[00:00:00] Aaron Hall: You know, being an entrepreneur, you want to do things a little bit different.
[00:00:02] John Ramstead: Yeah, right?
[00:00:03] Aaron Hall: You want to do something maybe an old way, but also break into a new marketplace. And the way we did that is like, okay, well, what we want to do is additive manufacturing. And we wanted to do kind of quick turnaround. And we know that engineering time is a lot of your cost and a lot of your effort, and we want to be able to pump that stuff out. And it really just fed into rapid prototyping for startups. And everybody here in Grand Forks is like, hey, you got to talk to the drone industry.
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Welcome to Hangar XStudios and we are live at the Hive in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And I'm excited. Today we're going to be talking about manufacturing. You guys have heard about 3D printing, rapid prototyping, manufacturing, fixing parts, improving on processes. So we brought on today Aaron Hall. Aaron, first of all, welcome and thanks for coming to the podcast.
[00:01:40] Aaron Hall: Thanks, appreciate being here.
[00:01:42] John Ramstead: And you got an incredible company, Bifrost Manufacturing. The website is killer. Plus I'm Norwegian. Plus I wanted to name my son Thor, but I got vetoed.
He might have. He might appreciate that. I'm not sure, but I mean, I really want to talk about today what you do. So we're going to talk about what this crazy thing is and some of these parts and pieces that you've made.
But before we do that, I'd love for you to talk about, hey, what? You guys formed Bifrost back about two years ago and it's taken off rapidly. There is a huge need for what you guys are doing. I know that one of my clients is building some rapid prototyping of actually a flying version of the aircraft, but actually finding and creating the parts from the CAD cam system to actually test our theories.
[00:02:29] Aaron Hall: Absolutely right.
[00:02:30] John Ramstead: In the past, this would have been years and millions of dollars and things have changed. But tell us about how Bifrost came to be.
[00:02:36] Aaron Hall: So when we started Bifrost, it was just out of need.
I started another company. We do infrastructure for data centers and bitcoin mining. And we were kind of running into this issue where we would have, you know, we're in kind of this, this new grassroots industry and we're setting these co located data centers on the ground, essentially what they are. And they don't operate in I would call the world's harshest environment as designed. So we're cutting on them and we need work done and we're getting to a lot of these guys and you know, things you experience this millions of dollars to wait a year and we need these fixes yesterday. You know, it's a very high value, you know, high dollar amount turnaround. Like we can't wait.
[00:03:11] John Ramstead: Like what kind of fix would be.
[00:03:13] Aaron Hall: An example, hot aisle containment. So you take like, you know, you, you got to make sure that your intake and your, your, your exhaust and your, your, your mining operations separate and it's sealed. There's a pressure barrier there. So what we did is. And the more robust the pressure barrier, the more effective it is. You can't just take, you know, polycarbonate and cut, you know, like a, a political sign and cut like a little hole in it. So what we did is we did CNC cut steel and we formed them to the back of our, our shelves essentially.
[00:03:39] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:03:40] Aaron Hall: And so that was just one simple fix, right?
And then there's all the fittings and all the whatever. And you know, we go to these places, we say, hey, you know, I need a $45,000 order in the next week. And they say I, I don't remember where I put the file. And we're like, just say that. So we knew Killian and we said, hey Killian, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, hello. We should come down to the shop. And it just, you know, he's kind of moping around the shop doing work and his phone's ringing all the time. Well, I don't do that anymore. Well, I don't do that anymore. Like, well, who's that? Well, that was serious.
[00:04:08] John Ramstead: You're thinking maybe we should do that.
[00:04:10] Aaron Hall: I was like, yeah, you got to stop saying no. You know. So then we, we kind of leapt into.
[00:04:14] John Ramstead: Oh, you said Cirrus called. So big companies are calling.
[00:04:16] Aaron Hall: Absolutely.
[00:04:17] John Ramstead: Because they need pieces for their prototyping.
[00:04:19] Aaron Hall: Well, a lot of it is tooling for tooling. So the, the companies I I'm allowed to talk about are like LM glass fiber, serious aircraft. And a lot of it is tooling and you know, just fixes and the, you know, being an entrepreneur, you want to do things a little bit different.
