Eddie is the share­hold­ers’ affec­tion­ate name for Smoltek Semi­’s advanced plas­ma enhanced chem­i­cal vapor depo­si­tion (PECVD) tool for high-vol­ume car­bon nanofiber pro­duc­tion. Back in June, Smoltek announced that it was head­ing to Tai­wan to join ITRI, where it would facil­i­tate a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion process under one roof. That was months ago. Since then? Radio silence.

Some­where between a ware­house in Swe­den and a research facil­i­ty in Tai­wan, Eddie has van­ished from the share­hold­er radar. Has it left Swe­den? Is it on a car­go ship cross­ing the Pacif­ic? Has it arrived? Smoltek’s investor com­mu­ni­ty on Dis­cord went wild with speculation.

As clue­less as every­one else, I decid­ed to solve the mystery.

The investigation begins

As a free­lance writer for Smoltek, I’m rarely in the loop. But armed with noth­ing but a key­board and deter­mi­na­tion, I set out to become the share­hold­ers’ own Her­cule Poirot. Well, with­out the ele­gant three-piece suits. Or the Bel­gian accent. And frankly, with con­sid­er­ably less impres­sive deduc­tive rea­son­ing. But I had determination.

My first move was sim­ple: I emailed my con­tact at Smoltek. Sure­ly some­one there must know where their mul­ti-mil­lion kro­nor machine had end­ed up?

The response came quick­ly. Too quick­ly, per­haps. As Poirot would say: when the answer comes eas­i­ly, one must sus­pect that the ques­tion was wrong all along.

“Eddie,” my con­tact informed me, “is in Gothen­burg. In a ware­house. Where it has been all along.”

The great anticlimax

I stared at my screen. That was it? No dra­mat­ic ocean cross­ing? No tri­umphant arrival announce­ment? No instal­la­tion pho­tos from Taiwan?

Eddie had­n’t even left Swe­den. It had been sit­ting in stor­age the entire time.

My career as a share­hold­er detec­tive seemed to have peaked ear­ly. The mys­tery was solved in a sin­gle email exchange. Case closed.

But wait. The lit­tle grey cells start­ed work­ing. (I may not have Poirot’s need for order and sym­me­try, but I’ve read enough detec­tive nov­els to know that the obvi­ous answer demands the most inter­est­ing explanation.)

Why would a machine specif­i­cal­ly ordered, cus­tom-built, and des­tined for Tai­wan still be sit­ting in a Swedish ware­house months after the announce­ment? This was­n’t the end of the sto­ry. It was just the beginning.

The real mystery

The ques­tion was­n’t “Where is Eddie?” The real ques­tion was: “Why has­n’t Eddie moved?”

And the answer reveals some­thing far more impor­tant about Smoltek’s busi­ness strat­e­gy than any ship­ping update ever could.

Sleeping Beauty in western Gothenburg

Eddie stands dis­as­sem­bled and packed on pal­lets in a ware­house some­where in an indus­tri­al area in west­ern Gothen­burg. In fact, Smoltek has nev­er even unpacked it. Every­thing remains in the orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing from the man­u­fac­tur­er in the Unit­ed States.

And here’s the cru­cial detail: the agree­ment with ITRI was nev­er about ship­ping Eddie imme­di­ate­ly. It gives Smoltek the flex­i­bil­i­ty to decide when to ship and assem­ble Eddie at ITRI.

So why not do it immediately?

The optimization strategy

First, there is no urgency. The estab­lished net­work of part­ners cur­rent­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing for Smoltek Semi is ful­ly capa­ble of pro­duc­ing the vol­umes Smoltek requires at present. They can already pro­duce CNF-MIM capac­i­tor pro­to­types for cus­tomer projects using exist­ing equip­ment. Instal­la­tion at ITRI sim­ply isn’t essen­tial right now.

This cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Since pro­duc­tion needs are being met through exist­ing chan­nels, Smoltek Semi can fine-tune the Eddie machine to deploy their lat­est inno­va­tions in CNF growth before com­mis­sion­ing it.

