CEO & Co-Founder, Zipline
Full Zipline Factory Tour: How a $7.6B Company Builds Drones
Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton gives Molly a rare full tour inside Zipline’s factory + HQ—including the ROCC (Remote Operating Command Center), live flight monitoring, the HITL hardware-in-the-loop simulator lab, reliability testing, and the production line.
DISCLAIMER: This is a LIVE factory, it is noisy, audio can be inconsistent at times. Enjoy :)
Watch our full sit-down interview with Keller for more information behind their latest $7.6B valuation & financing round.
Zipline is nearing 2,000,000 total deliveries and operates what Keller describes as a global system where “every one...
About Keller Rinaudo
Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, has been discussing the company's expansion and the economics of drone delivery. In December 2025, Zipline announced a $550 million partnership with the U.S. State Department to expand its delivery service across countries where it already operates. Cliffton said the U.S. was seeking new ways to engage in these countries and help save lives while accelerating local economies and benefiting the U.S. economically. He also stated that the fully burdened unit economics of Zipline's systems are falling below the cost of using cars for deliveries, a shift he described as happening "quietly" in the summer of 2026. Cliffton has emphasized that Zipline's drone is only about 15% of its autonomous delivery system, with the rest encompassing inventory management, air traffic integration, and engineering systems such as a dual flight computer failover protocol. He noted that Zipline has flown 140 million autonomous miles with zero safety incidents. Cliffton has also described the company's goal as approximating teleportation, saying that if a logistics system automated delivery and reduced the cost to near zero, it would fundamentally change how people live. He projected that Zipline expects to grow to a million deliveries a day in the next couple of years, while noting that even at that scale, the company would still serve a tiny percentage of the overall market.
Transcript (201 segments)
K
Keller Rinaudo0:03
Welcome to Zipline HQ. You can see we're just about to cross 2 million total deliveries. All of these aircraft flying around that number, do you want to guess what those are?
I
Interviewer0:10
Active flights.
K
Keller Rinaudo0:12
Yeah, exactly.
I
Interviewer0:13
Really?
K
Keller Rinaudo0:13
Yep. But every one of those aircraft is out making deliveries somewhere in the world. Right now, most of the Africa business is slower. It's like middle of the night, Africa time. But if you come in in the morning, you can like barely see that number. There's so many aircraft making deliveries. This whole building, you know, it's been a huge advantage. Sort of similar to, you know, Tesla originally had Fremont, right? They had giant car factory that was right next to engineering for the first several years. We've just been approved by the FAA to now fly one human to 30 aircraft. We'll soon go well in excess of that. Humans aren't really flying the aircraft. You have a human overseeing a large fleet of autonomous vehicles.
I
Interviewer0:47
My sn that's pretty advanced.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:00
Welcome to Zipline HQ. Um, you can see we're just about to cross 2 million total deliveries. Wow. Yeah. That'll probably happen in the next three or four days. All of these aircraft flying around that number. Do you want to guess what those are?
I
Interviewer1:11
Active flights.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:12
Yeah, exactly.
I
Interviewer1:13
Really?
K
Keller Rinaudo1:14
Yep. So, every one of those aircraft is out making delivery somewhere in the world. Um, right now most of the Africa business is slower. It's like middle of the night Africa time. But if you come in in the morning, you can like barely see that number. There's so many aircraft making deliveries.
I
Interviewer1:26
Yeah.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:26
Let's actually, speaking of seeing aircraft making deliveries, let's go check out the rock.
I
Interviewer1:30
What's the rock? There's a rock.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:32
The rock stands for a remote operating command center.
I
Interviewer1:36
I thought it was actual rock this whole time.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:40
You what?
I
Interviewer1:41
I thought it was like an actual rock this whole time.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:43
You guys are like, 'Let's go see the rock.'
I
Interviewer1:47
Okay, maybe there's like a fan of rocks.
K
Keller Rinaudo1:49
I mean, we're in California. There's like people who love crystals. Maybe you guys love rocks.