[00:04:35] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Aaron Hall: Right. You want to do something maybe an old way, but also break into a new marketplace. And the way we did that is like, okay, well, what we want to do is additive manufacturing. And we wanted to do kind of quick turnaround. And we know that engineering time is a lot of your costs and a lot of your effort, and we want to be able to pump that stuff out. And it really just fed into rapid prototyping for startups. And everybody here in Grand Forks is like, hey, you got to talk to the drone industry. You guys are set up to do drones. So that's what we started to do is we started to go to, you know, the UAS conferences we went to.
[00:05:07] John Ramstead: Right.
[00:05:07] Aaron Hall: You know, we went to San Diego and kind of got the feedback on what the industry needs are.
[00:05:11] John Ramstead: And did the drone industry, like, say, hey, we need this?
[00:05:14] Aaron Hall: Absolutely.
[00:05:15] John Ramstead: Because you started. You thought the classic car industry was going to be a home run.
[00:05:18] Aaron Hall: Yeah.
[00:05:18] John Ramstead: And it was a bit of crickets.
[00:05:20] Aaron Hall: But no, it wasn't even a bit of crickets. It was like total crickets. Like, it was absolutely like dead silence. I was sure that, like some guy would come in and be like, this ashtray is the only thing I can't get for my 1970 Dodge Charge and I'll pay four grand for it. And it was just absolutely nothing. It was just like blank stairs when you look at them. So I will admit classic cars were not a thing, but we also thought egg. Right. So like you take these parts and they're printed out of.
Printed out of steel. And these are 3D printed and laser centered. And they're actually, what they are is they're essentially a big weld. So they're stronger than cast steel. So what we thought we would have is agriculture as well.
[00:05:59] John Ramstead: So if I had a broken tractor and I needed a part, that might take me two months to get.
[00:06:04] Aaron Hall: Yep.
[00:06:04] John Ramstead: I can go to, you guys take the broken part, you scan it with this thing. We'll talk a little bit more about this.
I can actually print it and I can go get my tractor running in a day or two versus a couple of months of instead.
[00:06:16] Aaron Hall: Correct. If you.
[00:06:17] John Ramstead: Same thing with an entire gear for engine assembly or my cooling system, whatever it happens to be.
[00:06:22] Aaron Hall: Yeah. So this thing's a pretty good representation because. So this is actually a part for an industrial snowblower.
[00:06:26] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:06:27] Aaron Hall: And we're. We've now kind of tested this and not just steel, but also the staff. So the Nylon printing, we've.
[00:06:34] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:06:35] Aaron Hall: It's actually quite durable, but this gives you an idea, because if you see on the front or the back. Yeah, that's what it looks like when it's machined and finished, but this is what it looks like when it comes out of there.
So it's a little bit rough. It's got a little bit of texture to it.
[00:06:48] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:06:49] Aaron Hall: But, yeah, the solutions are kind of, like, based on the customer. Right. So we've got this marketing where we go, well, what do you want? And that's the. I think the struggle is the education. So it's important for us to come on podcasts and be like, well, what do you want us to make?
[00:07:04] John Ramstead: So, you know, let's take some. Educate us a little bit. So people that maybe aren't familiar with manufacturing or, you know, fixing or prototyping, but what's the interesting injection molding?
You mentioned the word SAF a couple times. I wasn't familiar with it.
I've heard of 3D printing, but could you kind of educate us a little bit on the whole process and the differences?
[00:07:25] Aaron Hall: Well, don't feel bad. I'm the business guy, and I heard of SAF like, two months ago. It's actually. It's brand new. Okay. So these parts are SAF printed. So I like this one because it's pretty cool. This is actually a speaker cover for a rivian. So what SAF is, is it's a Nylon 12, and it's a powder bed process. So what happens is it lays down a very thin layer of nylon 12, like less than a human hair. Cures it. Next layer, next layer. Next layer, next layer. So what happens is we print.
[00:07:53] John Ramstead: So as it's curing it, it's making that.
[00:07:56] Aaron Hall: Yep. And what comes out. What comes out is it's kind of crazy. Is that they call a cake.
[00:08:00] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Aaron Hall: And so it's just a brick, a nylon 12. And you, like, set it on the table and you got to, like, you know, you got to. It's like a little bit of a Jurassic park archeologist. You got to, like, brush them out of there.
[00:08:09] John Ramstead: And what you do, the stuff I used to buy my kids when I was, you know, Visit the museums.
