September 26, 2025 • 61 mins
Microfluidics has long promised to reshape diagnostics, drug discovery, and laboratory science. Microfluidics is about manipulating how tiny amounts of liquid move through channels no wider than a human hair; a "lab on a chip" diagnostic. Now imagine being able to 3D print those channels instead of painstakingly etching them. Paul Marshall, CEO of Rapid Fluidics, is working to improve the norm by applying additive manufacturing to the design and production of microfluidic systems.
In this episode, Jenny Chen speaks with Marshall about how 3D printing enables fluidic devices with architectures that cannot be produced through conventional techniques. Traditional fabrication locks researchers into rigid patterns and flat geometries. Paul's work extends beyond basic microfluidics.
His team creates remarkably detailed anatomical models by converting medical imaging data into functional vascular systems that mimic human biology. These models provide alternatives to animal testing and training platforms for medical procedures. They've also worked on embedding electronics directly into microfluidic devices, creating "smart" systems that can measure biological changes in real-time. Their work clearly demonstrates the potential of infusing engineering precision with scientific imagination.
Paul Marshall reflects on the growth of his career as a founder by detailing the progression from experimental prototypes to a growing enterprise serving research communities. Marshall launched this venture at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a seemingly unpromising time to start a business. However, as diagnostic companies pivoted to develop coronavirus tests, the demand for rapid prototyping exploded. Now five years later, Rapid Fluidics serves global healthcare giants from their base in Newcastle, England, while planning expansion to the United States.
This conversation offers a perspective on microfluidics that goes beyond the traditional. If you’ve ever wondered how big breakthroughs emerge from small scales, this episode makes the case that the tiniest channels can carry some of the most exciting ideas.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello there.
Today we're joined by PaulMarshall, ceo of RapidFluidics.
You may have noticed hiseye-catching social media posts
of 3D-printed microfluidics workthat has made him a recognized
leader in the field.
Paul's journey began inmechanical engineering before
moving into biotech about 10years ago.
(00:21):
Drawing on his experiences inadditive manufacturing, he went
on to co-found RapidFootix in2020, in the middle of a
pandemic, to deliver rapidprototyping of microfootix
devices, mainly for life sciencesector.
In this episode, we'll delveinto his career path, explore
how 3D printing is transformingmicrofootix and discover why the
(00:46):
most exciting developments areyet to come.
Enjoy Please listen to thedisclaimer at the end of this
podcast.
Hello Hi.
Thank you for joining the pod,paul.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Not at all Good.
Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think you're definitely famous in the world
of 3D printed microfilterics.
For sure, I see your amazingposts almost on a daily basis,
always fascinated with yourworks.
They're very visually pleasing.
The reason why I'm hosting thispodcast with you is we want to
deep deeper into your journey,your work and what those
(01:26):
beautiful photographs are aboutsure thanks for saying um, yeah,
we do make a point of showingoff the shiny stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Um, we do more conventional microfluidics as
well, but certainly, you know,we showcase the benefits of
using additive manufacturing,the features that we can make,
the geometry we can make, andwe've had a great time over this
summer really boosting oursocial media campaigns, really
pushing the boat out a littlebit more, and the great thing is
(01:57):
there's a lot more to come, soyou'll just have to keep
watching.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, I have to say, those campaigns are definitely
working for me.
I am your super fan and that'swhy we're having this
conversation today.
But just for the audience whoare still unfamiliar with the
field of microfluids and yourwork, would you like to just
introduce to us what yourcompany is about and your
founder journey briefly?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
journey briefly Sure.
So five minute elevator pitch.
I am a mechanical engineer.
I've been working for 25 yearsnow, but we don't like to talk
about it and for the last 10, 11years or so I've been involved
in the life science sector.
Through my career I managed toget into life science.
Let's say 11, 12 years ago I wasgiven the opportunity to work
for a startup biotech companyhere in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
(02:49):
north East England, developing apoint of care molecular
diagnostic system.
So a shiny, white or in thiscase black box with a disposable
microfluidic cartridge used fordiagnosing whatever assay was
going to be required.
So biological sample goes in,put the cartridge in the box,
(03:10):
box runs its magic and it tellsyou what's present in that
sample and that's what kind ofthat's.
That's the catalyst for where Iam now in the way we developed
that product and theopportunities that arose from
that.
So for those that don't know,microfluidics is exactly as it
sounds like it's manipulation ofsmall amounts of fluids.
(03:32):
So a few microliters sample,maybe smaller, looking at
analyzing DNA, single cellanalysis, anything along those
lines.
And then we're particularlyfocused in the automation of the
lab bench processes.
So taking a process on a labbench, converting it into
something that can be runautomatically.
So the lab on a chip is thephrase that gets used most
(03:56):
frequently.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, so you founded your company in the pandemic, at
the beginning of the pandemicor after the pandemic?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was just as it kicked off, which sounds like a
really silly time to start acompany.
So from the previous um job, Iwould basically come up with
this process through apartnership with newcastle
university in a phd to develop3d printing for microfluidics.
Um, and that worked.
We had this process.
We could produce a prototypemicrofluidic chip in a matter of
(04:27):
hours, if that suitable for pcramplification.
Subsequently, when I sawopportunities elsewhere.
So there was a demand for rapidprototypes of microfluidics.
That's what gave us theincentive to start a business.
So a bit of market researchrealized the market was there.
(04:47):
No one else was providing thiskind of service.
So bought a 3D printer, made afew parts, sold a few parts and
that's how it kind of kicked off.
But yeah, this was right at thebeginning of 2020.
This was the beginning of thepandemic.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Was this in March right?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, that's when we had our first.
The business was registered injuly, but we've been operating
for a few months before then.
Um, so made for an interestingsituation, but what we found was
the.
The market for diagnosticsystems understandably, went
through the roof.
Everybody who was developing adiagnostic system was pivoted
and went straight onto the COVIDassay.
(05:26):
So we certainly had someprojects.
We didn't have loads, but wehad some.
That enabled us to get going,enabled the world's approach to
diagnostics changed.
So for the following 18 months,we just saw more and more
inquiries coming in for not justCOVID but wider range as well.
What happened then, though?
Post pandemic, you know, theworld was cured.
(05:49):
Nobody cares about diagnosticsanymore.
But all these little startupsthat were running on investor
funding.
The investment dried up.
The attitude seemed to be thatlateral flow testing was good
enough.
You don't need to have the fulllab on a chip diagnostic.
So they were struggling, so themoney went elsewhere, and that
was when we expanded ourservices and found other markets
(06:10):
to get into with other featuresbenefiting from using additive
manufacturing that we'll go intoshortly.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So when you started the company, was your main focus
on how to use 3D printing tomake these rapid prototyping, or
was it a range of selections?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
It was definitely focusing on 3D printing.
That's the USP, that's what thePhD kind of formed and created.
That idea and that ability toproduce parts quickly became a
real.
There's a real game changer.
There was one of the earlyclients we dealt with, um, and I
actually posted on linkedinyesterday, um, where wait, I'll
(06:50):
find that link.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, they sayso.
We, we were describing aprocess, we had this sketch, or
we we had this process on a labbench.
We sketched on a whiteboardwhat was needed.
So it was take a sample, mix itwith a reagent, incubate it,
mix it with another reagent,incubate it, mix it with another
reagent, incubate it some more,mix it with another reagent and
incubate it some more.
So it's a five-step process.
We sketched out the schematicon a whiteboard in the afternoon
(07:13):
, turned that into a 3D CADmodel.
It's 3D CAD, but it's fairlysimple because it's actually
everything drawing really.
So it's not too hard to modelum, and that enables us to
generate the 3d model, generatethe stl file, 3d print it.
It's on the lab bench the nextday.
And that's where you think, hangon, this is amazing to get
these parts made any other way,through cmc machining or, you
(07:36):
know, embossing, anything likethat.
You're looking at weeks to makethem.
I think we actually put it outto tender.
We couldn't get anyone lessthan six weeks and we made it
next day.
And that's the stage.
You think, well, if my prototypeI can get next day and then I
can do the next one iterationthe next day and the next
iteration the next day.
That's three days, whereas itwould have been 18 weeks.
And if you're trying to developa process that's trying to
(07:59):
prevent half the population ofthe world being wiped out by the
super virus, what are you goingto do?
You know, you realize thebenefits of getting this product
to market quickly.
It's not financial, it'shealthcare, and that's where we
kind of had this real eye-openermoment.
You think, hang on, this isreal, this is so useful, we've
got to take it further andthat's enabled us to kind of
(08:21):
keep going and we prideourselves on the rapid response
that we can provide a service toour customers.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, I mean, these trips that you produced are
beautiful, fascinating.
However, you know, I think it'snot as easy as it looks, so I
think you made it look too easy.
So I want to hear just unpacksome concepts, for we have a
variety of audiences.
Some are in college still andsome are definitely in the phd
level.
But you know, if you were goingto explain the concept of
(08:51):
microfluidic fundamentally, whatare the principles behind it?
What makes it so challengingand interesting?
Can you say a few words on that?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
yeah, yeah, so obviously you're down to.
You know you're at themicrofluidic level.
You're dealing with microlitersof liquid.
So you've the best way topicture it from anyone who
hasn't seen one of these partsis imagine a pcb printed circuit
board, but instead of thecopper tracks you've got
channels for liquid to gothrough.
That's the complexity we'retalking about here.
(09:21):
Those channels will vary fromliterally single figure microns
in a silicon chip up to hundredsof microns, maybe millimeters.
With the technology we're usingwe can't get down to that single
figure micron and there areprocesses out there that will do
that.
So our sweet spot is around usall down to a couple of hundred,
(09:42):
maybe a hundred microns.
We can go smaller, we have gonesmaller, smaller.
It's pretty hard but we can getthere.
So you're dealing with thesefeatures that are, you know, the
size of a human hair, um, andthese are these channels, and we
we're printing in resin.
So there have been um attemptsat using filament printing for
making microfluidics.
Um, the dollar might evenproduce a coc extrusion um
(10:04):
system specifically for cocmicrofluidics.
Dolomite even produced a COCextrusion system specifically
for COC microfluidic chips, butthe resolution was such that you
were down to millimeterchallenges, millifluidics,
macrofluidics, whatever you wantto call it so much bigger yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so that never reallyworked.
It was nice, reallygood-looking parts, and anyone
within the field knows that cocis the be all and end all really
(10:25):
of material.
It's lovely, expensive and hardto process, but you know, the
end results are great.
But it's just not suitable for3d printing, so we're using um,
methacrylate based resins forprinting, and so you can imagine
printing a channel that isliterally, you know side of a
human hair, a couple hundredmicrons wide, a couple hundred
microns deep.
(10:45):
How do you stop the resinblocking that channel?
right and that is the majorchallenge.
That's what the basis of thephd was to find out a process to
do that.
Um, as printers have got better, you're getting much better
control.
You can get that resolution andthat you need.
But the great thing with 3dprinting is obviously you can,
and you can make an open channel.
(11:07):
How do you put a lid on it?
So that's another process that3d printing gets around.
There's no bonding.
So with traditional methods ofmaking microfluidics, whether
embossing or cnc, you know youcreate the channel and then you
put a lid on, you somehow join aflat surface on top to enclose
that channel.
We don't need to do thatbecause we're 3D printing it.
Great, that's one solution.
But the challenge is how do youget the excess resin out of the
(11:29):
channel?
That's the hard bit.
That's the question we getasked.
How do you do it?
How do you make sure it's clear?
Because it's almost tooaccessible, and this is
something we come up with withprospective clients.
They've bought a 3d printer.
You can buy one for, you know, afew hundred dollars on amazon
and you know, and in theory theresolution is 25 microns and xy
(11:51):
kind of thing it's.
It's totally achievable as, asthe projector resolutions have
got better and better, based onphone technology, you really in
theory can get down to thatresolution.
So people will try and itdoesn't work.
And that either puts them rightoff and they say 3d printing is
no good, we don't like it, itdoesn't work, um, or they
realize that they just need toget the experts, and that's what
our process is enable us to do.
(12:11):
We've got methods where we usethe sacrificial material to stop
the resin coming in.
The other thing is we've justlearned how to do it.
You know, by investing inhigher quality equipment,
especially with the dlp printersand and I'm saying we, I don't
do this, I've got a wonderfulteam who know how to do it, I
stay well out of it.
But by investing in theequipment and the materials and
(12:34):
just learning the processes,along with techniques for
post-processing, ultimately wecan make this happen.
So it is really hard, but weknow how to do it.
And it sounds quite smug, butwe are, the world leaders are
doing this.
There's there's few people whocan do what we can do.
Um, the alternative is you buyyourself a half a million dollar
(12:56):
printer and then you can do it.
But who wants to be spendinghalf a million dollars on on
some equipment?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I doubt having a million dollar equipment can
actually get you have a milliondollar return immediately
because there are a lot oflearning involved yeah, that's
that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That's my thought.
That's why we haven't gone downthat route.
Um, you know there are academicinstitutions that have these
and that's great and you can getdown to that really fine
resolution, but it's not.
That's not the market thatwe're trying to to fulfill.
We're trying to find people whoare they want to get their
product to market.
A lot of our customers willhave an end goal of injection
molding.
You know they want to.
You know 2 million, 10 millionparts a year for a consumable
(13:32):
and that consumable needs tocost you know a couple of
dollars, um, that's the targetprice.
So they've got to scale up toinjection molding and that
brings in other challenges.
