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The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast is a deep dive into what 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing mean for prosthetics and orthotics. We’re Brent and Joris both passionate about 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing. We’re on a journey together to explore the digitization of prostheses and orthoses together. Join us! Have a question, suggestion or guest for us? Reach out. Or have a listen to the podcast here. The Prosthetic and Orthotic field is experiencing a revolution where manufacturing is being digitized. 3D scanning, CAD software, machine learning, automation software, apps, the internet, new materials and Additive Manufacturing are all impactful in and of themselves. These developments are now, in concert, collectively reshaping orthotics and prosthetics right now. We want to be on the cutting edge of these developments and understand them as they happen. We’ve decided to do a podcast to learn, understand and explore the revolution in prosthetics and orthotics.
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
Tool-Up: Time = Money in Orthotics and Prosthetics with Niles Leonard
We catch up with Niles from Leonard Industries, our first-ever returning guest, as he reveals game-changing innovations in prosthetic and orthotic fabrication technology. This episode explores how new manufacturing tools are making fabrication faster, safer, and more consistent while helping address the industry's technical workforce challenges.
• Leonard Industries has expanded by acquiring a machine shop with enhanced capabilities
• Their revolutionary Wave Oven cuts heating time from 20 to 7 minutes using targeted infrared technology
• The oven creates consistent results with wider work windows, eliminating the need to flip materials
• Safety innovations include emergency stops, magnetic starters, and controlled heating
• Multiple oven models accommodate different fabrication needs, from standard to large KFO applications
• The "toast test" demonstrates heating consistency by showing how evenly bread slices brown
• Leonard Industries will showcase their technology at the upcoming AOPA conference
• The company has helped establish safer educational environments at O&P schools
• Niles emphasizes making fabrication more accessible to new technicians through consistency and automation
• Their aluminum construction ovens use less energy while providing more precise heating control
Visit the Leonard Industries booth at AOPA to see live demonstrations of their new fabrication technology, including the Wave Oven, dust collection systems, and fume extractors.
Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.
Welcome to Season 12 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we connect with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who help bring it all together. Our mission remains the same to share stories, tips and insights that help improve patient outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We're glad you're here and hope it's the highlight of your day.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone. This is Joris Peebles with the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Wright.
Speaker 1:How you doing, brent. Hey, joris, I am doing well, man, we've got some interesting news today, don't we? Or potential news?
Speaker 3:What kind of news? What news, what news? I don't know.
Speaker 1:So it appears that one of the big I would say the big four right. So if it's Autobach, oser Hanger and Equal, it appears that Autobach is eyeing, uh, an IPO.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's actually crazy. There's, I think I think, first off, like as a as, a as just as a practitioner, are you now? Are you worried that that, that there's going to sacrifice the family on family tradition type of stuff and then the quality is going to go down?
Speaker 1:Is that something that the first thing you think of when this happens? You know it's an interesting thing. You kind of wonder. So I think the family I don't know if it's a fully family owned, but this offering looks like they're giving up at least 30%, and so I don't know if it's their 30% makes 100 of this. Families set up with Autobach and there's other investors, or if they're like 100% owners.
Speaker 1:But you know, they have been around for a long, long time and I would say the Germans have not been known for their ability to be swift of foot, so to move quickly with changing times, and just to give you an example of that. This is not a knock on them, because they always do good products Like it's very well thought out and, you know, executed well. But specifically on the additive manufacturing side of things, they're behind and they're and it's not even close we're talking like years because they're building in almost like a vacuum. So people don't actually know what's going on in the real world. And so when they bring a product to market, they're like, hey, this is the latest and greatest and it's like actually, you know, that's three-year-old technology or even more. So I think it's. I don't think that it's a bad thing, but it'll just be interesting to see where technology goes and how quickly things move. And it's hard. It says that this IPO could be close to $7 billion. Moving a large company is not an easy task.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, the motivation behind this could be like a family thing, right, that family, uncle Bob doesn't want to go into the business, something like that, right, it could be like a family office thing, where they have professional managers that think that advising them, like hey, to maintain our fortune for multiple generations, we shouldn't have it all tied up in one thing, however wonderful that one thing is. Or it could be something offensive or defensive, like in the market, like you know, they're worried about equal, they're worried about these other guys. Or it could be offensive, like hey, you know what, we can go and purchase hangers, something like that. Well, what do you think your feelings are of this? Do you think it's like of course, you can never tell if it's uh, do you think this is something that they're trying to shore up their defenses? Or do you think they're going to go, like, really into that kind of offense and go do something that really spectacular, like you know, I don't know my hangar.
Speaker 1:I think it would be crazy like that yeah, well, I don't, I don't know that that would ever happen, but, um, uh, the on the auto box side of things. I think it's been neat. They, they, they definitely try to vertically integrate and they do have their hands in a lot of spaces, so not only like wheelchairs. But then you know, you've got the prosthetic side of things, but I believe they also have some automotive side of things, with Porsche using some of their technology and such as well, and so there's potentially like either private equity or venture capitalist guys looking for more vertical integration to see where some of this technology could spider out into other things. And then you have Department of Defense is spending like crazy, and the other thing that I found that was interesting is they're one of the few companies that still sell into Russia. That's actually kind of horrible actually.
