April 29, 2024 • 34 mins
Eric Law went searching for robotics opportunities in the construction industry, where machines have been used for decades, starting with earth-moving steam shovels in the 19th century. Recently, drones have taken on some of the more difficult and dangerous tasks. Eric discovered numerous opportunities for robotics, but one stood out due to its size, scale, and ubiquity: wood waste from construction and demolition.
**The Problem:** While steel and concrete have established reuse and recycling streams, 37 million tons of dimensional wood from construction sites are burned or buried in landfills in the US each year. This represents about half of the virgin softwood dimensional lumber produced for US consumption annually.
**The Cause:** Why couldn’t this wood be easily reused? Metal fasteners. Nails, screws, staples, and other fasteners in the used wood could cause significant damage and potentially injury if they were put back through the milling process. The saws, planers, and other equipment are designed to easily cut and process wood, not metal.
**The Solution:** Use robots to quickly and efficiently remove the metal from the used wood, certify its status as 'metal-free' with a metal detector, and then return it to the lumber supply.
Eric partnered with Andrew Gillies and Alex Thiele to create a robot that removes metal so the wood can be reused, and a company to commercialize it. The result is Urban Machine.
Join us as we dive into the intersection of robotics, construction, and sustainability. Eric and his team are using technology behind the headlines—artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, etc.—to economically do the dirty job of removing nails, screws, and fasteners, so the lumber can reenter the market and stay out of the incinerator or landfill.
Eric Law: Lumber, Robotics, Innovation, Sustainability | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep31
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxx8g-YHDqU&list=PLZURvMqWbYjk4hbmcR46tNDdXQlrVZgEn
Transcript and show notes - https://www.turnthelenspodcast.com/episode/eric-law-lumber-robotics-innovation-sustainability-turn-the-lens-with-jeff-frick-ep31
#Leadership #Lumber #Robotics #Innovation #Sustainability #SustainableConstruction #RoboticsInnovation #GreenTech #CircularEconomy #Landfill #ConstructionTech #Wood #LeadershipInTech #Sustainable #Waste #ComputerVision #UrbanSustainability #WasteReduction #Burn #Bury #EcoFriendly #Reuse #Reduce #Recycle #Interview #Technology #Construction #LumberRecycling #UrbanMachine #EcoFriendlyBuilding #TechLeaders #InnovativeEngineering #Podcast #TurnTheLens
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So, Eric, I'll just count us downand we will go.
You ready?
Ready as I will be.
All right.
In three, two.
Hey. Welcome back everybody
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episode of ‘Turn the Lens’.
And we're excited about this next episode.
You know, we've touched a little biton some environmental areas.
(00:21):
We've talked a little bitabout sustainability.
We've had the,you know
the Clean Tech Councilwas on
and we've also donesome stuff with robotics.
So this is a really interestingkind of coming together of robotics
and kind of an old industrysolving kind of a nasty problem
that's really better doneby machines than people,
because nobody wants to have this job.
And as we learned in ‘Dirty Jobs’ (Mike Rowe and Co)
(00:41):
there’s a whole lot of crappy jobs,
that computers are just better to do.
So welcoming in through the magic of the internet,
I think from Oakland, California,just over the bay not too far
He’s Eric Law, the Co-founderand CEO of Urban Machine.
Eric, great to see you today.
Awesome. Thank you for having me, Jeff.
Absolutely.
So why don't you just give us the
the 101 for people that aren't familiar with Urban Machine,
what are you guys all about?
(01:03):
Yeah, we are a 2½ year-old robotics startup
that is building robots for removingmetal fasteners from lumber.
We take out the nails,the staples, the screws,
and then once it's metal free,you can treat it like virgin wood.
You can build with it again,you can use it in furniture.
It's really a cool productonce the metal comes out.
So how did you come upwith this idea
(01:24):
to use robots
to pull nails, fastenersand screws out of pieces of wood?
Everyone asksthat question,
you know, what did you trip onand hit your head on, right?
on this idea
A screw or nailI’m guessing probably
Exactly, smashed my fingerwith a hammer?
Yeah, so I've, you know,
I've got about a 20 year career in construction and tech,
and the last project I was doing
was I built an innovation programfor a large contractor,
(01:47):
where we focused on bringingin robots to augment the craft.
And we really looked for
dull, dangerous, dirty tasksthat are highly repetitive.
And that's where the robots doreally well. Right?
That high repetitionis key for it.
and it's, you know, tasks thathumans aren't necessarily good at.
And while I was therebringing these robots in
(02:07):
and we started a sustainabilityproject with a group of folks there,
and we were lookingat waste streams.
And that's where I was learning, you know,
concrete and steelhave recycle paths.
but wood do not,
you know, wood’sgoing to the landfill,
wood’s going to incineratorsbecause of the metal fasteners?
It was just too expensiveto get them out.
And so that's concrete formwork.
That's demolition wood,temp structures, handrail,
(02:30):
just all getting ground up and going to incinerators and landfills.
and so that was kind of the impetus for like,
Hey, this is a really big problem.
It's about 37 million tons of dimensional wood
here in the US every year gets thrown away.
Not a good thing.
Well, let's back up a step
on the robotics piece of it specifically
because you were in robotics before
(02:51):
and they asked you to lookfor applications for robotics.
And I think what’s interestingbecause people get,
I think, way confused by allthe press with humanoid robots and,
you know, at the NVIDIA show,you know, recently
Jensen had, I think like eight,you know, people looking robots.
But the most successful robotsdon't look like people at all.
(03:11):
It's a Roomba (iRobot)
you know, that runs around and vacuums the house.
It's the Amazon,
you know, ones that we seethat are moving,
moving pallets around all the time.
Clearly, they've been in manufacturing
and cars and stufffor a long time.
So when you think abouthow do you apply robots,
so you look at a problem first
and you say, this is perfect for a robot
because I think
it's a different wayto think about robots.
(03:32):
I think people that aren'tin the industry
tend to go straight to that humanoid thing
and not really think about.
It's a machine
that we can programto do tasks
that (it) just does better than people.
If the attributes of the taskare just right.
Yeah, the humanoids are cool looking at,
you know, and they scare a lot of people
and they do some fun stuff
and they play soccer, but
At the end of the day,it's, you know
(03:53):
it's the task specific machines that rule in the automation world,
you design a machinefor a very specific task
and then you have it repeat that task you know
hundreds of thousands of timesover and over.
and that's where roboticsare very successful today.
if you look at auto manufacturing, right,
you have a robotthat puts tires on cars and
tightens lug nuts andor welds or
(04:15):
you know, very task specific
and that's where the opportunity is, right?
Those highly repetitive tasks.
Humans are much better atproblem solving, right?
The majority of humans don't
want to do the same thingover and over and over.
We get bored.
and so you find opportunitieswhere there's high repetition
and the machines will do it,
you know, millions of timesthe exact same way over and over.
(04:36):
And so all the constructionrobotics companies
that we worked with,it was all specific.
It was layout, you know,drawing lines on the floor.
It was drywall finishing.
It was brick laying
And the other thing we had to do too is
there wasn't enoughrobotics startups in the space,
so we would identify businessproblems, on our job sites,
(04:56):
and we would go outand look for people
to start companies and venturecapitalists to back those folks,
to solve those problems.
Okay.
So you found a huge opportunity in this waste stream,
like you said, thecement waste stream,
there's somerecycling going on there
The steel one is going on,but these huge piles of
And I think you said 37 million tons.
(05:16):
Is that right?
Per year goes into landfill,which is just shocking.
and a horrible, horrible big number.
But the
and again, I've listenedto a few of your podcasts.
Most of that stuff
is from demolition or,you know, taking things apart.
That's not the same as a robotputting a tire on, in the GM line.
(05:37):
That's the same tire on the same nuts every time
you have likeinfinite variability
of the crap that comes offthese demolished buildings.
So how did you start to reallythink about the problem,
break down the problemof how you could
take these really highly variable inputs
and then still have a processthat you could have a
you know, a nice output.
Yeah.
(05:57):
So what we did is we looked atwhat's the repetition, you know,
what's that overarching themethat just repeats over and over.
And that's the fasteners right.
That's the nails,the screws and the staples.
And there's a lot of them. Right.
You know, every six inches,every 12 inches,
you know, you can get afastener in a board,
that was holding up drywall or plywood or whatever that,
you know, attached material was.
(06:18):
And so we said,let's have the humans
focus on the non consistent,the non high volume.
