# We’ve made major technical decisions for our next machine! | Airthium (YC S17)

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/356727
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:356727
- Published at: 2026-07-22 15:09:47 UTC
- Updated at: 2026-07-22 15:09:53 UTC

## Author
Franck Lahaye

## Subject
Airthium (YC S17)

## Content
Our next major milestone will be a 10-kW system: a scaled-up version of our existing prototype, designed to reach 180°C.Airthium is now a team of about 15 employees, most of them engineers, organized around two core groups: a science team and a mechanical engineering team. The science team includes physics and numerical simulation, while the mechanical team includes system designers, CAD designers and the people who build and assemble the machine. We also have a data acquisition specialist who works across both teams to design, build and maintain specialty sensors based on the needs of our prototypes, experiments, and complete systems, so every test produces useful data.Before building a machine like this, we do not simply start drawing parts. Since January, the team has been working through the physics of this upscaled and upgraded system: what size this new machine can be, how fast it can operate, what performance we can theoretically expect, and where the technical limits will be for the demonstrator and the actual products as they get developed. Some questions can be answered with physics models. Others require numerical simulations. And for some, the best answer is a small mechanical experiment.This is a very important part of how we work. For every major technical risk, we list the uncertainty, the potential impact, and the best way to reduce it. In French engineering, this kind of process is called an “AMDEC”; in English, it is similar to an FMEA, or Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. In simple terms, it means we decide where to focus our engineering efforts before we reach the design freeze deadline and commit to the full build.We recently reached an important internal milestone: the team has completed enough modeling, simulations, and small experiments to make the key design decisions and set the core parameters for this next, 10-kW machine. That means the mechanical engineering team can now move into detailed CAD design and start preparing the manufacturing and assembly of the machine.We cannot yet share images of the machine or the experiments, because some of this work is confidential. But we wanted to share what is happening behind the scenes. This is not always the most visible part of building a hardware company, but it is one of the most important: reducing risk, making design choices carefully, and turning physics into a machine that can be built, tested, and improved quickly.Join us in this journey, invest in Airthium ! => https://wefunder.com/airthium/invest