlie.

Stephen LaMarca:

He's a Charlie. And that's the name Melissa always wanted. I want a name... I don't care if it's a boy or a girl, it's a perfect unisex name. We're naming him Charlie. And he's definitely a Charlie.

Benjamin:

Lesson learned, Melissa always wins.

Stephen LaMarca:

Happy spouse, happy house. That's the 2024 way of saying that, by the way.

Ramia Lloyd:

I got my dog at nine weeks old. She was a little tiny baby and it was a whole litter. They got the mom of the street when she was pregnant, so they had the litter. And their whole litter was like a pasta. They were pasta puppies. Her name is Gnocchi, and she had a brother named Farfalle, and Orzo, and Tortellini. And they were all so cute. But I was talking to my sister-in-law at the time, and I was like, "I don't know if I want to keep the name Nochi." And as soon as I saw her, I was like, that is a little pasta if I've ever seen one.

Elissa Davis:

Your dog looks like a gnocchi.

Ramia Lloyd:

She looks like a gnocchi. Especially when she was a little baby, she would always crawl up and I was like, "You look like a pasta. You look like a gnocchi."

Benjamin:

That's fun.

Elissa Davis:

It fits.

Stephen LaMarca:

Yeah. We've got a neighbor that has an Italian Whippet named Tony, short for rigatoni. And my friend up in Massachusetts, Kyle, he got a dog last year, or two years ago now, Ravi for ravioli. Dog looks like a ravioli.

Benjamin:

A little square ravioli.

Stephen LaMarca:

Little pudgy. Definitely looks like just a scoop of the filling that you put inside the pasta.

Elissa Davis:

My sister adopted an older dog and it's a tiny, little, scruffy, little black terrier mix. And it came with the name Nut, just Nut, nothing else. And they were like, "We're going to change it." They officially adopted her six months ago. They have not changed her name. And she kind of looks like a nut. But every time I tell people that their dog's name is Nut, they're like, "Is it short for something?" I call her nutter butter, because that's cuter.

Ramia Lloyd:

I would have six nicknames by now.

Elissa Davis:

My sister calls her nut butt.

Benjamin:

That's a great snack from the 90s.

Elissa Davis:

I literally just ate one.

Benjamin:

Did you?

Ramia Lloyd:

Name your dog Danimals.

Benjamin:

Danimals. Yeah.

Ramia Lloyd:

Dunkaroos.

Benjamin:

Dunkaroos.

Ramia Lloyd:

Yes.

Benjamin:

Name after snacks. That's pretty good. Ramia, can you tell us about today's sponsor?

Ramia Lloyd:

Manufacturing continues to grow at a rapid rate. Stay ahead of the curve at the MFG meeting this April. The MFG meeting is the ultimate gathering of manufacturing technology minds bringing together a community of solutions and solvers. Learn how to keep pace with growing demand, make lifelong connections and see what opportunities lie on the horizon. Go to amtonline.org/events to register.

Benjamin:

Awesome. Thanks, Ramia.

Ramia Lloyd:

Anytime.

Benjamin:

Stephen, things are moving on the test bed?

Stephen LaMarca:

Things are moving on the... Well, not literally. Will be soon, hopefully. We've made a lot of progress, Chloe and I have, with the help of Russ and his amazing project management skills, who hates project management. But Chloe's been tackling the software side of things. I've been tackling the hardware side of things. Chloe has our new Raspberry Pi 5 up and running with the MTConnect agent. And we're hopeful that the Raspberry Pi 5 is powerful enough to manage the agents for the entire test bed.

Benjamin:

That's cool.

Stephen LaMarca:

In the past we had a single Raspberry Pi per device on the test bed, and the most we had at one time was three Raspberry Pi's managing three devices, managing the data coming from three devices rather. But now, the Pi 5 has the agent running, and she's got the MTConnect adapter on our new Pocket NC. And I think she's probably going to wrap up this a week getting the MTConnect adapter on the [inaudible 00:11:49] rebel six, which is a big deal because that's a brand new... This robot is relatively new and it's never had an MTConnect to agent developed for it before.