So if you think about likeelectrical boxes
and structural fasteners,those are low volume
but there are lots of different shapes and sizes.
So in our in-feed we stillhave humans that take off
those odds and ends.
And then the machine takes careof the high volume high repetition.
And what we do iswe actually normalize the material.
(06:42):
So we cut all those fasteners downto make them little nubs,
and then we cook them allto reduce the friction force.
And then we pull them all out.
so it's really about, youknow, four step process,
coming into and then the fifth is
we run it through a metal detector to make sure
it truly is metal free for our customers.
and that's the one quality requirement we have from the industry is it
(07:03):
There cannot be a nailleft in that board.
It's got to be metal freebecause otherwise
it will destroy our planar bladeor a saw blade.
You know, virgin wood, machines do really good with lumber and wood.
They don't do wellwith metal.
With metal.
And then in terms of the process, right.
Do you bring the techto the material
or do you bringthe material to the tech.
Yeah.
So we are focused on taking the tech to the material.
(07:26):
Most of this material is collected at waste facilities.
Sometimes people call them MRFsor ‘Material Recovery Facilities.’
And it’s where all the contractors,whether it's demolition or concrete
all dump their trucks and trailers and bins full of wood.
and so they've got the raw material for us.
And then you, process it.
So describe to us kind of the basicsof what the line looks like,
(07:48):
what the machine actually is
that you would set up at that spot.
Yeah. So it's about 150ft long.
You start with some in-feed workstations for the crew,
where they've got toolsand workstations to help them
clean that materialand send it into the machine.
And then the next, you know, 125ftis for the most part, automated.
our machines are probably about the size of four refrigerators,
(08:08):
Okay
Lined up.
And each of these machineshas its own step.
Right.
So we got,
bandsaws running on the cutter onethat's cutting all the fasteners
after it’s cut
Then it goes intothe cooking station
where everything gets cooked,
and then from thereit goes into the picking station.
and it's really cool and impressive.
and then itgoes through a metal detector.
(08:29):
And if it dings.
We still got metal.
It doesn't ding. It's metal free.
so it's really a prettystraightforward linear process.
And then out the other end, we haveemployees that sort the material.
And how many peopleto operate it.
Yeah. So it runsfrom 2 to 4.
2 to 4, okay.
It's just interestingbecause I think at least for
for layman like me, you know,I think we really started to see
(08:52):
the re-use of the constructionmaterials on site with cement
next at next to freeways and stuff,because you can see it, right
It's not behind a fence where,
where back in the day
they would haul all that cement awaywhen they're redoing the highway.
And now you seethey've got this dedicated spot
where they're running it through this grinder
and basically putting that material back in place.
(09:12):
So that's kind of asimilar thing that,
that we'll start to see for wood?
Yep. Absolutely.
So right now today
all the wood goes through a grinder
before they bury it.
We're essentially going to replace that grinder.
So all the long material,all the high quality stuff
that doesn't belong, you know,either getting burned or buried
goes back tothe job site.
And what are the economics
that you have to hitto make it worthwhile?
(09:34):
Because it seems pretty cheap and easy
just to throw the broken stuffin the back of a truck
and drive it offto the landfill.
In terms of expenseand complexity from the,
the developer point of view.
Yeah.
So we have to competewith virgin lumber, right?
So at theend of the day,
the contractor, whoever's buyingthat wood makes a decision, right?
Do I want the reclaimed material
or do I want the virgin materialthat came from the forest?
(09:57):
and so our targetis to have a process
that competes with a virgin log mill.
right,
so those are the guysin the Pacific Northwest
or in the Southeastthat go harvest the trees
and process them and turn theminto virgin two by fours.
The big advantage wehave is we don't have the shipping
because our source is rightnext to our customers, right?
(10:19):
We're sourcing materialfrom metropolitan areas,
we clean it up in those metros,and we sell back to those metros.
whereas virgin lumbercoming out of Pacific Northwest,
if you're going to Texas,
you're going a couple thousand miles
of rail and trucks to get that material
to your customers,
which is expensive.
The other thing we don't have
is we don't have therisk of a commodity.
(10:41):
You know, lumber pricesgo up and down.
as we saw during Covid,they went up about 3½ x
which was a huge impacton housing prices.
because lumber is still the predominant building material
for single family and multifamily residential.
And so because ours is all locally sourced
and we're not a traded commodity,
we can provide consistentpricing to our customers.
(11:02):
So we don't have those shocks.
And is the business model to provide the service that
that somebody else justcontinues to own the wood.
Or do you take ownership of the wood,
or are you still trying to
figure out kind of
where's the business modelin terms of
who's paying whom to do what
and what the ownership of the wood or the output is?
Yeah. So right nowwe're in the wood business.
(11:24):
So all the material that we clean, we sell.
Okay.
To really get the market going.
Our long term vision is to leaseand sell the machines
to customers that will thenoperate the machines
in their localmetro areas.
They'll source the material, process the material,
and then sell it backwithin their metro areas.
our goal is not to operate
lots of wood processingfacilities across the world,
(11:46):
because what’s interesting,
this is a global issue.
Europe's got the same challenge.
Australia, New Zealand,anybody who's built with wood
has massive amounts of wood waste.
And I think it’swhat's in Australia
that I think Atlassian’s buildinglike the largest wood, skyscraper
oh really
as a new headquarters.(Atlassian Central in Tech Central, Sydney Central Station)
I'm pretty sure (Atlassian Central in Tech Central, Sydney Central Station)
have to double check the facts, (40 story skyscraper - hybrid timber-steel exoskeleton)
(12:06):
but I think so(40 story skyscraper - hybrid timber-steel exoskeleton)
because I think in a coupleof the items you talked about,
you know, people talking aboutdoing more with wood,
as even a replacement for steel and concrete
in more applications.
But I think that's pretty interesting.
Let's shift gears a little bit andtalk about the robots and robotics.
It's
especially
there's all kinds of interestingkind of robotic processes
that you have to putinto these things in terms of,
(12:28):
being able to see the nailsand being able to adjust to the nails
and treating a nail differentthan a screw
and angles andthis and that
wonder if you could share some of the challenges
and also some of the advancesthat you've seen in your
in your careerin robotics, as
you know, motors get smaller and
and you know, the horsepower that you get
with the computing power that you get,
(12:49):
I mean, it's awhole different world
than when you startedin robotics a while back.
Yeah, it's a couple major advancements.
I mean, obviously the costand power density of motors
is phenomenal, right?
We don't run any hydraulics.
You know, historically,
the lumber industry does everything with hydraulics
to get their powerperformance ratios.
We don't, we have no hydraulicson our systems.
(13:10):
We have a little bit of pneumaticsfor a couple operations,
but it's mostlyall electrical drive,
which makes it really efficient to move material
gives you incredible control accuracy
over the material.
And then the other oneis computer vision.
we're using cameras.
Our system isfull of cameras
to take pictures of the woodand to identify fasteners.
And so, when we look at the advancements in computer vision
(13:33):
and AI technology,we're leveraging that,
to solve a real problem, right?
We're not Bitcoin or
any of the other fun AI projectsthat have humanoids running around.
It's like we're using AI
to solve an industry problemand a waste problem.
which is awesome to see itget put to use.
Yeah. That's great.
And I saw you've got
I saw one interview,
that you had a couple interns on.
(13:53):
So I wonder if youcan share a little bit
about what's going onin kind of academia.
and robotics, I mean,
robotics seems like such a cool
industry that brings togetherall these different specialties.
I know you werea mechanical engineer.
How you got in, which is probably the more traditional,
but, you know,
there's opportunitiesfor software people.
There's opportunitiesfor human factors.
I mean, there's so much going on in robotics.
(14:15):
As you take a step backand look at that industry
as an opportunity for people to think about
either an existing careeror a new career.
What get’s you excitedabout the future of robotics?
Yeah, it’s probably one of those few industries
where you're combining multiple expertise
to actually solvethe problem, right?
It's hardware, it's physics,it's software, it's computer vision.
(14:37):
There’s a lot that goes into these machines
and getting these machines to market,
and we do research,with local universities.
We've have interns on our team.
I’ll have some morethis summer as well.
And then not just the robotics side,but also the sustainability side.
Right.
So okay, we got robots
that process this material,
but how do you sell itback into the market. Right.
(14:58):
Who's the customers?What do they do with it?
What's the process?
What does thatdemand look like?
because we're connecting two points in the economy
that have never been connected before.
Right, the waste industry has never sold wood to the lumber industry.
and so we're makingthose connections.