Speaker 3:I really don't like that.
Speaker 1:So it's, at least from my understanding, right. So you have. But here's the thing is I don't necessarily disagree with you on the premise, but I think one of the things that he has said is hey, if you're missing a leg, yes, war is war, right, but you should have access, and whether you agree with that or not, agree with it, in a perfect world that would be the right answer. Right Is if you don't have a prosthesis, regardless of who you are, you deserve to be walking.
Speaker 3:However, some of these it would be really so wonderful to be so naive. You know that we wouldn't believe something like that. It would be really nice if everybody thought like this and they were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, but they're not.
Speaker 1:No, I mean money is money, right, and it appears like there's been some articles that have shown that this technology has made it onto military people of Russia, and so anyway, I don't want to get too far into that. But it's an interesting. It's not a good shot. The interesting thing is this company going public for a ton of money. The other interesting thing is their EBITDA 23%. I mean that's pretty healthy.
Speaker 3:Somebody making a hardware normally hardware products in a semi-competitive market. I mean, it's not like mobile phones or anything but it's headphones and crazy like that but it's a fairly accessible market. I think that's very decent, it's very nice and and and also there isn't, like you said, there are a couple of, uh, big companies in this. They do it all slightly different, uh, so you could be actually there could be people that believe that premium and I believe in their quality and stuff like that and it could really actually, you know, there could be a scenario where they could justify that premium for a long time rather than just eroding that or turning into a short-term gain. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think what's interesting out of all this, though, is when you look at a VEBIT of 23%, it's very healthy. Specifically, it's very healthy when and it's been documented multiple times in our field the clinics a healthy clinic may do anywhere between 7% and 10% EBITDA, and a lot of people will say, well, why would you even be in business for 7% to 10%? And I think that's a reasonable question, but I think what that shows is there's money in manufacturing. I think that's that's more. What I'm getting at is that, um, these things still have to be fabricated, and they have to be fabricated in a specific way, with specific tools, with specific, and if you can supply those components, you're going to be in a good spot.
Speaker 3:And I think two interesting things. One is that OSER, whatever they're called, this week the market cap was several billion, so that could be like a merger between them if that would be allowed. And also I looked them up and their evident margins are lower, like around you know, they're between 16% to 23% or something like that over the time period of the last couple of years. So that means that you know, in the business of making money on what they sell, you know, the auto block does seem to be doing a better job. Even though maybe they're slower and slower to innovate and stuff like that, they do seem to be doing something right. They may have some screamingly profitable products somewhere.
Speaker 1:Well, they're a global company. So you know, they sell into India, they sell into Africa, they sell into South America. So these and they have clinics in those specific areas into South America and they have clinics in those specific areas. So being able to sell to yourself as a clinic, that's a pretty good setup right there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally. I think it's also like there's a lot of talk stuff you could be doing in that sense as well. So, yeah, I think it's the next stage of the fight of these vertically integrated mega companies. It could be really interesting to see what they do and really interesting to see if they decide to invest in themselves, invest in more distribution, if they go into Indonesia or something like that in a really fundamental way, or if they just invest in acquiring people. Are they going to bulk up and what kind of growth will they exhibit?
Speaker 3:The markets, the public markets, like steady, slow, every quarter a little bit more kind of stuff. Nothing too crazy, nothing too dramatic. And there's some businesses that work really well with that kind of public market kind of stuff. But truly innovative businesses in hardware find it very difficult to release things and milk them, if you will along according to the quarterly basis. So it would be interesting to see if they stand up to the vigorous impressions of the public market and they can perform well as a publicly traded company, because it's a different thing. It's not only about being a good company, it's about being a good company in the eyes of these investors and analysts.
Speaker 3:So that's a very different game. It's not the same game. It's about being a good company in the eyes of these investors and analysts. So that's a very different game. It's not the same game. It's very different. If you would show a wild profit for yourself, maybe your geriatric owner would high-five you or something, but a stock analyst would be like oh wait, this is it. This is the end of these guys, or next quarter, it's going to be terrible. So this could be a very challenging thing for them. This is a thing they're going to have to bridge, and it'd be interesting how much money they take off the table, if you will, and how much they uh use to uh, really, really double down on this market, because they could you know, can maybe pivot into something completely different. So we'll see. Really interesting.
Speaker 1:So I do feel I do feel like this is probably an appropriate time to say well, at least for myself, but for yours. We are not trained professionals in the area of investing, breaking down things. We are just a little bit more than winging it.
Speaker 3:Neither of us are investment advisors. We're not professionally licensed or allowed to give investment advice.
Speaker 1:These are our opinions, and our opinions only. You know. I you know it's funny like when you talk about some of these big companies, it's like they get their feelings hurt or something, and it's like we're not saying anything. Uh, it's, it's, it's our independent view of what's what on. And sometimes, you know, we say the quiet parts out loud, right, so it's not that anybody else doesn't think this stuff, we're just saying it.
