Disruptive Startups | Dr. John Garnier

 

About Dr. John Garnier

John is an expert in Business Development, Corporate Division, Small Business Startups and is an International Expert in Silicon Carbide. Additionally he holds a PhD in Materials Science from Marquette University. He is the author of two books through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, technical papers (40+), patents 11+, and more than 20+ in the pipeline related to advanced materials and advanced informational technology analysis. John’s “comfort zone” is forming technical business startups with domestic and international alliances for the benefit of his clients.

John has 35 years experience developing defense, aerospace and energy related technologies and products supporting business – client – product opportunities focused on cutting edge technologies. With a solid technical materials science, metals, ceramics and composites background, John also has corporate divisional, small business startup experience and international program leader expertise in design, development testing and use of advanced ceramic, metal and polymer composites for aerospace, missiles, directed energy, nuclear energy and armor applications. He has 18 years of corporate and small business program management leadership with PAL responsibility and IP management including domestic and international marketing and program sales experience.

John has been involved with two prior Angel-backed ventures: Cercom, Inc. and Dynamic Defense Materials Inc. Cercom is a small SBIR business connected to Triton Systems started in late 1990s and still in operation as a small business focused on specialty ceramics and composites. Dynamic Defense Systems, LLC is a firm that John was asked to join after its bankruptcy filing as VP and Marketing lead. With new owner cash venture capital infusion John led the business to new products within 9-months followed by sales to rapidly develop, manufacture and sell new armor products into the “global” market.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Garnier was the lead USA and International account/program manager for DuPont Lanxide Composites (DLC was owned by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company, later acquired by Honeywell Brakes then GE Turbines) from 1984 to 2002. During this 18 year period John was the Industrial Program Manager on the highly successful Air Force WPAFB IHPTET and IHPRT (Integrated High Performance Turbine Engine and Rocket Technology programs respectively) encompassing all seven (7) USA turbine engine companies and four (4) USA rocket development companies which were prime hardware development customers for DLC. With GE’s purchase of the business in 2002 it had grown to over 70 staff employees with over 350 “qualified” customers worldwide receiving our custom fiber reinforced composites worldwide. Later, Dr. Garnier was involved in several small business startups involving composites, composite armor and sportswear products business prior to his joining the INL as the Armor Program Lead for the Idaho National Labs National and Homeland Security Division.

Dr. Garnier officially “retired” from the INL on Nov. 4, 2012 followed by the incorporation of Advanced Ceramic Fibers, LLC on November 5, 2012.

 

Interview Transcript of: Disruptive Startups | Dr. John Garnier

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Dr. John Garnier. And we’re sitting here at his place here in Idaho Falls, advanced ceramic fibers. And John, welcome to today’s show.

John
Thank you very much appreciate it be here.

Alan
So John fascinating thing that you got going on here. But before we get into the details of that, I want to get a little bit of history on how you got here today. So can you give me background with your schooling and career and that led up to this?

