3 ms·

Why would you prototype with a material that's substantially different from the real-world item? I read the article and this bit puzzled me. The differences cle

Why would you prototype with a material that's substantially different from the real-world item? I read the article and this bit puzzled me. The differences clearly matter, and the $300M bankruptcy they reference in the article even makes that point.

truffdog 4y ago
Probably they want to handle wheat waste and corn waste long term. Seems like there should be plenty of both to go around
liminvorous 4y ago
They want to be able to process both the material they prototyped with and the material they started with (straw) and the material they tried to scale up with (corn cobs), and probably any kind of plant matter that has less structural integrity than say, timber.
pkrein 4y ago
Initial testing was in San Francisco, where corn stover is relatively tricky to come by because corn is not widely grown in California, and agricultural residues cannot be brought into the state because of the bugs. Wheat straw was much easier to procure in-state. Since encountering the differences, we tracked down the rarer corn growers in California and now use corn stover for testing as well.
- rexreed 4y ago
  If corn stover is a critical importance to your business and business model, wouldn't it be more effective, efficient, and beneficial to your business to be where the critical resource and information and experience is? Basically why not move to Kansas instead of stay put in California?
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    Come on. No one wants to live in Kansas. And it's extremely difficult to build in a rural setting. You try prototyping an experimental cutting-edge technology in the middle of a corn field 2 hours from the nearest Home Depot or metal fabricator.
    - rexreed 4y ago
      John Deere might find that interesting. Now headquartered in Moline, IL (Iowa border), they started up and built their company exactly in the rural America (Grand Detour, IL), when Home Depot didn't even exist. Yes it was over 150 years ago, but there's nothing that prevents you from starting an agtech company where the resources are if they are in the midwest. The Kauffman Foundation, a major entrepreneurial resource is based in Kansas City, MO.
    - stonemetal12 4y ago
      The wikipedia page for Wichita, Kansas claims Boeing, Airbus, and Learjet among others operate design and manufacturing facilities there. You should be able to find a metal fabricator and a home depot.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      There are less drastic options than Kansas that would work fine. Chicago has an international airport. Indianapolis as well (though it’s not listed in Wikipedia, which makes me wonder how complete that is). St Louis and Minneapolis are major hubs. Large airports besides those I’m less familiar with, but if you’re planning to process corn waste what you need is rail access, not air. So then you can add a lot more of the midwest and still maybe be able to find Bulgogi for lunch. The Quad Cities, Peoria, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Omaha.
      - krallja 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_International_Air... ?
        4y ago
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Because Charm is being run as a VC tech startup rather than a traditional industrial company and there's a recent movement of trying to do ag-tech in the bay rather than places like the Midwest or even central valley. Probably doesn't hurt that the CEO/co-founder already lives in the bay.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Why you wouldn’t do ag tech in Chicago is beyond me.
  - bshipp 4y ago
    I've worked in agriculture my entire life, and seven weeks is a pretty good turnaround for fixing these types of problems. the next batch of issues they're likely to encounter is handling product with variations in moisture content that further bungs the system. Then it will be incorporating new feedstock from other crops. Agriculture is the intersection of industrial mechanization and biological systems. Unlike traditional manufacturing, flexibility and efficiency is learned over time as situations are encountered that exceed previously theorized boundaries/ranges. I have a grower who used gigantic wood burners for heat instead of natural gas. When I walked through his boiler room I noticed a wheelbarrow full of nails and other fasteners. He said 90% of his labour and headaches with that system were dealing with steel chunks in the feed stream, something they barely accounted for beyond adding a magnet when they built the system. Not everything can be planned for in advance.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    “Did he just tell me to go fuck myself?” “I believe he did, Bob.”
- 9dev 4y ago
  If you rely on material that is scarce in one location but widely available in another, wouldn't it make sense to test where the material is abundant..?
  - failrate 4y ago
    They did. What do you think the article was about? Ordinarily, I do not reply to these kind of comments, but this article is receiving a lot of them along these lines. The comment breaks down to "Why did you not predict everything that could possibly go wrong before you started this new tech project?" I hope that it is clear that it would be impossible to identify every problem before field testing. Even in commercial manufacturing, you will run up against novel problems and have to engineer a solution onsite, even though we have had factories for about 250 years. When they start testing in a different state or country, they will discover a new crop that breaks their system and will go though this process once again. But now, they are more experienced, and it will probably be easier.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ComputerCat 4y ago
Yeah it's definitely a bit peculiar. You'd think they could have done some more research into the makeup of the material they'd be processing, get a good understanding of the needs of the machinery...
carbadtraingood 4y ago
Wheat straw is a common agricultural waste product across the US, and if they can solve processing that they still win. It's not that they tested A for a product that will only process B. They tested A for a product that will eventually process A and B and C and... Scaling up means testing with new inputs at scale. So now they've done that?

