We need to bring manufacturing back to America | Rangeview

Rangeview is building something hard. Hard as in it’s physically metal, hard as in difficult to build, and hard as in “hard hitting.”

American manufacturing has been diminishing in its scale, effectiveness, and ambition for a long time. China produces most of the world’s goods at insane rates using inhumane employee health standards.

Initially, Cameron realized to bring America back to the forefront of manufacturing that factories needed to upgrade their efficiency with robotics.

Cameron and the Rangeview team have been robotics experts and fans for awhile. They competed in BattleBots, built robotic arms, and even created gearboxes as powerful as the Japanese-made, industry standard, for a fraction of the price.

“When I went to sell robotic arms to factories, it was like trying to sell a toaster to a house without electricity,” Cameron explained to me while filming at Rangeview’s El Segundo, CA headquarters.

What Cameron found while meeting with factories of all shapes in sizes is that most US factory management teams are aging out and retiring, as a result they don’t see a need to invest in new ways to innovate their processes.

Despite Rangeview’s belief that automation was the way of the future for manufacturing they were met with disinterest, a lack of understanding, and worst of all, a lack of care from American manufacturing leaders.

So, Rangeview set out to build their own factory.

“The solution to this was to build a new type of factory. Green grass, ground up, new everything. Not humans doing robot jobs, robots doing robot jobs.”

Easier said than done, however Rangeview is tapping into the now popular and exciting investment theory of American Dynamism made popular by Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz.

Katherine initially called the entrepreneurs and investors of America to arms in an article that slams the current state of “unseriousness” in the country. This very article is linked on Rangeview’s website’s mission page.

Rangeview, despite their youth and current size, is a very serious company.

Rangeview’s grand plan is big — revolutionize American manufacturing with what Cameron calls a “cyber foundry,” where you could upload 3D designs and receive tangible metal parts on your door step a few days later.

This looks like robotic manufacturing lines, automated crucibles, and a massive level of capital to pull it all off.

For many, hearing grandiose visions for someone’s venture when they’re so early is a red flag. What proof do you have for your insane pudding?

Well, for Rangeview, they’ve already printed investment casting molds for US Military [redacted], parts in production for [redacted] who have a market cap of over $20B, and parts for cutting edge [super duper redacted].

During our prewriting call, Cameron told me that he and is cofounder, Aeden, looked at over 100 manufacturing processes to land on their current focus, investment casting. With their novel approach of 3D printing the casting molds, they’ve cut 8 steps out of the traditionally 18 step process for creating some of the most complicated metal parts on the planet.

They’re long term goal is to “take the same team and mindset [than invented this process] and apply it to every part of American manufacturing,” Cameron explained to me while filming.

That’s what it looks like to have a mission, revitalizing American manufacturing in Rangeview’s case, and taking a systematic approach to solving problems in aide of that mission.

You can check out Rangeview’s website here, it’s a pretty darn cool design, almost as cool as the cyber foundry they plan to build in the future.

Thanks for reading and keep on building the future,

— Jason