I
Interviewer1:53
Do we seem like the type to be into energy crystals to you?
K
Keller Rinaudo1:56
Definitely.
I
Interviewer1:57
Really?
K
Keller Rinaudo1:58
We're an engineering company. Molly. It's the opposite of that.
Um, yeah. This is actually kind of a, you know, cool example, by the way. You know, just getting a sense. So, yeah, October 10th, that's what that space looked like where we were just standing. And then December 10th, it was like completely built out manufacturing facility. Um, so this is all of Zipline HQ behind us. Zipline is about 1300 people. We're about um 800 people in the US and the more than half of those people are engineers. Everything from electrical engineering, firmware engineering, all different disciplines of software. So all of those teams are what you see behind us. Most of this column is actually the autonomy team. So responsible for machine learning, uh, detect and avoid, computer vision, both on the zip as well as on the droid. Um and then you know behind them is like uh system uh systems test embedded engineering mechanical engineering supplier industrialization engineering and then over here is
I
Interviewer2:56
You guys are going to need a bigger office soon.
K
Keller Rinaudo2:58
Yes. In fact maybe you just saw something that we can't announce yet but uh yeah zipline is soon going to be expanding offices. Um this building actually used to be a Harley-Davidson dealership.
I
Interviewer3:09
No way.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:10
Yeah. So they would actually do all of the maintenance of the bikes would happen downstairs and then upstairs they like had all the motorcycles. This was like the showroom.
I
Interviewer3:17
What's his job?
K
Keller Rinaudo3:21
Very friendly.
I
Interviewer3:24
Emotional support.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:25
Zipline. Yeah, it's a lot of tough days trying to build a company like Zipline.
I
Interviewer3:29
Yeah. Come on in.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:30
Okay.
I
Interviewer3:36
This is my desk.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:37
This is your desk.
I
Interviewer3:38
Maggie. Maggie. Zipline chief of staff. Hi. Hey,
K
Keller Rinaudo3:40
You're on camera.
I
Interviewer3:43
This is Molly.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:44
We have a lot of questions for you. Are you prepared?
I
Interviewer3:48
I'm just kidding.
K
Keller Rinaudo3:49
So, this is mostly like powertrain, electrical engineering, more firmware engineering. This is um the safety and reliability team over here. Um and yeah, if you want, we can go check out the rock.
I
Interviewer4:00
Let's go check out the rock. Yeah.
K
Keller Rinaudo4:13
So yeah, rock stands for remote operating command center. Um, this team is responsible for all flights happening everywhere in the US. We've just been approved by the FAA to now fly one human to 30 aircraft. We'll soon go well in excess of that. But essentially, you know, humans aren't really flying the aircraft. You have a human overseeing a large fleet of autonomous vehicles, if that makes sense. Um, and you can see we track everything from like, you know, uptime to, uh, the kind of cohort analysis of how quickly these sites scale. Um, Zipline's now operating about 20 sites in Dallas alone. Each of those sites scales faster and faster. So, you know, it took us uh it took us, I think, about 110 days to get our first site to 100 deliveries a day. We now have sites that hit 100 deliveries a day in two days. The sites are just scaling way way faster. Um, in some cities we have over 50% of homes ordering from zipline.
I
Interviewer5:08
It's kind of kind of insane.
K
Keller Rinaudo5:09
That's insane.
I
Interviewer5:10
Yeah. More than half of all homes ordering from zipline in some of these cities.
K
Keller Rinaudo5:13
Oh my gosh, that's crazy graph.
I
Interviewer5:16
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Um, we're definitely in the vertical part of the curve. And then if you want to come a little closer, you can actually see these deliveries happening live.
