E62 – Rethinking Aircraft Maintenance with Perfect Point EDM

Buying a fighter jet is the cheap part.Mike sits down with Jim Becker, President and CEO of Perfect Point EDM, to talk about the biggest line in any defense program: keeping the fleet flying.Perfect Point builds the E-Drill, which uses electro discharge machining (EDM) to pull aircraft fasteners. Founded in 2005, it turned a lab curiosity into a fielded tool that removes a rivet in about 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes, with no debris and almost no rework.Jim's take is blunt. The aircraft modernized, the maintenance tooling did not, and the industry keeps papering over it by leaning on a shrinking pool of skilled mechanics.Topics include:Operations and maintenance as the biggest cost in a programElectro discharge machining applied to fastener removalCutting a 10 minute rivet job down to 30 secondsEliminating foreign object debris and rework on titanium airframesWhy maintenance tooling never modernizedWinning over risk-averse engineers with the material science caseThe shrinking pool of skilled aircraft mechanicsSUBSCRIBE FOR FREE to get more intel on defense tech, news, and happenings!LinksSign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_mergePerfect Point EDM homepage https://www.ppedm.com/Perfect Point EDM LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/perfect-point-edm/Jim LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-becker-48449790/Follow us on...LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/themergeInstagram https://www.instagram.com/merge_newsletter/X https://x.com/MergeNewsletterFacebook https://www.facebook.com/themergenewsWebsite https://www.themerge.co/Chapters00:0000:28 intro02:06 the MRO space02:53 the founding story04:38 from the Marine Corps to Boeing06:10 framing the rivet problem07:01 tooling stuck in the 60s07:43 titanium and steel fasteners08:54 no FOD, no mess09:46 the three step process10:27 four to five times faster10:49 killing the rework11:52 problems everybody just accepts13:49 the miracle-worker culture14:55 the aging workforce16:49 winning over the engineers17:32 the launch that fell flat20:21 SBIRs and the valley of death21:39 fall in love with the problem22:09 conventional wisdom that's wrong24:47 making do with less26:03 go talk to the mechanics28:29 the stance he'll defend30:12 where to learn more31:03 outro