I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308

0:00 Is it possible to make something

0:02 in America and be competitive in the marketplace?

0:06 This video documents an experiment that lasted over four years.

0:10 The goal was simple, to manufacture a product here in America.

0:14 The challenge is that almost every single

0:17 market force pushes manufacturing to make things overseas.

0:20 What happens if you ignore those pressures

0:22 and you just make something here anyways?

0:25 This channel is supported by the patrons of Smarter Every Day.

0:27 Their financial contributions are what allowed to do this experiment,

0:31 and I think it's very important.

0:33 The global economic forces that have shaped

0:35 the world since World War II are changing,

0:37 and I believe people in your community who understand how to manufacture

0:41 things are going to be even more critical in the coming years.

0:45 My home is here in America,

0:47 but this video's lessons doesn't just apply to America.

0:50 It's wherever you live.

0:52 If you can manufacture things locally, then that ensures your self-reliance,

0:57 your stability, and ultimately, your freedom.

1:00 Let's explore this topic and go get Smarter Every Day.

1:06 I started this process with the goal

1:10 of making everything you see here in America.

1:14 All of these components go together to make one thing,

1:17 and that thing is a grill scrubber.

1:20 This is called the Smarter Scrubber, and we'll talk more about that later.

1:23 But for now, I want to tell you how we're going to lay this video out.

1:27 There's three parts to this video.

1:29 The first part is why I wanted to do it.

1:32 Why did I want to perform this experiment?

1:34 Secondly, how it happened.

1:35 Every component there has a story.

1:37 I want to tell you the story of each of those components.

1:40 And finally, I want to pitch you on buying that product.

1:43 I want you to buy it, not because you're watching some YouTube video,

1:47 but is it actually competitive in the market?

1:49 Is this a thing that can exist on its own in the marketplace?

1:53 I'm going to give you that pitch and we'll see.

1:55 Part one, why?

1:56 Both my mom and my dad were union auto workers.

1:59 United United Auto Workers, 2195, here locally in North Alabama.

2:02 They made steering components for vehicles.

2:05 My mom worked on the assembly line.

2:07 My dad was in tool and gage.

2:08 When they would come home, they would smell like cutting fluid,

2:11 and that smelled like work to me.

2:14 It smelled like productivity.

2:15 They made things.

2:16 And everybody that I knew, their parents made things.

2:19 Middle class America.

2:21 The American dream was alive and well.

2:23 And then things changed.

2:25 With NAFTA and CAFTA, it wasn't one political party.

2:28 It was everybody.

2:30 Globally, things were changing so that it made more sense

2:33 economically to move manufacturing facilities out of the United States.

2:37 And that's exactly what happened.

2:39 This is more than Destin is upset because NAFTA took mommy and daddy's job.

2:43 I don't even know that NAFTA did take mommy and daddy's job.

2:46 I think things were changing before that.

2:48 So the global economy is so complicated.

2:52 I could make a whole channel on it, but what I want to do is just take 60

2:55 seconds to demonstrate that I understand this is a complex topic,

2:59 and I just want to throw some ideas out there and let you think about it,

3:02 and then we're going to move on with this video.

3:04 But it's just a really interesting thing to think about.

3:07 Okay, so a long time ago, things were better, right?

3:10 That's called golden age thinking.

3:12 Every civilization has done that.

3:13 The idea that if we could just to return to the way the things were,

3:16 things would be better.

3:17 That's a powerful, nostalgic thing, but it's not really accurate.

3:21 Because if you think about it,

3:22 we went from this type of shipping to this type of shipping in 150 years.

3:27 And that is analogous to the complexities of global trade,

3:30 because wars were fought when we were using wooden boats.

3:33 Imagine how complex the economics are when you

3:35 go to boats like this with containerized shipping.

3:39 In World War II, the Bretton Woods Accords in New Hampshire,

3:43 America decided they were going to guarantee the shipping lanes

3:45 would be open so global trade and global prosperity could happen.

3:49 We started doing that.

3:50 Everybody started doing good things.

3:52 And then people started exploiting cheap labor in developing nations,

3:56 and then profit became king.

3:58 And so now we have billionaires,

3:59 and we have a wage gap, and it's very complicated.

4:02 And so people are pushing factories overseas,

4:06 and it's good for local communities overseas, but sometimes it's not.

4:10 Okay, so that was impossible.

4:11 I didn't even mention unions, collective bargaining agreements, all that stuff.

4:14 It's a very complicated issue.

4:17 And I'm not like, America is dominant and must be.

4:20 No, that's not what I care about.

4:22 I care about people.

4:23 I love people.

4:24 And I think these issues are more than something that can be distilled down

4:28 to a one-line that you can use to dunk

4:31 on people who differ with your views politically.

4:34 This is complicated.

4:35 And we, as people have to solve it because we're not agrarian anymore.

4:39 We have industrialization that can make food,

4:42 so we must produce things as people, not just in America, everywhere.

4:47 I just don't want people to be exploited in the process.

4:49 My answer to all of this is Jesus, the golden rule,

4:52 do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

4:54 But we have to figure this out.

4:55 Let's move on with the video.

4:57 I remember this period of time

4:59 not understanding how important these global shifts,

5:02 literally, were changing the town around me.

5:05 I become an engineer.

5:06 I learned how to draft and draw parts

5:08 that hopefully would be manufactured sometime in America.

5:10 But then when I got out of school, there were not many plants to go work at.

5:14 Fast forward a lot of stuff, and then you'll get to the 2020 global pandemic.

5:18 The 2020 pandemic made a lot of people mad for a lot of reasons.

5:21 It made me mad.

5:22 I don't get mad very often,

5:24 but it did make me mad because of manufacturing capacity in America.

5:28 So when everything went down,

5:29 Everybody wanted N95 masks and face shields, and they couldn't get it.

5:33 When the President starts talking about airplane shipments from China,

5:36 because that's the only place we can get these N95 masks,

5:39 I realized this is a big deal.

5:42 We can't make the things we need.

5:43 And I'm not talking about the mask debate.

5:45 Imagine, if we're talking about individual airplanes coming from China,

5:49 do you think Alabama is on the priority

5:51 list of where those things get distributed?

5:53 No, we weren't.

5:55 And so as a local community,

5:56 we decided we're going to 3D print masks for our medical workers the N95 masks,

6:00 the face shields, and stuff like that.

6:02 A guy in California had developed this system to do this safely, so we did.

6:06 We came together.

6:06 It was a really good community moment.

6:08 We 3D printed these things,

6:09 but we realized very quickly this is slow and very difficult.

6:13 We need to be able to manufacture things.

6:15 And so I started trying to find where I could manufacture these things.

