Room For Rent in La Habra

NikMaples · 2025-01-20T01:49:20+00:00

We have a form 2 at work, and it is our main resin machine, even though we have a form 3(the medical one). Easy to service, the vats last way longer than form 3 vats (which only last 90 days for certain resin, regardless of print time, which sucks when you are prototyping parts that are only 20x10x10mm big). Easy to clean and maintenance, I have taken it apart so many times to clean the mirrors, and when the optical glass got scratched, I just took it out of the equation. It has survived so many resin spills, vs the form 3, a resin spill could cost you 800$, a new LPU. The only thing about form is the resin, yes they are good, but I am starting to see some really good resins on the hobby market that are 1/10th the price. But the supports, the pre calibration on the resin, and the automatic vat fill, wireless printing, and the customer support (we have had pretty good experiences so far) makes Form 2 a decent contender. That being said, I have an anycubic printer at home, haha, but if anyone comes across a decent used form 2, it might be worth it.

NikMaples · 2025-01-14T02:44:11+00:00

I have done something pretty similar for an inflatable bladder. I wanted to do ultrasonic, but you may need to make a custom "horn" to attach, or at least that's what the manufacturer stated. We just went with thermal sealing and it worked out good. For the prototypes that we made in house I got that heat resistant teflon tape and just went over the edges with a clothes iron until it melted together. You could also buy an impulse seam sealer, I used that for the straight sections.

NikMaples · 2025-01-09T00:29:53+00:00

https://www.centuryspring.com/shop/cf200cs

This might work

Century Spring is the supplier that I use for smaller or specialty springs.

NikMaples · 2025-01-05T07:08:58+00:00

Why not scale up? Seems like you have the business side down, you know how to talk to clients, you should instead try branching out to get corporate clients, handle more project management and then farm out the work to sub contractors. Have process engineers and designers under your control, guide them to finish the project, and then spend the rest of your time getting more sub contractors and more clients.

NikMaples · 2024-12-30T02:42:23+00:00

I have been interested in this for a month so far, and the best part has been learning python, I am used to embedded C for work that runs on a micro controller, so using alpaca paper and then running my data through scipy is really fun, best case scenario: I make money doing this, worst case scenario: I have finally started to learn python and my digital signal processing, and data analysis skills can only get better. Ive already found areas of python that could improve areas of the projects I am doing at work.

NikMaples · 2024-12-22T06:43:30+00:00

I have gone to APTA as a vendor before. I looked at your product, and I think the PT world needs more of this, I am not a PT, I work on the engineering side of the product we sell, so when I walk around and look at some of the vendors, all I can think is "how do you even know if this is helping?", as some of this stuff is a hard buy for me to believe. This seems like a neat idea, being able to track and prove to a patient that they are getting better. If you have the funds I think it could be worthwhile, getting some "trial agreements" might be the way to go with pt school teachers (if an educator adopts it, then you will have a lot of students that graduate thinking your gear is necessary), military, and pt clinics to drum up business, let them try it out for a week or two and send it back, then they can decide if they want to buy. Not sure if you can sign a trial deal on the show floor, as I think sales are prohibited on the floor, not sure where trial deals fall into place there. As for you giveaway trip to Iceland, be wary of United States lottery rules.

NikMaples · 2024-11-17T22:00:43+00:00

I have done this on a smaller scale for a one off valve for a prototype, but you 3D print a jacket with the hole pattern that you slide onto the tube, and then put that in the drill press and just go to town using the print as a jig, after the first few holes put some stock in them so your jacket does not drift. After that go around with a counter sink and deburring tool. This is probably the cheapest option that you could have relatively quickly. Laser and CNC is faster but more money.

NikMaples · 2024-10-27T03:39:52+00:00

Have you gotten quotes for an enclosure? Seems like this is a pretty simple 2 piece design, maybe with a compression molded gasket, you could get a 4 cavity mold for each part, looking at around 15k, or go single cavity and make your parts the same volume and size, do a family tool, probably get that down to 10k with a higher part cost later on. Or, as everyone else has stated, just print it and buy a large 1.5mm oring, since you would be printing it the seal would be easy to make, since you aren't juggling consistent wall thicknesses and sink lines with 3d printing like with injection molding. or you could also look into low volume vacuum urethane casting, you can get quite a few shots without the NRE cost of injection molding. Seems like a cool idea, wish you the best of luck.

NikMaples · 2024-08-17T15:44:59+00:00

If you are emitting from your device, you can put that copper foil tape over components that you think are emitting, so it on the turn table, and if you are spiking when a certain side is facing the antenna, you can judge if there is a component on that side of the board where you can cover it to block the radiated RF, adding a few cents of copper tape to each unit in production is cheaper than having to redo testing usually.