N
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K
Keller Rinaudo6:26
So, you can actually see, you know, there are uh uh there's one aircraft actually making deliveries. This is in P Ridge Bentonville. So, you can see all the different 20 sites are being tracked here. And if we look in, you know, P Ridge, we can see two deliveries happening right now. So there's a zip, you know, in the uh northeast there, you can see a zip that's making delivery. Now it's on its way back. And it also looks like there's a zip that's outbound to make a delivery in the southwest. Um and then as more deliveries come in, um we'll get to see packages get loaded into these aircraft. Um and then the aircraft take off and go make deliveries. So we might we might get to see that over the next over the next two or three minutes. Here you can also see all the other sites and they almost all have deliveries that are happening right now. So
I
Interviewer7:07
Yeah, that's a lot over there.
K
Keller Rinaudo7:09
Yep. A lot of these sites are I mean, you know, we're right now we're operating sites about um 17 hours a day. We're soon going to transition the 24/7. Um it's kind of insane, you know, just getting to watch like the CCTV. And by the way, the system's growing 15% week over week. So it's, you know, I'll go like 2 weeks without coming and really like watching The Rock. You come back two weeks later, it looks completely different. like the system is scaling so fast almost every two weeks it's like a completely different level of scale that you can observe by watching these flights.
Um so we'll actually get to see here probably in the next 60 seconds you'll see a zip actually hover down and land um on into those docks. So all of this is controlled by this team. So one central control team for all aircraft in the US. Actually sorry there there there are two control centers. This is one of them. Oh, look. A new a new um delivery was just placed. So, see how the see how the um
I
Interviewer8:05
Bullseye just appeared? Yeah. Now, down in the southeast. So, that means that a zip has just been given a route. We'll probably see a zip take off here. I don't I didn't
K
Keller Rinaudo8:13
Actually see it take off. So, yeah, if you give it maybe 30 seconds, we'll get we're probably going to get to see a zip land here and a zip. Oh, yeah. There you go. See top right? That aircraft's taking off.
I
Interviewer8:22
Oh, yeah.
K
Keller Rinaudo8:26
There it goes.
So, it's had its route automatically loaded onto it. Now, you can watch it go out and make that delivery um to the south uh to the southeast. There's also a zip that is landing because we just saw it fly back, right? But we haven't seen it land. So, let's watch and we'll see you get to see a zip hover in and land.
I
Interviewer8:49
Yeah. I mean, coming over and watching this is honestly, you know, it's a little bit mesmerizing because it's like these systems are just now operating.
K
Keller Rinaudo8:55
Feed for the public to work.
I
Interviewer8:56
Maybe we should. We don't have that. It's like a zoo camera.
K
Keller Rinaudo8:59
Yeah, it's probably a zoo camera.
I
Interviewer9:01
It's not a bad idea. I wonder if there would be
K
Keller Rinaudo9:03
Put the googly eyes on them. People go. Look, there's a zip coming up after making a delivery.
I
Interviewer9:08
Cool.
K
Keller Rinaudo9:08
Um Yeah, we probably should do something like that. It's so fun to watch. Like I would I would watch it just from home.
I
Interviewer9:14
Um and keep in mind like we're watching the CCTV of one of the sites here where there 20 other sites that are just cycling.
K
Keller Rinaudo9:19
Um yeah. 17 hours a day.
I
Interviewer9:21
Put the googly eyes on them, start naming them, and then all of a sudden you have a zoo.
K
Keller Rinaudo9:25
As cute as possible.
I
Interviewer9:26
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
K
Keller Rinaudo9:28
Yeah, a lot of the uh powertrain teams, so designing everything from battery management systems to the flight computer to the uh power distribution boards. Um and we actually design the electric motors from scratch. In fact, let me we can pick one up in a sec. So, um what you're looking at is HDL. HDL stands for hardware in the loop simulator. You know, Zipline has 140 million commercial autonomous miles with zero safety instance. That's hard to do when you're constantly iterating on all the different aspects of software and hardware in the system. Right now, every six weeks, we're doing a major global software update to the entire fleet. Uh, typically that'll include like 60 bug fixes, 25 30 performance improvements, plus a lot of major new features. All of that has to be really carefully tested before we put it on an airplane, right? And you do not want to like find out for the first time that a feature is failing by putting onto an aircraft and crashing it, even at a test site.
