Zobel said:

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Many such cases.

AMCA is a company trying to address some of this.

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I'm glad to hear that.

During Trump's first term, we were approached by a group out of Washington, tasked with bringing manufacturing back to the US. They asked about our industry, reliance on China, etc...and was exploring Grants to US companies, to assist moving production back to the US.

When his term ended, so did the effort. But I was hopeful that some of this would change. Still am...though I don't see the movement at the scale we need.

It's a national security issue, but it isn't being addressed at the level we need.

It's a thorny problem. Like I posted about Friedrich List, it is a lot easier to destroy industry than build it.

You have to start at the bottom, which is critical minerals and energy. Then move up to base manufacturing and tooling, then you can get to end products. The USG interest in companies like Phoenix Tailings or MP Materials is in line but you just can't will it into existence, even with infinite cash.

If you've not read Freedom's Forge it's a great book, we're definitely in an echo of pre WWII buildup. The difference this time is that we don't have a large latent industrial base, so there's a step zero before we can do step one from last time.

Zobel said:

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Fabri, Digital Metal, Rangeview, Foundry Lab, DDM Systems

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The only one I've heard of before is Rangeview some time ago, and their website was just a single page with zero indication of what their product or service was. The website is still really vague, like it's not even targeting customers. I'll have to assume what they do, they're not yet ready for customers and are still in the demonstrating a proof of concept phase of their start-up.

Interesting thread, my job has required me to source some domestic castings so I've been learning a lot about the industry.

This is Boom, but Scott Manley gets a tour of their manufacturing facility including parts of their Symphony engine.. With the conversations about turbine construction this is interestingly relevant.

It seems like people in general believe that designing a gas turbine is hard. I can understand why people might think that but it isn't really grasping the situation correctly.

Designing a functioning gas turbine isn't difficult any more, its kind of known art. But designing a reliable, competitive gas turbine - high efficiency, light weight - is incredibly difficult. Way more difficult than developing a nuclear weapon for example.

Boom putting together a s/n 0 prototype is a supply chain exercise. Write a PO to FTT, write POs to various manufacturing and forging companies, print the blades, machine some parts on a 5-axis. It's good execution, they're going fast. But it doesn't really point to the engine being reliable.

They won't know if the engine is reliable for years, because that's how long it takes to accumulate the run hours to understand where you are in statistics.

Design of an engine for someone like GE takes a year, building the first one maybe a year. Arriving at a robust, reliable engine is a ten year exercise, even when you're iterating from known, validated hardware.

Gas turbines are really, really hard.

There is a very high barrier to entry in the turbine market. It wasn't worth the financial risk before the booming demand caused by AI. And prior to this boom, there was a shift away from gas turbines towards wind and solar and batteries.

Now the tech sector is short on power and it's revealed their green power push was just virtue signaling drivel. They're building out huge data centers with diesel generators and low efficiency high polluting gas turbines because that's the fastest and the most economically viable, emissions are an afterthought.