So in order for our robotsto work and be successful,
we have a sales team and a marketing team
(15:20):
that's driving that demand.
and so it’s a huge team effortto get this shift going
and not just the techbut also the market side as well.
Right.
Well, let's talk a little bit specifically
about the carrot and the stickin sustainability and governance,
because I've seen, you know,
you speak at a number of different conferences,
you speak at building conferences
(15:40):
and materials conferences,but you're also speaking
at sustainability conferencesand clearly,
the role of governanceand the changing of laws,
either to hit sustainability targetsor to have requirements,
especially in buildings, changesthings pretty dramatically.
So where are you seeing,you know, kind of the tailwinds
from a governance point of viewthat's helping you?
(16:04):
and how is the marketkind of responding
to both kind of the carrot sideand the stick side
of just not throwingstuff in the garbage?
Yeah, there's reallytwo drivers there, right
There's the demand sidewhere people are looking for
more sustainablebuilding materials.
Right? They're lookingat their carbon footprints.
They're looking at the wastefrom those materials.
Where are they sourced from?
They want local overlong haul materials.
(16:26):
which really aims you at reclaimed lumber, right.
If I can source materialfor my new building
from an old building down the street,
that's a huge win on sustainability.
And it's agreat story,
right
The designersreally like that.
The other side is the waste problem.
So as we started to dig into it andlearn more about the waste industry
and who owns it,
typically the government agenciesare responsible for the landfills
(16:48):
and disposing of wastewithin their regions.
And nobody wants to build a new landfill.
Over the next 60 years, all thelandfills in the U.S will be full.
And it takes about 20 yearsto permit a new one.
And so nobody wants to go down that path.
It's not.
It's massive expenditures.
It's not politically.
Nobody wants to fill up a canyonor fill a hole in ground.
(17:12):
And so what we're seeingfrom these government agencies
is different legislationto keep material out.
And wood is one of the biggest contributorsto landfill space by volume.
You know, the concrete's not going in the steel’s not going in.
So when you look at buildings,it's the wood.
And so there's deconstruction ordinances,
there's source separation ordinances,
there's incentives not to
(17:32):
bury the wood economically.
and there's a lot of,
a lot more of thesethat want to get passed.
But the challenge is,what do you do with all this wood?
Okay, if we don't put it in the landfill,what happens?
Well, we chip it and we burn it.
Oh, okay.
That's not much better, right.
And so we're the first ones that arebringing the technology to market
that says, okay,
let's take as much of thiswood as we can.
(17:54):
It's still dimensionally intact,
and let's use it in the buildings again.
Let's go store this carbon in building walls.
Right.
Which is a great placeto store carbon
because I canstore carbon
and I'm housing people,
which is ahuge win.
That's way better than storing it in the ground or,
you know, whatever some of these other schemes are
to manage it.
(18:14):
And so that's our goalis to keep it back in circularity
and let people build with it again.
And you said most of that'sbeing driven at the municipal level
because they're the oneson the hook for the landfill.
Yeah.
So that can be cities, counties,metropolitan government agencies.
It kind of depends on where you are.
We've talked with a whole host of different
people who host that problem
(18:36):
states are getting involved in it.
We're seeing state funding coming down,
federal funding coming down.
we've hadsome agencies,
received federal funding to go rent our machine,
and set up reuse facilitiesin their metropolitan areas.
Interesting.
I want to shift gearsand talk about something
you've discussed inother podcasts, which is
changing people's behavior
without really trying to changetheir process too much.
(18:59):
Right.
It's hard to get peopleto change their process, right?
Everyone's stuck in their ways.
But there's also, you know,kind of precedent
processes and subsequent processesthat are all tied together.
So to interrupt that or to get people to change
a step of that is very,very difficult.
You made a really interesting comment.
You're trying to do it without actually changing anything.
And I wonder if you can share,
(19:20):
you know, some of the techniquesand how you approach it and
And I saw one interviewthat you had, you know, a local,
wood guy who had his own mill, who,
you know, clearly was a little innovative
and willing to take a chanceand try something new and,
and had open eyes and open ears.
But how are you
addressing this very old, market place
with a lot of old players
(19:41):
and a lot of established ways of doing things,
and you're really kind of tryingto change it up a little bit.
Yeah.
So if we start withthe waste industry,
right, which is our source.
Right.
So how can we
minimize the impact to themwhile adding financial incentive.
so right now, today, you know, typically they minimize the wood,
they sort the wood out, they smash it all up into woodchips
(20:03):
and they burn, bury it,
maybe a couple of them are sawn upfor some landscape products.
And so our goal there is
how do we source that material from themand incentivize them economically?
The good news is they're usedto recycling other materials, right?
They grind up concreteand sell it as base rock.
they take the steel and they gothe scrap guys with that.
And so they're used totrying to convert waste
(20:23):
into a high valueor valuable commodity.
So when we pitch them, they're like,
this is very interesting
right
We're very interestedin selling this as a commodity.
You know, truckloads of woodgoing off our facilities.
And some of them
are at risk of losing their woodchip customers
because burning wood chipsis losing out the solar.
(20:45):
it's interesting how all these things work
when you start to learn about these industries.
It's like, wait,
the incinerator guythat's burning the free wood chips
that you're giving themcan't compete with solar.
And they're like, no,the operating costs
on the wood burners are just getting crushed
by the solar panels,
because once you put outsolar panels
Interesting
Eric - You got to do some Jeff - I’ve never heard that before
Yeah, a lot of these guysare shutting down.
(21:05):
And so we actually had a couple of people
introduce us to the term ‘Woodmageddon’
And if they don't have a placeto burn these woodchips
or bury these wood chips,what do you do with them?
and so right now we're one of the few options available
besides burning and burying it.
so it's nice to have the right timing.
I would say rightand have these pressures.
(21:27):
so for the waste world,they're very open to it.
They're like, if we can make moneyselling our wood
instead of grinding it and giving it away,
that's a win for them.
And then on the construction side,the great thing about lumber is
the dimensions have been pretty consistent,
you know, since about the 1940s,
when they went from rough sawn
to this finished inch and a halfthree and a half.
and so as long as we get it metal free,
(21:48):
any virgin lumber millcan process it.
And so we can sell them lumberjust like they procure it
from an existing log mill.
and so long as we can sell them a material
that acts like, looks like,measures like
their existing material,
there's very little change to them.
And then they get to sell itas a greener story.
(22:09):
You know, we went and got our FSC certification(Forest Stewardship Council)
so it can be FSC reclaimed lumber.(Forest Stewardship Council)
that's a big win for them.
And then a lot of folks are looking as
Hey, this product looks and sells just like my other products,
but it makes me look better.
And I can market itas a more sustainable material.
Oooh, that's a win too.
and so that's our goal, right?
How do we add that value to our customers
(22:31):
that outweighsthe small risk?
How do we minimize that riskas much as possible?
and so it's awesome to have these first adopter partners
to go validate that with
and go demonstratethat says,
Hey, here'smaterial.
We're selling itthrough your company,
here's your customers,it’s running.
They're building it.They're taking pictures of it,
and it's working.
Wild. The Woodmageddon.
(22:51):
That's funny you
because another one of your interviewsyou mentioned that 37 million
tons, if I’m gettingthe number right
is half
basically half of the new wood
shipped by the lumber industry in the US per year?
Is that did I get that right?
Yeah, for soft woods,
it's about half of what we harvestfrom our forest for soft woods.
(23:12):
That's crazy.
Yep
that's absolutely bananas.
And we producea lot of wood here in the US
and we import a lot of wood.
So let's talk aboutwood for a minute
because I'm sure there'sgoing to be a couple people
that are going tostumble upon this
just to talk about wood,
the quality of wood, the changein wood and wood construction.
And we know, you know,back in the old days,
there was a lot more old growththat was taken down.
(23:33):
There's a lot of old redwoodthat's out there
that people just treasure,
What do you find in this processand what's kind of the uptake
and the opportunityjust from a pure,
you know,kind of the wood
that was in the buildings
that you just can't get wood like that anymore.
Yeah.
I mean, that old growth stuff,your only option is a building,
right?
You can't go out to the forest andcut down old growth trees anymore.
(23:55):
and so you got to do it from a building.
And those buildings are holding a lot of material,
right
Despite, you know, our average buildings
here in the U.S are what,
somewhere between 30 and 50 years old probably
despite that short lifespan,especially here on the West Coast,
there's still a lot of buildingsout there that were built
prior to the 1940s that have old growth
rough sawn truly two bi
(24:16):
dimensional lumber in them,
with reallytight grains.