[00:08:13] Aaron Hall: 100%.
[00:08:14] John Ramstead: Okay, cool.
[00:08:14] Aaron Hall: Exactly what it is, but, like, way bigger and gets everywhere.
Well, I suppose that stuff does, too, but. So why SAF is comparable to injection molding is more in the term of price.
So the way SAF changes the game is it's all fast and cheap. Nylon 12 as a material is fairly. I would say cost effective. And the really, the boundaries you're running on is the whole cake itself. So if you only have to buy, you know, a couple parts to fill the cake, your. Your, your costs are low.
[00:08:45] John Ramstead: Well, you said. Yeah, this was a part that I needed. I wanted to prototype it, but to do it in this process, that I'd probably get 40 of these even if I needed one.
[00:08:53] Aaron Hall: Well, your cost, we can give you one, but it's going to be the same price because.
[00:08:56] John Ramstead: Yes, because you got to do a whole cake. But it's only a few hundred dollars.
[00:08:59] Aaron Hall: That's correct.
[00:09:00] John Ramstead: And if I want to do injection mold, something like this because I really needed it, what's the time and cost of something like that?
[00:09:05] Aaron Hall: Oh, man, that's a hard one. So injection molding, you're probably going to go to South America or China. You're going to spend millions of dollars in tooling because they need to make.
[00:09:13] John Ramstead: Okay, so not even comparable.
[00:09:14] Aaron Hall: Well, it is, because once you get to the end product, if you're doing a hundred thousand pieces, it's going to be sense. But if you're doing less than a hundred thousand, you're going to want to do 3D printing.
[00:09:24] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:09:25] Aaron Hall: And so as a startup, I mean, I don't think any drone company is going to do a hundred thousand of any piece.
[00:09:31] John Ramstead: No.
[00:09:31] Aaron Hall: And then the issue with injection molding is if you're any part of the prototyping process.
[00:09:37] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Aaron Hall: You can't change it because then you have to change all the tooling. This. We can change every print.
[00:09:43] John Ramstead: So show us some of the things that you printed these other pieces and tell us what this thing is, because it's pretty cool.
[00:09:47] Aaron Hall: I'll share this thing. So you roll in.
This is a creaform blue laser scanner. And what this does is it really just narrows down our. Sorry, I'll hold her up here.
It really narrows down our engineering time so we can, you know, example, we had an old marine colonel come in the other day and he had a.
It was like a 1930s antique pistol. And his leather maker was in Washington state. He didn't want to ship the gun because it was special to him. And he's like, guys, can you help me here? We're like, yeah. We scanned it in a matter of 15 minutes and just printed out a replica for him to send. Now in that case, it's just kind of a easy fix for an old marine colonel. But for a, you know, startup who's rapidly prototyping their parts, they now have a huge.
I would Call it industry advantage, because everybody else is moving in chunks of three to six months.
[00:10:35] John Ramstead: Well, I can see this, like, let's say I. I'm building something and this is a gear that I had and. And a tooth broke off and. And I need to get this replaced and I absolutely. It's going to be months. So you could scan this.
[00:10:47] Aaron Hall: Yep.
[00:10:48] John Ramstead: Fill that in in the CAD system. Go print it. And now I'm back. Prototyping.
[00:10:51] Aaron Hall: Correct.
[00:10:52] John Ramstead: I mean, so it's.
[00:10:52] Aaron Hall: Or, you know, you're. You're. This is a little intake housing that's heavy. You're. I mean, it's tool steel.
[00:10:58] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Aaron Hall: But, you know, so your, Your intake changes. Right. Just the dimensions of this.
[00:11:03] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:11:03] Aaron Hall: You'd have to change all your tooling. Or we can just go in the cab and stretch it out a little bit.
[00:11:07] John Ramstead: Reprint it and try it. Try the new one. Try the new one. Try the new one.
[00:11:09] Aaron Hall: And the other thing about SAF is includes resin in the process.
So I think it's. This part here is just sls.
[00:11:19] John Ramstead: So this is what's sls.
[00:11:20] Aaron Hall: This will be centered nylon without the resin staff is a little bit different because it's more durable. So then you could. If you feel. I don't know if this really translates well, but if you look in here, you can feel the walls of this are very thin.
[00:11:35] John Ramstead: Yeah, very thin. But they're also very.