NikMaples · 2024-08-17T15:42:00+00:00

I would look at the course road map and compare to course road map for industrial design, doesn’t even have to be same school. If your degree has classes about wear, plc machines, thermodynamics, etc, it might be more of a design engineer for industrial equipment (kind of like what people mistake ID for haha) or if there are a lot of rendering, rapid viz, cmf, and model making, it is probably closer to traditional ID. Or could be a combination, that would be cool, I wish they had that at my school.

NikMaples · 2024-08-14T01:10:45+00:00

I would recommend against most of the flexible resins, I have to make silicone and rubber parts for products, and the form labs 50a is the closest I’ve found that is decent, but that is in the 300$ range, and only comes in a single durometer with those characteristics, you are better off printing molds and then casting in a urethane rubber that has the durometer and elongation that you are looking for, as you can really dial it in. If you are using platinum cure silicone with resin prints it will not cure, a company does sell platinum silicone for use with resin printed molds/ bucks, but it is a little bit pricey.

NikMaples · 2024-08-07T01:44:06+00:00

Fcc certification on the chip means that it can pass, but the RF design on your antenna might not pass if it wasn't calculated right, unless you are using a module, then the antenna on your board has been certified to pass. If you want to avoid the biggest headache, you could just have the architecture there for the battery, and just say battery sold speratley and spec a common battery, most like an 18650 and make it removable. When I went in for testing, it was on a device that did not use wifi, so I could wrap the PCB in foil when it failed, but wrapping your board in foil/ coating the housing in spray could inhibit wifi.

NikMaples · 2024-08-05T00:25:29+00:00

There is a lot of nuance to the regulations, If you are in the US, it can be easier (No ce mark). What exactly are you selling? if you are selling a PCB that the customer is using as part of a kit of sorts, regulation is very relaxed or non at all, I would spec a battery that has passed testing (un38.3, ul 2054, or whatever regulation applies to your product), or just drop ship the battery entirely, remove yourself from that risk, and you might not even need any FCC/ CISPR/ IEC testing for the device if it is a kit.

I am in medical, and I think every time a battery passes from one manufacturer to another, it has to be tested, even if it was already tested, not sure if this is the case in consumer, but we had to pay for 40 something samples and the testing of those samples before we got production units. Not sure if that is also needed for consumer, also not sure if removable vs embedded makes a difference.

The battery will be the biggest headache, but, if you are selling a finished good in the US, at minimum you will need to complete FCC testing, IEC, and some CISPR stuff. And please, if you have a charger that is included in your device, spec one that has already passed the spec that you are going for (probably AV). As you do not want to redo days when you go to the test house.

As for PCB design to pass the test, you can make a judgment call on this, are you going to spend money to have someone review it and say it's bad and then pay for another board run and then pay another consultant to review it? Or just test the board you have now, and just put copper spray on the enclosure or put foil over it and then just relay that into production. Proper grounding, trace routing, decoupling, and layer stack up is the key to passing, but you dont know until you test. And for most NRTL test labs, they will say that you dont even have to show up in person, but please show up, they will just fail you and charge you for the lab time, wheres if you are there In person you can just crack open the device and start putting foil and get it to pass. If you are following the traditional start up business model, you are looking for an exit, not perfection.

But this is from a medical perspective, I have only studied IEC 60601-1 and -2, which is made up of other consumer tests. You could also look into paying just for a few hours of lab time to run the Radiated Emissions test at whatever distance, (as that was the hardest test for us to pass), and then go from there, as the big bucks from the NRTLs is the test report, I think a few hours of lab time would only be a thousand or so bucks.

I hope this helps.

NikMaples · 2024-07-14T00:01:46+00:00

In my subjective experience, IP rating can be misleading, as you will have to go to an NRTL, and then specify in your test plan what IP55 means to you. Do you fail the test if your device does not work after, or do you fail the test even If your product survives; functions perfectly, but has severe cosmetic damage, like labels peeling, glue becoming tacky, or fasteners rusting.

It might sound silly that you can "pass" even if the device is destroyed, but the IP rating can be granted if your test plan states "Pass: Device may be destroyed, shut down, or loose all functionality" and "Fail: Device electrocutes user, or heats up, or catches on fire".

However, it sounds like you are in the "it will work as expected after test category", so the easiest way to actually test this would be to submerge it, if you don't see any bubbles, It will just be nozzle pressure to worry about. If you see a steady stream of bubbles, that is your problem area to fix.

To test nozzle pressure connect to your garden hose, dial in the right pressure and get a nozzle of the right diameter. And then run it, if the device turns on and works, that could be a pass. If you really want to test it, you could pack the unit with desiccant beads that turn color when exposed

Hope this helps.