And it's beautiful stuff.
When we get that stuff,it flies off the shelf.
The designers love it,
because it's unique,
right?
There's nota large volume
and traditionally
is really expensive materialto get your hands on.
Great.
I want to shift gearsa little bit
and just talk about labor and talent and trades.
(24:37):
you mentioned in a number ofyour interviews specifically,
you know, we're not taking out high skilled craftsmen
and tradesmen.
but I would imaginein the construction industry,
like in every industry, laborand talent period, is a problem
and is only going to get worse,unfortunately, going forward.
So when you think aboutin terms of the talent and,
(24:59):
and just getting people,
what does your solution
or does it really help them,
along those lines,
is it an alternative waythat they don't need
as many people, is this a great way for people to,
to expand,
into different areaswithin the industry?
How do you fit within kind of thewhole labor tightness story?
(25:19):
Yeah.
So ironically, we actually are adding labor,
with our machines
because we need people to feed themand take it off the out feed.
And there's nobody doing this today at scale.
Right.
Traditionally with robotics,
mostly in construction,we looked at augmenting labor.
Right.
How do I reduce thenumber of labor hours
I need on a jobsite with a machine?
And it’s obviously been going on for,you know, over 100 years with
(25:41):
automation and caterpillar tractorsand stuff and now its robotics.
But for us, we're actuallybringing a machine to market
that's actually going to increase the demand for labor.
so our machines, you know, they takeabout 2 to 4 people to operate.
So not a huge amount.
But what it does is downstream
is it feeds a local manufacturing base,
because now you've got a rawmaterial in metropolitan areas
(26:03):
that you can feed into wood manufacturing companies.
which is a great opportunity.
So we've actuallyhad quite a few
municipalities reach out to us where they're like,
hey, we've got these old blighted homes and buildings.
We'd like to take these down,
but we want to turn themback into local buildings
and we want todo some job force training,
which our machines work out really well.
Right? You get to put people
(26:23):
in a manufacturingsetting processing lumber.
they're not doing the nail pulling
They're operating the robots
and the machinesand the maintenance on machines.
So they're higher skilled jobs
than pulling nails and fasteners.
so it's really cool to bebringing in tech that's actually
going to put more people to worksolving a sustainability challenge.
And are the machines that you'reshipping today just give us a
(26:45):
I should have got this earlier
kind of where you are in termsof the lifetime of the company.
I think you've shippedlike 4 or 5 machines,
if I recall, from
some of the other interviews
probably off date
are these, you know,kind of production prototypes.
Are they scale machines.
Are they in a position yetto get the scale
that you're going to need to really make them hum?
Or are you still working outa couple of the kinks.
(27:05):
Yeah, so we have shipped two R&D machines.
we had one that went outMay of last year
that's started field trials,ran for about four months,
before we swapped it outwith the next version.
The current versionthat we're running right now
spent three months at a large waste facility in San Jose
that did a pilot down there.
Then we moved itup to the lumber yard
in American Canyon (CA)that we've been based out of,
(27:27):
for our field testing.
and it's been running up there.
So it's, it'll be ninemonths old, almost,
that the system'sbeen running.
So it's pretty coolto see this one running.
And then we have onemore iteration on the tech.
And this next iteration on the tech
will be the hardware that we’ll shipto our first customer in October.
So it's nice to start to transition from the R&D.
(27:48):
R&D is great, but it's expensive.
Right? Right.
and then to shipping unitsto customers.
that one will head up into,the city of Seattle, in October.
That's great.
So what was kind of the biggest learning of,
moving from the lab to theprototypes out in the field?
Yeah. It's
(28:08):
unexpected.
Unexpected learning, I should say.
You know, it's these manufacturersand they give us these specs
and they say,oh, yeah,
they operate in these temperature ranges,
and you start loading the hardware
and you start putting the pressureon it, and it starts failing.
Oh, then, your components you mean
Jeff - The components that make the machine Eric - A lot of components, yeah.
We went through a lot of components.
Was a big learning one.
The computer vision, you know,we started with 3D depth sensing cameras
(28:30):
and unfortunately, they haven't performedas well as we needed them to.
So we've actually taken a step backand brought in 2D cameras,
which cost less, but areperforming way better.
and even in our environments,they're performing better.
so it's going back and usingsome more proven technology, we'll call it,
but the systemthat we're building in the shop
(28:50):
is just screaming fastcompared to the last iteration.
And the last one is doing great.
so it's pretty coolto watch those iterations
and the tech evolve to the pointwhere it's like,
okay, let's get ready to shipthis one to a customer.
And what is fast?
What are you measuring?
Fasteners removedper unit time
or board feet through the machine or what are?
What are some of your
your measures that you'reworking towards?
(29:12):
Yeah.
So internally we do fasteners per second.
coming offthe machines
board footage moved,linear footage moved.
we do everything in metricon the engineering side,
but then on the customer side,everything’s feet, and board feet.
Right.
and then for the customers,it's a board footage range.
Yeah.
Our target is to move,
(29:34):
you know, 2,500 to 7,500 board feet per shift
with the system.
so that'll run you about,
what’s that, it's about
500,000 to 1 million and a half board feet per year.
coming off that system,if you run one shift,
if you run two, you just doubled it.
is reallythe economics.
(29:55):
And what thatdoes is it
puts us at price paritywith virgin lumber mills.
So that gets us down in that 40¢ / 50¢ cent a board foot market.
And so we can competehead to head with them.
That's great.
That's real. Those are big numbers.
So let's shift gearsone more time before I let you go.
And this I found fascinating.
And all these podcasts,I was listening to you
(30:15):
At the end, they always say, right,
How can people getahold of you, Eric?
And rather than saying,
go to Urban Machine(dot build)
What does it, you have a funny dot. Dot what?
dot buildhttps://urbanmachine.build/
Dot build, Urban Machine dot build https://urbanmachine.build/
Maybe that's too hard.
You say goto LinkedIn.
and you're all over LinkedInand you even say
we're talking about our products on LinkedIn.
We're, you know, communicatingwith our, community on LinkedIn.
(30:38):
And I just thoughtit was interesting.
I wouldn't necessarily thinkbecause I think it was
another interview you said, you know,
not necessarily everyone in your construction world is in LinkedIn.
So I’d just love to get your takeon how you're using LinkedIn.
Why are you using LinkedIn this way?
I'm obviously a huge proponent myself, but,
you know, one of the requirementsfor it to be effective sometimes is
(30:58):
if your target market
is actually swimmingin the same pool,
if they're not in the pool, it's kind of hard to
it's kind of hard to communicate, so
Share a little bit about your strategy with LinkedIn
and its, and its effectiveness.
Yeah.
So it's interesting, you know,trying to find where is your market.
Right.
Where are thesepeople congregating
Where they workingand sharing information.
(31:20):
and it turns outit's LinkedIn.
That's wherethe contractors are.
the architects are
the engineers are
The waste industry
yeah, they're working on it.
Most of them aren't on LinkedIn.
It's a good old fashionedphone call to get to those folks.
But for sustainability,the design world,
the construction community,they're all there.
and so Jorie (Wisnefski)who heads up marketing for us,
(31:41):
has been very active on there with
building that community of followers.
And we have superfans,
You know, we went and visited a waste facility last week
and we got to meetone of our superfans there.
she just recently joined their team,
which is cool.
It's like people have beenfollowing us and supporting us.
you know, when people see the machine running,
they're rooting it on,to pick fasteners,
(32:02):
which is very cool.
right
To be in a space where, hey,
you're solving a problemand people like it.
right
There's nothing bad about this story
about reusing materials to build again.
It's a great story.
It's a great piece of technology.
and it's something wedesperately need.
Yeah.
We got to stop throwing awaythese high quality materials
and get them backinto the buildings.
(32:23):
Especially if we’rethrowing away half
of what we're shipping in fresh every year
That's just that's gonna not work long.
Eric - YeahJeff - That's crazy
So what have wenot talked about Eric?
What have we not talked about thatwe should have talked about?
Because you're the expert,and I'm pretty new
to this whole space,but I think it's super cool.
I love the sustainability angle.
I love the tech angle as well.
Yeah. I mean, we've covered the tech.
(32:44):
We've covered the sustainability,the construction industry, the,
the engineering side of it.
It's, you know, it's cool.
The history of the company, it's,you know, it's a lot of work.
You know, we got a really sharp team
that's cranking away at designing and buildingand testing these machines.