Um, but they've got.
You know, to tool up forinjection molding traditionally
costs you tens of thousands ofdollars, so you've got to know
where you are to get there inthe first place.
And again, if you can avoid thereally small features, it's
(13:53):
more likely that you canactually mold the thing in the
first place.
Um, so there's a, as I say,there's a sweet spot that we,
that we fit in with ourtechniques.
But then then there are lots ofother advantages to additive.
So one of my big things that Itry and promote is do you need
to go to injection molding?
You know if, actually, withinthe scope of what you're doing,
(14:16):
maybe additive is the wayforward and there's some
fantastic advantages on usingadditive manufacturing for batch
and large scale production andoutside of the medical
technology world.
I think additive is findingthese techniques for automating
large-scale production, so it'sreally interesting seeing where
that's going.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, let's just dial back a little bit in terms of
how hard actually making thesethings are.
There are a lot of signs behindhow fluid behaves on a micro
scale level tiny, tiny.
I mean.
Do you have to hire a bunch ofPhDs to figure out exactly what
you're making actually is goingto deliver what they're going to
(14:56):
deliver?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
If we are designing it, then, yes, it depends.
So we work with clients indifferent levels.
With some of our customers, ifthey've designed it, we're like
a generic prototyping shopalmost.
They give us a step file, we'llcome up with the price, make
the part and that's fine.
And that's how we operate.
(15:18):
So they might already havetheir concept, they might have
tried prototyping one way oranother, they might even be
towards the injection moldingside and they just need a bit of
support with converting it tothe animation.
But then, yes, there are thosecustomers who come to us and
they have a process.
They need support designing thewhole package.
Now, if it's fairly simple, wecan probably copy and paste an
(15:41):
existing design, make it alittle bit bigger, a little
smaller, change things around.
But if you need to get into thefundamentals of you know say,
you're trying to sort cells froma sample- um you want to use a
spiral for cell sorting, so youright
a liquid through a spiralcentrifugal force and I forget
the name of the other forcesinvolved but that causes cells
(16:01):
of different size to go out ofthat spiral out different points
, and so that's the level whereyou need that fundamental
knowledge, that phd levelknowledge of um, of
microfluidics.
So we have a network ofconsultants that we bring in
when we need to to assist on thedesign side of things.
So we'll you know we're notjust a prototyping shop, we'll
(16:22):
help our customers, at whateverlevel they're at, to solve their
problems.
I view it very much as we're anengineering consultant, we're a
solution provider, but wehappen to specialize in
microfluidics.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
You guys have some kind of preparatory method.
Now I just want to understand.
I remember that you areactually quite open to a variety
of tools, a variety of printers.
You're open to purchasingoutside tools.
What part of it do you actuallyhave IP on?
That's in-house trade secret.
Obviously don't share the tradesecret with us, but just kind
(17:02):
of curious.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, so I am open about this.
We don't have a patent on theprocess.
We don't have ip on the process.
It came from a phd which, ifyou dig into it, you can
download the thesis and read itand yeah, go and buy yourself a
sheet printer, knock yourselfout trying to copy us.
That's fine.
What we've got is the, it's theknow-how of how everything
mixes together.
So, yes, you can work, you, youcan read up about the
(17:27):
sacrificial material process,right, knowing what that
material is, how to apply it,how to remove it.
You might get there.
You probably, probably will.
But you know it might take youthree or four years effectively
a phd length of time to work outhow to do it.
So we've got our four-year phd.
Then we've been operating forfive years.
Since then, um, we've gained alot of knowledge in-house.
(17:48):
So that's, that's our, you know, that's our USP, that ability
to process it.
But what we found is, as I say,as we've invested in the, in
other equipment, we don't alwaysneed to use that process.
So it's only suitable forcertain geometry, some stuff.
Just it's not suitable for somestuff.
We just don't need to use thatprocess so it's only suitable
for certain geometry, some stuffjust it's not suitable for some
stuff.
We just don't need to use that,which makes it makes it easier
(18:10):
in a way, because it's quitelabor intensive.
We've looked at automating it.
We've developed a that, thehardware.
So we have developed a bespokeprinter that allows us to pull
everything together in one goand we proved that that works.
But then there wasn't reallythe return on investment to
scale it up.
We found it's just easier tokeep going, you know, with the,
(18:31):
with the higher quality printers, the better printers, and then
use this as a backup when weneed to and for the particular
geometry that applies to yeah, Iagree.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I mean, I think knowing how to use the
technologies that you alreadyhave is equally important, if
not more important than havingIP.
I know people who have 100 IPsand not a single company or
application.
So now let's go to some of thefun projects you have done.
You mentioned that you starteda company during the pandemic.
(19:01):
Why don't we start there?
What's your most interestingprojects during that period of
time?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
So the very first project was, by coincidence,
almost as anyone who starts acompany, you've got to commit to
it, you've got to know what todo.
Most people will have a backupplan.
So when the three of us foundedthe company so I founded the
company with another engineerand also the guy who did the PhD
the three of us got the company.
So I founded the company withanother engineer and also the
guy who did the PhD the three ofus got things going, but we all
had other things going on.
(19:28):
Just to you know, you've got toput food on the table at the
end of the day.
So the position I had I wasworking on a contract at that
point with a local business whowere developing a system.
It was detection of airbornepathogens.
So it's actually linked in witha US defense project.
Obviously, if you've got asystem for detecting airborne
(19:49):
pathogens just when a virus thatis airborne kind of takes over
half the world, there's a marketthere.
So that really boosted thingsforward.
So I was helping them with themicrofluidic system and one of
the first conversations I hadwas you know, I'm going to
design your microfluidics foryou.
How are we going to make this?
And they said we don't knowwhat do you suggest.
(20:09):
By coincidence, I've just setup a company that can do this.
So we had this first customerlined up from day one and that's
always been important to me onthe business growth.
Journey, the revenue iseverything to me.
I didn't want to be dependenton investment or grants.
You know, journey the revenueis everything to me.
I didn't want to be dependenton investment or grants.
You know we have taken some,but not masses.
Um, it's always been focused onon the customer.
(20:29):
So we started off working withthis one particular customer, um
, who we continue to work with.
You know it comes and goes, butthey're they're local firms.
It's really nice to work withthem, um, and we've we helped to
take their, their projectsquite a long way along away,
really, and that ability toproduce the components next day
we even did same day becausethey're local, literally.
(20:51):
There's one opportunity wherean email came in at nine in the
morning can we have two of theseand three of these please?
And by four in the afternoonthey're on the lab bench
allowing them their research andit's just yeah, those moments
like that are just fantastic.
So that allowed us to reallykick things off and give us the
confidence to take thingsfurther forward.
(21:11):
It allowed us to build up acase study where we got a large
grant from Innovate UK thatallowed us to develop materials
and, as I mentioned earlierabout developing the hardware,
and that gave us effectively an18 month runway, whilst covering
the um, the rd side, tocontinue to grow the business on
the side, and that's just, youknow.
(21:32):
Since then, we've just grownand grown um and picked up a
variety of different projects.
Um, I think so, paul um the uhfor the airborne project.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Just curious.
I don't know if you can sharethis is how do you use a
microfluidics to detect airbornepathogens?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I can't go into the details.
Obviously.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Even if I understood, I tried guys.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
The basic concept is a system draws gallons of air in
, condenses it down to liquidand then takes that liquid and
then runs it through amicrofluidic system to detect
what was in the air sampleoriginally.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So as they it was a defense-related project
initially, but then there'sapplication.
I mean, honestly, I am curioushow much, how many pathogens are
around me, because I still workin a hospital sometimes.
I don't think I've seenanything remotely like that so
far.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
No, there's applications.
It's more of a defense-basedsystem, right right, as far as I
know, with the results of livesampling.
It's astonishing how much is inthe air and quite scary.
But equally, humans areresilient.
If it's in the air anyway,you're probably fine, but yeah,
interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
That definitely piqued my interest.
I will do some research afterthis call.
All right and okay.
So you did a bunch of otherreally interesting and
fascinating projects.
Love to just name a few.
I think during our webinarrecently you talked about the
anatomical models, which got alot of audience response.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You got a lot of emojis during the call.
Yeah, these are some of myfavorites.
This is one of the applicationswe found, and it came from a
drive originally into how can wemake it easier.
So, ultimately, we're a team ofengineers.
We're working with scientistsand providing them with the
(23:31):
engineering resources they need,and as clever as scientists are
, they're not engineers.
They don't necessarily know howto design things.
So sometimes, you know, weliterally go with that hand
sketch and so on, trying to workout what something is.
We thought, thought, how can wemake the process quicker?
How can we bypass the CADentirely?
Could we take a hand sketch andcreate a part?
We came up with this processwhere you could take a scanned
(23:55):
image, a monochrome image, andthat allows you to create an STL
based on the variation, basedon the grayscale, from that 3D
STL file.
We could then 3d print theparts.
So we tried that and it worked.
Off a hand sketch.
It looked terrible, though itreally there's a reason for
straight lines when it comes toscience and engineering.
But we thought, you know, whatelse can we do with this?
(24:16):
What?
What would be a demand fororganic geometry, for not
engineered geometry?
So actually, surely there's aneed for modeling of vasculature
systems, of looking atanatomical systems.
So we took a leaf.
Originally it's nice andtwo-dimensional.
We took an x-ray of a leaf,created a a microfluidic part
(24:39):
based on that leaf venation andit is wonderful, it is so nice
to see you.
When you put liquid through itit just distributes perfectly
because, of course, the leaf hashad billions of years of
evolution to do exactly what itneeds to do.
And that's great.
And you know, it looks prettyand people joke we should sell
them on etsy and we kind ofshowcase I think it may actually
(25:01):
sell.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I'll buy one of those .
Yeah, it's a thought we've had.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It's a thought we've had, um.
So we did a few iterations ofthat and we just kind of we let
it lie.
You know it was there, weshowcased it and that was fine.
About a year or so later, um,we got a connection.
We were somebody got in touchfrom a large research
organization over there in thestates and so we've seen your
leaf.
If you can make the leaf, couldyou make a human organ?
(25:26):
yeah, yes and we made a model ofa prostate.
Well then, there's over anx-ray data of a prostate.
We created um models for them.
We've made kidneys, we've madelivers, we've just done a um
middle meningeal umous modelwhich will be-.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Artery, probably artery.
Yeah, Middle meningeal artery.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, that's the one yeah, so that is going to go out
on social media in a week ortwo.
Nice, look forward to that sothat ability to process the 2D
models, and so you're going froma 2D sketch to it's effectively
a two and a half day.
So it's still planar, right.
But the the channels arecircular, so depending on the
width of the line, it creates acircular channel um, and that's
(26:10):
just allowed us to get intodifferent markets.
Since then we've got into themore three-dimensional um right,
creating vasculature modelsfrom um, from 3d, from ct scans
and so on.
We've done some amazing thingson that and it's just these
parts look fantastic and youmentioned earlier how you're
impressed with them.
I'm blown away Every time I seethem.
(26:31):
I think it's just there'ssomething special about being
able to create these models andit's the kind of thing you can
only really make with 3Dprinting.
There are other methods ofdoing it, of casting, silicone
and and so on, but nothing quitedown to the size that we can
get down to.
So we're using our microfluidicknowledge to create these
models.
So other.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
So these are really small, even though the pictures
are magnified, but they're likeyeah well, just want to have a
concept how big it is.
Oh, okay, so yeah, so it's yourhand size.
Okay, that's a microvascular,that's a 3d, wouldn't you say
that's a three-dimensional?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
channel that is three-dimensional yeah and it's
about 200 microns at the center.
Um, these are some parts.
In fact, there'll be a versionof that model that's going on
the web shop soon.
Um, so it will be publiclyavailable for research, r&d
purposes.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Um okay, yeah.
So my question is yes, they're,you know, great to look at, but
what are the applications forcreating these models?
Um?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
so there's a few demands for them.
Um, obviously drug deliveryresearch is really important.
If you're developing something,you need to know where it's
going to get to I see, see.
And at the moment it's doneusing animals.
So in the drive to reduceanimal testing and the
regulations for reducing animaltesting, the more models like
this you can do.
You can reduce that so you canactually analyze what's going
(27:52):
through.
So you've got that side ofthings.
Training models for catheterinsertion, things like that.
Again, you can do whatevergeometry you need to do.
There's occasional requests forpatient-specific data.
We haven't really gone intothat market just yet, but that's
something we're kind of lookinginto where we can go on that
side of things.
But it's mainly the R&D and thetraining models.
(28:13):
That's the real benefits here.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean I would assume, in termsof drug delivery is to see how
various viscosity liquid withcarrying loads of ingredients
going through the vascularchannels, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly that, and we're working
with a few customers on thatfield now, which is it's really
cool that we can make theseparts.
As I say, there are othercompanies out there providing
similar models, but nobody canget this really good down to the
size that we're at yeah, Ihaven't seen any, so I I think
(28:53):
that's probably true.
Um, yeah, go ahead I was gonnasay you know, it may be a case
and I don't know this but it maybe a case of nobody's doing it
because nobody's asked for it,but nobody's asked for it
because nobody can do it.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, yeah
that's another question Iactually have is you know people
who want microfluidic chips.
They already know what theywant.
They kind of know what it isand what it does.
They kind of know what it isand what it does, but is there
(29:30):
such a market outside?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
of existing market that people don't know what they
don't have, don't even know theunknowns.