Every one of these layers is you can kind of think of it like the brain and nervous system of an airplane. So this is the battery, battery management system, cellular antennas, Wi-Fi antennas, flight compute, power distribution board, the four electric motors which are designed from scratch by Zipline, plus the red motor controllers you can see on top, winch motor controller, mix motor controller, so the droid brain. This is actually an Nvidia GPU running on that small cute robot that's actually, you know, controlling its own position when it's delivering to a house. plus the dock electronics. So that larger board is what's controlling that big hockey puck dock that's the landing station for the zip. So every one of these layers is an airplane. So and every airplane is connected to a powerful simulator that is simulating a world by that airplane to fly around in. It's kind of like think of them all as like dreaming, right? So you're surrounded by like 30 aircraft right now. They're all flying in the Matrix and we'll download all new software onto this fleet. We can cycle through tens of thousands of flights in simulation running on the actual flight avionics itself. We can typically catch 90 to 95% of bugs and performance software problems here before we then go to the final layer of testing which is the test site itself where we're going to deploy onto real aircraft and fly at scale. Once we do tens of thousands of flights at the test site and everything's working perfectly, then we can do an overtheair global update to the to the to the national fleet of that new software version. kind of makes sense.
I
Interviewer11:46
Makes sense.
K
Keller Rinaudo11:47
Yeah. So, this is all, you know, kind of I mean, you know, it's in the weeds, but um this is a huge part of Zipline's competitive advantage. Like this kind of infrastructure, this kind of investment in testing and validation is how we move at a very high engineering velocity while still deploying a product that's super safe for the neighborhoods that we fly over.
I
Interviewer12:04
I feel like I'm in a secret laboratory.
K
Keller Rinaudo12:06
Yeah, that's what this is.
N
Narrator12:09
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K
Keller Rinaudo12:40
So you're gonna kind of see where we're building all of that. Um this is the current manufacturing line for EV3. So uh primary structures start here and one structure. This is all the structural strength way to
I
Interviewer12:54
Oh my god, it's really like
K
Keller Rinaudo12:58
Try to pull it apart. You know, you can try pull it apart.
I
Interviewer13:00
Yeah. Yeah. Try to break it.
K
Keller Rinaudo13:03
You might be able to break it. You slam it. But um yeah, this is this is a simple carbon fiber structure comes out of a mold. It's kind of like um using a process that's sort of like injection molding but for carbon fiber.
And um so it's a really really hard thing to design. It has to be obviously not just strong, we also have to be very rigid. One thing you worry a lot about this in aircraft is you have to worry about, you know, whether you're exciting different um different types of vibration in the aircraft can actually shake an aircraft apart. It's actually like one of the main failure modes for an airplane. So anyway, those um primary structures basically come onto the line and immediately start routing bus bars and um uh through the main primary structure, but then also install the flight computer and the power destruction board, all the different avionics. There are about 43 major sub assemblies on each aircraft and about 700 unique components. So you can see a lot of the components that get assembled onto the aircraft is in these um in these bins next to each substation. Um all of these are designed from scratch by zipline. We have a big global supply chain and as I mentioned a lot of those components are actually now manufactured here. So for example we can go see the battery welding line section. So it's kind of cool. If we stop for a second, you can see the um power distribution board, flight compute board. Um we've now run the the wiring and the bus bar through the primary structure itself. So we're ready to plug in the electric motors also designed from scratch as one. You can also see the um we call this the um the wrench assembly. So, this is both the um my latch, the docking pin that basically latches in for the DA as well as the wedge used to raise and lower the droid when we're making this or when we're loading a package into the aircraft.
Um but yeah, as we come down, you know, all of the software, even the software that you can actually probably see on the screen here, even the software that controls all the manufacturing instructions.
I
Interviewer15:06
Oh my god, that's pretty advanced.