We are 15 people,
so it's not a tiny team,
(33:06):
here based out of Oakland.
but we're making great progress,which is awesome.
And we really appreciate opportunities
to come and share that story
with folks like yourselfand spread the good word.
Yeah, it is a good word.
And it's exciting on a lot of fronts
And again, I think the robotics angle is so cool.
I think the AI angle is so cool.
You’ve got so many different technologies in this robotics
(33:26):
between the computer visionand all the mechanical stuff.
I think it's a great story.
And at the endyou get this beautiful,
this beautiful productand keep it out of the landfill.
So what's not to love?
All right, Eric, well, thank you for your time today.
It's really acool story.
Glad to learn more about itand expand my,
my knowledge a little bit on the robotics side
beyond Roombas andAmazon warehouse robots.
(33:49):
It's good to see themdoing other things,
besides just moving stuff around.
Absolutely.Thanks for having me on, Jeff.
All right. Thank you.
All right.
He's Eric,I'm Jeff,
you're watching‘Turn the Lens’ with Jeff Frick.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.We'll see you next time.
Take care.
All right. That was great. Thank you.
Awesome, Jeff,that was great.
So, Eric, I'll just count us downand we will go.
You ready?
Ready as I will be.
All right.
In three, two.
Hey. Welcome back everybody
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episode of ‘Turn the Lens’.
And we're excited about this next episode.
You know, we've touched a little biton some environmental areas.
(00:21):
We've talked a little bitabout sustainability.
We've had the,you know
the Clean Tech Councilwas on
and we've also donesome stuff with robotics.
So this is a really interestingkind of coming together of robotics
and kind of an old industrysolving kind of a nasty problem
that's really better doneby machines than people,
because nobody wants to have this job.
And as we learned in ‘Dirty Jobs’ (Mike Rowe and Co)
(00:41):
there’s a whole lot of crappy jobs,
that computers are just better to do.
So welcoming in through the magic of the internet,
I think from Oakland, California,just over the bay not too far
He’s Eric Law, the Co-founderand CEO of Urban Machine.
Eric, great to see you today.
Awesome. Thank you for having me, Jeff.
Absolutely.
So why don't you just give us the
the 101 for people that aren't familiar with Urban Machine,
what are you guys all about?
(01:03):
Yeah, we are a 2½ year-old robotics startup
that is building robots for removingmetal fasteners from lumber.
We take out the nails,the staples, the screws,
and then once it's metal free,you can treat it like virgin wood.
You can build with it again,you can use it in furniture.
It's really a cool productonce the metal comes out.
So how did you come upwith this idea
(01:24):
to use robots
to pull nails, fastenersand screws out of pieces of wood?
Everyone asksthat question,
you know, what did you trip onand hit your head on, right?
on this idea
A screw or nailI’m guessing probably
Exactly, smashed my fingerwith a hammer?
Yeah, so I've, you know,
I've got about a 20 year career in construction and tech,
and the last project I was doing
was I built an innovation programfor a large contractor,
(01:47):
where we focused on bringingin robots to augment the craft.
And we really looked for
dull, dangerous, dirty tasksthat are highly repetitive.
And that's where the robots doreally well. Right?
That high repetitionis key for it.
and it's, you know, tasks thathumans aren't necessarily good at.
And while I was therebringing these robots in
(02:07):
and we started a sustainabilityproject with a group of folks there,
and we were lookingat waste streams.
And that's where I was learning, you know,
concrete and steelhave recycle paths.
but wood do not,
you know, wood’sgoing to the landfill,
wood’s going to incineratorsbecause of the metal fasteners?
It was just too expensiveto get them out.
And so that's concrete formwork.
That's demolition wood,temp structures, handrail,
(02:30):
just all getting ground up and going to incinerators and landfills.
and so that was kind of the impetus for like,
Hey, this is a really big problem.
It's about 37 million tons of dimensional wood
here in the US every year gets thrown away.
Not a good thing.
Well, let's back up a step
on the robotics piece of it specifically
because you were in robotics before
(02:51):
and they asked you to lookfor applications for robotics.
And I think what’s interestingbecause people get,
I think, way confused by allthe press with humanoid robots and,
you know, at the NVIDIA show,you know, recently
Jensen had, I think like eight,you know, people looking robots.
But the most successful robotsdon't look like people at all.
(03:11):
It's a Roomba (iRobot)
you know, that runs around and vacuums the house.
It's the Amazon,
you know, ones that we seethat are moving,
moving pallets around all the time.
Clearly, they've been in manufacturing
and cars and stufffor a long time.
So when you think abouthow do you apply robots,
so you look at a problem first
and you say, this is perfect for a robot
because I think
it's a different wayto think about robots.
(03:32):
I think people that aren'tin the industry
tend to go straight to that humanoid thing
and not really think about.
It's a machine
that we can programto do tasks
that (it) just does better than people.
If the attributes of the taskare just right.
Yeah, the humanoids are cool looking at,
you know, and they scare a lot of people
and they do some fun stuff
and they play soccer, but
At the end of the day,it's, you know
(03:53):
it's the task specific machines that rule in the automation world,
you design a machinefor a very specific task
and then you have it repeat that task you know
hundreds of thousands of timesover and over.
and that's where roboticsare very successful today.
if you look at auto manufacturing, right,
you have a robotthat puts tires on cars and
tightens lug nuts andor welds or
(04:15):
you know, very task specific
and that's where the opportunity is, right?
Those highly repetitive tasks.
Humans are much better atproblem solving, right?
The majority of humans don't
want to do the same thingover and over and over.
We get bored.
and so you find opportunitieswhere there's high repetition
and the machines will do it,
you know, millions of timesthe exact same way over and over.
(04:36):
And so all the constructionrobotics companies
that we worked with,it was all specific.
It was layout, you know,drawing lines on the floor.
It was drywall finishing.
It was brick laying
And the other thing we had to do too is
there wasn't enoughrobotics startups in the space,
so we would identify businessproblems, on our job sites,
(04:56):
and we would go outand look for people
to start companies and venturecapitalists to back those folks,
to solve those problems.
Okay.
So you found a huge opportunity in this waste stream,
like you said, thecement waste stream,
there's somerecycling going on there
The steel one is going on,but these huge piles of
And I think you said 37 million tons.
(05:16):
Is that right?
Per year goes into landfill,which is just shocking.
and a horrible, horrible big number.
But the
and again, I've listenedto a few of your podcasts.
Most of that stuff
is from demolition or,you know, taking things apart.
That's not the same as a robotputting a tire on, in the GM line.
(05:37):
That's the same tire on the same nuts every time
you have likeinfinite variability
of the crap that comes offthese demolished buildings.
So how did you start to reallythink about the problem,
break down the problemof how you could
take these really highly variable inputs
and then still have a processthat you could have a
you know, a nice output.
Yeah.
(05:57):
So what we did is we looked atwhat's the repetition, you know,
what's that overarching themethat just repeats over and over.
And that's the fasteners right.
That's the nails,the screws and the staples.
And there's a lot of them. Right.
You know, every six inches,every 12 inches,
you know, you can get afastener in a board,
that was holding up drywall or plywood or whatever that,
you know, attached material was.
(06:18):
And so we said,let's have the humans
focus on the non consistent,the non high volume.
So if you think about likeelectrical boxes
and structural fasteners,those are low volume
but there are lots of different shapes and sizes.
So in our in-feed we stillhave humans that take off
those odds and ends.
And then the machine takes careof the high volume high repetition.
And what we do iswe actually normalize the material.
(06:42):
So we cut all those fasteners downto make them little nubs,
and then we cook them allto reduce the friction force.
And then we pull them all out.
so it's really about, youknow, four step process,
coming into and then the fifth is
we run it through a metal detector to make sure
it truly is metal free for our customers.
and that's the one quality requirement we have from the industry is it
(07:03):
There cannot be a nailleft in that board.
It's got to be metal freebecause otherwise
it will destroy our planar bladeor a saw blade.
You know, virgin wood, machines do really good with lumber and wood.
They don't do wellwith metal.
With metal.
And then in terms of the process, right.
Do you bring the techto the material
or do you bringthe material to the tech.
Yeah.
So we are focused on taking the tech to the material.
(07:26):
Most of this material is collected at waste facilities.
Sometimes people call them MRFsor ‘Material Recovery Facilities.’
And it’s where all the contractors,whether it's demolition or concrete
all dump their trucks and trailers and bins full of wood.
and so they've got the raw material for us.
