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I belive it is a crime to falsify patent data. Other than the legal ramifications, i don't know if there is anything stopping them from doing so if they really wanted to.
I stated my sources and a breakdown of the data on my Post 88891
The Spiber patent info can be found at http://www.google.com/patents/WO2012165477A1?cl=en
The KBLB PNAS article is at http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/923.long
I compared the Spiber patent info from Patent WO2012165477A1 to the KBLB PNAS article.
I know this information is dated and Kim has even stated that the Monster Silk™ properties have since been improved as well as Spiber stating that they are continuously improving their fibers as well, but this is the only quantitative data that I can find that can give me a comparison.
Here is a breakdown:
Max Stress (Mpa):
KBLB:
Min: 281.9 ±57.7
Max: 338.4 ±87.0
Spiber:
Min: 474.2
Max: 858.9
Spiber clearly has a superior fiber in terms of stress in this case
Toughness (MJ/m^3):
KBLB:
Min: 68.9 ±16.2
Max: 77.2 ±29.5
Spiber:
Min: 16.5
Max: 84.8
While Spiber has a tougher fiber in the mix, KBLB is consistently stronger than the average of Spiber’s Fibers which is about 39.6.
Young's Modulus (Mpa) (ratio of stress vs strain):
KBLB:
Min: 4860.9 ±1269.2
Max: 5498.1 ±1181.2
Spiber:
Min: 11600
Max: 18300
Spiber again clearly has a higher young’s modulus
Strain/Elasticity (%):
KBLB:
Min: 31.1 ±4.5
Max: 32.5 ±4.3
Spiber:
Min: 5.7
Max: 21.3
KBLB is definitely better here which is very useful for “mundane” clothing, but not so much for other applications.
The 2015 date is based on when they plan on getting their second prototype facility up. It is supposed to be up early this year if it is not already. At that point, they are going to be slowly start ramping up production and should be ready for full commercialization producing up to 20 tons annually in 2017.
They do have a lot of funding, backing by some big players, and have around $20 million in reserve capital due to fundraising efforts and support from sponsor corporations. The small amount of info that I have been able to find on them also suggests that they have developed threads that rival or possibly exceed the strength and toughness of Monster Silk™.
The cost to produce these threads may be higher since they are using E.coli bacteria to make the proteins, but this also gives them more ability for testing and troubleshooting as it takes just a few days to grow a culture of new bacteria compared to the months that it takes for the lifecycle of the silkworm.
We will see how well and how quickly Kim and Jon can market the Monster Silk™ that they do have and hopefully the Big Red fibers will exceed expectations and the limit of what E.coli can produce for strength and toughness while still being cheaper.
I agree, Randy's experiment is just a small part of the overall USTAR projects. I just found it strange that they want to cut funding to the entire program mentioning his silk as one of the many reasons for considering this, but they still gave him extra funding to get that new equipment.
Its not extremely suprising though. I have seen the same thing happen plenty of times elsewhere due to excessive bureaucracy where their efforts to save money ends up spending even more money or where there is WAY too much finding for a special project, but not nearly enough for normal operations and preventative maintenance. "Different money from different pockets" is always how it has been explained to me.
Huh... They may cut Randy Lewis's funding, but they scraped together enough to buy new equipment?
Maybe this is his last "make or break" attempt.
The potential creation of the KBLB Vietnam sericulture facility has been put on hold pending Vietnamese legislation on GMO organisms. There may have been a meeting last week on this subject, but was was discussed and the outcome is unknown.
Yeah, I think we all would. Even Kim has admitted that this delay in commercialization has delt a blow to the pps.
Well, if their funding falls through, Randy Lewis could always come back to KBLB, assuming Kim wants him.
I really don't think that UND will cancel the agreement. This is mostly because they are currently in negotiations for a second agreement supplying almost double the funding.