6:18 And this revealed to me how anemic

6:20 our manufacturing capacity in America has become,

6:22 because I was waiting on some billionaire to come save us, and it didn't happen.

6:27 You know what happened?

6:28 I went and found a guy guy here locally in Alabama.

6:31 His name is Chris Robeson.

6:33 He knew how to make an injection mold, and he did.

6:36 We worked together and we created an injection mold here in Alabama.

6:40 This is the model number Huntsville 02 made in Alabama face shield.

6:45 This is what was distributed here in Alabama to our medical workers.

6:48 You put a little piece of plastic over there,

6:51 and we used this in hospitals all over the state and even in adjacent states.

6:55 So this whole pandemic made me realize

6:59 that our our manufacturing capacity in America has been gutted.

7:03 If Chris had decided to retire before I needed that mold made,

7:07 we would not have been able to make an injection mold in my area.

7:10 And this made me mad.

7:12 I realized the knowledge chain almost broke,

7:15 so I made this tweet asking about how I would

7:18 find local manufacturers in order to make things in America.

7:21 That's what I realized had to happen, and so I started on the journey.

7:25 All right, I'm going to pause here and introduce you to the last,

7:27 probably most important person of the story that you

7:29 need to know before we get going, John Youngblood.

7:32 John owns a small business named JJ George that sells grill products.

7:35 There's a ton of problems with grill brushes on the market.

7:38 We'll get into those later.

7:40 But John had a very clever idea to solve these problems with chain mail.

7:44 Now, I got excited about his idea,

7:46 and I wanted to get involved as an engineer and just help him in general,

7:49 so we decided to work together.

7:51 I tagged along as John presented his idea

7:53 at a roundtable discussion of local business owners.

7:55 The problem is that every product out there

7:57 that's a grill scraper is mediocre at best.

8:01 I know I'm buying a disposable product, maybe one a season.

8:06 John got to start by making wooden grill tables right here in the USA,

8:09 but he's also worked with people overseas to make other grill accessories.

8:13 John was experiencing pain because of that.

8:15 I don't know if you realize this, but as a small business,

8:18 if you have an idea and you get it made overseas,

8:21 that's cool, but they have all the tooling

8:23 to make the thing that you wanted made.

8:25 So at night, they can literally just crank up the machine,

8:29 make more of them less high-quality products,

8:31 and they can just counter-sell against you on Amazon, and you have no recourse.

8:36 There's nothing you could do.

8:37 This is one of John's best-selling products on Amazon,

8:40 at least it used to be, because look at all of these knock-offs.

8:43 They're everywhere.

8:44 The interesting thing about this is John has a patent,

8:47 and he's tried to get these other things taken down off of Amazon,

8:50 but he's found it almost impossible to get Amazon to respond in a timely manner.

8:55 It's like playing Whac-a-Mole.

8:56 Look at all these letters he had to get lawers to write.

8:58 That's a lot of money.

8:59 The interesting thing is,

9:01 Amazon almost tells these manufacturers overseas what to knock off.

9:05 If you go to the product page, you can see how many were sold in the last month,

9:09 and all they have to do is say, Oh, look, that one sells 3,000 units a month.

9:12 That's clearly what I want to pirate.

9:14 So these product pirates go and they'll take

9:16 a really good product like his grill torch, and they'll just knock it off.

9:20 And parts of it are exactly the same.

9:22 Other parts of it are a little different because they want to make it cheaper.

9:24 Like, for example, on John's unit,

9:26 there is a removable screw that allows you to take the tube

9:29 off in the event that a dirt dover gets in there or something.

9:32 Not on the other unit, there's nothing like that.

9:34 It's glued in position.

9:35 You just have to throw it away.

9:36 It's weird because they're selling this for half the price,

9:39 but at the same time,

9:41 they're taking all the business and they're making lower-quality products.

9:43 Not only does this mean counterfeit goods for buyers,

9:46 look at what sellers are saying in Amazon's own seller forum.

9:49 Amazon's inability to police this, or at worst, unwillingness to prioritize it,

9:54 that's destroying small businesses and manufacturers in America who depend

9:58 on the very idea of intellectual property to protect them from fraud.

10:01 So this is one of the main reasons why John wanted to work with me.

10:04 I wanted to work with him because I wanted to make something,

10:06 and he knows the business side,

10:07 but he wanted to work with me so we could use the YouTube channel

10:10 to tell people about the product and not have to sell it on Amazon.

10:14 So again, Amazon, do on to others as you would have them do on to you.

10:17 Let's get to part two of the video.

10:19 How did we build this thing?

10:21 To understand why we have all these parts,

10:22 let's think about the problem we're trying to solve.

10:24 We have grill grates, and we're trying to scrub it with chain mail, right?

10:29 So in order to do that, we need

10:31 the chain mail to be compliant around those bars.

10:33 So we want to apply downward pressure.

10:36 To do that, we need something squishy behind

10:38 the chain mail that when we push it down,

10:40 it wraps those chain mail links around those grates.

10:44 So I figured out that in order to attach

10:47 the chain mail and the rubber part to a handle,

10:49 we were going to have a problem because the Squishy part would break.

10:54 So what we need is some type of adapter

10:56 that could go between the Squishy and the handle,

10:59 and then that way you could move the whole thing and it would all work as one.

11:04 So that's how we did all this.

11:06 And I learned from the pandemic that the key

11:08 to making things fast is injection molding.

11:10 I covered injection molding in the MVP Disk Golf disk video.

11:13 You have two parts of a metal mold,

11:15 and you clamp them together so that they have a cavity in the center,

11:18 the shape of the part you want.

11:20 You then inject molten plastic into that void and let it solidify,

11:25 and then you open the mold and you kick out the part.

11:28 That's injection molding.

11:29 So I started the design process.

11:31 And for an engineer, you just start in CAD and you start drawing stuff.

11:35 I started making things and started figuring out how to get a rubbery backing,

11:40 and I ended up with a really nice history of all the designs right here.

11:44 It's kinda fun to look at.

11:46 I knew that I had to design it so

11:48 that it could be molded and made and then ultimately assembled.

11:51 I'm a little embarrassed showing you all this stuff.

11:54 In some of the earlier designs, I had these little posts because I had

11:59 to hold the chain the chain mail around the rubber.

12:01 My thought was to hold the chain mail with these posts,

12:03 but the posts started breaking off.

12:06 So I was making more problems than I was solving in the early days.

12:09 But pretty quickly, I figured out that I was going to need multiple components.

12:12 I needed something on bottom that I would adapt a squishy to.

12:17 I also needed a top cover, and I needed to be able to assemble those.

12:22 Now, mechanical engineers know from reading books by Toyota

12:26 folks that it's better to click things together, then bolt them together.

12:31 If you can.

12:32 It makes the manufacturing process fast.