And do you see some of that outthere?
Absolutely.
Maybe not so much in themicrofluidic chip kind of market
, the kind of two and a half dlab on a chip stuff.
But one of the interestingmarkets we're getting into at
the moment and have been pushingfor last year or so, is valve
manifolds, so much morethree-dimensional, which
(29:52):
traditionally are made eitherwith cross drilling, blocks of
acrylic or cnc machining anddiffusion bonding together,
building building layers up thatway.
And we've realized thatactually with 3d printing you
just make them, you canabsolutely smash the lead time.
But one of the reallyinteresting processes is you can
get rid of all excess material.
You're not restricted to thistwo and a half d layout you're
(30:16):
suddenly got.
You got all three dimensionsthat you can utilize and, as
we've been sort of showcasingwhat's possible, you get the
light bulb moment.
It happens every time and Iabsolutely love it when you're
showing someone we can do this,we can do this, we can do this,
and they realize that actuallyyou know you're not restricted
(30:36):
to the way that it's always beendone.
Yes, there are challenges inpersuading people that the right
materials to use it's differentum, but as long as you are open
to finding equivalent materials, depending on what's being
needed um, it can work reallywell, and we are.
We're in the process of reallyspeeding the process up um, so I
(30:57):
can't say too much yet, butwe'll be launching it kind of
soon.
So for a diffusion bondedmanifold, you're usually looking
at a lead time of four to sixweeks, maybe a bit longer um
where you take three layers ofacrylic and bond it together.
Now we've done case studieswhere we've taken the same part
and we can 3d print it asdesigned in about, I think, 10
(31:19):
or 11 hours.
We then took that part, took aload of material out, took all
the excess material out, whichobviously reduced weight.
That makes it easier to print.
So by improving themanufacturability we got it down
to two and a half hours um wow,or a similar kind of cost to
what you'd be paying um for aquantity of a few hundred.
So you're getting the sameperformance but you're getting
(31:41):
it within a few days.
We're about to show how we canget that down to minutes by
producing multiple parts at onetime.
That is going to begame-changing stuff.
All of a sudden we'll be.
We will have the capacity toproduce hundreds of components,
fairly complex components, in aday.
So you know, because it's, youknow, ultimately works out two
(32:04):
or three minutes per part onaverage to produce.
So that market, that ability toget a product to market quickly,
again, it's just.
You know, if our customers canget their product out there
sooner, they're going to makemore money.
As simple as that.
If they need to change theirmind, change the design, we can
change it at a moment's notice.
So you can go through multipleiterations, you can go for
individual bespoke geometry andit's just.
(32:25):
It's only possible throughadditive and it's only possible
because we know how to, as wementioned earlier, get the
excess resin out of the channelsand incorporate various other
features.
So it's a it's a new marketthat's been watching with
interest for the last couple ofyears since we've started
talking about it and I thinkit's about to blow up in a good
way.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Um yeah so I'm gonna, I'm gonna admit my inners in
the, in the in things, uh,inside or outside of life
science.
So I would assume theapplication for this manifold it
sounds like a fluidmanipulating device that can be
modularly produced, that can beused for both industrial and non
(33:10):
and life science sectors.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's.
Ultimately it's a block ofplastic with some valves
attached to it, a fluid sourceso you can have pressurized
fluid going into it.
Valves turn it on and off soyou can change how the fluids
then behave, whether they mix orthe outlets they go to, and
that applies to liquid or gas.
So pneumatic systems areapplicable as well, and you can
(33:36):
even go to fairly high pressures.
That's one of the questions.
Another question people areasking is it suitable for
high-pressure applications?
There's this belief thatbecause 3D printing is built up
layer by layer, that under highpressure it's going to
delaminate.
Now we've carried out someinternal pressure testing where
we are pressurizing these partsup to 250 bar.
(33:57):
And when they're failing.
They're failing exactly the wayyou think they're going to fail
, based on a stressconcentration area, and then
it's cracking through as ahomogenous material.
It's not delaminating, it'scracking.
You'd expect a solid materialto do.
We're about to set up asix-month cycling testing so we
can get some fatigue strengthdata on that.
But certainly going up to 100bar is possible.
(34:21):
None of our customers go to 100bar.
I think the most is maybe 8.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
We can probably guess what the applications are once
you go on to a very extremedimension.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
What I'm curious to see the testing house we're
using when they're pressurizingit, they're putting in a steel
box for safety.
I would love to see a slowmotion video of it exploding at
200 bar.
But we're not there yet.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Okay, well, good to know what you're thinking about.
So you also have somethingcalled the PCB Embedded Wells,
which is fascinating becauseit's like a kind of a
bioelectronics or maybe justelectronics.
Can you expand on that a littlebit?
What does it do?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, so again, this was a lot of the things we're
pushing out.
So anything you look at on oursocial media.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
These are all public.
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, so everything we've put
out there is is, is, it's in thepublic knowledge.
Occasionally customers allow usto share data, but most of the
time it's it's our own.
So we're always keen to tryideas out.
So if I hear two or threepeople talking about or see an
application, rather than waitfor a customer to come along and
order something, I'll say, well, I wonder if we can make that.
(35:29):
So I come back to the officeand I say I saw this great thing
at the show, can we make that?
And everybody says no, oh, goon, try and we'll try.
So one of the things was thiswhole um application of using
electrochemical biosensing.
So when you're within the lifescience, within the microphysics
, you know if you are trying todetect a change of state, you
(35:50):
wonder what you can do iselectronically.
So it's whether a protein bindsto electrode or the change of
state of the chemistry, anythinglike that.
If you can measure itelectronically.
You have an electricalbiosensor and we thought we were
looking into how can we get theelectronics into the part.
So we thought the first ideathat the real, cheap and easy
way of doing this can we take asimple pcb and put it in the
(36:13):
part.
So in the same way we put thesacrificial material in the
channel to stop the resin goingin, can we just put a solid part
in there and print over the topof it?
And the answer is yes, and we.
So we started off, you know,just putting a pcb, and I think
the first demo we had was a verysimple chip where we had a
straight line fluid line.
We had this pcb in there thatwas wired up to some leds, so
(36:37):
when you ran a saline solutionthrough, it simply completed the
circuit and the leds flashed onas the liquid went through.
Nice needs a fluid actuatedlighting system, but it just
demonstrated how the electronicswere interfacing with the
fluidics.
And so from there we've beenable to reduce.
You know, put biosensors inflow cells.
Uh, an interesting applicationwe've done a few examples of is
(37:00):
where you take a standard 96well plate and you can then have
an electronic measurementsystem at the bottom of each
well.
So we have a system that's justgone out which is a
multi-channel impedancemeasuring system.
So there's a customer approachthat said they've had a 64
channel impedance measuringsystem, which is wonderful, but
they didn't actually have aconsumable to measure 64 things,
(37:22):
which is wonderful, but theydidn't actually have a
consumable to measure 64 things.
So we made them a well plate.
We use the 96 format butobviously only 64 are being used
and that's connected up to thesystem.
So as they are modifying thecontents of the wells, we are
measuring the impedance live.
So you get to see, measure that,that change of state, and it's
just by embedding the pcb withinthe printing part.
And again, it's that knowledgeof how you get to see, measure
(37:43):
that change of state, and it'sjust by embedding the PCB within
the printing part.
Again, it's that knowledge ofhow you get the print to bond
top and bottom to the PCB, tolocate it correctly and seal on.
We've done the same kind ofthing with screen printed
electrodes.
So if you print an electrodeonto PET film, for instance, the
advantage there is that getsyou into the flexible wearable
(38:03):
market.
So some of the resin we'reprinting with are flexible.
We've got flexible methacrylate.
We recently started lookinginto flexible so silicone, so 3d
printed silicone.
So if you can input a flexibleelectrode into a silicone part,
then wearable biosensors startto become feasible.
Um, and that's, you know, aninteresting new application.
(38:24):
And it's just that way of justtrying different ideas out
different technologies andpulling it all together.
Um, and that drive to to pushideas to our out there for our
customers to see, and it's thatgreat example where where people
see the range of products thatwe can make and I said I want
that and I we can make, andthey'll say I want that and I
want that and I want that, but Iwant them all in one piece.
(38:46):
Can you do that?
Yes, you know, might not beable to do it straight away, but
give us a little bit of timeand we'll put them all together
and within a week you'll have it.
And that's yes, that's, that'sthe service that we we like
giving yeah, I mean listening toyou.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
I feel like you're opening doors for a lot of
people with creative ideas.
You know things that weren'tpossible and suddenly open a
door for example that pcbembedded wells and now there's
so many things you can do justcoming from that possibility
that it can be achieved.
I mean now you can.
You can pretty much run 96experiments and acquire data in
(39:22):
a consistent manner and maybeeven control the experiments um
kind of just all day long.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah you know, yeah, this kind of product is
available at volume.
You know it does, and this waswhat gave me the idea that it
does actually translate neatlyto injection molding, so you can
buy well plates and you canhave well plates with electrodes
in.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If you want something custom, it's going to cost.
If you're going down theinjection molded route, it'll
cost you tens of thousands, ifnot more, of dollars to actually
get that product.
So the fact that we canprototype it so you can try a
bespoke system is reallyinteresting.
Fact that we can prototype itso you can try a bespoke system,
yeah, is really interesting.
We have customers who they usethe well plate um interface
because it's standardized.
There's equipment out therethat's designed to take a well
(40:10):
plate but they may not want justto have wells.
So again, by using additive wecan put electrodes in, we can
have channels between the wells,we can have flexible lights
going on and off the wells.
You can have different kind ofsensors within that, so you can
have a complete lab in a wellthat does allows you to run 12
experiments at one time or soyou can use that 96 format for
(40:31):
different applications, but youcan prototype it while you're
testing it and you can get abatch of 10, a batch of 100
before you want to commit to um,to injection molding.
So it's, it's so.
It's not something that isunique to small quantities, but
it's a way of enabling that massproduction technology and
actually trying ideas out beforecommitting to the high volumes
(40:55):
and the high costs that go withit.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Right Totally makes sense Now of all these cool
projects we have talked so farwhat are some of the challenges
you've faced?
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Any surprising requests that you're like WTF?
Terms of the challenges, thebig one is certainly the
material um, because we're usingmethacrylate resins, um
compared to glass or coc or alsoanything like that.
You know, everything has itsstrengths and weaknesses and I
I'm very open to say you knowthere's a lot of things we can't
(41:36):
do.
You know, we can't go reallysmall.
We can't get below 100 micronsum, traditionally, most
materials are terrible for autofluorescent.
You know, if and fluorescent,fluorescent imaging is a common
method for analysis if you'remeasuring um, pcr or whatever,
you need that, that fluorescentreaction, and if the material
(41:58):
itself glows like a street light, then it's no good.
There are materials that getbetter there.
So that's that's that's beingresolved and there were ways
around that so we can kind ofcross that bridge.
Transparency, um, you know,actually optical transparency,
ignoring the, the flessingoutside, but if you want to see
clearly what's going on, thereare challenges involved with as
(42:19):
printed parts.
Now you can polish them, youcan coat them and you can get
higher levels of transparency onthe resins.
And again, the materials aregetting better, the equipment's
getting better.
There's some great ways ofpost-processing now that allow
you to get a much better finish.
And we've gotten access andknowledge of how to do that.
But equally, if you reallywanted it perfect, you can put a
(42:49):
glass window in there.
Um, so if we had, this is a aninteresting one we had a while
ago where someone was culturedcell culturing, um, probably a
cancer cell.
That's the, you know, that'sthe kind of common thing.
So culturing a cell on amicroscope slide.
But they needed to have eightchannels for um, for liquid to
feed it.
But they wanted to image it topand bottom, but they needed
perfect clarity.
So we ended up with a systemwhere the cell was cultured
initially on the slide.
We created this microfluidicmanifold that we stuck to the
(43:12):
slide just using a double-sidedadhesive that had the wells, the
channels going into it.
But to get the visibility onthe top, we embedded a cover
slip within the part, much likeI've talked about embedding pcbs
.
You embed a cover slip into asmall glass cover slip into the
block.
There's then stuff on the slide.
So you end up with the cellculture sandwiched between two
(43:33):
pieces of glass.
So you get perfect opticaltransparency.
So we solve that problem just by, you know, with a fabrication
technique?
Um, it's, it is.
Yeah, it's.
It's a limiting factor with thematerials.
Sometimes we simply cannot doif, if you really need that high
precision or or a particularmaterial quality, that we can do
(43:53):
and that's where we reach outto the network.
You know, ultimately it's it'sa growing market, but it's still
relatively small.
There were what 20 or 30, maybea few more companies around the
world producing microfluidiccomponents, using different
techniques in differentmaterials, and, on the whole,
(44:14):
most people are happy tocollaborate.
Most people realize, you know,how technology can complement
each other.
So we'll just, you know, usethe network and go out to the
right, you know the rightsupplier, make an introduction,
make a referral, and it goes theother way as well.
So as long as everybody getsalong, then we can all service
our customers as we need to.
So that's, yes, it is a bigchallenge In terms of specific
(44:37):
kind of crazy ideas.
We have been asked to getinvolved in a vaping project.
Um, ultimately it's, it'sdroplets yeah vaporized um, that
didn't go anywhere and I wasn'ttoo bothered about it.
And my my drive as an engineeris I like being involved in the
(44:58):
healthcare, in the life sciencemarket.
That's what I want to do.