K
Keller Rinaudo15:10
I don't put that out. So like all those manufacturing instructions, all of Zipline's uh manufacturing software system is also built on Sketch by Zipline. That might sound weird like you would think, oh, you probably use, you know, some kind of because there are plenty of companies who make like software like an MRP or what it would be called. Um but Zipline actually ourselves.
I
Interviewer15:32
Yeah. So it's a it's a weird thing to do really like the only other companies that do that like that I know of are Tesla and sets but designing your entire operating system for the company all the software that uh we use on manufacturing for all the software we use a site the service centers all of that copies like not only are we building all the software that runs on the aircraft not not only are we building the communications architecture multivition customerf facing app if app that people download to order systems and we also build unmanned traffic management system that provide the FA but after all that we're also designing the operating system for the company itself which is controlling supply chain manufacturing maintenance logistics everything else might seem like a weird or nuance point but it's really big enabler for what we do um the other advantage of being in control of all that software is it allows us to um it allows us to have full track and traceability of every single component goes into place aircraft. That's a big component of our regulatory.
K
Keller Rinaudo16:37
If ever something goes wrong in the real world, we need to be able to identify what the sales track that was to a specific batch and we should be able to know every single aircraft has times that batch. We can quarantine if necessary. You can build that by the supplier initiate quality some a new kind of quality process. Um this is extraordinary super important in terms of designing systems that are not just really cost effective but that are also extraordinarily and um at the end of the day I mean zipline is for 140 million since they're not as small that has zero hit if you were to drive 130 million miles car even in a place like the US you would have about 600 crashes 100 injuries between tasks. So not only is it that you know not only is the goal for statewide people running a life cycle park in modern basis but the goal is also to um to just have fundamental super remote
This whole building you know it's been a huge advantage like very sort of similar to you know how Tesla originally had Fremont right they had like a giant car factory that was right next to engineering for several years um this this factory has been a huge huge advantage like this building as we've been able to expand into more and more uh more of it. It's just a huge advantage to have all of this stuff tightly integrated together. It allows us to like lightning fast.
So these are actually docs here. Um the dock is the piece of hardware that we're installing on the towers themselves. I just posted something on X days ago. It was like the new 12 doc tower design. I don't know if you saw that. I loved how I actually posted that and uh people were asking Grock because I just said nextg people were asking Brock what is this how does it work and Grock was saying don't worry this is a CGI rendering of like some kind of code technology so it's like awesome cuz that's actually you know uh Grock is uh is incorrect that is you know that is operating in the real world today uh but yeah so these these docs install to these are basic like think of it like superchargers um the dock So the aircraft pump below latches it off. It dock tees the aircraft. It charges the aircraft. It actually it will precondition battery charges that data depending on what amateur is. It also uploads data your ground. Every play centering over a gigabyte data on the train. Super useful to make all future quite safer.
I
Interviewer19:17
I saw on your all-in interview that people will go to Icape and then teach them.
K
Keller Rinaudo19:23
Yeah, it's a thing. People like bring their kids like young kids will ask. They'll be like, 'Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to the park? Do you want to go to the museum?' Because they be like, 'I want to go to the zipline.' So, they'll like drive to, you know, a parking lot and they sit and just watch the air.
I
Interviewer19:36
You're going to have to start getting like an ice cream stand.
K
Keller Rinaudo19:39
I know. I know. We We need to be like selling swag. That could be another component of the business. you know, selling selling t-shirts and Yeah.
I
Interviewer19:46
Kind of like the Tesla diner, you know, the supercharger. Yeah.
K
Keller Rinaudo19:50
Um yeah, it's a thing. So, yeah, lots of batteries waiting to go on the aircraft. And then this is a lot of uh droid manufacturing. So, you know, the droid is that smaller cute robot that's actually controlling its position on X and Y axis when we're landing.
I
Interviewer20:05
Um looks like swimmer.
K
Keller Rinaudo20:08
Yeah, a little like that. Yep. Um, we kind of designed it. It was a little inspired by like Eve from Wall-E.