12:34 So this is the early days of how I started trying to figure that out.

12:38 I said, well, maybe if I had these two parts and I have a slot and I

12:42 could put them together like this and I

12:44 could push them and they just click together,

12:46 then that would be my assembly process.

12:48 And so these posts ultimately were foolish.

12:52 And so I ended up with something that looked like this.

12:56 So I had a rubber component that I molded with a 3D printed mold that I made.

13:01 I really enjoyed that process,

13:03 but ultimately it's too complicated for making the squishy component of this.

13:07 I did finalize the rigid components.

13:09 I had the cover, I had the adapter, and they clicked together.

13:12 After I finished the design, I decided I wanted to be able to take

13:16 this scrubber head off and hold it with my hand.

13:20 I measured my fingers and I put these little grooves on there

13:24 so I could hold it and really get in and scrub really hard.

13:29 At this point, I got serious about the squishy part.

13:31 I knew that over molding took too long,

13:34 so I moved away from that geometry so things could pour through there,

13:38 and I went to a pad design.

13:40 So if this was my adapter, I said,

13:42 what if I had a little pad that goes underneath that was just compliant,

13:45 and the chain mail itself would keep it in place.

13:49 So I started designing these little rigid pads, and then my 3D printer,

13:54 which is a Formlabs Form 3, I had different materials.

13:57 One was called Elastic.

13:59 So I started printing Squishy geometries in an attempt to try

14:03 to figure out what would work best on the grill.

14:06 So I even tried some linear designs.

14:08 I tried some hex patterns, and I ended up with something roughly like this.

14:12 I had all the components,

14:13 and John took it all to the hardware store and put it together with a wire,

14:17 and this was our very first prototype.

14:18 And at this point, we could only get chain mail out of China,

14:22 so John started testing the different types,

14:24 and he came up with some very interesting information.

14:27 When you go against the grain, It'll catch.

14:31 It puts a lot of tension on the individual rings,

14:34 and they're coming apart, and we're losing some.

14:37 But that's a good thing.

14:39 This is a good thing because we haven't

14:43 ordered thousands of these pieces of chain mail yet,

14:47 and we can get a welded version.

14:49 It's going to cost us a little more money,

14:51 but we can get a welded version that is going to be stronger,

14:55 and it's going to make our product better.

14:57 The supply chain for chain is a big deal to me right now.

15:00 So John's test revealed that we could not

15:03 use the most common thing that's on the market,

15:06 which is this type of chain mail with a radial

15:08 pattern with a central ring in the middle.

15:10 We found that that doesn't adapt well to the grate.

15:12 So we want this rectangular pattern, and And John did a lot of testing,

15:16 and he arrived at not a square like this, but if

15:19 we got an octagonal pattern of the rectangular grid, this will do what we need.

15:23 It's really fun to play with, by the way.

15:25 So this is what we need, and we could only find it in China.

15:29 That goes against the thesis statement for what we're trying to do.

15:32 So we worked and worked,

15:33 and we eventually found a supplier in the US that can make it.

15:36 However, they can't make the quantities that we

15:39 need for a price that makes sense.

15:42 So what we did is we created a contract where we

15:46 could buy all that we could afford at the rate they have.

15:51 And we're getting about 2,000 units a month of this stuff right here.

15:56 And it's incredibly expensive.

15:57 It is so expensive.

15:59 That is by far the most expensive part of the whole thing.

16:03 But we realized these quantities that we're able to get aren't enough.

16:07 And so we have supplemented that with an Indian supplier.

16:11 We said, hey, we don't want to do this in China,

16:13 but we contacted our Indian supplier.

16:15 We said, we need a stash of chain mail that is the quantities we

16:19 need in the event that we sell any kind of numbers of the scrubbers.

16:23 So we ended up buying some Indian chain mail that would augment the quantities

16:28 that we could get from the American

16:30 supplier because that's all they could produce.

16:32 And that's where we're at.

16:33 So, yeah, that's where we're at on chain mail.

16:35 One inch long stainless steel, 1/4-20 bolt.

16:38 This was so difficult.

16:40 I know it sounds like an industrial commodity, seems like a simple thing.

16:44 But if you want to buy this made in the USA,

16:46 and you stipulate that, that changes everything.

16:49 Foreign bolt like this, nine cents a piece.

16:51 In the US, average, 38 cents a piece.

16:54 Here's a quote right here.

16:56 If I buy 10,000 of these, 42 cents a piece, that's pretty standard.

16:59 Most machine shops I talk to directly, they said, Yeah,

17:02 we can't even get the material for the price

17:04 of the finished bolts that you're getting from a foreign supplier.

17:07 Finding people to get quotes for you, very difficult.

17:09 I emailed a lot of people.

17:11 I sent out this tweet.

17:12 It helped, and it's a very fascinating thing.

17:15 Eventually, after literally months of emailing people back and forth,

17:18 John picked a supplier that got him for 35.

17:20 5 cents a piece, which we then verified were made in Massachusetts.

17:24 So instead of a dime to get our bolts from a foreign supplier,

17:27 we're doing roughly this because we think it's important

17:30 to have manufacturing capacity for stainless steel bolts in Massachusetts,

17:35 which is weird because my uncle used to work

17:37 down the road at a bolt factory that closed.

17:41 But now I'm going to Massachusetts to get this bolt,

17:43 which is interesting, right?

17:45 Very interesting.

17:46 After we bought our bolts, quote came in for 19 cents a piece.

17:49 Other salesmen told me, There's no way that's American.

17:51 I couldn't verify.

17:52 It got sketchy.

17:53 I don't know.

17:53 I have no idea what to do with that.

17:55 I thought it would be simpler.

17:56 They're on the shelf, they're made in the USA.

17:58 Buy them, they're this price.

18:00 Very difficult.

18:00 The next part of this story is very interesting.

18:03 I had my parts and it was time to injection mold,

18:05 and I went to a facility that does injection molding,

18:08 and I said, Can you make these parts?

18:10 And they said, Yes, we can make the parts.

18:11 And I said, That's great.

18:13 I would also like to make the molds

18:15 here because I want to learn more about molds.

18:17 And they said, Oh, no, we don't make molds here.

18:19 And I said, Why not?

18:20 They said, We don't do that.

18:22 We ship the part, the CAD file to China, and they make the mold,

18:26 and they send it back, and then we injection mold.

18:28 I said, no, that's not what I want to do.

18:29 I don't want intellectual property in China, I want to make it here.

18:33 And they said, Good luck.

18:35 And this is the moment where this whole experiment came into focus for me.

18:40 I realized at that moment we're screwed.

18:43 I think we're screwed as a nation if we

18:46 can't do the intelligent work of tool and die,

18:49 making the tools that make the things.