I I like to know that the endproduct is helping people and
it's hard for me to get involvedin a vaping project.
It's tricky because ultimatelythere's money there and you
can't.
You know, as a business ownerI'm not going to turn down an
opportunity to make money.
We've.
We had an inquiry recently forin the automotive industry, um
(45:23):
making to produce a smallquantity of caps for a porsche.
So imagine, with the roll cageapparently a certain model you
could take the roll cage out.
That leaves a nasty hole on thetop and the caps that Porsche
provide fall out.
So somebody had this great ideaof making aftermarket caps to
go to, to sort of tidy up thebodywork, and we proved that we
(45:45):
could do it.
My question is why would youtake the roll cage out?
That's, it's there for um again, that's.
That's not materialized andit's.
It's one of those interestingwe are getting into a few other
markets.
The valve manifold is allowingus to get into industrial
automation.
We've got customers who arelooking at robotics, so we're
making components for robotics.
(46:06):
So there are other things outthere that we will talk about.
We'll talk to them, we'reopen-minded, but ultimately
we've got a range ofhigh-precision 3D printers that
I'd much rather we're makingproducts and not the markets
that we desperately want to bein, but the drive for me, as I
(46:27):
say, is working within thehealthcare sector.
That's the important thing forme.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
I think you can, definitely.
I'm very curious myself of whatare the applications outside of
healthcare, but currently I amseeing a lot more applications
within healthcare.
To begin with, yeah, yeah roomto grow.
(47:01):
So so, speaking of the room togrow, do you think this industry
is consistently growing assuggested by some market
research, or do you feel it's?
It's?
It's a more of a hockey stickgrowth trend, or is it more like
a linear, or hopefully notplateauing?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
oh it's definitely not plateauing, it's definitely
growing and yeah, and yeah, themarket research.
Every year there's the reportsout for the growth of
microfluidics as a sector andit's worth however many $10
billion a year, $20 billion ayear, CAGR of whatever.
I think during the COVIDpandemic they were quoting a
CAGR of 40%, because it was that.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
And that's lovely.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
It's a great one when you're talking to that's.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
That's how much I lost.
That's how much money I lostbasically um, yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
It tends to be around sort of 10, 15 percent, I think
, in terms of yeah I thinkthat's the number I'm looking at
too.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
It's a fifth double low double digit.
Yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
it's definitely growing, I think, from our point
of view, because we have thisunique approach.
There's a lot of peoplewatching and I'm waiting for it
to.
I think it is going to kick off.
I think we've kind of we'vebeen going for five years.
We've achieved what we need toachieve and we're starting to
get interest from a lot of thebig players.
We've got some huge names onour books.
(48:13):
I'm astonished when I look atthe customers we've got, and
here we are in our littlewarehouse in central Newcastle
supplying to these customersaround the world.
So things are growing and theUS market is particularly
important to me.
Ultimately, the attitude to R&Dover there involves spending
(48:33):
more money and spending itquickly compared to the European
attitude, and I just want to beon the receiving end of that.
So we know we're talking topartners about setting up remote
manufacturing over there,because, rather than shipping
bits of plastic across theatlantic, why don't we just
share data and then havesomebody or assist them over
there to load the data, load thematerial, press go yeah there's
(48:55):
machinery being made which itspeeds up the shipping times um,
reduces import costs and youknow we're not really affected
by the tariffs as such being Iwas
wondering it's, that's, that'snot a problem for us at the
moment, um, who knows how thatwill change, but even so, if we
can bypass it, it makes sense,um, and you can just say save
time, so we can be a muchquicker response for our
(49:17):
customers, so we can kind ofkeep that rapid development side
of things.
So, yeah, the market, I wouldsay, is growing.
I think by expanding ouroffering, by not just looking at
microfluidic chips, by theanatomical models, the valve,
manifolds and so on, we've foundother markets, much wider
markets, markets.
We're expanding our ownservices.
(49:38):
So in-house we're looking atthermoplastic forming, so using
3d printed molds for hotembossing and pressure forming.
Um, we are looking at um rapidprototyping using injection
molding, um, so we're partneringwith, with a company who can
offer that, so we can start toum bring in more services.
So we can start to bring inmore services, so we can just
widen our appeal, widen ourmarkets, whilst also still
(50:01):
keeping it pretty niche.
I mean, ultimately what we'redoing is a niche in a niche, so
we'll just kind of step onelevel back and widen things a
little bit more and find a widermarket.
But yeah, it's picking up.
We saw earlier this year the USmarket did definitely take a bit
of a.
It paused, I think, with allthe the uncertainty over
(50:21):
research grants and so on.
Um, the upshot of that was theuk and european market kind of
took up the slack.
So that side of things, we gotmore inquiries, more business
over here.
But then since the summer theus market has definitely picked
up again really has for us.
So this over summer inquiriesare ramping up.
We've hit September and it'sgone mad.
It's a fantastic problem tohave, but there's so much kind
(50:45):
of coming in at the moment it'sreally good.
So we're kind of growing tosuit.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, no, I think.
From the long-term perspective,I think this industry is poised
to grow.
Now, even though you caughtyourself in a niche market, but
you didn't lose sight of theforest, it seems like you are
very well aware of other players.
I mean, granted, it's still asmall field, but you're very
(51:12):
much aware of all the playersthat are around you.
Have you seen anything that'ssuper cool and new that you'd
like to share with our audience?
Speaker 2 (51:20):
um, oh, super cool and new.
I saw something today, in fact,that I would love to share, and
I'm not going to um absolutelyyeah, you got to keep watching
following on linkedin find out,okay.
Okay, some really cool stuff,more on the manifold market kind
of things.
Again, just by taking adifferent approach to the
(51:41):
large-scale 3D printing, there'sgoing to be some really really
cool stuff coming out very soonin terms of production rates and
processes.
That's got me really excited.
I would love to tell you and wewill be launching it um, as
soon as we can kick things offum other than that, see, I think
(52:04):
it's like I mentioned the, therapid injection molding process,
which obviously that's not 3dprinting.
There might be ways of 3dprinting tools and stuff.
That's something I'm reallyquite keen to see.
If you can get a 3d printedtool, it works for hot embossing
, so it ought to work forinjection molding as well, so
you can get rapid, low cost umthermoplastic parts, um.
So that's, there's definitelyappeal there.
(52:24):
So there's yeah, there's there'slots out there that's going on
um and just seeing the way that3d printing is evolving as a as
the technology matures and theresolutions are getting better,
materials are getting betterease of use.
I bought my son a little bamboofilament printer for his
(52:44):
birthday this year and he isjust smashing our stuff out
because it's so easy to use andthe quality is just blows me
away with what you can get onthis basic filament printer, um,
and you kind of think, well, ifthat's the you know, that's the
home user, diy, hobbyist market, just you know what's going on
at the industrial scale?
(53:04):
Well, I know what's going on inthe industrial scale and it's,
it's the same rapid development,um, so it's, it's an exciting
place to be yeah, I know it'sgood to see that, uh, both ends
of the market is, uh, they areevolving.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
I I have a firm belief that technology should be
easy to use and easier overtime and not hard, and 3D
printing has been very hard forme personally and many others,
and that's why it didn't realizewhat it wanted to realize.
So I'm hoping that this kind ofprogression can continue.
Now we're approaching the endof this interview, although I
(53:37):
honestly half of the questions Iwanted to ask.
We don't have time, but maybeanother episode.
So, since we're approaching theend, let's just uh, have some
reflection about you know, yourjourney as a engineer and
entrepreneur what, what kind ofadvice would you give to the
newcomers to this space andmaybe even students in college?
Speaker 2 (53:58):
yeah I would say, if you see an opportunity, jump on
it, totally and utterly jumping.
I've, you know, I'm 25 years ofsince graduating, so 25 years
as an engineer, and I sawthere's definitely a few
situations early on my career Ithought, oh, that's a good idea,
but somebody else has done it.
And I had this realizationwhere the next time something
(54:22):
comes along, grab it and go withit.
And that's what enabled me toget into life science.
That opened this door, thatopened other doors and and then
it just it's a chain reactionfor where your career can go.
If you you know, if you seesomething, totally go for it.
Likewise, and you know theother end of that is, if you're
going to go for it, make sureyou know where you're going to a
point you know it's from asetting up your own business
(54:45):
entrepreneur.
I never set out to be anentrepreneur, you know.
That was not my intention atall as career guidance.
It is so incredibly stressfuland worrying and hard work, but
the upshot is it's such good fun.
You know you can totally dowhatever you want to do.
But you've got to know themarket, you've got to know those
customers then.
But because the whole drive forthis technology came about
(55:07):
because I, effectively, was thecustomer.
We needed this process.
That means that I can relate tomy customers, um, so, yeah,
it's, it's kind of that thing ofgo for it but be careful it's,
but it's, it's absolutely worthit.
Um, and I wouldn't change itfor the world.
I don't think I can ever workfor anyone else ever again, now
that I've experienced doing itmyself.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
This is a common comment I hear from a lot of
founders they cannot be anotheremployee ever and I can?
I can understand that.
Now, where do you envisionrapid fluidics, let's say in
three years?
Speaker 2 (55:39):
Three years time, I think we will have a site in the
States.
I think we'll have amanufacturing over there Good
Awesome, I'll go visit.
Absolutely yeah, whether it'smore than manufacturing, if we
could have obviously have salesand so on, whether we end up
with the technical design teamas well over there, it would be
a nice place to be.
That's, you know.
That's definitely one thingthere going on.
(56:01):
It may be an acquisition.
Um, you know, there have beenconversations about that and in
the back of my mind I'm thinking, yeah, I'll take the money, I'm
happy it is my baby, but I'llsell it for a moment's notice,
just for a good night's sleep.
Um, so it might be that webecome part of something larger.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
I think that's.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
I think that I think there will definitely will be
some external partnershipformalizing whether we are
absorbed into something biggeror we've just kind of merged
with other similar companies.
That's the way to survive, Ithink, in this situation.
As I say, just by broadeningour services, let's bring in
other people as well.
But I think we'll still begoing.
(56:41):
I think we'll be larger, moreestablished.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, I'm here saying don't sell.
There's a lot to be said forthat yeah, so to calm your
nerves or to encourage yourselfto continue the journey.
What do you entertain yourself?
Speaker 2 (56:59):
with books, media, any youtube channels, whatever I
yeah I don't tend to focus onthe business side of you know of
media other than you know.
You know I'm fairly prolific onusing linkedin but I also I
read linkedin.
It's you know, it's my sourceof news of what's going on in
the industry and lead generation.
(57:19):
You see an interesting article,you read up who wrote it, you
get in touch with them and whoknows where that conversation is
going to go.
So I'm not a I don't listen toprofessional podcasts and stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
You know I'm a keen cyclist, that's but but other
than our podcast, obviously, ohyeah without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Obviously I read, listen to the lattice all the
time.
I do listen to a fewbusiness-related podcasts.
There was a great one thatsadly is no longer going, called
the Northern Spin, which was aview on politics and business,
predominantly in the north ofEngland but looking at wider
spread, so very much importantto me.
So that's not happening thesedays.
There's a couple of Australianbusiness podcasts I listen to
(57:55):
Interesting Mark Boris.
I find fascinating.
I'd love to have a couple ofAustralian business podcasts I
listen to Interesting Mark Boris.
I find fascinating.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I'd love to have a link of all these podcasts you
listen to, because I've neverheard of these and I don't want
to be an echo chamber and justgetting the same kind of news,
same kind of commentary everyday.
I want to hear differentperspectives.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
And then, yeah, I listen to cycling podcasts.
I listen to audiobooks when I'mdriving.
I've rediscovered Stephen King.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
Nice.
Is it good?
The audio version is betterthan the written one.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Yeah, as a teenager I read all the Stephen King
novels and I kind of lost it for15 years.
And then I've rediscovered andI'm partway through the Dark
Tower, which is just epicallyweird, and I'm reading on the
Kindle.
I'm reading um game of thronesagain.
um, mainly because you knowwhere I live, I you know I live
(58:44):
near to hajian's wall, which wasthe inspiration for the wall,
um, so it's kind of wow, I didnot know that, I did not know
that I do know that game ofthrones has a lot of references
in history and yeah, and it'skind of yeah, it's kind of based
on the war of the Roses, theidea of the House of York and
the House of Lancaster and Igrew up in Yorkshire, so White
Rose versus Red Rose Wow,there's a lot going on kind of
(59:08):
linked to British history.
We don't quite have as muchdragons, though, but that's the
fun in that We've got the Welsh.
They're dragons.
Okay, so I wasn't going to askyou this question and this
certainly is my last question iswhat's so special about
newcastle?
Um, it is a fantastic city.
It's relatively remote forengland.
(59:28):
You know, it's two hours northto edinburgh.
It's, you know, an hour or twosouth to to york.
So this we're surrounded by alarge amount of nothing, which
means the city is quite insular,but it's it's not too big, it's
it's like by a large amount ofnothing, which means the city is
quite insular, but it's not toobig.
It's like a large town in somerespect, but it's got everything
going on.
And as for the football, youknow you cannot avoid it.
(59:48):
Yeah, where?
Speaker 1 (59:50):
we are Stalker.
Stalker for the Americanlisteners.
Speaker 2 (59:53):
Oh yeah, so where I'm sitting right now, st James's
Park, is out of that window, sowe are right close to where
Newcastle United play at homewhen they play the whole town's
black and white.