Optimizing before the journey

The CNF-MIM tech­nol­o­gy is con­tin­u­ous­ly being devel­oped. As research pro­gress­es, Smoltek Semi iden­ti­fies ways to improve Eddie.

One improve­ment would be to adapt the machine to enable nick­el to be used in the growth process. Nick­el offers cer­tain advan­tages, includ­ing being cheap­er than pal­la­di­um (though cost is not a dri­ving fac­tor). But… Nick­el requires high­er pro­cess­ing tem­per­a­tures. There­fore, if Smoltek Semi wants to use this approach with Eddie, the com­pa­ny first needs to ensure that the machine can reli­ably han­dle those high­er temperatures.

This is just one poten­tial opti­miza­tion among many. And here’s where the strat­e­gy becomes clear: if you want to make such improve­ments, Tai­wan might not be the best place to do it. Mod­i­fi­ca­tions might be more effec­tive­ly con­duct­ed in Swe­den or back at the man­u­fac­tur­er’s facil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States.

Now con­sid­er the costs: ship­ping Eddie to Tai­wan involves sig­nif­i­cant expens­es, espe­cial­ly with high cus­toms tar­iffs. Installing it requires addi­tion­al invest­ment. Run­ning it means pay­ing for on-site per­son­nel, insur­ance, and main­te­nance. And if mod­i­fi­ca­tions are need­ed after all that? You’d have to dis­as­sem­ble, re-ship, pay those cus­toms fees again, and then ship back once more.

The economics of strategic patience

The finan­cial log­ic is straight­for­ward: it’s unnec­es­sary to incur costs for ship­ping, instal­la­tion, and oper­a­tion only to poten­tial­ly dis­as­sem­ble and ship again short­ly after. Bet­ter to wait and see. Bet­ter to focus on under­stand­ing exact­ly what opti­miza­tions would make Eddie pro­duc­tion-ready for the long term.

As CEO Mag­nus Ander­s­son explains, it’s strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant at this stage to focus on under­stand­ing cus­tomer require­ments and build­ing them into the pro­duc­tion line. That way, when the sys­tem is final­ly installed, it will already be opti­mized to pro­duce CNF-MIM capac­i­tors accord­ing to spe­cif­ic needs.

So Eddie remains in stor­age. It will stay there as long as Smoltek can man­age pro­duc­tion through exist­ing part­ners, ready to be deployed when – and where – the opti­miza­tions are com­plete and the move becomes strate­gi­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sound.

The timing dilemma

One might ask: why did Smoltek’s for­mer CEO order the machine before know­ing exact­ly what opti­miza­tions would be needed?

Tim­ing is dif­fi­cult. If he had­n’t ordered it and demand had sud­den­ly mate­ri­al­ized, Smoltek would have faced prob­lems ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion quick­ly. He was wise to order it so we’d be ready. But secur­ing the capa­bil­i­ty ear­ly cre­at­ed a new lux­u­ry: time to opti­mize properly.

Iron­i­cal­ly, cur­rent CEO Mag­nus Ander­s­son faces the same fun­da­men­tal dilem­ma as his pre­de­ces­sor: Should he incur the costs for ship­ping, assem­bly, per­son­nel, and insur­ance now to be ready slight­ly ear­li­er? Or should he con­serve the com­pa­ny’s resources and ensure Eddie is tru­ly opti­mized first?

Mag­nus has cho­sen the cau­tious path. Eddie waits.

But what does Eddie actually do?

For those unfa­mil­iar with the tech­ni­cal details, let me back up.

Eddie isn’t just “a machine.” It’s a cus­tom-built plas­ma enhanced chem­i­cal vapor depo­si­tion (PECVD) sys­tem designed to pro­duce car­bon nanofibers at indus­tri­al scale. These nanofibers are the key to Smoltek Semi­’s ultra­thin CNF-MIM capacitors.