Feels very.
[00:11:38] Aaron Hall: Right.
[00:11:38] John Ramstead: Like there's strength to it.
[00:11:40] Aaron Hall: Yes. So tensile strength. Yes. So in the drone industry now, you can reduce your weight significantly and still keep a lot of your strength, which means, you know, more payload, more flight time. Yeah. So I think this is going to be quite the game changer. And I brought a.
When we go to, like, we go to. I don't know, we do sometimes throw robotics competitions and whatnot. And, you know, we go to just conferences. We like to hand out stuff for the kids. And so this is a. This chassis is 3D printed. And this is a micro racing drone.
[00:12:08] John Ramstead: It has your Bifrost logo on there.
[00:12:09] Aaron Hall: Well, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:10] John Ramstead: So you got a micro racing down that you basically 3D printed.
[00:12:13] Aaron Hall: That's right. Just the whole chassis. You can feel it's pretty light.
[00:12:15] John Ramstead: Oh, it's very light.
[00:12:16] Aaron Hall: The interns, like, they're. They're big fans of flying them around and crashing into people's offices and stuff. So we always have quite a few of those around. Yeah.
[00:12:24] John Ramstead: That's awesome. So what does the next year look like for you? I. I know there's some things you're. You're under NDA, you're working on some really interesting projects that could really kind of blow up in a good way. Some things you're doing.
[00:12:34] Aaron Hall: Absolutely.
[00:12:35] John Ramstead: What does the next year look like for us?
[00:12:36] Aaron Hall: I think the big one is, you know, we have the things we're working on now which are more I think defense related.
So flyaway parts is we're in a couple processes where our machine specifically will go through characterization studies with BIGs that will then certify them to.
The FAA says, hey, yeah, this process. Okay.
Now that is on the horizon.
[00:13:00] John Ramstead: If I understood you right, you're basically saying there might be a path to actually use the work you're doing to put replacement parts on certified aircraft script as part of signed off for A and P repair process.
[00:13:13] Aaron Hall: Yeah. So the whole.
[00:13:14] John Ramstead: Which could cut down costs and, and avail and increase availability.
[00:13:19] Aaron Hall: Yeah. I mean this whole industry, as you probably know, evolves very rapidly.
[00:13:23] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Aaron Hall: And then, you know, the FAA is, what they're trying to do is they're trying to say, hey, we want to not just certify like this part because what if they have to change it? And they're, they're looking now more at processes, certified process which is, I mean it's smart, especially when you come to the 3D printers. I told you when I came here is like, you know, everybody wants to know what's your widget. And it's like, well, if it fits on a build plate. So now the FAA has to think differently and be like, well, if it's made on that build plate, then it should be certified kind of deal. That's one of the things we hired. His name is Will Swearson. Will comes to us from Northrop Grumman as one of their senior engineers. And Will is, he wants to like target darpa.
[00:14:00] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:14:01] Aaron Hall: For you know, right now working on hypersonics is one of them. High hypersonic interception and then there's a couple other things. But I think research and development would be another stage that we really want to focus on.
[00:14:15] John Ramstead: That's pretty cool. And you're up here in Grand Forks and there's quite an ecosystem of drones and UAS and probably a lot of customers up here and growing.
[00:14:23] Aaron Hall: Absolutely. Oh yeah, you see that a lot.
It becomes more sophisticated as time goes on. With the money that's involved, you're seeing less and less just I would say pie in the sky.
I have an idea. But actual, you know, pre seed or series A or companies that are funded and motivated to, you know, make a product.
[00:14:42] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Aaron Hall: So I think it's definitely evolving as time goes on.
[00:14:45] John Ramstead: Yeah. Well, that's awesome, man. We'll keep up the good work. I look forward to, you know, catching up with you as we're up here.
[00:14:50] Aaron Hall: For sure.
[00:14:51] John Ramstead: And just hearing about some of these big projects is. You can talk about them. We'll have to have you back on.
[00:14:55] Aaron Hall: Oh, for sure.
[00:14:55] John Ramstead: Some of them have some big implications.
[00:14:58] Aaron Hall: Okay. Yeah, hopefully.
Hopefully.
[00:15:01] John Ramstead: All right.
[00:15:01] Aaron Hall: All right.
[00:15:03] John Ramstead: Thanks for everybody for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.