From the S-1/a, page 20:
Adaptive Materials Inc. was a private company before it was acquired by Ultra Electronics and is only a single branch of that company, so market cap would not be the case. He was speaking in annual revenues. A quote from my conversation with the HR rep was:
Conversation with Ultra Electronics AMI about Jon Rice
I just got off the phone with the HR representative at AMI and he could not speak higher of Jon Rice. Concerning his personality, work ethic, and ability to get things accomplished, he is top notch. Some of the highlights of the conversation were:
-Jon worked at AMI from 2002 until Jan. 2015 and was hired on as one of their first few employees.
-He started out as a Chemical Engineer working with fuel cells and small projects initially, but worked his way up doing many jobs including performing management duties over the time that he was employed.
-He learned customer service and how get and manage military DARPA contracts including writing and presenting proposals for new contracts.
-He was a key player in the successful growth of AMI from almost nothing to a $7-9 million company.
-He is dedicated, positive, friendly, energetic, and can get results while being extremely frugal and maximizing income.
-He enjoys working at small companies and growing them.
-He was good at working projects solo as well as working with a team.
-He was trusted with more confidential info than most employees and was even screening e-mails to ensure that no confidential data was released and export compliance was met.
-The reason he went back to school was for personal improvement and to help the company succeed in his new management duties.
-He recently decided to quit AMI due to the general lack of interest in fuel cell technology and the branch gradually downsizing. They did ask him to stay, but he felt that KBLB would be a better opportunity for him.
Honestly, I am surprised that Kim could get him for only $120k. Everything that I was told was good and it seems like he is just what KBLB needs to succeed.
I am not sure of the exact methods to produce this silk. I know a while back, they developed a method to mechanically extract the fibers, but I believe it was only one or a few silkworms at a time that it worked on. They may have improved their machinery or increased the capacity so that it would do many.
If this machinery is scalable, it is a method that would potentially work with KBLB's silk, especially in cases where a super-stron silk is desired (tactical textiles, space elevator cable, etc.). I personally would not want them to start investing in all of this machinery until they actually start turning a profit on what they currently have, though.
Two people are cited in this paper.
Fritz Vollrath is a professor at Oxford University and a lead director of the company "Oxford Biomaterials, Ltd." which currently has 2 spinoff companies "Orthox, Ltd." and "NeuroTex, Ltd.". They have found a way (as stated in the paper) to physically modify the bombyx mori silkworm to produce stronger silk with the strength similar to that of spider silk.
I believe that if we could combine their technology with KBLB's genetically altered silkworms, that could conceivably produce silk that surpasses that of dragline spider silk. Of course, if it requires handling each silkworm individually to perform the physical modifications, it may be too time consuming and labor intensive to do on a mass scale.
Zhengzhong Shao is a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He has written a number of papers on modifying the mechanical properties of silkworms. I haven't gatherd much information on him other than that, though.
This article is on "My Hedhammer", one of the top researchers at the Swedish based "Spiber Technologies AB" (not the Japanese based "Spiber Inc.").
While Joe Noel's report was extremely overly optimistic, the history of KBLB listed in it that the article draws from seems to be legit and likely taken from Kim directly.
I really like this article, thanks for posting it!
While the Bethel program looks promising, it will take time to get these techs through the classes to the point that they will be working with the company, and even then, they will only be working with KBLB for 6 hours this fall as stated in a e-mail from them to TRUTH that he posted in his post #81999.
I really dont think that that is enough time to get a grasp on everything that is required to know while working there.
This is one of the methods used by Oxford Biomaterials, Ltd. and its spinoff companies to produce a more consistant and stronger silk thread without any genetic manipulation of the silkworms themselves.
I believe if their technology can be coupled with the transgeneic silkworms that we have currently, we would finally be able to create the stronger than native dragline spider silk threads that have been hinted at.
Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) is the same group that made the vest and scarf from transgenic silkworms created using piggyBac transposons.
They are also the group that is attempting to set up in India as your post #87225 stated.
This group seems to be moving fast and I would not be suprised if they start ramping up to commercialization in the next year or so. Hopefully KBLB will be established before that.
