Conventional sheet metal manufacturing is highly inefficient for the low-volume production seen in the space industry. At Machina Labs, they developed a novel method of forming sheet metal using two robotic arms to bend the metal into different geometries. This method cuts down the time to produce large sheet metal parts from several months down to a few hours. Ed Mehr, Co-Founder and CEO of Machina Labs, explains this revolutionary manufacturing process.


Ed Mehr is the co-founder and CEO of Machina Labs. He has an engineering background in smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence. In his previous position at Relativity Space, he led a team in charge of developing the world’s largest metal 3D printer. Relativity Space uses 3D printing to make rocket parts rapidly, and with the flexibility for multiple iterations. Ed previously was the CTO at Cloudwear (Now Averon), and has also worked at SpaceX, Google, and Microsoft.

https://machinalabs.ai/
https://robohub.org/shaking-up-the-sh...

0:00 intro
7:28 Starting Machina Labs
14:58 How it works
23:01 Who are your customers?
28:30 Type of robots used
30:24 New geometries possible
38:25 Machina Labs Origin Story
43:42 Overcoming the high capital investment in robots
52:02 Iteration Speed in Hardware vs Software