Open Science Hardware Product Developer

Hi folks!
I would love to hop on a call as well. I’m currently on vacation, but can have a chat anyways… If not on the next days on Jan 3rd I’m back in the office…

Last but not least, it is awesome to see this developing!!

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Hi everyone,
During Q1 2020, we have commercialisation funding around our new open hardware project, so we look forward to using this to learn more about distributed manufacturing models, as ‘conventional venture-backed tech transfer’ is clearly not the only way to drive innovation. Leading this project is Sarah Needs in Reading, UK, so it would be great for her to talk to each of you about what you learned already about this new model for making new hardware available to researchers around the world.

On the subject of Open-flexure Christmas builds, this time last year I spent happy hours with a work experience high school student, trying to work out how to make ‘home-made’ slides of interesting things to look at on our open-flexure microscope.

In a seasonal theme, we found onion skin (representing roast lunch?) and yeast (winter baking?) looked cool, and we used red and green dyes for a festive slide staining session.
It might be worth thinking about accesory components, e.g. distributing basic slide staining materials alongside open source microscopy hardware.
Also, if people have identified truly ‘food-grade’ methods for preparing microscopy samples for teaching, where would we find these? My searches (and initial experiments) suggested that microbiology and histology dyes are quite specific and don’t usually overlap with stuff in your kitchen cupboard, nor would you like them in your xmas pud. Maybe something to explore in a hackathon or workshop?

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@regfade DM me or Ryan if you want to connect, colearn, or collaborate. We have some good applicants, so I feel hopefully we’ll get rolling in the next 2 months.

Actually, scratch that, sorry didn’t read all the responses - interest is building!

Does everyone want to hop on a call together (@jcm80 @amchagas @ryanfobel @regfade)? Maybe @thomasmboa also if you’re interested? @julianstirling feel free to join but I don’t want to overwhelm also.

I’d like to include everyone, but also keep the agenda tight enough to move this specific project forward. I think we can do it with something like:

  • give some time for general introductions and a little history of everyones interest
  • then see in the context of our current position we’re hiring for and our next 6 month shared assembly/distribution test if there’s opportunities for near term collaboration.
  • then think about our long term hopes and identify overlap, and how our current paths can move in that direction if appropriate.

How does these times work for folks?

Friday Jan 3 - 9am EST or 10am EST
Weds Jan 8th, 9am EST or 10am EST

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Hi @regfade

Really interested to hear more about your project! I think most of us are in the exploratory stages of all this at the moment and trying to pull together enough resources to properly test ideas. @rbowman @thomasmboa @valerian and I were part of a UK Global Challenges Research Fund grant proposal to pull together a research network on distributed manufacturing of health technologies but we were deemed ineligible on a minor technicality, which was really a shame. DM me if this would be of interest because we are regrouping!

I’m available any of those times @gbathree.
I took the liberty of making a doodle poll to avoid flooding the mailing list with availability responses:
https://doodle.com/poll/6zmnxdrcmghszfwk

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Are we having the call tomorrow at 16.00-1700 CET? According to the poll that’s the best time.

Yes - I just found my message about that didn’t send. Sorry!
Fri 3 Jan @ 10:00 ET looks best.
Confirmed as attending via Doodle: @jcm80 @kaspar @amchagas @julianstirling @gbathree @szroboman_opentrons @regfade, others welcome!
I can offer a Zoom line: https://zoom.us/j/366418168

Jenny

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Here is an international event announcer which may help people with time zone confusion

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Open+Hardware+Manufacturing+Call+(https%3A%2F%2Fzoom.us%2Fj%2F366418168)&iso=20200103T15&p1=136&ah=1

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We are here now if you are joining the call! https://zoom.us/j/366418168

It looks like quite a few people didn’t see the message yesterday about the time - apologies again for leaving my message about that as a draft and not realising!

The other favourite time was Wed 8 Jan at 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT) but I also added some extra options in case you want to edit:
https://doodle.com/poll/6zmnxdrcmghszfwk

I promise to notify properly this time on Sunday so respond by then :smiley:

Jenny

@jcm80 @kaspar @amchagas @julianstirling @gbathree @szroboman_opentrons @regfade

After our unsuccessful attempt on Friday, the next most popular time is Wed 8 Jan at 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT) (sorry @szroboman_opentrons)

@gbathree @ryanfobel we need you :slightly_smiling_face: - are you available then?

Thanks @jcm80 for organising this, especially over the break it’s even harder when people like me turn off everything- I’ll do my best to join in Weds 8th, (I’ll sneak out of a ‘commercialisation workshop’ to join if I can)… very keen

Yes, sorry, I missed it it was over the break too. I’ll put it on my calendar. Thanks Jenny.

Hi, I’m also interested in joining. At the moment I’m experimenting with small-scale manufacturing for my potentiostat project. I recently got a pick&place machine and can now manufacture small batches and I’m interested to collaborate here in Europe.

Cool

Sorry, I totally checked out over the holidays but happy to join tomorrow!

:+1:

See you all and anyone else keen to join on Wed 8 Jan at 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

hi, is the call this moring?

I think it is in 1 hour.

  1. Intros
    Mortiz, Bengt, Chiu, Andre, Ryan, Greg, Jenny, Harold, Kaspar, Julian, Al Edwards

Greg’s not very complete notes -->

Greg, Ryan: Small companies with low volume (like Ryan and Greg) can’t really effectively do the process of manufacturing and sales. That would let us get hte talent that’s qualified to do it well. Also, it’s the nature of our space that most things are low volume, so combining them. Also, from a marketing perspective, we can co-marketing many products at the same time.

Chiu: Biggest problem they had to do themselves - the machine is too large, so in the end their key is: 1) supply chain (good, consistent, effective sourcing), 2) who’s going to assemble the finished product, 3) QC QC QC!!!

Bengt: building testing and QC jigs to automate tests. Keep serial numbers, etc. etc. Never rely on a single source for a component.

Andre: Tech aspect is pretty easy… but what we’re not good at is the other stuff. Marketing for example, branding, etc. So we should spend our time talking about the things we don’t like to talk about!!!

Is it a good idea to have distributed manufacturing for small - mid scaled products? Help bridging the gap. Are folks interested in that?

Bengt: maybe we only need to collaborate on marketing + branding, but let folks do their own assembly.

Ryan: it can be a sliding scale - like sparkfun does.

Al: for his project, he’s interested in manufacturing, distribution, and branding etc.
Jenny: for bioreactor project, interested in manufacturing, distribution, branding etc. Has a half time MBA marketing person. Also, there’s also just freelancers and knowledge of who to call
Andre: uses freelancers, then it works well.
Greg: so Andre and Jenny, if you already have marketing components down, is there value
Andre: We can do common marketing campaigns.
Greg: What about
Jenny:
Chiu: startups are emotional. Different stages are different problems.

Standardize the manufacturing processes, advertising process, structure, even if things aren’t
share freelancers who have good skills.

standard ways to ingest a new project - tutorial formats, assembly formats, etc.

Actionable steps:

Create a document describing the specific toolchain (software, hardware, information management systems, etc.) we would like to use for new hardware projects. So that includes assembly instructions, tutorials, branding (icons, art, web design), sales + website, distribution, and marketing. Greg will start an editable wiki post with an outline, and we can go from there.

Greg + Ryan: make reflectometers, drop bots, open flexure, maybe spikelings
Andre: 1 person company, service, provisioning company for spikelings. Create standard documentation system for these things.

  1. Other ideas that may connect.

Jenny + distributed enzyme production
Al has an individual product
Andre is interested, has a new company

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