I
Interviewer20:15
Yeah. You want it to look cute and you want and it needs to
K
Keller Rinaudo20:18
Exactly. Um, you want it to it needs to be safe, but just as important, it has to feel safe.
Actually, you know, when you see um kids and families receiving deliveries from Zipline, you can tell they feel safe because it's quiet. And this robot feels friendly. It is safe. It looks safe. Kids feel comfortable being right next to it, grabbing the packages forever. Um, this is the reason, you know, people have this like concept in their head of like because some other companies are actually doing this. You're they're like descending this massive octop, you know, which sounds like a lawn mower of death to within like, you know, 20 feet of you. It's like, you know, you're you're you're like, it's incredibly loud, incredibly scary. It's actually super dangerous to have an aircraft of that size come that close to your house. And um that's all insane. Like for this to actually work, you got to have a experience is more magical, quieter, safer than the way. And the way you do that, it's like keeping the main aircraft, making it a main aircraft, super quiet, and keeping it 100 meters a year at all times. a really cute robot like the droid actually.
I
Interviewer21:30
Have you thought of putting googly eyes on it?
K
Keller Rinaudo21:32
Yeah, we have. I I like the idea of doing like stickers on the front of having little like two little chip hunks like holding flight controls of like, you know, aviator goggles and things like that to make it look like two little chipmunks are controlling you.
N
Narrator21:43
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I
Interviewer22:44
Yeah, never mind.
K
Keller Rinaudo22:45
We're not we're not beyond making it look super cute, you know. Actually, here's more droid testing that you can see here. Hey, how are you? Um, so you can see, you know, this this has been cycling on the leaves. Literally just cycling it uh day after day, 24/7. Get it? Hundreds of thousands of cycles. This might look kind of fancy, but you know, every single component system life cycle test, right?
I
Interviewer23:10
So obviously in a delivery that would lower.
K
Keller Rinaudo23:15
Right now we're just testing, right? to see what fails. Every single one of the 700 aircraft we will test in all different weather conditions. We will disrupt test vibration test to see a lot of that here. If something's going to fail, we want it to fail here rather than fail in the room.
I
Interviewer23:45
Yeah. As long as it fails here, we can then figure out what we need to change. We can prove it. We can upgrade.
So when people are placing an order, what do they like? Is that the term?
K
Keller Rinaudo23:57
Yeah, today placing order is super easy. I mean, you just download the zipline app. If you're living in one of zip lines metro, you just download the zipline app and then you can you see all the different storefronts. You can see Walmart would need Buffalo Wild Wings sweet green bottom under me to healthcare purposes.
I
Interviewer24:24
I think I saw in one of the demos that like you can maybe I don't know this happens everywhere but you can see like aerial footage of your house and choose location you want to drop it down.
K
Keller Rinaudo24:36
Exly. Yeah. The first time you're ordering you just type in your address. We show you a satellite image of your house. You get to exact you get to just choose exactly where you want to send it. It's a really big advantage because a lot of houses you know being able to have something go over to your backyard is like it's more secure. It's more private. You don't have to worry about much pirates. Um, yeah, it's great. And a lot of people really love just being able to like, you know, you could literally tell it exactly where you want it to go, like on the side of your pool or on your doorstep or in your driveway. The other nice thing is like these kinds of robotic systems, they're really reliable. Like once you say how you want the thing delivered, we will deliver to that spot every single time without fail. We deliver in a highly accurate time because you're not worrying about traffic or what humanity to do. Whitney, here you go. How many orders can someone pick in the house?
I
Interviewer25:22
Yeah, we never we'd never uh
K
Keller Rinaudo25:24
I think you should test that out. And I think uh I have some ideas.
I
Interviewer25:29
We don't necessarily want people trying to do that because as I mentioned right now we are like severely supply constrained. You know, we need people only ordering what they definitely need because right now uh the system is struggling to keep up with demand.
Yeah. But say like I either want to give someone a birthday or you don't like someone and you
K
Keller Rinaudo25:48
People do that. People want to frame their house.