And then you, process it.
So describe to us kind of the basicsof what the line looks like,
(07:48):
what the machine actually is
that you would set up at that spot.
Yeah. So it's about 150ft long.
You start with some in-feed workstations for the crew,
where they've got toolsand workstations to help them
clean that materialand send it into the machine.
And then the next, you know, 125ftis for the most part, automated.
our machines are probably about the size of four refrigerators,
(08:08):
Okay
Lined up.
And each of these machineshas its own step.
Right.
So we got,
bandsaws running on the cutter onethat's cutting all the fasteners
after it’s cut
Then it goes intothe cooking station
where everything gets cooked,
and then from thereit goes into the picking station.
and it's really cool and impressive.
and then itgoes through a metal detector.
(08:29):
And if it dings.
We still got metal.
It doesn't ding. It's metal free.
so it's really a prettystraightforward linear process.
And then out the other end, we haveemployees that sort the material.
And how many peopleto operate it.
Yeah. So it runsfrom 2 to 4.
2 to 4, okay.
It's just interestingbecause I think at least for
for layman like me, you know,I think we really started to see
(08:52):
the re-use of the constructionmaterials on site with cement
next at next to freeways and stuff,because you can see it, right
It's not behind a fence where,
where back in the day
they would haul all that cement awaywhen they're redoing the highway.
And now you seethey've got this dedicated spot
where they're running it through this grinder
and basically putting that material back in place.
(09:12):
So that's kind of asimilar thing that,
that we'll start to see for wood?
Yep. Absolutely.
So right now today
all the wood goes through a grinder
before they bury it.
We're essentially going to replace that grinder.
So all the long material,all the high quality stuff
that doesn't belong, you know,either getting burned or buried
goes back tothe job site.
And what are the economics
that you have to hitto make it worthwhile?
(09:34):
Because it seems pretty cheap and easy
just to throw the broken stuffin the back of a truck
and drive it offto the landfill.
In terms of expenseand complexity from the,
the developer point of view.
Yeah.
So we have to competewith virgin lumber, right?
So at theend of the day,
the contractor, whoever's buyingthat wood makes a decision, right?
Do I want the reclaimed material
or do I want the virgin materialthat came from the forest?
(09:57):
and so our targetis to have a process
that competes with a virgin log mill.
right,
so those are the guysin the Pacific Northwest
or in the Southeastthat go harvest the trees
and process them and turn theminto virgin two by fours.
The big advantage wehave is we don't have the shipping
because our source is rightnext to our customers, right?
(10:19):
We're sourcing materialfrom metropolitan areas,
we clean it up in those metros,and we sell back to those metros.
whereas virgin lumbercoming out of Pacific Northwest,
if you're going to Texas,
you're going a couple thousand miles
of rail and trucks to get that material
to your customers,
which is expensive.
The other thing we don't have
is we don't have therisk of a commodity.
(10:41):
You know, lumber pricesgo up and down.
as we saw during Covid,they went up about 3½ x
which was a huge impacton housing prices.
because lumber is still the predominant building material
for single family and multifamily residential.
And so because ours is all locally sourced
and we're not a traded commodity,
we can provide consistentpricing to our customers.
(11:02):
So we don't have those shocks.
And is the business model to provide the service that
that somebody else justcontinues to own the wood.
Or do you take ownership of the wood,
or are you still trying to
figure out kind of
where's the business modelin terms of
who's paying whom to do what
and what the ownership of the wood or the output is?
Yeah. So right nowwe're in the wood business.
(11:24):
So all the material that we clean, we sell.
Okay.
To really get the market going.
Our long term vision is to leaseand sell the machines
to customers that will thenoperate the machines
in their localmetro areas.
They'll source the material, process the material,
and then sell it backwithin their metro areas.
our goal is not to operate
lots of wood processingfacilities across the world,
(11:46):
because what’s interesting,
this is a global issue.
Europe's got the same challenge.
Australia, New Zealand,anybody who's built with wood
has massive amounts of wood waste.
And I think it’swhat's in Australia
that I think Atlassian’s buildinglike the largest wood, skyscraper
oh really
as a new headquarters.(Atlassian Central in Tech Central, Sydney Central Station)
I'm pretty sure (Atlassian Central in Tech Central, Sydney Central Station)
have to double check the facts, (40 story skyscraper - hybrid timber-steel exoskeleton)
(12:06):
but I think so(40 story skyscraper - hybrid timber-steel exoskeleton)
because I think in a coupleof the items you talked about,
you know, people talking aboutdoing more with wood,
as even a replacement for steel and concrete
in more applications.
But I think that's pretty interesting.
Let's shift gears a little bit andtalk about the robots and robotics.
It's
especially
there's all kinds of interestingkind of robotic processes
that you have to putinto these things in terms of,
(12:28):
being able to see the nailsand being able to adjust to the nails
and treating a nail differentthan a screw
and angles andthis and that
wonder if you could share some of the challenges
and also some of the advancesthat you've seen in your
in your careerin robotics, as
you know, motors get smaller and
and you know, the horsepower that you get
with the computing power that you get,
(12:49):
I mean, it's awhole different world
than when you startedin robotics a while back.
Yeah, it's a couple major advancements.
I mean, obviously the costand power density of motors
is phenomenal, right?
We don't run any hydraulics.
You know, historically,
the lumber industry does everything with hydraulics
to get their powerperformance ratios.
We don't, we have no hydraulicson our systems.
(13:10):
We have a little bit of pneumaticsfor a couple operations,
but it's mostlyall electrical drive,
which makes it really efficient to move material
gives you incredible control accuracy
over the material.
And then the other oneis computer vision.
we're using cameras.
Our system isfull of cameras
to take pictures of the woodand to identify fasteners.
And so, when we look at the advancements in computer vision
(13:33):
and AI technology,we're leveraging that,
to solve a real problem, right?
We're not Bitcoin or
any of the other fun AI projectsthat have humanoids running around.
It's like we're using AI
to solve an industry problemand a waste problem.
which is awesome to see itget put to use.
Yeah. That's great.
And I saw you've got
I saw one interview,
that you had a couple interns on.
(13:53):
So I wonder if youcan share a little bit
about what's going onin kind of academia.
and robotics, I mean,
robotics seems like such a cool
industry that brings togetherall these different specialties.
I know you werea mechanical engineer.
How you got in, which is probably the more traditional,
but, you know,
there's opportunitiesfor software people.
There's opportunitiesfor human factors.
I mean, there's so much going on in robotics.
(14:15):
As you take a step backand look at that industry
as an opportunity for people to think about
either an existing careeror a new career.
What get’s you excitedabout the future of robotics?
Yeah, it’s probably one of those few industries
where you're combining multiple expertise
to actually solvethe problem, right?
It's hardware, it's physics,it's software, it's computer vision.
(14:37):
There’s a lot that goes into these machines
and getting these machines to market,
and we do research,with local universities.
We've have interns on our team.
I’ll have some morethis summer as well.
And then not just the robotics side,but also the sustainability side.
Right.
So okay, we got robots
that process this material,
but how do you sell itback into the market. Right.
(14:58):
Who's the customers?What do they do with it?
What's the process?
What does thatdemand look like?
because we're connecting two points in the economy
that have never been connected before.
Right, the waste industry has never sold wood to the lumber industry.
and so we're makingthose connections.
So in order for our robotsto work and be successful,
we have a sales team and a marketing team
(15:20):
that's driving that demand.
and so it’s a huge team effortto get this shift going
and not just the techbut also the market side as well.
Right.
Well, let's talk a little bit specifically
about the carrot and the stickin sustainability and governance,
because I've seen, you know,
you speak at a number of different conferences,
you speak at building conferences
(15:40):
and materials conferences,but you're also speaking
at sustainability conferencesand clearly,
the role of governanceand the changing of laws,
either to hit sustainability targetsor to have requirements,
especially in buildings, changesthings pretty dramatically.
So where are you seeing,you know, kind of the tailwinds
from a governance point of viewthat's helping you?
(16:04):
and how is the marketkind of responding
to both kind of the carrot sideand the stick side
of just not throwingstuff in the garbage?
Yeah, there's reallytwo drivers there, right
There's the demand sidewhere people are looking for
more sustainablebuilding materials.
Right? They're lookingat their carbon footprints.
They're looking at the wastefrom those materials.
Where are they sourced from?
They want local overlong haul materials.
(16:26):
which really aims you at reclaimed lumber, right.