18:53 It used to be that America did the smart thing,

18:57 and then we would send the machine that we made to another country,

19:00 and the country would operate the machine in the developing world.

19:04 We have flipped it.

19:06 We are now to the point where the smart stuff is done somewhere else,

19:11 and they send us the machines, and we push the buttons to operate the machines.

19:17 I need you to understand this because I

19:19 realize we have lost something very, very important,

19:21 and we did it by lulling ourselves to sleep,

19:25 by pushing money around and doing the intellectual property work,

19:29 but not doing the manufacturing work.

19:31 I think it was best put simply by the CEO of Apple,

19:34 Tim Cook, while sitting in China when he was asked a question about tooling.

19:39 There's a confusion about China.

19:42 Let me at least give you my opinion.

19:46 The popular conception is that companies come

19:50 to China because of low labor cost.

19:54 I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth

19:59 is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago.

20:04 That is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view.

20:10 The reason is because of the skill and the type of skill it is.

20:14 The products we do require really advanced tooling,

20:20 and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working

20:24 with the materials that we do are state of the art.

20:28 The tooling skill is very deep here.

20:32 In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers,

20:36 and I'm not sure we could fill the room.

20:40 In China, you could fill multiple football fields.

20:43 So Tim Cook said that in 2017 at the Fortune Global Forum.

20:46 Now, there's two ways of looking at this.

20:47 One way is, well, Tim Cook is, of course, going to say that.

20:50 He's incentivized because his business is tied up in China.

20:53 He's not going to cross the Communist Party

20:55 because he needs his stuff to be made there.

20:58 The other way to look at it is, well, Well, maybe that's right.

21:00 Maybe the tooling and advancement is somewhere way beyond what Americans can do.

21:05 So here's what I want to do.

21:07 I know a man that is specifically unique

21:09 in the world that can answer this question.

21:13 He's a friend of mine named Jeremy Fielding.

21:15 He has a YouTube channel.

21:16 He's an engineer.

21:17 He speaks Chinese.

21:19 He spent a significant amount of time exploring these topics in China,

21:22 and he's right there beside you.

21:23 Let's just ask him.

21:25 All right, Jeremy.

21:27 What do you think about what Tim Cook said

21:29 about labor and about the tooling industry in China?

21:33 [J] Well, it'd be hard for me to comment on tooling specifically,

21:37 but I do think that we do have a common misconception,

21:40 including myself before I went, that in China, that their product is inferior.

21:45 I mean, the quality of manufacturing is surprisingly good.

21:49 When I started comparing that mentally to all the places I've visited,

21:52 because I've been to many shops here and over there,

21:55 if it wasn't for the fact that they were speaking a different language,

21:58 I would feel like I was in the same place.

22:00 I was really impressed.

22:01 I think I would say it's at least equivalent to what we can make here.

22:06 In some cases, things that used

22:08 to be available in America aren't available anymore.

22:12 It's like you have to go to China to get

22:13 it because we just don't do it here some more.

22:15 [D] Oh, that's scary.

22:17 Okay, this is a tangent we could talk about for hours just on this topic.

22:21 I just want to encourage you to go watch Jeremy's channel because it's awesome.

22:25 You do engineering videos,

22:26 and there's also content there about your time in China, right?

22:28 [J] Yeah, absolutely.

22:29 [D] How do I say thank you in Chinese?

22:31 How do I say thank you?

22:32 [J] Xiè xie [D] Xiè xie So that gives

22:35 you a peek into the world of Chinese manufacturing,

22:37 but on the American side, it's very different.

22:41 We talked about this when I was a guest on a podcast called Search Engine.

22:44 Shruthi and PJ invited me on to talk about what it was

22:47 like to try to find a mold maker to make this thing.

22:50 This was a light bulb moment for me in the conversation.

22:53 The problem is not just that we've forgotten

22:55 a lot about how to make things in America,

22:57 it's that we're also forgetting how to make the things that make the things.

23:01 We go deep into the topic of the tool and die trades in America.

23:04 It's fascinating.

23:05 Check that out.

23:06 I called Chris Robeson, the guy that made the mold during the pandemic,

23:09 and I asked for help.

23:10 And not only did he agree to help me, he decided to mentor me.

23:14 The first thing I did is send him my CAD files of the drawings,

23:17 and he told me everything that was wrong about them.

23:20 I had to redesign things because there

23:22 were things I didn't understand about injection molding.

23:24 For example, you don't want some areas to be too thick,

23:27 you want draft angles, all these things.

23:29 Chris walked me through the process and taught me

23:30 the proper way to design an object for injection molding.

23:33 There were three parts to my prototype, so Chris designed three molds,

23:37 and we wanted to try a new technique.

23:39 So this isn't a thing that you can do for thousands of parts,

23:42 but for a few dozen parts,

23:44 you can 3D print the mold cavities with Formlabs' Rigid 10K solution.

23:49 So that's what we did.

23:51 And these are those parts right here.

23:54 These are 3D printed inserts that we could run in Chris's

23:57 injection molding machines to verify that the geometry is correct.

24:00 It actually worked.

24:01 We got a few dozen working parts,

24:03 and this let us see how the plastic would flow in the mold,

24:06 and we made mold design changes.

24:08 So it's Chris's vast knowledge of tool making and injection

24:11 molding that allowed us to create molds that would work.

24:14 It's now time to make the production tool out of metal.

24:17 You can send this off and get it done in a machine shop.

24:19 They're not going to have the knowledge of the tool and die making,

24:21 but they can just make a metal part if you send them a CAD file.

24:24 I wanted to learn how to CNC machine.

24:26 I've always wanted to learn how to do that.

24:29 So me and the younger engineer named Trent, we started learning how to machine.

24:33 I was able to pick up two used CNC machines.

24:36 Thank you again, patrons.

24:37 It started out pretty rough.

24:40 Wow.

24:44 But then we figured it out.

24:46 This process was incredibly enjoyable.

24:48 I thought it would be intimidating, but I called friends like Shane from Stuff

24:53 Made Here and local machinists and Chris himself.

24:55 They taught me what speeds and feeds I needed to use,

24:58 and this process was awesome.

25:00 One night, I was machining in the garage,

25:01 and my friend Daylan came over to hang out,

25:03 and we started talking about the importance of making

25:05 things in America and how it affects local communities.

25:08 [Daylan] All the opportunities to have education and so on went away.

25:14 What's happening?

25:16 [D] I'm filming you.

25:17 Talk about manufacturing in America.

25:18 [Daylan] When those jobs went away in those communities,

25:23 all those economic prospects and ultimately educational

25:26 prospects and quality of life prospects went away.

25:29 So manufacturing, coming back to America is really important to me because

25:33 of what it's meant historically for communities

25:36 in terms of opportunities for kids.

