Theo Saville on manufacturing
From #1 Theo Saville of Cloud NC on Transforming Manufacturing (Full Episode) · · EntrepreneurFirst
“What I must actually do is hand my 3D file to a very highly skilled human operator called a machinist who will then use their years of experience to figure out how to cut that block of metal into your final component; this can take anything from 20 minutes to more than a hundred hours. If I want to make one unit of something with this process it's more than 10 times as expensive as it should be.”
On , Theo Saville, Cofounder at CloudNC, spoke about manufacturing during #1 Theo Saville of Cloud NC on Transforming Manufacturing (Full Episode) on EntrepreneurFirst.
About Theo Saville
Theo Saville, cofounder of Cloud NC, discussed the company's work on automating CNC milling machines in a 2018 episode of the podcast Scaling Ambition. He described CNC milling machines as responsible for manufacturing over a hundred billion dollars worth of components annually, including items such as iPhone bodies and jet engine turbine blades. Saville stated that the machines "should be automatic but they are not today," and that the process currently requires a highly skilled machinist to manually program the cutting of metal blocks, which he said makes single-unit production "more than 10 times as expensive as it should be." He explained that Cloud NC is building software that automates this task by using "a vast artificially intelligent mathematical optimization" to find the fastest way to make a part from a 3D file, reducing the time from hours to minutes. Saville noted that the technical challenge was greater than initially anticipated, saying that he and his co-founder Chris thought it would take two working years but instead required "a team of 14 software engineers two and a half years" and was not yet complete. He also described early difficulties in convincing factories to engage with the company, citing the perceived riskiness of the idea and the need for "an awful lot of cold calls" to find partners willing to take a chance. Saville emphasized the importance of hiring and of founders automating themselves out of tasks, and he characterized himself as unsuited for corporate employment, stating that he cannot "sit still" or "do what I'm told" and is motivated by solving problems.