So, we can put that in the history books, that the [inaudible 00:12:01] rebel six is now MTConnect ready if you go to MTConnect user portal, mtcup.org or something like that. It's like a wiki page for MTConnect things. But on the hardware side of things, we've got the difficult to find bolts. We use the nuclear option of McMaster-Carr to get the right spec hardware to mount the gripper to the end of arm tooling bracket. And now, we need the right hardware to get the bracket onto the end of the arm, which is going to be a lot easier. I actually saw the bolts the first time we were there, the first time I went to the hardware store, didn't think to grab them, like a dummy, because I wasn't worried about them at the time. I was worried about other hardware that was near impossible to get. That's the next step.

Then after that, the following step will be to source a 8 Pin GX connector to complete the cable that will connect the wired connection from the robot to the gripper. And then, the next step after that will be to function check the gripper. And then, the next step after that will be to design and produce soft jaws for the gripper. And then, we can figure out what the hell the robot's going to do.

Benjamin:

Fun.

Ramia Lloyd:

Grip stuff?

Stephen LaMarca:

Yeah.

Benjamin:

We have a bunch of scenarios in mind.

Stephen LaMarca:

We've got a lot of different plans. We've got a lot of plans in case all of the plans fail. It's a lot of backup plans. We've experienced a lot of failure. I'm really good at it.

Benjamin:

Iterations.

Elissa Davis:

Like Plankton and SpongeBob when he's got the big drawer full of plans, and it's just A through Z.

Stephen LaMarca:

I have not seen that, but I want to see it now.

Elissa Davis:

I think it's in the movie. I think it's in the SpongeBob movie.

Stephen LaMarca:

Okay.

Benjamin:

I've never seen the sponge movie.

Elissa Davis:

[inaudible 00:13:51] reference.

Benjamin:

That's okay. No.

Stephen LaMarca:

Transitioning to a bunch of things we found recently, Elissa found something where Japan's headed to the moon.

Elissa Davis:

Yes. Yeah. As you guys know, I have some history with Japan. I spent four years there as a kid, and I'm wearing my Yakota Air Force Base shirt today. So, I figure we should probably talk about Japan today.

Benjamin:

Absolutely.

Elissa Davis:

This is from Nikkei Asia. It's about two astronauts from Japan will set food on foot on the moon through the lunar exploration program led by NASA. So, this is under the Artemis program. And they'll be there by 2028. And this will be the first time since the Apollo program, since the 60s and 70s, they'll be putting someone on the moon. So, it's a pretty big deal. I'm pretty excited about it. They selected the candidates in 2023. Yeah.

Benjamin:

I like the fascinating... It's a collaborative approach, NASA's Artemis program along with Japan getting there, because they've had a pretty healthy space program also. And it's interesting that it's been such a long time... Everyone's talking about Mars, but getting to Moon is almost just as difficult. It's hard.

Ramia Lloyd:

It's still really cool.

Stephen LaMarca:

I mean, there's now a second country that's made it to the moon, India, in recent events.

Benjamin:

That's right.

Stephen LaMarca:

This is really exciting for me because, as proudly American as I am, I'm more proud of my small stint in science and education because I'm a big fan of scientific units, scientific standardized units of measurement. And I really can't stand that our manufacturing industry insists on using imperial units of measurement when you're programming manufacturing programs, G-code. I remember, really quickly, in 2016 when we got our first Pocket NC. It was like, I'm programming and measuring everything in millimeters. We're not... Inches? What are we? Animals? Are we barbarians? No, we're using scientific units. And then, that did not last long. There was maybe a week before using inches.

But I'm really excited to this, because for the longest time the argument for SAE or Imperial was, well, you know what? You can use millimeter. I don't care if it's the scientific standard, you can use millimeters once you've been to the moon. And it's like, yes, please get more countries on the moon that are our allies. But this makes me want to talk about air force things. Do you guys have a favorite fighter jet?