25:38 So figuring out a way to do that is

25:40 something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

25:42 [D] We took all the metal parts to Chris

25:43 and the guy that works with him named Jeremy, and they assemble the molds,

25:46 and they explain that there's a couple of things that weren't quite right.

25:50 They then took the time to fix it, and then they put them all together.

25:53 And this is what was interesting to me.

25:55 I realized that a machinist is not enough

25:58 to be an injection mold designer and maker.

26:01 They're two different things.

26:02 You have one set of skills that feeds into the other,

26:05 but ultimately that tool and dye creation is its own thing.

26:08 But here we are.

26:09 We have these beautiful molds, and we're ready to make parts.

26:13 It felt so good to watch parts pop out of these injection molding machines,

26:17 knowing how much work went into the molds, it was awesome.

26:20 Out of the three injection molded parts,

26:22 it was the Squishy part that I was most concerned about.

26:25 Now, this is made out of a thermoplastic polyurethane called Santoprene,

26:29 and it's only heat resistant up to a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

26:32 John did a test.

26:39 Yeah, it definitely got some melt in there.

26:41 So obviously, we were going to have to change that material,

26:44 and silicone is the best option.

26:46 Now, the problem is we can't inject silicone with the same molds that we made.

26:51 It's a whole different process.

26:53 Unfortunately, I couldn't find anybody in my area.

26:55 They just weren't here.

26:57 So I had to reach out to a guy in Virginia called Commonwealth Manufacturing.

27:01 Kevin hooked us up.

27:03 He made a nine cavity mold so the silicone process could work.

27:07 So by switching from the santoprene to the food-grade silicone,

27:10 we bought ourselves another couple of hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

27:12 However, it's not meant to be used on a fiery furnace, blazing hot grill.

27:16 It's meant to be used on a cold to warm grill.

27:18 The handle has its own story, and there was a ton that went into this.

27:22 The first thing I did is I found a metal tool that I liked,

27:25 and I just went over to an Anvil and I just

27:28 beat a little flat edge on the end of the thing,

27:30 and then I cut out the end on a band saw and drilled a hole in it,

27:34 and we put that on the prototype and gave it to John's mom to test.

27:40 This is great.

27:41 Since it passed that test, it was time to design it for manufacturability.

27:45 So I went back to CAD and realized if I was going to be bending up sheet metal,

27:49 I might as well put a flat scraper on the front

27:51 so that you could get into the corners and stuff like that.

27:53 I put a little bitty curve on the edge

27:55 of the scraper so that you could get around the grill grates,

27:58 and that was our design.

27:59 I made I'm making a video on Smarter Every Day about sheet metal stamping,

28:02 and the reason is because I was

28:04 doing research into how to manufacture this handle.

28:07 Sheet metal stamping is a process that involves using tooling

28:10 to cut and bend metal into the shape you want.

28:17 When we made that video at TNC Stamping,

28:19 I spoke to a tool and die expert named Roger,

28:22 who taught me some critical concepts about tool and die.

28:26 It was pretty clear to me that Roger had forgotten

28:27 more about tool and die than most people will ever know.

28:30 In the time between filming that video about

28:32 metal stamping and filming this video, Roger passed on.

28:36 He's no longer with us, and that's a big deal.

28:39 Obviously, his family and friends and coworkers are going to miss him.

28:42 Roger seemed like a great guy.

28:43 Probably takes years just to learn the vocabulary of the trade, right?

28:46 You hear that?

28:47 It takes years to learn to speak like I speak.

28:49 But there's another loss here for the community that's not as obvious,

28:53 but it's very important.

28:54 And that's all of the experience and tool

28:56 and die wisdom that Roger has acquired over the years,

28:59 he can no no longer pass that along.

29:01 We only have what he gave us while he was here.

29:04 Furthermore, all the experience of the person that taught Roger,

29:07 all that has stopped now.

29:09 All we have is what he passed on before he left.

29:12 So that makes what you were about to see very, very important.

29:17 You're about to witness the birth of a tool and die worker in America.

29:22 When I first visited TNC Stamping,

29:24 Weston explained that they had a tool and die shop,

29:27 and they invest heavily in their tool and die apprenticeship program,

29:30 which is becoming increasingly rare among American manufacturers.

29:33 They showed us the progressive stamping dies that they made,

29:36 but John and I couldn't afford one of those, so Weston

29:38 agreed to give us a price to make what's called station tooling.

29:41 A tooling engineer named Joey worked with a young man named Logan.

29:45 Logan used to be a press operator,

29:46 but he's entered into the apprenticeship program for Tool& Die.

29:50 The tool that made our handle is the first tool that Logan ever made.

29:54 [D] Is this the first one you've made?

29:55 [L] Yes, sir.

29:56 [D] And how long did it take you?

29:57 [L] About six weeks.

29:58 [D] So are you been training him?

30:01 I've helped.

30:01 [L] He's a lot of help.

30:03 [D] So do you feel like you know how to do the next one now?

30:07 [L] As long as I got prints to go by, I could build it, yes, sir.

30:10 [D] Really?

30:10 Did you ever think you would have this skill?

30:11 [L] I never knew anything like this really existed.

30:15 During high school, with everything, I didn't know what I was going to do.

30:18 I started out up here as just a press operator,

30:21 actually running these presses and got

30:22 the opportunity to move over as an apprentice, and I've enjoyed it ever since.

30:27 All the hands-on stuff, learning stuff every day.

30:30 I've really enjoyed it ever since I've been over to it.

30:32 [D] It is really fun to watch the tool Logan made an action.

30:35 Flat blanks that have been cut out with a laser are loaded onto the tool,

30:38 where as the press comes down, it gets bent into a specific shape along the way.

30:43 It's called station tooling because the part is

30:45 then moved from one station to the other,

30:48 and progressively, the different bends and shapes are put into the part.

30:52 I think the side action that bends the handle around into a tube is my favorite.

30:56 After that, we put them in a box and we take them back to Chris's place,

30:59 where he lasers a logo on the handle, which is really cool.

31:02 This is currently the bottleneck in the process.

31:04 It's a little slow.

31:05 We're trying to automate this, but my favorite part,

31:07 we get to put Made in the USA on the handle.

31:10 How cool.

31:10 All of these parts down here go together to make the scrubber head,

31:14 and the scrubber head is put together with a piece of stainless steel wire,

31:18 which we have confirmed is made in Pennsylvania.

31:21 Now, the rope, however, is harder to confirm the manufacturer's location.

31:24 We haven't been able to verify it's made in the USA,

31:26 which brings us to the knob.

31:28 This is an off-the-shelf item that we ordered,

31:30 and when we ordered it, we were told it was made in America.

31:33 We have a problem, right?