Eddie has an impres­sive work capac­i­ty. Cur­rent­ly, it can process one 8‑inch wafer every half hour. Each 8‑inch wafer con­tains 48,000 CNF-MIM capac­i­tors. With 500 wafers per month, that’s 24 mil­lion capac­i­tors per month. And that’s just the begin­ning. The machine can be scaled up ten­fold to pro­duce 5,000 wafers per month.

If you want the full tech­ni­cal sto­ry – and trust me, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing – I wrote about it back in June: The Machine.

The short ver­sion: Eddie rep­re­sents the future of high-vol­ume CNF-MIM pro­duc­tion. It’s the bridge between lab­o­ra­to­ry inno­va­tion and indus­tri­al real­i­ty. But it’s a bridge that only needs cross­ing when traf­fic demands it.

Why “Eddie”?

You might be won­der­ing: why does a sophis­ti­cat­ed piece of indus­tri­al equip­ment have a name that sounds like your neigh­bor’s friend­ly gold­en retriever?

Inter­nal­ly, Smoltek has always called the machine the “High-Vol­ume Machine” or “HVM” for short. Pro­fes­sion­al. Descrip­tive. Utter­ly boring.

But in the Smoltek’s share­hold­er com­mu­ni­ty on Dis­cord, one par­tic­u­lar­ly influ­en­tial mem­ber – an Iron Maid­en fan – saw some­thing else. The machine’s reac­tor cham­ber, topped with a gold­en per­fo­rat­ed met­al box, remind­ed him of some­thing: Eddie the Head.

Eddie the Head is Iron Maid­en’s icon­ic mas­cot – a skele­tal fig­ure that’s graced their album cov­ers since 1980. Cre­at­ed by artist Derek Rig­gs, Eddie has appeared in var­i­ous incar­na­tions: as a pup­pet mas­ter, a cyborg, a pharaoh, even as Satan him­self. He’s been shot, stabbed, lobot­o­mized, and res­ur­rect­ed more times than a hor­ror movie villain.

The orig­i­nal Eddie drew ear­ly inspi­ra­tion from a mask Rig­gs saw in street the­ater and World War II imagery, but the visu­al style quick­ly became unique­ly his own. Over four decades, Eddie has evolved into some­thing more: a sym­bol of resilience, trans­for­ma­tion, and—perhaps most rel­e­vant here—heavy met­al power.

When the Dis­cord mem­ber shared his obser­va­tion about the visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ty, the name stuck. The com­mu­ni­ty adopt­ed it imme­di­ate­ly. And now, even out­side the com­mu­ni­ty, it’s sim­ply what every­one calls it.

A sophis­ti­cat­ed piece of indus­tri­al equip­ment, nick­named after a heavy met­al mas­cot by enthu­si­as­tic share­hold­ers. It’s per­fect­ly absurd and per­fect­ly fitting.

Poirot’s revelation

So here we are at the end of our inves­ti­ga­tion, and what have we learned?

The mys­tery was nev­er about where Eddie phys­i­cal­ly was. Eddie isn’t lost. The sto­ry is about under­stand­ing why it’s wait­ing – and why that’s exact­ly right.

Eddie is a solu­tion wait­ing for the right moment – packed on pal­lets some­where in west­ern Gothen­burg, still in its orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing, ready to wake from its Sleep­ing Beau­ty slum­ber when opti­miza­tions are com­plete and the tim­ing is right.

Smoltek ordered capac­i­ty in antic­i­pa­tion of demand. They have a high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion machine ready. Until they need it, they pro­duce through estab­lished chan­nels, stay flex­i­ble on poten­tial improve­ments, and avoid the costs of run­ning expen­sive equip­ment at low uti­liza­tion or mod­i­fy­ing it after installation.

Les apparences sont trompeuses, as Poirot would say. Appear­ances are deceptive.

Some­times the most inter­est­ing sto­ry is the one where noth­ing hap­pens yet. Some­times wis­dom looks like wait­ing. And Eddie, like Iron Maid­en’s mas­cot, knows how to wait for its moment.