So interestingly, you know, birthdays are a huge hit. Tons of people are like for birthdays having birthday cakes or cupcakes and delivered like in front of all the kids. This is one of the reasons we've been able to turn off all because it's super viral. It makes for really good Tik Tok content. Good for you. A lot of people a lot of people are making these Tik Tok videos that can see 10 or 20 million times of these. Um so this is a lot of the um you know we just walked by a lot of the halt chambers that's like accelerated life cycle testing chambers every single component we will you know heat up cool down we'll vibrate it we'll try to break it all kinds of different ways uh this is testing the roll tilt mechanism which is a really important part of aircraft you can see you know 20 roll tilt mechanisms right there are running right now but you know any new basically any hardware iteration we will do millions of hours of testing across these kind of different components to make sure that we have fully characterized the real life of the component before it goes to the cut. This is a lot of basically designs a lot of those end of line test jigs and flight.
One more cool thing to show you is the vibe lab. We obviously uh think a lot about um the reliability uh of the system as well as like how many life cycles can you get out of an aircraft. Um airplanes have to think, you know, cars, you already worry a lot about vibrations. airplanes have to worry even more about vibration because um when you're spinning motors and especially when you're transitioning from hover into fixed wing flight uh you get something called called edge wise flow across the propellers that can cause some pretty serious vibration from the you know through the propellers into the motors and then infilling itself. If the primary structure happens to vibrate at that same frequency, you can basically shake and the part. In fact, that's one of the reasons it's hard to reliable vertical ver take off a great aircraft. Um, and so we do a huge amount of testing from a vibration perspective. This is one of the test setups. These are like large vibration tables that we use. Um, we also use this system over here where we can actually um hit things with like liquid nitrogen and like instantly cool them down um to a super cool uh uh to a very cold temperature to where we're basically almost forcing the thing to break. We're going to like subject it to such extreme temperature and such extreme vibration that we can force the thing to break um and therefore determine like what is the weakest part of the of the structure itself. we can then go back and reinforce that part of structure. So yeah, this is might might all seem kind of like technical or in the weeds, but like this level of testing and validation is required. That's how we've been able to build a system that has 140 million commercial tunnels.
N
Narrator28:35
Founders ship faster on deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere. Get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deel.com/sorcy. That's d e l.com/s o r c e r y.
I
Interviewer28:51
So when it says X, you can tap it.
K
Keller Rinaudo28:56
It's so awkward though. You can't hit it.
I
Interviewer28:59
It's harder to hit it.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:00
45.
I
Interviewer29:01
Is it Is it turned on right now? So we can It can see.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:04
No, we can we can show We can show you. Okay.
I
Interviewer29:08
Can someone demo it for me?
K
Keller Rinaudo29:09
Oh, yeah.
I
Interviewer29:10
YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO IT ON the top. That's 45. So you can do this and then you can kind of see how it crocates through there. So that's what K was talking about earlier is it goes from the motor to the body. That's it. So you can do that and you kind of see how everything else.
Okay. So the goal is not to like as possible. All right guys. So this is what we're going TO DO HERE. SAY we're going to test this out.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:41
Nice. Yep. Can you see the vibration? You can see the vibration. You can see the vibration with your eyes.
I
Interviewer29:47
If you know this, you can see the vibration with your eyes.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:50
Yeah.
I
Interviewer29:51
Right.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:53
Cool.
I
Interviewer29:57
Did it pass? Molly approved.
K
Keller Rinaudo29:59
Okay. We're going to turn this on. Uh so we usually have these fans set up in our uh wings states air services. They will get really really high. I take about 80ish miles indoors with the vibration. That's exactly what's happening. So, we'll see the vibration of the Sonic. Uh, can we have a deposition on?
I
Interviewer30:28
All right. You want to let her turn it on?
K
Keller Rinaudo30:30
You like the green button and then the one on the screen.
I
Interviewer30:36
She wanted to turn it on.
K
Keller Rinaudo30:37
OH, SORRY. YEAH. YEAH, PLEASE. OH.