31:35 That's right.

31:36 We thought they were made in America, but when they got here, they're not.

31:42 They're made in Costa Rica.

31:44 So we've got to fix that.

31:47 So that's what we get.

31:49 So the first 20,000 lucky customers are going

31:52 to have their scrubbers with Costa Rican knobs.

31:55 Yeah.

31:56 It's probably going to be more than that because it's going to take

31:58 me a while to figure out how to make a mold for this.

32:00 Chris and I are already working on this mold,

32:02 but we want to reach out to this new company that's got

32:04 this new technology we think could be disruptive to the mold making industry.

32:08 Nice to meet you, Ted.

32:09 How are you doing, man?

32:10 [T] Good.

32:10 How are you doing?

32:11 [D] So you own Mantle.

32:12 [T] That's correct.

32:13 [D] So I found your company because

32:14 the injection molder that I know Chris Robeson,

32:16 he's been wanting to work with your machines for years.

32:19 My understanding is that you are a 3D printing company that can print metal.

32:24 Is that right?

32:25 [T] That's correct.

32:26 That's all we do.

32:26 We invented a new process to print metal,

32:29 and we specifically use it to make injection

32:33 molds and other type of hard tooling like that.

32:35 [D] What I've seen with some of the powder bed fusion laser sintering

32:39 type methods is that it's very difficult to get a good surface finish.

32:43 How are you doing metal with a surface

32:45 finish that's acceptable for injection molding?

32:48 [T] Most of the other processes that do

32:50 metal printing melt metal powders with a laser,

32:53 and they end up with a surface finish that's like 80 grit sandpaper,

32:56 and it's just not near smooth enough for injection mold tools.

32:59 Our Our process is actually a hybrid process,

33:01 which means it uses additive plus subtractive.

33:04 So we actually put down this metal paste, we dry it so it firms up.

33:08 But then after a few layers of that, we come in and actually cut it with a CNC.

33:12 So we get a CNC-like finish out of this material.

33:15 And then as a secondary step,

33:17 we put them in a furnace and densify the metal into a solid metal part.

33:20 But we can do things that you could never do traditionally.

33:23 This medical tool right here looks pretty simple,

33:26 but these deep grooves you see here

33:29 have to be done with electric discharge machining.

33:32 You can't CNC cut those because no one makes an end mill

33:34 that's skinny enough and long enough that won't break when cutting steel.

33:38 Our technology allows us to shape, refine,

33:41 or cut that material as we build up the part.

33:44 And so we get a part that can get

33:46 any of those really unique geometries you need for tools.

33:49 [D] So your technology is aimed at improving the tool and die industry.

33:52 What are your thoughts on tool and die makers in general in the US?

33:55 [T] I think we need more of them.

33:56 I think the incentives to go into tool and die have gone downhill.

33:59 So I saw a New York Times article that showed a graph that in the '80s, '90s,

34:04 tool and die makers were above the average by about

34:06 20% in terms of income in the United States.

34:09 That's dropped today to 15% below the standard income level.

34:13 And so it's tough to justify going into tool and die.

34:16 [D] I think that's changing.

34:18 I've noticed that people really like making things in America.

34:21 I'm excited about it, and other people I talk to are excited about it.

34:25 And your technologies like yours are very interesting.

34:28 I think it's coming back.

34:29 [T] There's no question that there's a huge demand for this, right?

34:32 So I talk to companies every day.

34:34 They're like, I've got tool and die makers, but they're about to retire.

34:37 They have open jobs today.

34:38 There are tons of positions available.

34:41 So I think that it's looking up for tool and die,

34:44 especially when you combine it with new technology.

34:46 [D] I think the time to get into a thing is not when everybody else is doing it.

34:49 It's before the wave happens.

34:51 So if I was a young person, I would be looking into this right now.

34:54 [T] Let's just say that AI is taking software coding jobs left and right,

34:57 but it's not taking tool and die jobs.

34:59 [D] Interesting.

34:59 Yeah.

35:01 Mechanical, physical things are where it's at, isn't it?

35:04 [T] We're not there yet.

35:06 Optimist robot can barely serve a drink at a party for Elon Musk.

35:10 It's not going to make a tool and die anytime soon.

35:13 [D] It's a great point, Ted.

35:14 I hadn't thought about that?

35:15 The reason I wanted to reach out to you

35:17 is I'm trying to make this product in America,

35:19 and we're doing everything we can to make everything in America.

35:22 And my understanding is we were told that this right

35:25 here was made in America, but when we got it,

35:27 the box said made in Costa Rica, and so obviously, I have to make it in America.

35:32 And so I've learned the hard way.

35:33 I'm not saying the hard way,

35:34 but I've learned the right way or the traditional way to make a mold insert.

35:38 And I was wondering if you'd be willing to work

35:40 with me to make another mold using your technology for this knob.

35:43 [T] That'd be great.

35:44 We print stuff like that all the time.

35:46 We can do all types of geometries.

35:49 That would be a shoe in for our technology,

35:50 and we could do it a lot faster than you would normally as well.

35:53 [D] Will you please help me?

35:54 [T] I will do my best.

35:55 I'll do my best.

35:56 Anything to keep grill brush bristles from ending up

36:00 in people's throats is definitely something I'm on board with.

36:03 [D] That's right.

36:03 I saw your email on your reply to this.

36:05 So maybe we could talk about that in the pitch in the last part of this video.

36:09 [T] For sure.

36:10 I've experienced the problem firsthand.

36:11 It's funny you said in your email like,

36:14 People know someone that knows someone that's had this problem.

36:16 Like, no, that's me.

36:17 I've had this problem.

36:18 I'm the guy.

36:19 [D] That's great.

36:20 We'll talk about that later.

36:21 So that's the story of how we made the Smarter Scrubber.

36:23 But there's one more thing you need to know about.

36:26 You remember I told you that we had this American

36:29 chain mail and we wanted to get some more chain mail,

36:31 and we had to go to India to get the quantities we need

36:34 in the event that we sell out

36:35 of everything we have from the American chain mail.

36:37 Well, I'm in the middle of making this video, and a couple of days ago,

36:41 I thought it would be good to go show you a palette of the American chain

36:44 mail and a palette of the Indian chain

36:46 mail to show you that they're two separate things.

36:48 While I was filming that, something crazy happened,

36:51 and the camera happened to be rolling.

36:53 Okay, so this is chain mail that we haven't used in any assembly yet.

36:59 This is from India.

37:00 Dude, look at that.

37:02 That's not from India.

37:04 That's Chinese.

37:05 Is that- Is that Chinese?

37:07 I didn't even notice that.

37:09 That's your seller's name.

37:10 He's Indian.

37:11 I bet they're just shipping it from China to India.