It's an amazing experience and Iwas never a soccer fan but my
youngest son got me into it.
It's just, it's special.
And if you're not and I, Ididn't grow up here.
(01:00:16):
I've been been here for 25years but I've didn't grow up
here.
But you know the geordie,geordie accent, I'll get you for
starters, um, but it's, it'sjust a wonderful place to be.
I would say majority people arewonderful here.
It's great great.
Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Well, I would say to those people who want to go on a
pilgrimage for microfluidicsdefinitely visit Paul Marshall
in Newcastle, England.
Definitely yeah Well it's beena pleasure, Paul.
Until next time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Yeah, good to talk to you.
See you again, great.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Cheers only.
The views expressed do notconstitute medical or financial
advice.
The technologies and proceduresdiscussed may not be
commercially available orsuitable for every case.
Always consult with a licensedprofessional.
Hello there.
Today we're joined by PaulMarshall, ceo of RapidFluidics.
You may have noticed hiseye-catching social media posts
of 3D-printed microfluidics workthat has made him a recognized
leader in the field.
Paul's journey began inmechanical engineering before
moving into biotech about 10years ago.
(00:21):
Drawing on his experiences inadditive manufacturing, he went
on to co-found RapidFootix in2020, in the middle of a
pandemic, to deliver rapidprototyping of microfootix
devices, mainly for life sciencesector.
In this episode, we'll delveinto his career path, explore
how 3D printing is transformingmicrofootix and discover why the
(00:46):
most exciting developments areyet to come.
Enjoy Please listen to thedisclaimer at the end of this
podcast.
Hello Hi.
Thank you for joining the pod,paul.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Not at all Good.
Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think you're definitely famous in the world
of 3D printed microfilterics.
For sure, I see your amazingposts almost on a daily basis,
always fascinated with yourworks.
They're very visually pleasing.
The reason why I'm hosting thispodcast with you is we want to
deep deeper into your journey,your work and what those
(01:26):
beautiful photographs are aboutsure thanks for saying um, yeah,
we do make a point of showingoff the shiny stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Um, we do more conventional microfluidics as
well, but certainly, you know,we showcase the benefits of
using additive manufacturing,the features that we can make,
the geometry we can make, andwe've had a great time over this
summer really boosting oursocial media campaigns, really
pushing the boat out a littlebit more, and the great thing is
(01:57):
there's a lot more to come, soyou'll just have to keep
watching.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, I have to say, those campaigns are definitely
working for me.
I am your super fan and that'swhy we're having this
conversation today.
But just for the audience whoare still unfamiliar with the
field of microfluids and yourwork, would you like to just
introduce to us what yourcompany is about and your
founder journey briefly?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
journey briefly Sure.
So five minute elevator pitch.
I am a mechanical engineer.
I've been working for 25 yearsnow, but we don't like to talk
about it and for the last 10, 11years or so I've been involved
in the life science sector.
Through my career I managed toget into life science.
Let's say 11, 12 years ago I wasgiven the opportunity to work
for a startup biotech companyhere in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
(02:49):
north East England, developing apoint of care molecular
diagnostic system.
So a shiny, white or in thiscase black box with a disposable
microfluidic cartridge used fordiagnosing whatever assay was
going to be required.
So biological sample goes in,put the cartridge in the box,
(03:10):
box runs its magic and it tellsyou what's present in that
sample and that's what kind ofthat's.
That's the catalyst for where Iam now in the way we developed
that product and theopportunities that arose from
that.
So for those that don't know,microfluidics is exactly as it
sounds like it's manipulation ofsmall amounts of fluids.
(03:32):
So a few microliters sample,maybe smaller, looking at
analyzing DNA, single cellanalysis, anything along those
lines.
And then we're particularlyfocused in the automation of the
lab bench processes.
So taking a process on a labbench, converting it into
something that can be runautomatically.
So the lab on a chip is thephrase that gets used most
(03:56):
frequently.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, so you founded your company in the pandemic, at
the beginning of the pandemicor after the pandemic?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was just as it kicked off, which sounds like a
really silly time to start acompany.
So from the previous um job, Iwould basically come up with
this process through apartnership with newcastle
university in a phd to develop3d printing for microfluidics.
Um, and that worked.
We had this process.
We could produce a prototypemicrofluidic chip in a matter of
(04:27):
hours, if that suitable for pcramplification.
Subsequently, when I sawopportunities elsewhere.
So there was a demand for rapidprototypes of microfluidics.
That's what gave us theincentive to start a business.
So a bit of market researchrealized the market was there.
(04:47):
No one else was providing thiskind of service.
So bought a 3D printer, made afew parts, sold a few parts and
that's how it kind of kicked off.
But yeah, this was right at thebeginning of 2020.
This was the beginning of thepandemic.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Was this in March right?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, that's when we had our first.
The business was registered injuly, but we've been operating
for a few months before then.
Um, so made for an interestingsituation, but what we found was
the.
The market for diagnosticsystems understandably, went
through the roof.
Everybody who was developing adiagnostic system was pivoted
and went straight onto the COVIDassay.
(05:26):
So we certainly had someprojects.
We didn't have loads, but wehad some.
That enabled us to get going,enabled the world's approach to
diagnostics changed.
So for the following 18 months,we just saw more and more
inquiries coming in for not justCOVID but wider range as well.
What happened then, though?
Post pandemic, you know, theworld was cured.
(05:49):
Nobody cares about diagnosticsanymore.
But all these little startupsthat were running on investor
funding.
The investment dried up.
The attitude seemed to be thatlateral flow testing was good
enough.
You don't need to have the fulllab on a chip diagnostic.
So they were struggling, so themoney went elsewhere, and that
was when we expanded ourservices and found other markets
(06:10):
to get into with other featuresbenefiting from using additive
manufacturing that we'll go intoshortly.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So when you started the company, was your main focus
on how to use 3D printing tomake these rapid prototyping, or
was it a range of selections?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
It was definitely focusing on 3D printing.
That's the USP, that's what thePhD kind of formed and created.
That idea and that ability toproduce parts quickly became a
real.
There's a real game changer.
There was one of the earlyclients we dealt with, um, and I
actually posted on linkedinyesterday, um, where wait, I'll
(06:50):
find that link.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, they sayso.
We, we were describing aprocess, we had this sketch, or
we we had this process on a labbench.
We sketched on a whiteboardwhat was needed.
So it was take a sample, mix itwith a reagent, incubate it,
mix it with another reagent,incubate it, mix it with another
reagent, incubate it some more,mix it with another reagent and
incubate it some more.
So it's a five-step process.
We sketched out the schematicon a whiteboard in the afternoon
(07:13):
, turned that into a 3D CADmodel.
It's 3D CAD, but it's fairlysimple because it's actually
everything drawing really.
So it's not too hard to modelum, and that enables us to
generate the 3d model, generatethe stl file, 3d print it.
It's on the lab bench the nextday.
And that's where you think, hangon, this is amazing to get
these parts made any other way,through cmc machining or, you
(07:36):
know, embossing, anything likethat.
You're looking at weeks to makethem.
I think we actually put it outto tender.
We couldn't get anyone lessthan six weeks and we made it
next day.
And that's the stage.
You think, well, if my prototypeI can get next day and then I
can do the next one iterationthe next day and the next
iteration the next day.
That's three days, whereas itwould have been 18 weeks.
And if you're trying to developa process that's trying to
(07:59):
prevent half the population ofthe world being wiped out by the
super virus, what are you goingto do?
You know, you realize thebenefits of getting this product
to market quickly.
It's not financial, it'shealthcare, and that's where we
kind of had this real eye-openermoment.
You think, hang on, this isreal, this is so useful, we've
got to take it further andthat's enabled us to kind of
(08:21):
keep going and we prideourselves on the rapid response
that we can provide a service toour customers.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, I mean, these trips that you produced are
beautiful, fascinating.
However, you know, I think it'snot as easy as it looks, so I
think you made it look too easy.
So I want to hear just unpacksome concepts, for we have a
variety of audiences.
Some are in college still andsome are definitely in the phd
level.
But you know, if you were goingto explain the concept of
(08:51):
microfluidic fundamentally, whatare the principles behind it?
What makes it so challengingand interesting?
Can you say a few words on that?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
yeah, yeah, so obviously you're down to.
You know you're at themicrofluidic level.
You're dealing with microlitersof liquid.
So you've the best way topicture it from anyone who
hasn't seen one of these partsis imagine a pcb printed circuit
board, but instead of thecopper tracks you've got
channels for liquid to gothrough.
That's the complexity we'retalking about here.
(09:21):
Those channels will vary fromliterally single figure microns
in a silicon chip up to hundredsof microns, maybe millimeters.
With the technology we're usingwe can't get down to that single
figure micron and there areprocesses out there that will do
that.
So our sweet spot is around usall down to a couple of hundred,
(09:42):
maybe a hundred microns.
We can go smaller, we have gonesmaller, smaller.
It's pretty hard but we can getthere.
So you're dealing with thesefeatures that are, you know, the
size of a human hair, um, andthese are these channels, and we
we're printing in resin.
So there have been um attemptsat using filament printing for
making microfluidics.
Um, the dollar might evenproduce a coc extrusion um
(10:04):
system specifically for cocmicrofluidics.
Dolomite even produced a COCextrusion system specifically
for COC microfluidic chips, butthe resolution was such that you
were down to millimeterchallenges, millifluidics,
macrofluidics, whatever you wantto call it so much bigger yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so that never reallyworked.
It was nice, reallygood-looking parts, and anyone
within the field knows that cocis the be all and end all really
(10:25):
of material.
It's lovely, expensive and hardto process, but you know, the
end results are great.
But it's just not suitable for3d printing, so we're using um,
methacrylate based resins forprinting, and so you can imagine
printing a channel that isliterally, you know side of a
human hair, a couple hundredmicrons wide, a couple hundred
microns deep.
(10:45):
How do you stop the resinblocking that channel?
right and that is the majorchallenge.
That's what the basis of thephd was to find out a process to
do that.
Um, as printers have got better, you're getting much better
control.
You can get that resolution andthat you need.
But the great thing with 3dprinting is obviously you can,
and you can make an open channel.
(11:07):
How do you put a lid on it?
So that's another process that3d printing gets around.
There's no bonding.
So with traditional methods ofmaking microfluidics, whether
embossing or cnc, you know youcreate the channel and then you
put a lid on, you somehow join aflat surface on top to enclose
that channel.
We don't need to do thatbecause we're 3D printing it.
Great, that's one solution.
But the challenge is how do youget the excess resin out of the
(11:29):
channel?
That's the hard bit.
That's the question we getasked.
How do you do it?
How do you make sure it's clear?
Because it's almost tooaccessible, and this is
something we come up with withprospective clients.
They've bought a 3d printer.
You can buy one for, you know, afew hundred dollars on amazon
and you know, and in theory theresolution is 25 microns and xy
(11:51):
kind of thing it's.
It's totally achievable as, asthe projector resolutions have
got better and better, based onphone technology, you really in
theory can get down to thatresolution.
So people will try and itdoesn't work.
And that either puts them rightoff and they say 3d printing is
no good, we don't like it, itdoesn't work, um, or they
realize that they just need toget the experts, and that's what
our process is enable us to do.
(12:11):
We've got methods where we usethe sacrificial material to stop
the resin coming in.
The other thing is we've justlearned how to do it.
You know, by investing inhigher quality equipment,
especially with the dlp printersand and I'm saying we, I don't
do this, I've got a wonderfulteam who know how to do it, I
stay well out of it.
But by investing in theequipment and the materials and
(12:34):
just learning the processes,along with techniques for
post-processing, ultimately wecan make this happen.
So it is really hard, but weknow how to do it.
And it sounds quite smug, butwe are, the world leaders are
doing this.
There's there's few people whocan do what we can do.
Um, the alternative is you buyyourself a half a million dollar
(12:56):
printer and then you can do it.
But who wants to be spendinghalf a million dollars on on
some equipment?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I doubt having a million dollar equipment can
actually get you have a milliondollar return immediately
because there are a lot oflearning involved yeah, that's
that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That's my thought.
That's why we haven't gone downthat route.
Um, you know there are academicinstitutions that have these
and that's great and you can getdown to that really fine
resolution, but it's not.
That's not the market thatwe're trying to to fulfill.
We're trying to find people whoare they want to get their
product to market.
A lot of our customers willhave an end goal of injection
molding.
You know they want to.
You know 2 million, 10 millionparts a year for a consumable
(13:32):
and that consumable needs tocost you know a couple of
dollars, um, that's the targetprice.
So they've got to scale up toinjection molding and that
brings in other challenges.
Um, but they've got.
You know, to tool up forinjection molding traditionally
costs you tens of thousands ofdollars, so you've got to know
where you are to get there inthe first place.
And again, if you can avoid thereally small features, it's
(13:53):
more likely that you canactually mold the thing in the
first place.
Um, so there's a, as I say,there's a sweet spot that we,
that we fit in with ourtechniques.
But then then there are lots ofother advantages to additive.
So one of my big things that Itry and promote is do you need
to go to injection molding?
You know if, actually, withinthe scope of what you're doing,
(14:16):
maybe additive is the wayforward and there's some
fantastic advantages on usingadditive manufacturing for batch
and large scale production andoutside of the medical
technology world.
I think additive is findingthese techniques for automating
large-scale production, so it'sreally interesting seeing where
that's going.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, let's just dial back a little bit in terms of
how hard actually making thesethings are.