Elissa Davis:

No. I lived across the highway from the Air Force Base... I'm sorry. The Air Force Academy. So, we'd always see the Blue Angels fly over.

Benjamin:

Yeah. The F-18s for a while.

Elissa Davis:

That was pretty cool. They were very loud, and people would just literally pull off to the side of the road on the freeway and just watch the Blue Angels fly over for graduation.

Stephen LaMarca:

That's cool.

Elissa Davis:

Yeah.

Benjamin:

I mean, my old history with the military fighters was I used to build a lot of plastic model airplanes, like 1.48 scale and then went up from there. The F-14 is probably the most...

Stephen LaMarca:

Yeah. It's the American sweetheart.

Benjamin:

A giant, big old ball flying through the sky. I mean, the movable wings. Yeah. The B-1 also had movable wings too. That was very complex. So yeah, that's probably my favorite.

Elissa Davis:

Those are extreme.

It's definitely fascinating to me, though, that Japan has always been so technologically advanced and they haven't gone to the moon yet.

Benjamin:

Yeah.

Stephen LaMarca:

Well, it's because I think they're wrapped up in a lot of western red tape bureaucracy. Okay. My favorite fighter jet is the Japanese F-2, the Viper Zero. Which, as you might be able to tell from the name, is based off of the American F-16 Viper. If you call it the Fighting Falcon, you're a nerd. Everybody refers to it as the Viper. But the F-16 is probably my favorite because it's the most mass-produced, it's the most still technologically viable. It's still a viable aircraft today, even though it was made forever ago. Super high performance, super low cost, super low maintenance. And you can stuff all of the bombs on it.

Japan does what the Japanese do best. And what did they do to make the F-2? They took an F-16, put a wide body kit on it and they made the F-2 to put even more bombs on it. And the Japanese, as much as I like it, they don't like it as much as I do because they're like, "This cost us so much money." Because General Dynamics and everybody else who was involved with the F-16 was like, "If Japan does anything to it, they have to do it on our behalf. So, we have to yay or nay on any modifications they make, and we get the IP to it." They spent so much money on making the F-2 for something that was supposed to be a really inexpensive aircraft.

Benjamin:

That's where we're today. I found something on 3D printing. 316, stainless steel version. 316L, actually. It's supposed to corrosion resistant, so you can use it in harsh environments. It's not supposed to corrode. So, if you do see corrosion on 316s it's because of material coming off, like cutters or rollers, stuff like that. They've had an issue of 3D printing 316, getting porosity or mysterious pitting on the material itself. So, I found an article from physics.org on a research paper from Lawrence Livermore. Great facility over in the West Coast. They do a great amount of research in additive printing processes.

They discovered a common issue as they're printing, and it actually occurs in welding. They're getting corrosion caused by slag. It's extra material or oxidation throughout the printing process. And you'll see that on oil and gas where they actually use the slag as a protective barrier as they're welding these big parts. And they're using a couple of different processes and some other materials to help reduce this. So, that was very interesting where... Everyone's interested in titanium, in canal, but 316 has got some life, and it's a very... It's very useful. They talked about how useful it is in salt water conditions, so boats and naval facilities.

Stephen LaMarca:

Very popular in marine applications.

Benjamin:

Yeah. And we saw some very interesting... I've run across very interesting propeller designs recently where the propellers are moveable or counter rotating. So, there's a lot of innovation going on with the naval boats and stuff.

Stephen LaMarca:

I'll be honest, though, I think 316 is a little overrated unless we're talking about explicitly marine environments. Because where a lot of people are shopping for 316 parts and not taking this into salt water, 18-8 eight is going to be perfectly fine.

Benjamin:

I mean, the 300 series... Okay. Let's back up a little bit. The difference [inaudible 00:21:06] 316, there's a bunch of different grades. And a lot of it, the differences are the constituents between the two. So, you'll actually prefer one for its formability versus another that machine's better. There's a lot of minutiae. I agree. To get into the 300 series, you need to have a conversation of what is the best material. You could use 17-4, you can use other materials that are better.

