BY RAEANNE MARSH
INNOVATIONS FOR BUSINESS
SRP Smart Business Series
CEI’s Maker Lab Advances Manufacturing Opportunity
The new maker lab at the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation is making 3-D printing available, enabling rapid — and affordable — prototyping to local entrepreneurs and startup companies. PADT StartUpLabs opened last month with five portable and six larger 3-D printers and SolidWorks computer-aided design (CAD) software, along with hand tools and light power tools to support the 3-D printing. Businesses can use 3-D printing to run an iteration of a new product in days instead of months. And Andrew Miller, the lab’s project manager, is excited about its future applications. “More and more, prices and capabilities are improving so they can do real customer manufacturing. For instance, a manufacturing plant may not need electricity for lights if the manufacturing is done by machines — and this could make the competitive advantage of labor rates meaningless and therefore pull the manufacturing back from overseas,” he says. And medical parts can be 3-D printed that are unique to the individual, such as hearing aids and even more sensitive medical products such as implantable bone and tissue structure. “CEI can’t do the biological part, but is has been done in university labs,” he adds. “The startup lab is a means of providing discounted engineering services with a special bent toward medical devices,” Miller says. The lab is certified by International Standards for Medical Device Manufacturing. Medical device manufacturing can cost three times other manufacturing, Miller notes. “This partnership [between Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies and CEI] should lower that bar for small companies trying to break into medical devices.” The lab runs two types of 3-D printing technology. Fused-deposition modeling (FDM) uses plastic filament on a spool, similar to weed
BEVERAGE DISTRIBUTOR TAPS INTO ENERGY SAVINGS My name is James “Bubba” Moffett. I’m president of Crescent Crown
Eden 260 3-D printer
Distributing, one of
whackers. The filament is heated to become a liquid and extruded through a hot nozzle that moves in two dimensions to draw an outline of the item, then moves up incrementally to draw the outline in additional layers. The other is a polyjet printer that operates similarly to an ink jet printer. The plastic starts as a liquid, and is “buttered” in micro-particles onto a layer, using static electricity to guide it. An ultraviolet light source hardens it. “Because it starts as a liquid, we can mix things,” Miller says. Possibilities include hundreds of colors, and different stiffness of materials, such as making a hammer with a hard head and a soft grip. CEI members will receive the PADT lab services at a discount, but they are also available to nonmembers. The entrepreneur first submits the design through a Web portal on the CEI site to PADT headquarters. CEI engineers price it and determine the appropriate 3-D technology to use. The design is then sent to the printer through the cloud, and it will run for many hours. The final step is having a manufacturing engineer on-site do postprocessing — cleaning it of excess material, and painting it. “Design and operational considerations preclude use by the public,” says Miller Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation ceigateway.com PADT StartUpLabs padtinc.com/startup
Photo courtesy of Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation
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the needs of their business and size of their team. Teamchat’s website assures users, “Each approved Chatlet goes through our rigorous testing process, which ensures safety of data for the parties in conversation, while enabling the essential features.” Accessible through any net connection, Teamchat is available on all leading Web or mobile platforms. Teamchat teamchat.com
Join In Business Magazine and the Arizona Technology Council for the “TechFast & INTERFACE Phoenix IT Conference” on June 19, 2015. For more, visit www.inbusinessmag.com.
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here in Mesa. Our company has an unquenchable thirst for energy efficiency. With the help of SRP rebates, we designed and built an eco-friendly 335,000-square-foot facility, which saves more than $150,000 a year in utility costs. It is important to us to save money on our electric bill while being more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. We worked with SRP as our energy partner to install energy-efficient lighting, occupancy sensors, high-efficiency insulation and package heating, ventilation and air-conditioning units to ensure products stay cool and keep energy bills affordable. Taking advantage of SRP’s programs netted us $138,855 in rebates with a return on investment after only 2 ½ years.
Streamlining Mobile Communication
Extended email and message “conversations” among multiple parties can get chaotic and confusing. Offering a “chatlet” technology designed to clear the clutter, Beerud Sheth has launched the messaging app Teamchat. The platform allows users to create their own app to be able to summarize and organize messages, including collating responses to different questions, customizing their message form to fit
the largest beer distributors in the country, based
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SRP Business Solutions offers rebates for almost any energy-saving project, ranging from lighting updates to new construction. For more information, visit savewithsrpbiz.com or call (602) 236-3054.