John
Well, actually, when I graduated from high school, I didn’t want to go on to college. But I went to work in a manufacturing facility and realize that I didn’t want to become a craftsperson. So I went down and registered at one of the local universities. And that started me in the area of civil engineering. From there I went into as an undergraduate into aerospace engineering. And then I took a course in material science at the University of Cincinnati and got an F in it. And when I transferred back to another college called Marquette University, I had an opportunity to retake the course and got an A because I had a chance to read the book twice. And then working with the professors else in mechanical engineering at the time, I got involved in a program called material science, just starting at the university, and started taking courses and I started signing up for courses, and I was taking graduate level courses as an undergraduate. And then the professor came down and said, Well, here’s your degree in mechanical engineering, you should have picked that up last year. And oh, by the way, here’s your master’s degree, because you just finished all the coursework for that. And I kind of put me into the doctorate program. So about a year and 11 months later, I finished a PhD in material science, focusing on the non psychometric properties of qubit Flourite materials, which is pretty esoteric in itself, but it’s an analog to nuclear materials. And that brought me into basic research and science out of Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs, which I spent 11 years there. And during that time, I ran into some very brilliant people that got me involved in the molecular structure of materials. And with use of the high powered laser system, we studied the molecular structure materials up to 3000 Celsius. That in turn brought me into the DARPA elite program at the time, developing material, advanced materials in the sciences for those materials. That became the forerunner to what we have today in the hypersonics and turbine engine as your rocket material programs. I had a chance to read a book on technology transfer was a very short book. But I then went to talk to folks at the Standard Oil engineering materials company in Cleveland. And they put me in charge of six divisions at that time to be the Technology Transfer coordinator for the business. And that allowed me to have the opportunity to take technology out of the laboratory and put it into the marketplace. I was very fortunate that time to be working at the former standard and engineering materials company before more carborundum in alpha silicon carbide of all things on the monolithic form, that in turn, when I left there, I went to several different startup businesses, which eventually led me into the EI Dupont, the Marine Company, dealing with Advanced Composites, materials for ceramic matrix composites, I was the second person into a new joint venture, which got me involved with developing of the ceramic matrix composites for turbine engines and rocket applications. I then spent six to 18 years developing those materials. This then brought me back through other elements, which brought me back and other materials. Well, one of the things all along was this aspect of developing a low cost high performance fiber. I was involved with the Idaho National Laboratories as the armor lead for national Homeland Security. And through there we developed a technology for the metal carbide slash carbon fibers which brought me to advanced ceramic fibers, which I started an hour after I retired from the Idaho National Labs. So here today, we’ve got a pre production facility where we’re validating the technology and bringing it forward as rapidly as we can to develop new manufacturing methodologies and the transportation infrastructure, energy, aerospace and defense markets.

Alan
You know, it’s fascinating listening to the story in the history, how you got where you are today. But, you know, having seen some of this processes in which you’re looking at this is truly disruptive technology and applying the carbon fiber into various metals here. Now, John, we need to take a quick break. Okay, but we’ll be right back of these messages. And I’d like to talk about some of the disruptive technology Then we look at the future of working with the material science and metals or carbon fiber. Okay, we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’m here with Dr. John Garnier. And he’s a CEO of advance ceramic fiber. And we’re here at his facility here in Idaho Falls. And we’ve been, we’ve been talking about how this technology is truly disruptive to the materials industry. Now, I want to also clarify, this is not your first startup.

John
That is correct. This is actually my seventh startup over my career 35 plus years that have spanned the element of material science.

Alan
So John, just for the listeners out there. How hard is it to start a company?

John
Well, I think the first thing to do is just have no fear. And also recognize that it takes a lot of things other than just a single person to start a business you have to surround yourself with, with people who have skill sets that I currently add lack of very, a lot of number of skill sets, I have skill sets and materials and that type of thing, and maybe technology transfer, but I don’t have the skill sets and things like the legal the lawyer side, the financial side, and also other people who can do marketing and development better than I can.

Alan
You know, that’s a trait. So as businesses are created, it really takes a team to get them started into the next lattice.

John
Exactly correct. And a team is really what’s required. So I think one of the first things in starting a business is write down, what are the skill sets that this person is lacking, I certainly had a fair number of them. But I was able to actually go through a couple of courses, one offered by the technology ventures corporation that went through entrepreneurialship and business startup. So they covered such things as marketing, commercialization, patent, legal caught, things associated with developing a business. And that was really eye opening. For me, even though I in my past other businesses I’ve worked with. I’ve had certain elements of it, but it was able to bring it into a coherent picture.

Alan
Want to move into then the vision for your company? When you bring everyone together? You got to have a vision?

John
That is absolutely correct. When we first started advanced ceramic fibers, our vision was actually kind of small in that we have a fiber, we recognize that it could have a disruptive element associated with it. But the thing was drilling down into what are the disruptive elements of the product. And those elements are low cost, high performance and the ability to develop that fiber and fabricated in high volume, especially as we recognized early on because of the low cost. We could penetrate into the Transportation and Infrastructure markets, as well as the energy now

Alan
carbon fiber has been around for years. Yes, it has what makes yours so your technology is so unique and so disruptive.