Stephen LaMarca:

Well, 18-8 is still the 300 series. 188's interchangeable with 304. It's 18% chromium and 8% nickel. And 316 is 20% chromium and 6% nickel, right?

Benjamin:

Yes.

Stephen LaMarca:

I hope so.

Benjamin:

Yes. So, you prefer 304?

Stephen LaMarca:

I prefer it because there's barely a difference. There is more longevity, more corrosion resistance, but you only notice it if you're in a marine environment, number one. And 316 is double the cost of 304.

Benjamin:

Fun times.

Stephen LaMarca:

Hashtag just saying.

Benjamin:

Steve, tell me about Boeing.

Stephen LaMarca:

I watched a video recently on YouTube from a great channel called ColdFusion. And five days ago, as of this recording, five days ago, they published a video that was nothing really new if you've been following the Boeing situation, but I'd like to think I've been following the Boeing situation, but there was a lot of things that I missed. And this was a great up to speed. As bad as the Boeing situation is, and I'm about to highlight a few other things that people may have missed. The short disclaimer is you have to consider that there are 100,000 commercial airliner flights that take place every day. Every single day there's 100,000 plus flights.

This is a small percentage. The odds that you are going to have a problem on a Boeing aircraft are still super limited. That being said, this video had solid footage of somebody's point of view recording. I think they had video recording glasses walking through a Boeing facility and asking the workers on the aircraft, would you fly on this plane? And they were all basically saying, "Oh, God. No."

Benjamin:

That's rough.

Elissa Davis:

That sounds vaguely illegal.

Stephen LaMarca:

Yeah. Well, fortunately, it wasn't ColdFusion's video recording, they just found the footage of somebody that did it. But you know what's also... Nevermind. I'm not going to get into what happened to the whistleblower. But there was a lot of... I never saw the footage of the wheel falling off. I never saw the footage of the plane taking off and the hydraulic fluid just spewing out of the landing gear. I didn't see the report on the Boeing plane that landed and then veered off of the runway because they lost control of the plane during landing, at least you were already on the ground. Still probably really traumatic.

I wasn't as shocked by the video footage of the one Boeing plane with an engine spewing flames, because I don't know if I can blame Boeing on that. Number one, if I saw flames out of the window of my seat, I would think that's really cool, number one.

Benjamin:

Would you start clapping like you landed?

Stephen LaMarca:

Yes. I would be one of those white people. Number two, isn't that the engine manufacturer's fault? I remember touring the Boeing facility and they were like, "We make the plane to 80, 90%. Once the plane leaves our hands, it's still up to the air carrier or the customer to source who puts in the interior of the plane and what engines they use. The only thing that comes with the plane from us is a quarter tank of gas." Or something like that.

Benjamin:

That is an interesting point that you bring up, which I just want to mention quickly. Boeing, they're an airframe manufacturer, so they do everything. They do the control surfaces, they do everything. But to your point, there's a lot of other pieces, the end user can define what kind of instrument cluster that they want, what kind of engine that they want. Their interior is completely up to a third party.

Boeing's getting a lot of heat, and some of it is probably rightly so based on they are running hydraulics, they're running the landing gears, things like that. But the engine is a different supplier and it's on the carrier's responsibility too to maintain these aircraft. So, there's a lot of shared problems here.

Elissa Davis:

And I think when we look at... Like you said, there's like 100,000 flights a day.

Benjamin:

There's a lot of flights.

Elissa Davis:

And there's always issues with different planes. One, I will say that I think this might be more of a 737 issue than a Boeing issue at this point, because there's been a couple 757 that have had issues. I've seen that. But about 90% of the issues are 737.

Stephen LaMarca:

Yeah. But it was really scary when the video also highlights some major issues happening to the Dreamliner, the 787-9, which is the latest and greatest Boeing, and it's already having problems? Are we serious?