There are a lot of signs behindhow fluid behaves on a micro
scale level tiny, tiny.
I mean.
Do you have to hire a bunch ofPhDs to figure out exactly what
you're making actually is goingto deliver what they're going to
(14:56):
deliver?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
If we are designing it, then, yes, it depends.
So we work with clients indifferent levels.
With some of our customers, ifthey've designed it, we're like
a generic prototyping shopalmost.
They give us a step file, we'llcome up with the price, make
the part and that's fine.
And that's how we operate.
(15:18):
So they might already havetheir concept, they might have
tried prototyping one way oranother, they might even be
towards the injection moldingside and they just need a bit of
support with converting it tothe animation.
But then, yes, there are thosecustomers who come to us and
they have a process.
They need support designing thewhole package.
Now, if it's fairly simple, wecan probably copy and paste an
(15:41):
existing design, make it alittle bit bigger, a little
smaller, change things around.
But if you need to get into thefundamentals of you know say,
you're trying to sort cells froma sample- um you want to use a
spiral for cell sorting, so youright
a liquid through a spiralcentrifugal force and I forget
the name of the other forcesinvolved but that causes cells
(16:01):
of different size to go out ofthat spiral out different points
, and so that's the level whereyou need that fundamental
knowledge, that phd levelknowledge of um, of
microfluidics.
So we have a network ofconsultants that we bring in
when we need to to assist on thedesign side of things.
So we'll you know we're notjust a prototyping shop, we'll
(16:22):
help our customers, at whateverlevel they're at, to solve their
problems.
I view it very much as we're anengineering consultant, we're a
solution provider, but wehappen to specialize in
microfluidics.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
You guys have some kind of preparatory method.
Now I just want to understand.
I remember that you areactually quite open to a variety
of tools, a variety of printers.
You're open to purchasingoutside tools.
What part of it do you actuallyhave IP on?
That's in-house trade secret.
Obviously don't share the tradesecret with us, but just kind
(17:02):
of curious.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, so I am open about this.
We don't have a patent on theprocess.
We don't have ip on the process.
It came from a phd which, ifyou dig into it, you can
download the thesis and read itand yeah, go and buy yourself a
sheet printer, knock yourselfout trying to copy us.
That's fine.
What we've got is the, it's theknow-how of how everything
mixes together.
So, yes, you can work, you, youcan read up about the
(17:27):
sacrificial material process,right, knowing what that
material is, how to apply it,how to remove it.
You might get there.
You probably, probably will.
But you know it might take youthree or four years effectively
a phd length of time to work outhow to do it.
So we've got our four-year phd.
Then we've been operating forfive years.
Since then, um, we've gained alot of knowledge in-house.
(17:48):
So that's, that's our, you know, that's our USP, that ability
to process it.
But what we found is, as I say,as we've invested in the, in
other equipment, we don't alwaysneed to use that process.
So it's only suitable forcertain geometry, some stuff.
Just it's not suitable for somestuff.
We just don't need to use thatprocess so it's only suitable
for certain geometry, some stuffjust it's not suitable for some
stuff.
We just don't need to use that,which makes it makes it easier
(18:10):
in a way, because it's quitelabor intensive.
We've looked at automating it.
We've developed a that, thehardware.
So we have developed a bespokeprinter that allows us to pull
everything together in one goand we proved that that works.
But then there wasn't reallythe return on investment to
scale it up.
We found it's just easier tokeep going, you know, with the,
(18:31):
with the higher quality printers, the better printers, and then
use this as a backup when weneed to and for the particular
geometry that applies to yeah, Iagree.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I mean, I think knowing how to use the
technologies that you alreadyhave is equally important, if
not more important than havingIP.
I know people who have 100 IPsand not a single company or
application.
So now let's go to some of thefun projects you have done.
You mentioned that you starteda company during the pandemic.
(19:01):
Why don't we start there?
What's your most interestingprojects during that period of
time?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
So the very first project was, by coincidence,
almost as anyone who starts acompany, you've got to commit to
it, you've got to know what todo.
Most people will have a backupplan.
So when the three of us foundedthe company so I founded the
company with another engineerand also the guy who did the PhD
the three of us got the company.
So I founded the company withanother engineer and also the
guy who did the PhD the three ofus got things going, but we all
had other things going on.
(19:28):
Just to you know, you've got toput food on the table at the
end of the day.
So the position I had I wasworking on a contract at that
point with a local business whowere developing a system.
It was detection of airbornepathogens.
So it's actually linked in witha US defense project.
Obviously, if you've got asystem for detecting airborne
(19:49):
pathogens just when a virus thatis airborne kind of takes over
half the world, there's a marketthere.
So that really boosted thingsforward.
So I was helping them with themicrofluidic system and one of
the first conversations I hadwas you know, I'm going to
design your microfluidics foryou.
How are we going to make this?
And they said we don't knowwhat do you suggest.
(20:09):
By coincidence, I've just setup a company that can do this.
So we had this first customerlined up from day one and that's
always been important to me onthe business growth.
Journey, the revenue iseverything to me.
I didn't want to be dependenton investment or grants.
You know, journey the revenueis everything to me.
I didn't want to be dependenton investment or grants.
You know we have taken some,but not masses.
Um, it's always been focused onon the customer.
(20:29):
So we started off working withthis one particular customer, um
, who we continue to work with.
You know it comes and goes, butthey're they're local firms.
It's really nice to work withthem, um, and we've we helped to
take their, their projectsquite a long way along away,
really, and that ability toproduce the components next day
we even did same day becausethey're local, literally.
(20:51):
There's one opportunity wherean email came in at nine in the
morning can we have two of theseand three of these please?
And by four in the afternoonthey're on the lab bench
allowing them their research andit's just yeah, those moments
like that are just fantastic.
So that allowed us to reallykick things off and give us the
confidence to take thingsfurther forward.
(21:11):
It allowed us to build up acase study where we got a large
grant from Innovate UK thatallowed us to develop materials
and, as I mentioned earlierabout developing the hardware,
and that gave us effectively an18 month runway, whilst covering
the um, the rd side, tocontinue to grow the business on
the side, and that's just, youknow.
(21:32):
Since then, we've just grownand grown um and picked up a
variety of different projects.
Um, I think so, paul um the uhfor the airborne project.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Just curious.
I don't know if you can sharethis is how do you use a
microfluidics to detect airbornepathogens?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I can't go into the details.
Obviously.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Even if I understood, I tried guys.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
The basic concept is a system draws gallons of air in
, condenses it down to liquidand then takes that liquid and
then runs it through amicrofluidic system to detect
what was in the air sampleoriginally.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So as they it was a defense-related project
initially, but then there'sapplication.
I mean, honestly, I am curioushow much, how many pathogens are
around me, because I still workin a hospital sometimes.
I don't think I've seenanything remotely like that so
far.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
No, there's applications.
It's more of a defense-basedsystem, right right, as far as I
know, with the results of livesampling.
It's astonishing how much is inthe air and quite scary.
But equally, humans areresilient.
If it's in the air anyway,you're probably fine, but yeah,
interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
That definitely piqued my interest.
I will do some research afterthis call.
All right and okay.
So you did a bunch of otherreally interesting and
fascinating projects.
Love to just name a few.
I think during our webinarrecently you talked about the
anatomical models, which got alot of audience response.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You got a lot of emojis during the call.
Yeah, these are some of myfavorites.
This is one of the applicationswe found, and it came from a
drive originally into how can wemake it easier.
So, ultimately, we're a team ofengineers.
We're working with scientistsand providing them with the
(23:31):
engineering resources they need,and as clever as scientists are
, they're not engineers.
They don't necessarily know howto design things.
So sometimes, you know, weliterally go with that hand
sketch and so on, trying to workout what something is.
We thought, thought, how can wemake the process quicker?
How can we bypass the CADentirely?
Could we take a hand sketch andcreate a part?
We came up with this processwhere you could take a scanned
(23:55):
image, a monochrome image, andthat allows you to create an STL
based on the variation, basedon the grayscale, from that 3D
STL file.
We could then 3d print theparts.
So we tried that and it worked.
Off a hand sketch.
It looked terrible, though itreally there's a reason for
straight lines when it comes toscience and engineering.
But we thought, you know, whatelse can we do with this?
(24:16):
What?
What would be a demand fororganic geometry, for not
engineered geometry?
So actually, surely there's aneed for modeling of vasculature
systems, of looking atanatomical systems.
So we took a leaf.
Originally it's nice andtwo-dimensional.
We took an x-ray of a leaf,created a a microfluidic part
(24:39):
based on that leaf venation andit is wonderful, it is so nice
to see you.
When you put liquid through itit just distributes perfectly
because, of course, the leaf hashad billions of years of
evolution to do exactly what itneeds to do.
And that's great.
And you know, it looks prettyand people joke we should sell
them on etsy and we kind ofshowcase I think it may actually
(25:01):
sell.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I'll buy one of those .
Yeah, it's a thought we've had.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It's a thought we've had, um.
So we did a few iterations ofthat and we just kind of we let
it lie.
You know it was there, weshowcased it and that was fine.
About a year or so later, um,we got a connection.
We were somebody got in touchfrom a large research
organization over there in thestates and so we've seen your
leaf.
If you can make the leaf, couldyou make a human organ?
(25:26):
yeah, yes and we made a model ofa prostate.
Well then, there's over anx-ray data of a prostate.
We created um models for them.
We've made kidneys, we've madelivers, we've just done a um
middle meningeal umous modelwhich will be-.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Artery, probably artery.
Yeah, Middle meningeal artery.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, that's the one yeah, so that is going to go out
on social media in a week ortwo.
Nice, look forward to that sothat ability to process the 2D
models, and so you're going froma 2D sketch to it's effectively
a two and a half day.
So it's still planar, right.
But the the channels arecircular, so depending on the
width of the line, it creates acircular channel um, and that's
(26:10):
just allowed us to get intodifferent markets.
Since then we've got into themore three-dimensional um right,
creating vasculature modelsfrom um, from 3d, from ct scans
and so on.
We've done some amazing thingson that and it's just these
parts look fantastic and youmentioned earlier how you're
impressed with them.
I'm blown away Every time I seethem.
(26:31):
I think it's just there'ssomething special about being
able to create these models andit's the kind of thing you can
only really make with 3Dprinting.
There are other methods ofdoing it, of casting, silicone
and and so on, but nothing quitedown to the size that we can
get down to.
So we're using our microfluidicknowledge to create these
models.
So other.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
So these are really small, even though the pictures
are magnified, but they're likeyeah well, just want to have a
concept how big it is.
Oh, okay, so yeah, so it's yourhand size.
Okay, that's a microvascular,that's a 3d, wouldn't you say
that's a three-dimensional?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
channel that is three-dimensional yeah and it's
about 200 microns at the center.
Um, these are some parts.
In fact, there'll be a versionof that model that's going on
the web shop soon.
Um, so it will be publiclyavailable for research, r&d
purposes.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Um okay, yeah.
So my question is yes, they're,you know, great to look at, but
what are the applications forcreating these models?
Um?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
so there's a few demands for them.
Um, obviously drug deliveryresearch is really important.
If you're developing something,you need to know where it's
going to get to I see, see.
And at the moment it's doneusing animals.
So in the drive to reduceanimal testing and the
regulations for reducing animaltesting, the more models like
this you can do.
You can reduce that so you canactually analyze what's going
(27:52):
through.
So you've got that side ofthings.
Training models for catheterinsertion, things like that.
Again, you can do whatevergeometry you need to do.
There's occasional requests forpatient-specific data.
We haven't really gone intothat market just yet, but that's
something we're kind of lookinginto where we can go on that
side of things.
But it's mainly the R&D and thetraining models.
(28:13):
That's the real benefits here.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean I would assume, in termsof drug delivery is to see how
various viscosity liquid withcarrying loads of ingredients
going through the vascularchannels, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly that, and we're working
with a few customers on thatfield now, which is it's really
cool that we can make theseparts.
As I say, there are othercompanies out there providing
similar models, but nobody canget this really good down to the
size that we're at yeah, Ihaven't seen any, so I I think
(28:53):
that's probably true.
Um, yeah, go ahead I was gonnasay you know, it may be a case
and I don't know this but it maybe a case of nobody's doing it
because nobody's asked for it,but nobody's asked for it
because nobody can do it.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, yeah
that's another question Iactually have is you know people
who want microfluidic chips.
They already know what theywant.
They kind of know what it isand what it does.
They kind of know what it isand what it does, but is there
(29:30):
such a market outside?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
of existing market that people don't know what they
don't have, don't even know theunknowns.
And do you see some of that outthere?
Absolutely.
Maybe not so much in themicrofluidic chip kind of market
, the kind of two and a half dlab on a chip stuff.
But one of the interestingmarkets we're getting into at
the moment and have been pushingfor last year or so, is valve
manifolds, so much morethree-dimensional, which
(29:52):
traditionally are made eitherwith cross drilling, blocks of
acrylic or cnc machining anddiffusion bonding together,
building building layers up thatway.
And we've realized thatactually with 3d printing you
just make them, you canabsolutely smash the lead time.
But one of the reallyinteresting processes is you can
get rid of all excess material.
You're not restricted to thistwo and a half d layout you're
(30:16):
suddenly got.
You got all three dimensionsthat you can utilize and, as
we've been sort of showcasingwhat's possible, you get the
light bulb moment.