John
Well, the carbon industry did a lot of the legwork for us and spent billions of dollars to develop it to the point where back in the night, early 1980s was about 10,000 pound. Today carbon fiber can retail from any worse than about 12 to as high as $100 a pound depending upon the quality of the fiber and it’s in USD application. By quality, I mean the mechanical strength. So you can buy carbon fiber today running from about 400 pounds, or 400 KSI to 8000 KSI mechanical strength and the carbon fiber. What we’ve done, it’s so disruptive as we taking this raw product and running it through a process which we call direct conversion. So we take some of that carbon fiber and we directly convert it into the metallic carbide. And the first product we’re bringing to the market is the alpha silicon carbide fiber, followed by other metallic carbides no other night 1929 of those in the periodic table.

Alan
So you’re really creating your own periodic table with carbides. Is that correct?

John
I love I love your use of the word create. God creates Yeah, we we innovate in an event event the processes, but in terms of bringing the team together, you not only have to have the product, but you have to have a product that can actually be made Let’s roll into the process that’s robust. Because we envision our vision for this is to produce not just pounds of the fiber or 1000s of pounds of fiber, we plan on producing millions of pounds of this fiber, because our feedstock comes from carbon, and today, there’s about 150 million pounds of carbon fiber being produced worldwide. And all we want to do is pull off about one to 2% of that, that feedstock to produce a fiber now that can go into metals, that’s a market that carbon doesn’t penetrate today, because it can’t be processed into the metals readily. So we can take our our fiber, put this conversion layer on it, and now stick it into metals such as aluminum, steel, or conium, titanium, okay, and maintain material properties that are well above, say, today’s current aluminum, it’ll be 20 times stronger.

Alan
And also because carbon is much lighter, it will make a lighter, yet stronger product Exactly.

John
And we’ve done some independent studies have been done outside of advanced ceramic fibers such as high voltage transmission, where I’m showing a product right here. And what this has inside of it is the solid carbide carbon fiber as a core and it creates a very stiff aluminum material. And in a high voltage transmission line, we can take out the steel core, and this will carry all the load. So we can have more ampacity more current carrying capacity at a lighter weight and equivalent cost of the day’s high voltage transmission lines.

Alan
Now it’s gonna be a lot easier to move the wires I guess,

John
Drew saw that generation and current that to meet the expanding markets, you know, distributed energy is a is a big issue in the United States today as well as around the world. And the ability to carry more current on a current high voltage transmission line system has a definite benefits to the community.

Alan
Now, in addition to the voltage of the high voltage wires, what are their applications apply in this?

John
Just as as we can increase the current carrying capacity of a high voltage transmission line? Because of the higher mechanical strength of the wire? We can also do the same in semi trailers.

Alan
Well, I’ll tell you what, John, we’re running up against a break. Okay, I want to hear more about this disruptive technology applications. But right after these messages, okay, we’ll be right back.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m with Dr. John Garnier he is the CEO of advanced ceramic fibers here in Idaho Falls. And we’re talking about the application of this new carbon fiber technology being integrated into metals. Before the break, you gave the example of using it in the high voltage transmission wire. And then you said something about semi trailer trailers.

John
You talked about the fact is we can reduce weight in structural components. As you increase this structural load carrying capacity of aluminum by a factor of 20 or higher depending upon the base fiber we put it into. We now can take first instance in a 52 foot semi trailer, which you drive you see every day as you drive past, they weigh about 12 to 14,000 pounds, we can take about 3000 pounds out of that trailer. That helps the industry either by one fuel economy, less fuel is necessary to pull a trailer when it’s dry. But more importantly, it can carry 3000 pounds more product in a typical trip from Seattle to New York, that would that trip that 3000 extra pounds would pay for the fiber that goes in to make the trailer so everything else then goes directly to the bottom line, more profit or trailers, more jobs.

Alan
What else is that? What are you looking at with the new carbon fiber integrated into metals?