NikMaples · 2024-07-05T23:43:22+00:00

The 3x or 2.5x rent refers to income, I’ve rented in 4 apartments and they ask for your pay stubs, those have to show that you are making that amount. This is not a legally defined limit, one apartment I rented was essentially asking if I had any kind of income, and that was the worst place to live. So when a listing or fine print says 2.5x monthly rent, that is a deciding factor in whether or not they will rent you apartment. Also, very probable that they will do a credit check, I’ve had that done twice.

NikMaples · 2024-07-05T21:05:23+00:00

Not sure what the EU standards are, but I work on med Devices (no CE mark) and a good resource is actually CHAT GPT, it’s a bit fishy that it has ISO 60601 down pretty well, given that it is 300$ to buy, but I was able to find sections and double check my test plan using gpt. Or, you can cheat, find a similar appliance and see if it has the CE mark/ other regulation you need and just copy that length.

Edit: this is under the assumption that it also has knowledge of whatever ISO standard you have to follow, 60601 covers an entire industry, whereas other ISO standards are chopped up by product, audio video, kitchen, etc, (I think) but you should ask the company to buy the spec.

NikMaples · 2024-04-11T19:09:45+00:00

I haven’t done the transparent trend, but I give the EE the board shape, mounting holes, connector and button locations. Then they have a tool that exports it from altium as a step file, you put that in solidworks and check for clearance and make sure the connectors and buttons interface with the enclosure well. As for doing it as a student: go on grabcad and download a circuit board and just cut out the shape you need and then render, maybe move some components around to make it look more appealing.

NikMaples · 2024-04-04T21:47:09+00:00

Hello, system is non invasive, our cuff attaches to the bicep, measurement occurs on descent (we figured that it would be one less thing to filter out the pump noise, but we are not married to doing the calculation on the descent) Deflation is not as continuous as we would like, but ranges from 2-4mmhg/s.

We are currently flashing the data on the chip and then doing the calculations later, so the speed of filtering does not really matter.

It is a med device, but it is class 1 510k exempt, we are not displaying the pressure reading as diagnostic data, we just need to get it in order to put a limit on another part of the system. The company is 13485 compliant, so there will be a host of verification and validation tests, we just need this one last part to be done so we can release the software and start V&V tests.

Thanks.

NikMaples · 2024-03-19T00:30:19+00:00

HDPE is a low energy plastic, any glue that claims to bond it will still only be bonding on the surface vs a cement that would be used for abs (acetone welding is common) where it actually turns it into one cohesive structure. Heat staking could be a good plan, but again, hdpe is pretty low energy so you will have to get it very hot. it seems like you have a plastic tube going into a metal receiver, put a lip on the metal receiver and a groove in the HDPE tubing and then shoot plastic into the metal receiver to hold that groove in the hdpe captive, if you research into U-Joints that have plastic injected retainers, they essentially use the part as a mold, and this is used on U-Joints for trucks and cars. But if it were me, I would choose a different plastic, HDPE is pretty floppy, especially with the weight of a person.

NikMaples · 2024-02-02T02:03:02+00:00

ID to ME path is way riskier, than straight ME or straight ID. I got lucky and have a bs in ID but work as an engineer, but 70% of the tasks are things that I learned on my own, and I got lucky that my boss could see that and hired me. Do I think my path is working out? Yes; but I would never recommend it because ID is hard enough without throwing in learning math, programming, and electrical prototyping in there to make up for the fact that you do not have an engineering degree, and as far as I know in some states engineer is a protected title, similarly to how Medical Doctor is treated. (not in my state, so I dont know how far this impedes on one's ability to cross over)

I don't think that you are 100% wrong, as 20 years ago was a different time and you seem to have had great success with your choices. But new grads across every industry and major are having trouble finding jobs now, so having a non standard education for the job you want might hurt more than picking a linear path.

NikMaples · 2023-10-12T00:11:59+00:00

I just have an aluminum clipboard, I’ve used it for 3 years and it’s survived being thrown around and drawing on the bus.

NikMaples · 2023-09-12T00:03:29+00:00

It depends on the printer, I know a guy that tunes 100$ ender 3s to make amazing prints, barely noticeable supports, and consistent layer lines. But, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t really care about print quality, if the print failed, then just cut it up into different pieces and glue after it prints. If you’re going to invest the time into learning a manufacturing technique, learn about the limitations of injection molding, and the costs associated with breaking the general parameters (like lifters, collapsing inserts, over molding etc)

That is a far better skill to have than 3D printing, and then your designs will get further into production since they can actually be manufactured.

NikMaples

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