It happens every time and Iabsolutely love it when you're
showing someone we can do this,we can do this, we can do this,
and they realize that actuallyyou know you're not restricted
(30:36):
to the way that it's always beendone.
Yes, there are challenges inpersuading people that the right
materials to use it's differentum, but as long as you are open
to finding equivalent materials, depending on what's being
needed um, it can work reallywell, and we are.
We're in the process of reallyspeeding the process up um, so I
(30:57):
can't say too much yet, butwe'll be launching it kind of
soon.
So for a diffusion bondedmanifold, you're usually looking
at a lead time of four to sixweeks, maybe a bit longer um
where you take three layers ofacrylic and bond it together.
Now we've done case studieswhere we've taken the same part
and we can 3d print it asdesigned in about, I think, 10
(31:19):
or 11 hours.
We then took that part, took aload of material out, took all
the excess material out, whichobviously reduced weight.
That makes it easier to print.
So by improving themanufacturability we got it down
to two and a half hours um wow,or a similar kind of cost to
what you'd be paying um for aquantity of a few hundred.
So you're getting the sameperformance but you're getting
(31:41):
it within a few days.
We're about to show how we canget that down to minutes by
producing multiple parts at onetime.
That is going to begame-changing stuff.
All of a sudden we'll be.
We will have the capacity toproduce hundreds of components,
fairly complex components, in aday.
So you know, because it's, youknow, ultimately works out two
(32:04):
or three minutes per part onaverage to produce.
So that market, that ability toget a product to market quickly,
again, it's just.
You know, if our customers canget their product out there
sooner, they're going to makemore money.
As simple as that.
If they need to change theirmind, change the design, we can
change it at a moment's notice.
So you can go through multipleiterations, you can go for
individual bespoke geometry andit's just.
(32:25):
It's only possible throughadditive and it's only possible
because we know how to, as wementioned earlier, get the
excess resin out of the channelsand incorporate various other
features.
So it's a it's a new marketthat's been watching with
interest for the last couple ofyears since we've started
talking about it and I thinkit's about to blow up in a good
way.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Um yeah so I'm gonna, I'm gonna admit my inners in
the, in the in things, uh,inside or outside of life
science.
So I would assume theapplication for this manifold it
sounds like a fluidmanipulating device that can be
modularly produced, that can beused for both industrial and non
(33:10):
and life science sectors.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's.
Ultimately it's a block ofplastic with some valves
attached to it, a fluid sourceso you can have pressurized
fluid going into it.
Valves turn it on and off soyou can change how the fluids
then behave, whether they mix orthe outlets they go to, and
that applies to liquid or gas.
So pneumatic systems areapplicable as well, and you can
(33:36):
even go to fairly high pressures.
That's one of the questions.
Another question people areasking is it suitable for
high-pressure applications?
There's this belief thatbecause 3D printing is built up
layer by layer, that under highpressure it's going to
delaminate.
Now we've carried out someinternal pressure testing where
we are pressurizing these partsup to 250 bar.
(33:57):
And when they're failing.
They're failing exactly the wayyou think they're going to fail
, based on a stressconcentration area, and then
it's cracking through as ahomogenous material.
It's not delaminating, it'scracking.
You'd expect a solid materialto do.
We're about to set up asix-month cycling testing so we
can get some fatigue strengthdata on that.
But certainly going up to 100bar is possible.
(34:21):
None of our customers go to 100bar.
I think the most is maybe 8.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
We can probably guess what the applications are once
you go on to a very extremedimension.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
What I'm curious to see the testing house we're
using when they're pressurizingit, they're putting in a steel
box for safety.
I would love to see a slowmotion video of it exploding at
200 bar.
But we're not there yet.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Okay, well, good to know what you're thinking about.
So you also have somethingcalled the PCB Embedded Wells,
which is fascinating becauseit's like a kind of a
bioelectronics or maybe justelectronics.
Can you expand on that a littlebit?
What does it do?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, so again, this was a lot of the things we're
pushing out.
So anything you look at on oursocial media.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
These are all public.
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, so everything we've put
out there is is, is, it's in thepublic knowledge.
Occasionally customers allow usto share data, but most of the
time it's it's our own.
So we're always keen to tryideas out.
So if I hear two or threepeople talking about or see an
application, rather than waitfor a customer to come along and
order something, I'll say, well, I wonder if we can make that.
(35:29):
So I come back to the officeand I say I saw this great thing
at the show, can we make that?
And everybody says no, oh, goon, try and we'll try.
So one of the things was thiswhole um application of using
electrochemical biosensing.
So when you're within the lifescience, within the microphysics
, you know if you are trying todetect a change of state, you
(35:50):
wonder what you can do iselectronically.
So it's whether a protein bindsto electrode or the change of
state of the chemistry, anythinglike that.
If you can measure itelectronically.
You have an electricalbiosensor and we thought we were
looking into how can we get theelectronics into the part.
So we thought the first ideathat the real, cheap and easy
way of doing this can we take asimple pcb and put it in the
(36:13):
part.
So in the same way we put thesacrificial material in the
channel to stop the resin goingin, can we just put a solid part
in there and print over the topof it?
And the answer is yes, and we.
So we started off, you know,just putting a pcb, and I think
the first demo we had was a verysimple chip where we had a
straight line fluid line.
We had this pcb in there thatwas wired up to some leds, so
(36:37):
when you ran a saline solutionthrough, it simply completed the
circuit and the leds flashed onas the liquid went through.
Nice needs a fluid actuatedlighting system, but it just
demonstrated how the electronicswere interfacing with the
fluidics.
And so from there we've beenable to reduce.
You know, put biosensors inflow cells.
Uh, an interesting applicationwe've done a few examples of is
(37:00):
where you take a standard 96well plate and you can then have
an electronic measurementsystem at the bottom of each
well.
So we have a system that's justgone out which is a
multi-channel impedancemeasuring system.
So there's a customer approachthat said they've had a 64
channel impedance measuringsystem, which is wonderful, but
they didn't actually have aconsumable to measure 64 things,
(37:22):
which is wonderful, but theydidn't actually have a
consumable to measure 64 things.
So we made them a well plate.
We use the 96 format butobviously only 64 are being used
and that's connected up to thesystem.
So as they are modifying thecontents of the wells, we are
measuring the impedance live.
So you get to see, measure that,that change of state, and it's
just by embedding the pcb withinthe printing part.
And again, it's that knowledgeof how you get to see, measure
(37:43):
that change of state, and it'sjust by embedding the PCB within
the printing part.
Again, it's that knowledge ofhow you get the print to bond
top and bottom to the PCB, tolocate it correctly and seal on.
We've done the same kind ofthing with screen printed
electrodes.
So if you print an electrodeonto PET film, for instance, the
advantage there is that getsyou into the flexible wearable
(38:03):
market.
So some of the resin we'reprinting with are flexible.
We've got flexible methacrylate.
We recently started lookinginto flexible so silicone, so 3d
printed silicone.
So if you can input a flexibleelectrode into a silicone part,
then wearable biosensors startto become feasible.
Um, and that's, you know, aninteresting new application.
(38:24):
And it's just that way of justtrying different ideas out
different technologies andpulling it all together.
Um, and that drive to to pushideas to our out there for our
customers to see, and it's thatgreat example where where people
see the range of products thatwe can make and I said I want
that and I we can make, andthey'll say I want that and I
want that and I want that, but Iwant them all in one piece.
(38:46):
Can you do that?
Yes, you know, might not beable to do it straight away, but
give us a little bit of timeand we'll put them all together
and within a week you'll have it.
And that's yes, that's, that'sthe service that we we like
giving yeah, I mean listening toyou.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
I feel like you're opening doors for a lot of
people with creative ideas.
You know things that weren'tpossible and suddenly open a
door for example that pcbembedded wells and now there's
so many things you can do justcoming from that possibility
that it can be achieved.
I mean now you can.
You can pretty much run 96experiments and acquire data in
(39:22):
a consistent manner and maybeeven control the experiments um
kind of just all day long.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah you know, yeah, this kind of product is
available at volume.
You know it does, and this waswhat gave me the idea that it
does actually translate neatlyto injection molding, so you can
buy well plates and you canhave well plates with electrodes
in.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If you want something custom, it's going to cost.
If you're going down theinjection molded route, it'll
cost you tens of thousands, ifnot more, of dollars to actually
get that product.
So the fact that we canprototype it so you can try a
bespoke system is reallyinteresting.
Fact that we can prototype itso you can try a bespoke system,
yeah, is really interesting.
We have customers who they usethe well plate um interface
because it's standardized.
There's equipment out therethat's designed to take a well
(40:10):
plate but they may not want justto have wells.
So again, by using additive wecan put electrodes in, we can
have channels between the wells,we can have flexible lights
going on and off the wells.
You can have different kind ofsensors within that, so you can
have a complete lab in a wellthat does allows you to run 12
experiments at one time or soyou can use that 96 format for
(40:31):
different applications, but youcan prototype it while you're
testing it and you can get abatch of 10, a batch of 100
before you want to commit to um,to injection molding.
So it's, it's so.
It's not something that isunique to small quantities, but
it's a way of enabling that massproduction technology and
actually trying ideas out beforecommitting to the high volumes
(40:55):
and the high costs that go withit.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Right Totally makes sense Now of all these cool
projects we have talked so farwhat are some of the challenges
you've faced?
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Any surprising requests that you're like WTF?
Terms of the challenges, thebig one is certainly the
material um, because we're usingmethacrylate resins, um
compared to glass or coc or alsoanything like that.
You know, everything has itsstrengths and weaknesses and I
I'm very open to say you knowthere's a lot of things we can't
(41:36):
do.
You know, we can't go reallysmall.
We can't get below 100 micronsum, traditionally, most
materials are terrible for autofluorescent.
You know, if and fluorescent,fluorescent imaging is a common
method for analysis if you'remeasuring um, pcr or whatever,
you need that, that fluorescentreaction, and if the material
(41:58):
itself glows like a street light, then it's no good.
There are materials that getbetter there.
So that's that's that's beingresolved and there were ways
around that so we can kind ofcross that bridge.
Transparency, um, you know,actually optical transparency,
ignoring the, the flessingoutside, but if you want to see
clearly what's going on, thereare challenges involved with as
(42:19):
printed parts.
Now you can polish them, youcan coat them and you can get
higher levels of transparency onthe resins.
And again, the materials aregetting better, the equipment's
getting better.
There's some great ways ofpost-processing now that allow
you to get a much better finish.
And we've gotten access andknowledge of how to do that.
But equally, if you reallywanted it perfect, you can put a
(42:49):
glass window in there.
Um, so if we had, this is a aninteresting one we had a while
ago where someone was culturedcell culturing, um, probably a
cancer cell.
That's the, you know, that'sthe kind of common thing.
So culturing a cell on amicroscope slide.
But they needed to have eightchannels for um, for liquid to
feed it.
But they wanted to image it topand bottom, but they needed
perfect clarity.
So we ended up with a systemwhere the cell was cultured
initially on the slide.
We created this microfluidicmanifold that we stuck to the
(43:12):
slide just using a double-sidedadhesive that had the wells, the
channels going into it.
But to get the visibility onthe top, we embedded a cover
slip within the part, much likeI've talked about embedding pcbs
.
You embed a cover slip into asmall glass cover slip into the
block.
There's then stuff on the slide.
So you end up with the cellculture sandwiched between two
(43:33):
pieces of glass.
So you get perfect opticaltransparency.
So we solve that problem just by, you know, with a fabrication
technique?
Um, it's, it is.
Yeah, it's.
It's a limiting factor with thematerials.
Sometimes we simply cannot doif, if you really need that high
precision or or a particularmaterial quality, that we can do
(43:53):
and that's where we reach outto the network.
You know, ultimately it's it'sa growing market, but it's still
relatively small.
There were what 20 or 30, maybea few more companies around the
world producing microfluidiccomponents, using different
techniques in differentmaterials, and, on the whole,
(44:14):
most people are happy tocollaborate.
Most people realize, you know,how technology can complement
each other.
So we'll just, you know, usethe network and go out to the
right, you know the rightsupplier, make an introduction,
make a referral, and it goes theother way as well.
So as long as everybody getsalong, then we can all service
our customers as we need to.
So that's, yes, it is a bigchallenge In terms of specific
(44:37):
kind of crazy ideas.
We have been asked to getinvolved in a vaping project.
Um, ultimately it's, it'sdroplets yeah vaporized um, that
didn't go anywhere and I wasn'ttoo bothered about it.
And my my drive as an engineeris I like being involved in the
(44:58):
healthcare, in the life sciencemarket.
That's what I want to do.
I I like to know that the endproduct is helping people and
it's hard for me to get involvedin a vaping project.
It's tricky because ultimatelythere's money there and you
can't.
You know, as a business ownerI'm not going to turn down an
opportunity to make money.
We've.
We had an inquiry recently forin the automotive industry, um
(45:23):
making to produce a smallquantity of caps for a porsche.
So imagine, with the roll cageapparently a certain model you
could take the roll cage out.
That leaves a nasty hole on thetop and the caps that Porsche
provide fall out.
So somebody had this great ideaof making aftermarket caps to
go to, to sort of tidy up thebodywork, and we proved that we
(45:45):
could do it.
My question is why would youtake the roll cage out?
That's, it's there for um again, that's.
That's not materialized andit's.
It's one of those interestingwe are getting into a few other
markets.
The valve manifold is allowingus to get into industrial
automation.