John
Well into metals, we’re looking at things such as fire barriers, because because of the fact that the fiber itself has such a high temperature capability to it. I’m talking 2200 Celsius, well above the melting point of many known metals. If you put it into steel, the steel would have a higher load carrying capacity at elevated temperatures. So for example, something that might If that occurred in 911, when the Twin Towers were knocked down, it was due to the fact that the high heat caused the softening of the steel which caused the implosion of the towers themselves to occur, we can minimize that effect by putting fiber reinforced our fiber into the steel to give it the higher load carrying capacity. That’s for the metals.

Alan
It also sounds like with this, because it’s resistant higher temperature, you might be able to use the fusion in a different way for carrying your new new types of technologies coming in, then,

John
Yes, it could be used in in, for instance, because of its radiation tolerance, it can be used as a outer liner or an inner liner in tubes for nuclear cladding. So we’d have no more Fukushima, we have test data on that that demonstrates that capability can also be used because of its high radiation tolerance in fusion reactors. Because it’s one of the known materials that doesn’t lose the structural integrity under radiation exposure. Another application that we’re currently looking at, is ultra high temperature used for reentry vehicles or high speed, Mach 20. Vehicles.

Alan
What about what about the application of the technology into battery life?

John
That’s an excellent question. The core of the technology is direct conversion of the carbon fiber into a outer layer of alpha silicon carbide. If you take that conversion all the way to completion, you end up with actually a hollow filament, it’s 10 microns in diameter with a one micron diameter hole in the middle. Because of that hole in the high temperature capabilities, we have inquiries from folks in the industry, you could have for lithium transport, like in a battery application, or it could be used in elements of hydrogen storage. It could also be used in water filtration to filtrate out viruses, because viruses on the order of about 0.5 to 1.5 microns in diameter, so they can’t go through the hollow tubes. So we might be able to make low cost, water filtration units for use around the world. In addition to this aspect of the original question on the batteries, it goes back to how does a battery actually work? It works by creating ions that go to one side, or to the other depending upon whether it’s charged, or rapidly discharged. And then when the ions transport across a distance, they carry this thing called the current. And if you have a second lead these hollow fibers might be one mode of operation for improving the current capacity of batteries.

Alan
It’s fascinating, and also seems that as this application is put into play, we’re gonna see new types of technology emerge that weren’t before possible.

John
Well, I agree with that. In fact, anytime you have a new material system, a lot of people come forth, much smarter than me and others that will see something that we don’t see. And they can actually apply that to make new products and new applications. And again, that creates jobs and opportunities for United States to maintain its competitiveness. Well,

Alan
we look forward to more jobs, right. Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of where you’re at now, you just start, you’re less, a little over a year into this exactly. Yeah. What’s the what’s the vision moving out? Do you? Where do you see this in a five to 10 year? timeframe?

John
That’s a good question. Our current goal is to here at the Idaho Innovation Center to move from the pre production to the production scale, producing potentially up to about 1000 pounds a year product, but to actually service the transportation and infrastructure will have to expand further. But the technology is simple. We have a we have feedstock of carbon fiber, there’s the excess that we can draw from multiple manufacturers worldwide. And we can price production facilities either in Idaho Falls or located closer towards there in use applications such as the trucking or automotive applications. Are you having fun? Absolutely. This is a good job of sleeping well, every night in my bracket ball game is improved. But it’s only because I’ve got a really good core executive team and I have to mention their names Shawn Perkins and Ken Kohler and Matt Waismann. And Sergey Raj Neve and Dave Harrell, who’s also on the financial side, so it takes all of the team to make the same the elements to go together in an initial startup phase.

Alan
Yeah, I love the concept of your understanding of the team approach. So often, businesses are failed to transition into the team approach it makes it difficult.

John
The actual business itself reaches a particular cap say it’s a million or $2 million a year type business, when in reality, it could be 100 million if you just did it right.

Alan
Dr. Garnier where can people find out more information on advanced ceramic fibers?

John
Well, we do have a website. It’s www.acfibers.com. And you can go to the website to see how we’re looking at this disruptive transformational technology and bringing it into the marketplace.

Alan
Thanks for being on today’s show.

John
Thank you very much.

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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