If I can source materialfor my new building
from an old building down the street,
that's a huge win on sustainability.
And it's agreat story,
right
The designersreally like that.
The other side is the waste problem.
So as we started to dig into it andlearn more about the waste industry
and who owns it,
typically the government agenciesare responsible for the landfills
(16:48):
and disposing of wastewithin their regions.
And nobody wants to build a new landfill.
Over the next 60 years, all thelandfills in the U.S will be full.
And it takes about 20 yearsto permit a new one.
And so nobody wants to go down that path.
It's not.
It's massive expenditures.
It's not politically.
Nobody wants to fill up a canyonor fill a hole in ground.
(17:12):
And so what we're seeingfrom these government agencies
is different legislationto keep material out.
And wood is one of the biggest contributorsto landfill space by volume.
You know, the concrete's not going in the steel’s not going in.
So when you look at buildings,it's the wood.
And so there's deconstruction ordinances,
there's source separation ordinances,
there's incentives not to
(17:32):
bury the wood economically.
and there's a lot of,
a lot more of thesethat want to get passed.
But the challenge is,what do you do with all this wood?
Okay, if we don't put it in the landfill,what happens?
Well, we chip it and we burn it.
Oh, okay.
That's not much better, right.
And so we're the first ones that arebringing the technology to market
that says, okay,
let's take as much of thiswood as we can.
(17:54):
It's still dimensionally intact,
and let's use it in the buildings again.
Let's go store this carbon in building walls.
Right.
Which is a great placeto store carbon
because I canstore carbon
and I'm housing people,
which is ahuge win.
That's way better than storing it in the ground or,
you know, whatever some of these other schemes are
to manage it.
(18:14):
And so that's our goalis to keep it back in circularity
and let people build with it again.
And you said most of that'sbeing driven at the municipal level
because they're the oneson the hook for the landfill.
Yeah.
So that can be cities, counties,metropolitan government agencies.
It kind of depends on where you are.
We've talked with a whole host of different
people who host that problem
(18:36):
states are getting involved in it.
We're seeing state funding coming down,
federal funding coming down.
we've hadsome agencies,
received federal funding to go rent our machine,
and set up reuse facilitiesin their metropolitan areas.
Interesting.
I want to shift gearsand talk about something
you've discussed inother podcasts, which is
changing people's behavior
without really trying to changetheir process too much.
(18:59):
Right.
It's hard to get peopleto change their process, right?
Everyone's stuck in their ways.
But there's also, you know,kind of precedent
processes and subsequent processesthat are all tied together.
So to interrupt that or to get people to change
a step of that is very,very difficult.
You made a really interesting comment.
You're trying to do it without actually changing anything.
And I wonder if you can share,
(19:20):
you know, some of the techniquesand how you approach it and
And I saw one interviewthat you had, you know, a local,
wood guy who had his own mill, who,
you know, clearly was a little innovative
and willing to take a chanceand try something new and,
and had open eyes and open ears.
But how are you
addressing this very old, market place
with a lot of old players
(19:41):
and a lot of established ways of doing things,
and you're really kind of tryingto change it up a little bit.
Yeah.
So if we start withthe waste industry,
right, which is our source.
Right.
So how can we
minimize the impact to themwhile adding financial incentive.
so right now, today, you know, typically they minimize the wood,
they sort the wood out, they smash it all up into woodchips
(20:03):
and they burn, bury it,
maybe a couple of them are sawn upfor some landscape products.
And so our goal there is
how do we source that material from themand incentivize them economically?
The good news is they're usedto recycling other materials, right?
They grind up concreteand sell it as base rock.
they take the steel and they gothe scrap guys with that.
And so they're used totrying to convert waste
(20:23):
into a high valueor valuable commodity.
So when we pitch them, they're like,
this is very interesting
right
We're very interestedin selling this as a commodity.
You know, truckloads of woodgoing off our facilities.
And some of them
are at risk of losing their woodchip customers
because burning wood chipsis losing out the solar.
(20:45):
it's interesting how all these things work
when you start to learn about these industries.
It's like, wait,
the incinerator guythat's burning the free wood chips
that you're giving themcan't compete with solar.
And they're like, no,the operating costs
on the wood burners are just getting crushed
by the solar panels,
because once you put outsolar panels
Interesting
Eric - You got to do some Jeff - I’ve never heard that before
Yeah, a lot of these guysare shutting down.
(21:05):
And so we actually had a couple of people
introduce us to the term ‘Woodmageddon’
And if they don't have a placeto burn these woodchips
or bury these wood chips,what do you do with them?
and so right now we're one of the few options available
besides burning and burying it.
so it's nice to have the right timing.
I would say rightand have these pressures.
(21:27):
so for the waste world,they're very open to it.
They're like, if we can make moneyselling our wood
instead of grinding it and giving it away,
that's a win for them.
And then on the construction side,the great thing about lumber is
the dimensions have been pretty consistent,
you know, since about the 1940s,
when they went from rough sawn
to this finished inch and a halfthree and a half.
and so as long as we get it metal free,
(21:48):
any virgin lumber millcan process it.
And so we can sell them lumberjust like they procure it
from an existing log mill.
and so long as we can sell them a material
that acts like, looks like,measures like
their existing material,
there's very little change to them.
And then they get to sell itas a greener story.
(22:09):
You know, we went and got our FSC certification(Forest Stewardship Council)
so it can be FSC reclaimed lumber.(Forest Stewardship Council)
that's a big win for them.
And then a lot of folks are looking as
Hey, this product looks and sells just like my other products,
but it makes me look better.
And I can market itas a more sustainable material.
Oooh, that's a win too.
and so that's our goal, right?
How do we add that value to our customers
(22:31):
that outweighsthe small risk?
How do we minimize that riskas much as possible?
and so it's awesome to have these first adopter partners
to go validate that with
and go demonstratethat says,
Hey, here'smaterial.
We're selling itthrough your company,
here's your customers,it’s running.
They're building it.They're taking pictures of it,
and it's working.
Wild. The Woodmageddon.
(22:51):
That's funny you
because another one of your interviewsyou mentioned that 37 million
tons, if I’m gettingthe number right
is half
basically half of the new wood
shipped by the lumber industry in the US per year?
Is that did I get that right?
Yeah, for soft woods,
it's about half of what we harvestfrom our forest for soft woods.
(23:12):
That's crazy.
Yep
that's absolutely bananas.
And we producea lot of wood here in the US
and we import a lot of wood.
So let's talk aboutwood for a minute
because I'm sure there'sgoing to be a couple people
that are going tostumble upon this
just to talk about wood,
the quality of wood, the changein wood and wood construction.
And we know, you know,back in the old days,
there was a lot more old growththat was taken down.
(23:33):
There's a lot of old redwoodthat's out there
that people just treasure,
What do you find in this processand what's kind of the uptake
and the opportunityjust from a pure,
you know,kind of the wood
that was in the buildings
that you just can't get wood like that anymore.
Yeah.
I mean, that old growth stuff,your only option is a building,
right?
You can't go out to the forest andcut down old growth trees anymore.
(23:55):
and so you got to do it from a building.
And those buildings are holding a lot of material,
right
Despite, you know, our average buildings
here in the U.S are what,
somewhere between 30 and 50 years old probably
despite that short lifespan,especially here on the West Coast,
there's still a lot of buildingsout there that were built
prior to the 1940s that have old growth
rough sawn truly two bi
(24:16):
dimensional lumber in them,
with reallytight grains.
And it's beautiful stuff.
When we get that stuff,it flies off the shelf.
The designers love it,
because it's unique,
right?
There's nota large volume
and traditionally
is really expensive materialto get your hands on.
Great.
I want to shift gearsa little bit
and just talk about labor and talent and trades.
(24:37):
you mentioned in a number ofyour interviews specifically,
you know, we're not taking out high skilled craftsmen
and tradesmen.
but I would imaginein the construction industry,
like in every industry, laborand talent period, is a problem
and is only going to get worse,unfortunately, going forward.
So when you think aboutin terms of the talent and,
(24:59):
and just getting people,
what does your solution
or does it really help them,
along those lines,
is it an alternative waythat they don't need
as many people, is this a great way for people to,
to expand,
into different areaswithin the industry?
How do you fit within kind of thewhole labor tightness story?
(25:19):
Yeah.
So ironically, we actually are adding labor,
with our machines
because we need people to feed themand take it off the out feed.
And there's nobody doing this today at scale.
Right.
Traditionally with robotics,
mostly in construction,we looked at augmenting labor.
Right.