37:16 I bet that's what they're doing.

37:18 Is that Chinese?

37:19 It looks like Chinese.

37:20 Get Google Translate out.

37:21 We got this drop ship from India, but I think he just boomeranged it.

37:26 I do, too.

37:27 I think a person in India told us it was from India,

37:30 but it was actually from China, is what I'm thinking.

37:33 It's got Chinese writing on it.

37:36 Pu Qi Han Haipai.

37:39 Man, that looks Chinese.

37:40 What is that?

37:41 Says, Haipai refers to East meets West culture

37:44 from Shanghai in the 20th and 21st centuries.

37:46 It's part of the culture of Shanghai.

37:48 That's what it is.

37:49 Haipai.

37:51 I don't know what that means.

37:53 I don't know if that means, but it's definitely not English.

37:57 Okay.

37:59 This is so hard.

38:01 This is so hard.

38:03 It's the supply chain.

38:05 Jack.

38:06 It always goes back to China.

38:08 Yeah.

38:09 Everybody wants to make a dime, so it's worth it.

38:14 I'm shocked.

38:15 It's pretty weird to set out to try to make a thing completely in America

38:19 and to find out towards the end

38:21 of the process that you made something in China anyways.

38:25 That's really hard to swallow.

38:27 So this is a big, big problem.

38:32 And I have like 100 things I want to say because I've learned

38:34 so much in this process and I did a lot of things wrong.

38:39 Obviously, we did a lot of things wrong.

38:41 But I'll limit myself to saying this one thing.

38:44 If you are ever, ever in a position

38:46 to make a decision about where your thing is manufactured.

38:51 Take a second and consider making a little less

38:54 profit maybe in order to invest in your local community.

38:58 Because these are people you know and love, and they need jobs,

39:03 and they need to be able to feed their families.

39:05 And you need a person in your hometown that can injection mold.

39:09 You need to be able to do that locally.

39:11 So that's what I would say.

39:13 I feel a lot of things right now.

39:15 I'm not going to say all of them.

39:16 It's time for the pitch.

39:17 And before I give you the pitch, I want to say this.

39:20 I don't think it's right that I had to have

39:22 a YouTube channel in order to take this risk.

39:25 I hope that we will invest in manufacturing

39:27 in America and other places in the West so

39:30 that it will make sense for people who

39:32 have a really good idea that will help people.

39:34 It'll make sense for them to make these types

39:36 of things in their hometown and take them to market.

39:39 I don't like the fact that having a YouTube channel was

39:41 a big part of the calculus in order for me to do this.

39:44 So I just wanted to say that.

39:46 So here we go.

39:47 I'm going to give you a pitch on the Smarter Scrubber,

39:49 and we will see if you want to buy one.

39:52 All right.

39:52 My name's Destin, and I would like to tell

39:55 you about a product called the Smarter Scrubber.

39:57 I genuinely believe this is the smartest way to clean your grill.

40:01 If you go to a store right now and you look at the shelves,

40:03 you're going to see a ton of options for steel, bristle, wire grill scrubbers.

40:09 And they're interesting.

40:11 I mean, there's a lot of different designs.

40:12 You can tell that this is a very difficult problem because of all

40:15 the different solutions people are throwing out there for trying to solve it.

40:18 And these wire bristles are a problem.

40:21 I don't know if you know this, but those bristles can come off on your grill,

40:25 and then when you're drilling,

40:26 they can get in your food and you can ingest that.

40:30 And that's very, very bad.

40:31 If you have ever talked to somebody that this has happened to, it's a big deal.

40:36 And chances are you know somebody that knows somebody that this has

40:39 happened to because this happens way more than you think.

40:43 So this is Ted.

40:44 Ted, my understanding is you had something happen to you with a grill brush.

40:48 What happened?

40:48 I was out barbecuing, and I went to eat my salmon that night,

40:54 and a bristle brush that had gotten on my grill got

40:58 into my salmon and impaled it myself at the back of my throat.

41:01 And with some skilled work by my wife and a pair of forceps,

41:06 I was able to get it out, or she was able to get out of my throat.

41:09 When it stuck in you, where was it?

41:10 What did it feel like?

41:12 All the way at the back, I could barely see it, halfway impaled.

41:16 And I thought it was a fishbone,

41:18 but it pretty clearly wasn't once we started to look at it.

41:22 And it was painful.

41:23 It's hard to talk.

41:25 I was lucky that we were able to get

41:26 it out without having to go to the emergency room.

41:28 My brother is an ear, nose, and throat doctor, and he says every summer,

41:32 he's got someone coming in with this problem,

41:34 and it can be easy in the case of what mine was.

41:36 It's like, Oh, just see if you can pull it out.

41:37 I went, Okay.

41:39 Or it can go all the way down your throat,

41:41 and now you're talking about a semi-surgical procedure

41:43 to get that thing So it's not safe,

41:48 and it's only a matter of time if you keep using those bristle brushes.

41:50 Ted's situation ended up okay, but there is a worse situation that can happen.

41:54 John and I have a mutual friend that's a doctor,

41:56 and when we gave him a smarter scrubber, he told us a story about his partner.

42:00 He had to do an exploratory surgery to find a grill

42:02 brush bristle in the bowel of one of his patients.

42:05 Apparently, this is way more common than I realized.

42:08 Tyler goes on to explain that he hasn't

42:09 owned a grill brush with bristles since residency.

42:12 I've debated on whether or not to show you pictures

42:14 of that, and I've decided to do it this way.

42:16 I'm going to show you a picture for one second on the screen,

42:19 and you have the option of closing your eyes.

42:22 But this is from a medical paper

42:23 of a person that had to go under exploratory surgery,

42:26 and they found the bristle sticking out of the gut inside the body.

42:31 So I'm going to show you that picture.

42:32 Close your eyes if you want to.

42:33 In three, two, one.

42:34 There it is.

42:35 Yeah, that's bad.

42:36 It's bad.

42:37 You don't want to do that.

42:39 That was the thrust behind wanting to build the Smarter Scrubber.

42:43 But the more I get to thinking about why this needs to exist,

42:47 the more I realize there are other reasons

42:49 why we should make a product like this.

42:51 This is made in America.

42:53 All of the components are not currently made in America,

42:55 but we're moving that way.

42:56 We're trying very hard to do that.

42:58 I have noticed that a lot of products on the market right now are cheap.

43:02 They're made poorly.

43:03 I understand why you would be tempted to buy the cheaper

43:05 product because it feels like you're spending less money, right?

43:08 Let's look at a graph and let me show you why even if

43:10 the Smarter Scrubber is four times the cost of this, it's in your best interest.

43:15 Check this out.

43:15 If we look at this graph, when you first purchase, it feels like this.