I am pretty sure KBLB has always had to foot the bill on the patents. I did find the change away from CSC suprising, though.
I did a side by side comparison with the S-1 and S-1/a to see what was changed. I may have missed a few things and it obviously does not include anything that may have been omitted, but this is all what I found:
Page 4:
Changed from:
That is up two from the last S-1.
Thanks! I did not realize that they could omit info from the S-1. I just thought they had to be very vague if they did not want specific info to be released.
So there are parts of the S-1 other than the correspondence between Kim and the SEC that will not become public knowledge? I just assumed that that statement meant that an amendment could be filed at any point before it becomes effective. Does it mean more than that?
Reading through the S-1, I could not find a single mention of Vietnam. Because of that, I do not believe that this particular S-1 hinged on Vietnam becoming a reality.
His Jan 2009 update predicted a $4.00 a share target price.
He wrote the last update to his KBLB report in January 2009. His company, YesDTC Holdings, was created in 2006 and his daughter's company, Sonoma Winton, LLC, was created in Dec 2008.
According to the original complaint to the SEC (http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2014/comp-pr2014-255.pdf):
He's a scammer. I believe he wrote that report on KBLB with an inflated target price and overly optimistic outlook for the sole purpose of selling those newly inflated shares that he had purchased before writing it.
Look at the KBLB website's Safe Harbor Disclosure:
Well, that is a good confirmation that it is only temporary, but considering that they have just sat on their hands for the last year concerning these laws, I doubt that they will suddenly get up and try to enact legislation in any hurry.
I think it would be best for Kim, KBLB, and us shareholders if Kim just found somewhere else to set up his sericulture facility.
Honestly, I would not trust anything that Joe Noel has ever said. It was a mistake to allow him to have as much access to Kim as he did.
Here is another article I found and translated from Vietnamese (via Google Translate) from http://baolamdong.vn/kinhte/201412/nuoi-tam-lai-nhen-co-hoi-hay-moi-nguy-hai-2385418/:
Well, this is annoying news to come off Christmas break to read.
I had wondered if there was something going on with the status of the KBLB GMO silkworms under the Cartagena Protocol ever since it was brought to my attention back in September by FACT-MASTER’s post #80697. I was hoping that it was being kept confidential under the Cartagena Protocol article 21 as stated by FACT-MASTER’s post #80810. Unfortunately, it looks like this is not the case. I wonder why they did not evaluate this before and it is just now coming up as an issue 10 months later.
I sincerely hope that Kim does not just sit around twiddling his thumbs waiting for Vietnam to draft whatever approvals they need to and just starts expanding production here in the US or other countries that have already started allowing or are looking into allowing GMO silkworms. As stated in FACT-MASTER’s post #80811, Japan has already started allowing GMO silkworms that produce spider silk (which is why the Japanese have been able to produce that vest and scarf). Unfortunately, Japan is an expensive country and still fairly xenophobic, so even if the Japanese would allow KBLB to run a sericulture facility in direct competition with Spiber/Xpiber Inc. or the researchers that created the vest & scarf, it would be more expensive than just starting up one here in the US. I also know that that same Japanese company that made the vest and scarf is looking into working with organizations in India to expand their production, likely due to cheaper costs there, but they are still looking into how the GMO silkworms would affect their ecology. EntoGenetics has also already started their own sericulture facility & mulberry farm here in the US.
So, if Kim does not find a solution to this mass production issue soon, they will lose whatever lead that they may have.
From what I understand, the "spider gloves" that were created were done just to test to see if Monster Silk would work in the already existing machinery. It was created through knitting (a jersey knit) which is fairly simple to do, but not the more complex weaving. The tests that would need to be done would likely be on the different types of weaves and blends with other fibers to generate (i assume) extremely high strength material that is comfortable and lightweight enough to wear as everyday clothing, but strong enough to stop bullets or snake bites. From what i can gather, these tests take a while to do in order to figure out the correct combinations that will yield the best results.
Hopefully we will get more news soon that will update us on where they are at.