Elissa Davis:

Yeah. I honestly think, in some ways with Boeing, the older the plane, the more likely you're going to be fine. But like you said, there's like 100,000 flights a day, is this becoming... Because of the whole door blowing off thing, that was a major problem, I acknowledge that was a big issue. But is it more sensationalized in the news now because that happened? And so, now we're seeing it happen more and more?

Benjamin:

Yeah, it's hyper focused.

Stephen LaMarca:

It is hyper focused.

Elissa Davis:

I feel like these things were already happening, but now we're just really focused on it.

Stephen LaMarca:

But to the point of hyper focus, what makes me a really sad panda and a sad American is that the biggest government contractor, the biggest private government contractor to the United States government is Boeing. It is Boeing. So when Boeing gets sued, it's the US government that's paying for it.

Elissa Davis:

But that could also be the US government... Their standards in terms of what Boeing gives them could be different than an airline carrier.

Stephen LaMarca:

You got a good point. And just knowing that the people near the exit row suing for a billion dollars.

Benjamin:

That's a big number.

Elissa Davis:

That's a lot of money.

Stephen LaMarca:

They're straight up aiming for the three comma club. But I'm not going to lie, I can't deny. Again, as an American, if that wheel popped off and landed on my car, like it did that one Corolla, I would be listening to Louis Prima on repeat, pennies from heaven.

Benjamin:

To be fair, I bet you that Corolla is still running.

Stephen LaMarca:

For sure.

Elissa Davis:

Probably.

Benjamin:

I travel about once a month, recently has been twice a month, [inaudible 00:28:09] is not too happy about that. But that's fine, that's a different issue. And to be honest, I see all your concerns. And the biggest trouble I still have is I just want to get on the plane faster. Stop putting your carry-on luggage on your overhead compartment. Stop struggling. Just get to your seat.

Elissa Davis:

Stop putting your jacket in the overhead compartment before everyone else has sat down.

Benjamin:

Just let me get on the plane fast and let's take off. That's all I want.

Elissa Davis:

People lose basic human decency when they get on a plane. I'm sorry.

Stephen LaMarca:

They really do. They really do.

Elissa Davis:

Post pandemic has gotten so much worse.

Ramia Lloyd:

[inaudible 00:28:35] people in the back who... Anyone who's not in the first three seats, as soon as you land, they're standing up. Where are you going? We're all going the same place.

Stephen LaMarca:

Never been on a bus before.

Ramia Lloyd:

Where are you going?

Elissa Davis:

Or the people in the first few rows who they're sitting, you're sitting in the window. They're sitting in the aisle and they don't stand up. And you're like, "Are you going to be one of those people who waits til everyone's off the plane, so I have to wait?"

Ramia Lloyd:

I start to get panicky.

Stephen LaMarca:

The people who stand up right away, their only excuse is, "Well, I got to make a connecting flight." Stop being poor. Get a direct flight.

Benjamin:

That's one way. Ramia?

Ramia Lloyd:

I loved it.

Benjamin:

Where can they find more info about us?

Ramia Lloyd:

Amtonline.org/resources. Like, share, subscribe.

Stephen LaMarca:

Bing bong.

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Author
Benjamin Moses
Director, Technology
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International
By Fred Qian | Nov 13, 2024

China beats market expectations with the first increase in factory activity since April. Output has increased for the second month in a row, and new orders have stabilized after five months of decline. For more industry intel and other tidbits, read on.

4 min
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Intelligence
By Christopher Chidzik | Nov 11, 2024

Orders of manufacturing technology totaled $450.6 million in September 2024, an increase of 24% from August 2024 and 14.6% over September 2023 orders. Year-to-date orders reached $3.35 billion, a 7.7% decline compared to the first three quarters of 2023.

5 min
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Technology
By Stephen LaMarca | Nov 08, 2024

Ford's attempt to 'undercut' with EVs. Nvidia to launch CPUs in 2025. AR glasses will not die. Flexibility with zero backlash. Mechanical simp.

6 min