43:18 It feels like the cheap one cost about one-fourth as much,

43:22 and you've spent that much money.

43:23 It feels like you've wasted money, right?

43:25 This literally says on a sticker to buy a new one every year.

43:28 If we play this out over time, look at what happens.

43:31 You are buying a new one of the cheap ones

43:33 every year instead of just buying one good one that lasts.

43:36 So you are saving money by buying the more expensive scrubber over time.

43:41 It's very important.

43:42 This has actually got a name.

43:43 This is called the Boots Theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

43:47 The theory is if you buy a cheaper product,

43:49 you're going to spend more money over

43:50 time because you have to keep replacing it.

43:53 So it makes more sense to get a higher quality item.

43:56 So one of the things we wanted to do with the Smarter Scrubber is we

43:58 wanted to make something that was strong that you would have for a long time.

44:02 One thing I don't apologize for, I've actually heard this feedback,

44:05 I do not apologize for this feeling like a medieval weapon.

44:09 We actually talked to a person that handles grill products for a big company.

44:13 You would recognize the name if I told you.

44:15 And we put it in his hand.

44:16 The first thing he said was, well, this feels like an American made product.

44:20 And I was like, What does that mean?

44:21 And he said, It's very strong.

44:23 And I don't apologize for that.

44:25 That's what I was going for.

44:26 Another thing I want to tell you about is the fact that I designed it so

44:30 that you can pull the head off the top and you can clean things by hand.

44:35 So even if you don't use it on your grill,

44:37 you can use just the head at your sink and you

44:40 can clean your cast iron pots and pans with that.

44:41 It works really, really well.

44:43 Another thing is you can take this and just throw it in the dishwasher.

44:46 We've made it out of materials that can handle the dishwasher no problem,

44:49 so you can clean this thing and get the gunk off of it really easily.

44:53 The Smarter Scrubber is a problem that I wanted to solve.

44:57 I've been wanting to design something and build

44:58 it in America for a for a really,

45:00 really long time, and this is my first go at it.

45:02 And I would encourage you to try it because I genuinely think you will love it.

45:07 You can go check out the reviews on the website.

45:09 We're selling this at SmarterScrubber.com I think it's a great thing.

45:13 You're going to pay a little more for it, and that's because we made it well.

45:15 We didn't make it to just throw away.

45:17 If you go into the store and you buy any one of these, I

45:21 want you to think about the person that made it for you.

45:24 They don't care about you like I care about you.

45:27 When they put a sticker on here, it says something like,

45:29 Stop using if bristles are found on the grill,

45:31 replace after one year of use is recommended.

45:33 That person is just trying to sell you a grill scrubber.

45:36 I'm not.

45:37 I'm trying to make your life better, and I'm trying to make it in America

45:40 because I want people here locally to have jobs.

45:43 I care about you.

45:44 I care about your health.

45:46 And I want you to try out the smarter scrubber to see

45:49 if this is something that would work for you and your family.

45:52 Ultimately, it's about playing the long game.

45:54 You can buy nice or you can buy twice.

45:57 I think if you buy this, it'll last for a really, really long time.

46:00 If you buy those other things, I'm worried that you might get hurt.

46:02 I would really like for you to try the Smarter Scrubber at SmarterScrubber.com.

46:06 If you don't buy the smarter scrubber, do me a favor.

46:09 Don't use any of these wire bristle grill brushes anymore.

46:12 I don't think it's safe for you or your family.

46:14 All right, how did the pitch go?

46:16 I hope it worked.

46:17 We'll see.

46:18 I guess we'll find out.

46:19 So I hope after this whole thing was done,

46:22 that you recognize what I was going for.

46:24 I was trying to get the right mixture of intellectual

46:26 humility because I had no idea what I was doing,

46:28 but also just sheer determination to make it happen.

46:31 So that's the balance I was trying to strike.

46:34 And I would love to know your comments on the experiment as a whole.

46:37 It took a lot of time, but clearly I did some stuff wrong.

46:40 I could have done better.

46:41 I'd love some feedback.

46:42 With that, I got some things that I want to say that's important to tell you.

46:45 So enjoy the footage while I say this stuff.

46:47 First of all, John has been working with the team to stockpile these scrubbers.

46:51 We've got thousands of them stockpiled and ready to go,

46:53 but we don't know how many orders we're going to get as a result of the video.

46:57 So if you go to the website and it says pre-order,

46:59 that means the grill scrubber you're buying hasn't been made yet.

47:02 So you can go ahead and purchase it,

47:04 and we'll get it to you as soon as it's built.

47:06 We're hoping to get a surge of orders from this video,

47:08 so if that happens, please be patient with us.

47:10 John's a little scared, which is fun.

47:12 Our plan is to use the profits we get from these initial

47:14 sales and put it right back into the process and tooling.

47:17 For example, right now, our bottleneck is the laser marking process.

47:20 We're going to try to build a conveyor belt system to do that automatically.

47:23 That's going to be a tremendous investment.

47:25 But one of the lessons I learned from this experiment,

47:27 as well as the manufacturing series,

47:29 is that it's smart to invest in your process and tooling.

47:32 Which leads me to the fact that a couple of these components

47:34 may or may not be made in a different country, depending on when you buy it.

47:38 I'm working on making everything 100% in America.

47:41 However, if you buy it and it has something from somewhere else,

47:44 we're going to make sure that the quality is top-notch.

47:46 So we're working on that.

47:48 Thank you for your patience.

47:49 A huge thank you to patrons and people who tested early prototypes.

47:52 We listened to everything you said and we made changes,

47:54 and that made the product better.

47:56 Thank you.

47:57 Currently, we can ship to the US and Canada.

47:58 We figured all that out.

48:00 We have some partners in Europe.

48:01 We're trying to get there, and we'll expand to worldwide as we can.

48:04 When you get this thing, if for any reason you're not happy,

48:07 reach out to us and we'll make it right.

48:09 That being said, don't put this on a crazy hot surface.

48:13 You can melt it if you're not thoughtful, so be smart about it.

48:16 Last thing, if you are interested

48:17 in being a wholesaler for the Smarter Scrubber,

48:19 as we get more efficient and we're able to bring the cost down,

48:23 maybe we get more tooling that's more efficient,

48:25 then we would love to have the Smarter Scrubber in your store.

48:28 So if you're interested in selling this thing,

48:30 I've got a link down in the video description.

48:33 If you'll reach out, we'll be in touch, and maybe we can work something out

48:36 as we get more efficient at building this thing.

48:39 All right, that's it.

48:40 I hope you enjoyed this.

48:41 Thank you so much for watching this video.

48:43 I'm grateful.

48:44 I'm Destin.

48:45 You're getting Smarter Every Day.

48:47 Have a good one.

48:47 Bye.