I
Interviewer30:41
UH, all right. Actually, turning it off is pretty fun, too. It makes a crazy noise. So, hit the red button.
K
Keller Rinaudo30:46
Yeah, if you hit the red button, right now.
I
Interviewer30:49
Is it on?
K
Keller Rinaudo30:50
It not really.
I
Interviewer30:52
Okay, that's it. Now, you can turn it on with the green button.
K
Keller Rinaudo30:54
So, green button. I'm going to walk you through it. So, it's a green button. Once it comes on, you hit this button that speed and light up when there's this uh on off button. And then that's when it gets turning out. That's mean. Press that button and then that pretty much.
I
Interviewer31:10
Dude, well say I'm so good at duck for cover.
Oh, nervous.
It takes a second.
One more time.
One more time. Oh, yeah. The all
All right. So, now we're going to run the test here.
So what you hear is THE CRAZY.
Oh yeah.
Heat.
Heat.
magic.
Heat.
Heat. Heat.
Thanks guys.
Available on Tuesdays at 8.
K
Keller Rinaudo34:05
Yeah, now you know.
I
Interviewer34:09
All right.
K
Keller Rinaudo34:09
Let's keep going.
I
Interviewer34:12
The fan's good. You want the fan?
K
Keller Rinaudo34:14
All right. All right. All right. Get in prediction on.
I
Interviewer34:16
So, I'll give like a little demo of this first and then if you want to get in front of them, they're wild. So, these these are RC playing fans for like a 7 foot model jet or whatever. And we use them to what like you saying for uh tails and wings. The control surface under wind load can get stuck. you can cause it to get stuck. So, while we do a vibe test, we blow air over them to simulate that it's flying through the air while going through a really fast VIP test. So, let's check them out. These are pretty loud.
K
Keller Rinaudo34:48
Oh, and just fair warning. If you go in front of them like they sort of blow your head, so just
I
Interviewer34:54
Do we need somebody else? Go for it.
I'LL DO YOU CAN LOOK FOR THE VIEW.
You like feel your hand ON TOP.
WAIT, DID YOU TEST IT OUT OR YOU GOING TO BLOW THIS WAY?
BLOWING THAT WAY.
YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. I'll step out of frame.
You're going to blow my life back. IT'S GOING TO BE LIKE A POLY LIKE A Dyson hair dryer.
K
Keller Rinaudo35:18
Yeah. It's crazier than that.
I
Interviewer35:23
Oh, yeah. You want to You want to drive?
K
Keller Rinaudo35:25
No. You got it.
I
Interviewer35:27
All right. You ready? Go for it.
Oh my god.
I think it's going 80 miles hour.
Oh, this one's definitely faster.
That's right. So fantastic. I feel like that'll be a really good end OF THE VIDEO. THAT'LL BE REALLY GOOD. Your face is like
K
Keller Rinaudo36:26
It's crazy, right?
I
Interviewer36:28
You sit there all day. It's kind of more than you would probably think. Yeah.
K
Keller Rinaudo36:33
It's a ton of fun.
I
Interviewer36:34
It's like when you touch a, you know, electric fence.
Okay. Good intro for the video. All right. Should we go to headquarters real quick?
K
Keller Rinaudo36:43
Yeah, we should.
I
Interviewer36:43
Are we doing okay on time?
K
Keller Rinaudo36:44
Uh, we're running a little bit fine.
I
Interviewer36:46
Just quickly explain in one sentence what accelerated life cycle testing is like do people know what that is? Does that matter?
K
Keller Rinaudo36:51
I think so. I mean it's just like at simulate get
I
Interviewer36:54
Yeah. I mean look basically the reason all this acceler accelerated life cycle testing is so important is for any given component you're just going to beat the crap out of it here from a testing and validation perspective so that if it's going to fail it fails here rather than in the real world. Like this kind of how we validate every single component up to hundreds of thousands or millions cycles.
M
Molly37:13
Hey it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.bc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.