We've got customers who arelooking at robotics, so we're
making components for robotics.
(46:06):
So there are other things outthere that we will talk about.
We'll talk to them, we'reopen-minded, but ultimately
we've got a range ofhigh-precision 3D printers that
I'd much rather we're makingproducts and not the markets
that we desperately want to bein, but the drive for me, as I
(46:27):
say, is working within thehealthcare sector.
That's the important thing forme.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
I think you can, definitely.
I'm very curious myself of whatare the applications outside of
healthcare, but currently I amseeing a lot more applications
within healthcare.
To begin with, yeah, yeah roomto grow.
(47:01):
So so, speaking of the room togrow, do you think this industry
is consistently growing assuggested by some market
research, or do you feel it's?
It's?
It's a more of a hockey stickgrowth trend, or is it more like
a linear, or hopefully notplateauing?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
oh it's definitely not plateauing, it's definitely
growing and yeah, and yeah, themarket research.
Every year there's the reportsout for the growth of
microfluidics as a sector andit's worth however many $10
billion a year, $20 billion ayear, CAGR of whatever.
I think during the COVIDpandemic they were quoting a
CAGR of 40%, because it was that.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
And that's lovely.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
It's a great one when you're talking to that's.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
That's how much I lost.
That's how much money I lostbasically um, yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
It tends to be around sort of 10, 15 percent, I think
, in terms of yeah I thinkthat's the number I'm looking at
too.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
It's a fifth double low double digit.
Yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
it's definitely growing, I think, from our point
of view, because we have thisunique approach.
There's a lot of peoplewatching and I'm waiting for it
to.
I think it is going to kick off.
I think we've kind of we'vebeen going for five years.
We've achieved what we need toachieve and we're starting to
get interest from a lot of thebig players.
We've got some huge names onour books.
(48:13):
I'm astonished when I look atthe customers we've got, and
here we are in our littlewarehouse in central Newcastle
supplying to these customersaround the world.
So things are growing and theUS market is particularly
important to me.
Ultimately, the attitude to R&Dover there involves spending
(48:33):
more money and spending itquickly compared to the European
attitude, and I just want to beon the receiving end of that.
So we know we're talking topartners about setting up remote
manufacturing over there,because, rather than shipping
bits of plastic across theatlantic, why don't we just
share data and then havesomebody or assist them over
there to load the data, load thematerial, press go yeah there's
(48:55):
machinery being made which itspeeds up the shipping times um,
reduces import costs and youknow we're not really affected
by the tariffs as such being Iwas
wondering it's, that's, that'snot a problem for us at the
moment, um, who knows how thatwill change, but even so, if we
can bypass it, it makes sense,um, and you can just say save
time, so we can be a muchquicker response for our
(49:17):
customers, so we can kind ofkeep that rapid development side
of things.
So, yeah, the market, I wouldsay, is growing.
I think by expanding ouroffering, by not just looking at
microfluidic chips, by theanatomical models, the valve,
manifolds and so on, we've foundother markets, much wider
markets, markets.
We're expanding our ownservices.
(49:38):
So in-house we're looking atthermoplastic forming, so using
3d printed molds for hotembossing and pressure forming.
Um, we are looking at um rapidprototyping using injection
molding, um, so we're partneringwith, with a company who can
offer that, so we can start toum bring in more services.
So we can start to bring inmore services, so we can just
widen our appeal, widen ourmarkets, whilst also still
(50:01):
keeping it pretty niche.
I mean, ultimately what we'redoing is a niche in a niche, so
we'll just kind of step onelevel back and widen things a
little bit more and find a widermarket.
But yeah, it's picking up.
We saw earlier this year the USmarket did definitely take a bit
of a.
It paused, I think, with allthe the uncertainty over
(50:21):
research grants and so on.
Um, the upshot of that was theuk and european market kind of
took up the slack.
So that side of things, we gotmore inquiries, more business
over here.
But then since the summer theus market has definitely picked
up again really has for us.
So this over summer inquiriesare ramping up.
We've hit September and it'sgone mad.
It's a fantastic problem tohave, but there's so much kind
(50:45):
of coming in at the moment it'sreally good.
So we're kind of growing tosuit.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, no, I think.
From the long-term perspective,I think this industry is poised
to grow.
Now, even though you caughtyourself in a niche market, but
you didn't lose sight of theforest, it seems like you are
very well aware of other players.
I mean, granted, it's still asmall field, but you're very
(51:12):
much aware of all the playersthat are around you.
Have you seen anything that'ssuper cool and new that you'd
like to share with our audience?
Speaker 2 (51:20):
um, oh, super cool and new.
I saw something today, in fact,that I would love to share, and
I'm not going to um absolutelyyeah, you got to keep watching
following on linkedin find out,okay.
Okay, some really cool stuff,more on the manifold market kind
of things.
Again, just by taking adifferent approach to the
(51:41):
large-scale 3D printing, there'sgoing to be some really really
cool stuff coming out very soonin terms of production rates and
processes.
That's got me really excited.
I would love to tell you and wewill be launching it um, as
soon as we can kick things offum other than that, see, I think
(52:04):
it's like I mentioned the, therapid injection molding process,
which obviously that's not 3dprinting.
There might be ways of 3dprinting tools and stuff.
That's something I'm reallyquite keen to see.
If you can get a 3d printedtool, it works for hot embossing
, so it ought to work forinjection molding as well, so
you can get rapid, low cost umthermoplastic parts, um.
So that's, there's definitelyappeal there.
(52:24):
So there's yeah, there's there'slots out there that's going on
um and just seeing the way that3d printing is evolving as a as
the technology matures and theresolutions are getting better,
materials are getting betterease of use.
I bought my son a little bamboofilament printer for his
(52:44):
birthday this year and he isjust smashing our stuff out
because it's so easy to use andthe quality is just blows me
away with what you can get onthis basic filament printer, um,
and you kind of think, well, ifthat's the you know, that's the
home user, diy, hobbyist market, just you know what's going on
at the industrial scale?
(53:04):
Well, I know what's going on inthe industrial scale and it's,
it's the same rapid development,um, so it's, it's an exciting
place to be yeah, I know it'sgood to see that, uh, both ends
of the market is, uh, they areevolving.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
I I have a firm belief that technology should be
easy to use and easier overtime and not hard, and 3D
printing has been very hard forme personally and many others,
and that's why it didn't realizewhat it wanted to realize.
So I'm hoping that this kind ofprogression can continue.
Now we're approaching the endof this interview, although I
(53:37):
honestly half of the questions Iwanted to ask.
We don't have time, but maybeanother episode.
So, since we're approaching theend, let's just uh, have some
reflection about you know, yourjourney as a engineer and
entrepreneur what, what kind ofadvice would you give to the
newcomers to this space andmaybe even students in college?
Speaker 2 (53:58):
yeah I would say, if you see an opportunity, jump on
it, totally and utterly jumping.
I've, you know, I'm 25 years ofsince graduating, so 25 years
as an engineer, and I sawthere's definitely a few
situations early on my career Ithought, oh, that's a good idea,
but somebody else has done it.
And I had this realizationwhere the next time something
(54:22):
comes along, grab it and go withit.
And that's what enabled me toget into life science.
That opened this door, thatopened other doors and and then
it just it's a chain reactionfor where your career can go.
If you you know, if you seesomething, totally go for it.
Likewise, and you know theother end of that is, if you're
going to go for it, make sureyou know where you're going to a
point you know it's from asetting up your own business
(54:45):
entrepreneur.
I never set out to be anentrepreneur, you know.
That was not my intention atall as career guidance.
It is so incredibly stressfuland worrying and hard work, but
the upshot is it's such good fun.
You know you can totally dowhatever you want to do.
But you've got to know themarket, you've got to know those
customers then.
But because the whole drive forthis technology came about
(55:07):
because I, effectively, was thecustomer.
We needed this process.
That means that I can relate tomy customers, um, so, yeah,
it's, it's kind of that thing ofgo for it but be careful it's,
but it's, it's absolutely worthit.
Um, and I wouldn't change itfor the world.
I don't think I can ever workfor anyone else ever again, now
that I've experienced doing itmyself.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
This is a common comment I hear from a lot of
founders they cannot be anotheremployee ever and I can?
I can understand that.
Now, where do you envisionrapid fluidics, let's say in
three years?
Speaker 2 (55:39):
Three years time, I think we will have a site in the
States.
I think we'll have amanufacturing over there Good
Awesome, I'll go visit.
Absolutely yeah, whether it'smore than manufacturing, if we
could have obviously have salesand so on, whether we end up
with the technical design teamas well over there, it would be
a nice place to be.
That's, you know.
That's definitely one thingthere going on.
(56:01):
It may be an acquisition.
Um, you know, there have beenconversations about that and in
the back of my mind I'm thinking, yeah, I'll take the money, I'm
happy it is my baby, but I'llsell it for a moment's notice,
just for a good night's sleep.
Um, so it might be that webecome part of something larger.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
I think that's.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
I think that I think there will definitely will be
some external partnershipformalizing whether we are
absorbed into something biggeror we've just kind of merged
with other similar companies.
That's the way to survive, Ithink, in this situation.
As I say, just by broadeningour services, let's bring in
other people as well.
But I think we'll still begoing.
(56:41):
I think we'll be larger, moreestablished.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, I'm here saying don't sell.
There's a lot to be said forthat yeah, so to calm your
nerves or to encourage yourselfto continue the journey.
What do you entertain yourself?
Speaker 2 (56:59):
with books, media, any youtube channels, whatever I
yeah I don't tend to focus onthe business side of you know of
media other than you know.
You know I'm fairly prolific onusing linkedin but I also I
read linkedin.
It's you know, it's my sourceof news of what's going on in
the industry and lead generation.
(57:19):
You see an interesting article,you read up who wrote it, you
get in touch with them and whoknows where that conversation is
going to go.
So I'm not a I don't listen toprofessional podcasts and stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
You know I'm a keen cyclist, that's but but other
than our podcast, obviously, ohyeah without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Obviously I read, listen to the lattice all the
time.
I do listen to a fewbusiness-related podcasts.
There was a great one thatsadly is no longer going, called
the Northern Spin, which was aview on politics and business,
predominantly in the north ofEngland but looking at wider
spread, so very much importantto me.
So that's not happening thesedays.
There's a couple of Australianbusiness podcasts I listen to
(57:55):
Interesting Mark Boris.
I find fascinating.
I'd love to have a couple ofAustralian business podcasts I
listen to Interesting Mark Boris.
I find fascinating.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I'd love to have a link of all these podcasts you
listen to, because I've neverheard of these and I don't want
to be an echo chamber and justgetting the same kind of news,
same kind of commentary everyday.
I want to hear differentperspectives.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
And then, yeah, I listen to cycling podcasts.
I listen to audiobooks when I'mdriving.
I've rediscovered Stephen King.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
Nice.
Is it good?
The audio version is betterthan the written one.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Yeah, as a teenager I read all the Stephen King
novels and I kind of lost it for15 years.
And then I've rediscovered andI'm partway through the Dark
Tower, which is just epicallyweird, and I'm reading on the
Kindle.
I'm reading um game of thronesagain.
um, mainly because you knowwhere I live, I you know I live
(58:44):
near to hajian's wall, which wasthe inspiration for the wall,
um, so it's kind of wow, I didnot know that, I did not know
that I do know that game ofthrones has a lot of references
in history and yeah, and it'skind of yeah, it's kind of based
on the war of the Roses, theidea of the House of York and
the House of Lancaster and Igrew up in Yorkshire, so White
Rose versus Red Rose Wow,there's a lot going on kind of
(59:08):
linked to British history.
We don't quite have as muchdragons, though, but that's the
fun in that We've got the Welsh.
They're dragons.
Okay, so I wasn't going to askyou this question and this
certainly is my last question iswhat's so special about
newcastle?
Um, it is a fantastic city.
It's relatively remote forengland.
(59:28):
You know, it's two hours northto edinburgh.
It's, you know, an hour or twosouth to to york.
So this we're surrounded by alarge amount of nothing, which
means the city is quite insular,but it's it's not too big, it's
it's like by a large amount ofnothing, which means the city is
quite insular, but it's not toobig.
It's like a large town in somerespect, but it's got everything
going on.
And as for the football, youknow you cannot avoid it.
(59:48):
Yeah, where?
Speaker 1 (59:50):
we are Stalker.
Stalker for the Americanlisteners.
Speaker 2 (59:53):
Oh yeah, so where I'm sitting right now, st James's
Park, is out of that window, sowe are right close to where
Newcastle United play at homewhen they play the whole town's
black and white.
It's an amazing experience and Iwas never a soccer fan but my
youngest son got me into it.
It's just, it's special.
And if you're not and I, Ididn't grow up here.
(01:00:16):
I've been been here for 25years but I've didn't grow up
here.
But you know the geordie,geordie accent, I'll get you for
starters, um, but it's, it'sjust a wonderful place to be.
I would say majority people arewonderful here.
It's great great.
Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Well, I would say to those people who want to go on a
pilgrimage for microfluidicsdefinitely visit Paul Marshall
in Newcastle, England.
Definitely yeah Well it's beena pleasure, Paul.
Until next time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Yeah, good to talk to you.
See you again, great.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Cheers only.
The views expressed do notconstitute medical or financial
advice.
The technologies and proceduresdiscussed may not be
commercially available orsuitable for every case.
Always consult with a licensedprofessional.
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