truffdog 4y ago

Probably they want to handle wheat waste and corn waste long term. Seems like there should be plenty of both to go around

liminvorous 4y ago

They want to be able to process both the material they prototyped with and the material they started with (straw) and the material they tried to scale up with (corn cobs), and probably any kind of plant matter that has less structural integrity than say, timber.

pkrein 4y ago

Initial testing was in San Francisco, where corn stover is relatively tricky to come by because corn is not widely grown in California, and agricultural residues cannot be brought into the state because of the bugs. Wheat straw was much easier to procure in-state. Since encountering the differences, we tracked down the rarer corn growers in California and now use corn stover for testing as well.

rexreed 4y ago
If corn stover is a critical importance to your business and business model, wouldn't it be more effective, efficient, and beneficial to your business to be where the critical resource and information and experience is? Basically why not move to Kansas instead of stay put in California?
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  Come on. No one wants to live in Kansas. And it's extremely difficult to build in a rural setting. You try prototyping an experimental cutting-edge technology in the middle of a corn field 2 hours from the nearest Home Depot or metal fabricator.
  - rexreed 4y ago
    John Deere might find that interesting. Now headquartered in Moline, IL (Iowa border), they started up and built their company exactly in the rural America (Grand Detour, IL), when Home Depot didn't even exist. Yes it was over 150 years ago, but there's nothing that prevents you from starting an agtech company where the resources are if they are in the midwest. The Kauffman Foundation, a major entrepreneurial resource is based in Kansas City, MO.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    The wikipedia page for Wichita, Kansas claims Boeing, Airbus, and Learjet among others operate design and manufacturing facilities there. You should be able to find a metal fabricator and a home depot.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    There are less drastic options than Kansas that would work fine. Chicago has an international airport. Indianapolis as well (though it’s not listed in Wikipedia, which makes me wonder how complete that is). St Louis and Minneapolis are major hubs. Large airports besides those I’m less familiar with, but if you’re planning to process corn waste what you need is rail access, not air. So then you can add a lot more of the midwest and still maybe be able to find Bulgogi for lunch. The Quad Cities, Peoria, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Omaha.
    - krallja 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_International_Air... ?
      - 4y ago
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Because Charm is being run as a VC tech startup rather than a traditional industrial company and there's a recent movement of trying to do ag-tech in the bay rather than places like the Midwest or even central valley. Probably doesn't hurt that the CEO/co-founder already lives in the bay.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Why you wouldn’t do ag tech in Chicago is beyond me.
- bshipp 4y ago
  I've worked in agriculture my entire life, and seven weeks is a pretty good turnaround for fixing these types of problems. the next batch of issues they're likely to encounter is handling product with variations in moisture content that further bungs the system. Then it will be incorporating new feedstock from other crops. Agriculture is the intersection of industrial mechanization and biological systems. Unlike traditional manufacturing, flexibility and efficiency is learned over time as situations are encountered that exceed previously theorized boundaries/ranges. I have a grower who used gigantic wood burners for heat instead of natural gas. When I walked through his boiler room I noticed a wheelbarrow full of nails and other fasteners. He said 90% of his labour and headaches with that system were dealing with steel chunks in the feed stream, something they barely accounted for beyond adding a magnet when they built the system. Not everything can be planned for in advance.
- hinkley 4y ago
  “Did he just tell me to go fuck myself?” “I believe he did, Bob.”
9dev 4y ago
If you rely on material that is scarce in one location but widely available in another, wouldn't it make sense to test where the material is abundant..?
- failrate 4y ago
  They did. What do you think the article was about? Ordinarily, I do not reply to these kind of comments, but this article is receiving a lot of them along these lines. The comment breaks down to "Why did you not predict everything that could possibly go wrong before you started this new tech project?" I hope that it is clear that it would be impossible to identify every problem before field testing. Even in commercial manufacturing, you will run up against novel problems and have to engineer a solution onsite, even though we have had factories for about 250 years. When they start testing in a different state or country, they will discover a new crop that breaks their system and will go though this process once again. But now, they are more experienced, and it will probably be easier.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ComputerCat 4y ago

Yeah it's definitely a bit peculiar. You'd think they could have done some more research into the makeup of the material they'd be processing, get a good understanding of the needs of the machinery...

carbadtraingood 4y ago

Wheat straw is a common agricultural waste product across the US, and if they can solve processing that they still win. It's not that they tested A for a product that will only process B. They tested A for a product that will eventually process A and B and C and... Scaling up means testing with new inputs at scale. So now they've done that?