How do I reduce thenumber of labor hours
I need on a jobsite with a machine?
And it’s obviously been going on for,you know, over 100 years with
(25:41):
automation and caterpillar tractorsand stuff and now its robotics.
But for us, we're actuallybringing a machine to market
that's actually going to increase the demand for labor.
so our machines, you know, they takeabout 2 to 4 people to operate.
So not a huge amount.
But what it does is downstream
is it feeds a local manufacturing base,
because now you've got a rawmaterial in metropolitan areas
(26:03):
that you can feed into wood manufacturing companies.
which is a great opportunity.
So we've actuallyhad quite a few
municipalities reach out to us where they're like,
hey, we've got these old blighted homes and buildings.
We'd like to take these down,
but we want to turn themback into local buildings
and we want todo some job force training,
which our machines work out really well.
Right? You get to put people
(26:23):
in a manufacturingsetting processing lumber.
they're not doing the nail pulling
They're operating the robots
and the machinesand the maintenance on machines.
So they're higher skilled jobs
than pulling nails and fasteners.
so it's really cool to bebringing in tech that's actually
going to put more people to worksolving a sustainability challenge.
And are the machines that you'reshipping today just give us a
(26:45):
I should have got this earlier
kind of where you are in termsof the lifetime of the company.
I think you've shippedlike 4 or 5 machines,
if I recall, from
some of the other interviews
probably off date
are these, you know,kind of production prototypes.
Are they scale machines.
Are they in a position yetto get the scale
that you're going to need to really make them hum?
Or are you still working outa couple of the kinks.
(27:05):
Yeah, so we have shipped two R&D machines.
we had one that went outMay of last year
that's started field trials,ran for about four months,
before we swapped it outwith the next version.
The current versionthat we're running right now
spent three months at a large waste facility in San Jose
that did a pilot down there.
Then we moved itup to the lumber yard
in American Canyon (CA)that we've been based out of,
(27:27):
for our field testing.
and it's been running up there.
So it's, it'll be ninemonths old, almost,
that the system'sbeen running.
So it's pretty coolto see this one running.
And then we have onemore iteration on the tech.
And this next iteration on the tech
will be the hardware that we’ll shipto our first customer in October.
So it's nice to start to transition from the R&D.
(27:48):
R&D is great, but it's expensive.
Right? Right.
and then to shipping unitsto customers.
that one will head up into,the city of Seattle, in October.
That's great.
So what was kind of the biggest learning of,
moving from the lab to theprototypes out in the field?
Yeah. It's
(28:08):
unexpected.
Unexpected learning, I should say.
You know, it's these manufacturersand they give us these specs
and they say,oh, yeah,
they operate in these temperature ranges,
and you start loading the hardware
and you start putting the pressureon it, and it starts failing.
Oh, then, your components you mean
Jeff - The components that make the machine Eric - A lot of components, yeah.
We went through a lot of components.
Was a big learning one.
The computer vision, you know,we started with 3D depth sensing cameras
(28:30):
and unfortunately, they haven't performedas well as we needed them to.
So we've actually taken a step backand brought in 2D cameras,
which cost less, but areperforming way better.
and even in our environments,they're performing better.
so it's going back and usingsome more proven technology, we'll call it,
but the systemthat we're building in the shop
(28:50):
is just screaming fastcompared to the last iteration.
And the last one is doing great.
so it's pretty coolto watch those iterations
and the tech evolve to the pointwhere it's like,
okay, let's get ready to shipthis one to a customer.
And what is fast?
What are you measuring?
Fasteners removedper unit time
or board feet through the machine or what are?
What are some of your
your measures that you'reworking towards?
(29:12):
Yeah.
So internally we do fasteners per second.
coming offthe machines
board footage moved,linear footage moved.
we do everything in metricon the engineering side,
but then on the customer side,everything’s feet, and board feet.
Right.
and then for the customers,it's a board footage range.
Yeah.
Our target is to move,
(29:34):
you know, 2,500 to 7,500 board feet per shift
with the system.
so that'll run you about,
what’s that, it's about
500,000 to 1 million and a half board feet per year.
coming off that system,if you run one shift,
if you run two, you just doubled it.
is reallythe economics.
(29:55):
And what thatdoes is it
puts us at price paritywith virgin lumber mills.
So that gets us down in that 40¢ / 50¢ cent a board foot market.
And so we can competehead to head with them.
That's great.
That's real. Those are big numbers.
So let's shift gearsone more time before I let you go.
And this I found fascinating.
And all these podcasts,I was listening to you
(30:15):
At the end, they always say, right,
How can people getahold of you, Eric?
And rather than saying,
go to Urban Machine(dot build)
What does it, you have a funny dot. Dot what?
dot buildhttps://urbanmachine.build/
Dot build, Urban Machine dot build https://urbanmachine.build/
Maybe that's too hard.
You say goto LinkedIn.
and you're all over LinkedInand you even say
we're talking about our products on LinkedIn.
We're, you know, communicatingwith our, community on LinkedIn.
(30:38):
And I just thoughtit was interesting.
I wouldn't necessarily thinkbecause I think it was
another interview you said, you know,
not necessarily everyone in your construction world is in LinkedIn.
So I’d just love to get your takeon how you're using LinkedIn.
Why are you using LinkedIn this way?
I'm obviously a huge proponent myself, but,
you know, one of the requirementsfor it to be effective sometimes is
(30:58):
if your target market
is actually swimmingin the same pool,
if they're not in the pool, it's kind of hard to
it's kind of hard to communicate, so
Share a little bit about your strategy with LinkedIn
and its, and its effectiveness.
Yeah.
So it's interesting, you know,trying to find where is your market.
Right.
Where are thesepeople congregating
Where they workingand sharing information.
(31:20):
and it turns outit's LinkedIn.
That's wherethe contractors are.
the architects are
the engineers are
The waste industry
yeah, they're working on it.
Most of them aren't on LinkedIn.
It's a good old fashionedphone call to get to those folks.
But for sustainability,the design world,
the construction community,they're all there.
and so Jorie (Wisnefski)who heads up marketing for us,
(31:41):
has been very active on there with
building that community of followers.
And we have superfans,
You know, we went and visited a waste facility last week
and we got to meetone of our superfans there.
she just recently joined their team,
which is cool.
It's like people have beenfollowing us and supporting us.
you know, when people see the machine running,
they're rooting it on,to pick fasteners,
(32:02):
which is very cool.
right
To be in a space where, hey,
you're solving a problemand people like it.
right
There's nothing bad about this story
about reusing materials to build again.
It's a great story.
It's a great piece of technology.
and it's something wedesperately need.
Yeah.
We got to stop throwing awaythese high quality materials
and get them backinto the buildings.
(32:23):
Especially if we’rethrowing away half
of what we're shipping in fresh every year
That's just that's gonna not work long.
Eric - YeahJeff - That's crazy
So what have wenot talked about Eric?
What have we not talked about thatwe should have talked about?
Because you're the expert,and I'm pretty new
to this whole space,but I think it's super cool.
I love the sustainability angle.
I love the tech angle as well.
Yeah. I mean, we've covered the tech.
(32:44):
We've covered the sustainability,the construction industry, the,
the engineering side of it.
It's, you know, it's cool.
The history of the company, it's,you know, it's a lot of work.
You know, we got a really sharp team
that's cranking away at designing and buildingand testing these machines.
We are 15 people,
so it's not a tiny team,
(33:06):
here based out of Oakland.
but we're making great progress,which is awesome.
And we really appreciate opportunities
to come and share that story
with folks like yourselfand spread the good word.
Yeah, it is a good word.
And it's exciting on a lot of fronts
And again, I think the robotics angle is so cool.
I think the AI angle is so cool.
You’ve got so many different technologies in this robotics
(33:26):
between the computer visionand all the mechanical stuff.
I think it's a great story.
And at the endyou get this beautiful,
this beautiful productand keep it out of the landfill.
So what's not to love?
All right, Eric, well, thank you for your time today.
It's really acool story.
Glad to learn more about itand expand my,
my knowledge a little bit on the robotics side
beyond Roombas andAmazon warehouse robots.
(33:49):
It's good to see themdoing other things,
besides just moving stuff around.
Absolutely.Thanks for having me on, Jeff.
All right. Thank you.
All right.
He's Eric,I'm Jeff,
you're watching‘Turn the Lens’ with Jeff Frick.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.We'll see you next time.
Take care.
All right. That was great. Thank you.
Awesome, Jeff,that was great.
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