Speaker 3:People get mad at us for saying whatever else we're thinking on. Yeah, well, I guess that puts.
Speaker 1:Advanced 3D out of the running for being acquired by Autobot, but hey, that's all right. We're doing fine.
Speaker 3:Okay, so who is our long suffering guest today?
Speaker 1:And Niles will probably want to be as far away from this as possible. He's taking that 10-foot pole and pushing Beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah, so really excited.
Speaker 3:Actually nothing to do with what we said before.
Speaker 1:That's right, and yours, this is a. This is a first for the orthotics and prosthetics podcast. We actually have a returning guest and this is the first returning guest ever in. I don't even know how many episodes 130 plus episodes and uh. So if you haven't listened to his first episode, it's great. A lot has changed since then and we're going to get into that, but I'm really excited to have him on. He has been really an advocate for the orthotic and prosthetic field, creating tools for our field, and he's got some new stuff coming. But you know, as we've talked about, aoppa is next week. So, as we've talked about what's been going on at AOPPA, niles is actually a big part of a new thing that they have going, where they actually will have a lab there for real, live technical demonstrations on making specific devices, and so I'm really excited about getting into that and I love that. He's passionate about that and passionate about moving our field forward, not only with the right tools, but with safety in mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, welcome to the show again, Niles.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys very much. I'm so honored to be the show again. Niles, Thank you guys very much. I'm so honored to be the first second-time guest here. That's just amazing. That's wonderful. So much has happened since the last time we talked, so it's really good to catch up with you guys. And yeah, I might have a few things to say about the previous Autobach discussion. I was on mute so you probably couldn't hear some of my opinions already, but yes, I did have a few things to express.
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, let's talk about Iopa first of all. That's coming up very, very soon. Talk to us about this lab thing. What is it and for who is it? What's the deal?
Speaker 2:Well, orlando is a really big hub for central fabrication. We have quite a few large companies here, and so, since Aopa is in our backyard, these guys really wanted to be able to showcase a little bit more fabrication, you know, on-site actual fabrication, and we just happen to be close. We make all the tools. So we got the opportunity to outfit them with a few tools and they said go nuts. So we, as usual, you know, way overpacked, as we tend to do If you've ever seen us at any of the shows, we're the only people with giant crates instead of boxes. But that's what we do we make tools.
Speaker 2:So we're really excited about not just bringing you know grinders and laminating fixtures and stuff, but the safety equipment will be there. This time we're going to have a full system set up where we've got a HEPA filter for our dust collectors so you can see how those work, how those run, how easy they are to maintain, how not expensive they are. We'll have our fume extractor there so you'll be able to safely scrub the air and return it right to the room that you're working in, whether you're gluing or laminating or whatever they want to do room that you're working in, whether you're gluing or laminating or whatever they want to do. And then we'll also have our new oven, which is kind of our new signature piece for, you know, dialing in orthotic and prosthetic fabrication.
Speaker 2:We've always tried to make it safer. But you know, as we move forward here, we're noticing the trend of that there's a lot less technical expertise, a lot less technicians in the field, while the workload is increasing. So, kind of to help, that we're trying to automate our tools. We're trying to make fabrication a little bit more automated by bringing some bigger tools into the industry, by bringing some better tools in the industry, obviously all with the same safety in mind, but we're just trying to make every technician out there a little bit more effective and a little bit safer while they work.
Speaker 3:How is that market just selling that kind of equipment? Is it like you know? Is it going really well? Is it really difficult to sell people this kind of stuff, or do you have to have like a really strong business case to sell this stuff at the moment.
Speaker 2:It's a passion. It's definitely not something that the business people are looking at and they're like, oh, I know what, we're going to make some serious money. You know, orthotic and prosthetic tooling it's a niche that I found, that I love. I love doing the technical work. I was always disappointed in the level of tools and level of safeties, and so it's just sort of this area that I've been able to fit in and grow. You know, bootstrap it from the beginning Just very small. We, you know, very, very systematically add new pieces, new products, all under the same kind of umbrella of safe, really high quality stuff. And we just continued to grow and it was a nice small business for us. I know.
Speaker 2:You know, as the practitioners look at like an autobock or a hanger, it's really easy to think manufacturing makes all the money. It's not true either. It's brutal on the manufacturing side as well. I don't think anybody in O&P is really making that much money, except for maybe some insurance providers. But it's really more of a passion thing than like a serious for profit. You know I never set out to this thing thinking, oh, I'm going to be a millionaire. I've just always been happy to contribute and, you know, feed my family and keep my crew employed. And as we've gone on we've gotten so much bigger. Since the last time we talked to you guys, we've just had always kind of a nice steady growth rate and it just got to be too much for me.
Speaker 2:Where my shop got too small, I could only get a couple of people in there. You have to get new tools. New tools means new electricity, new space, and so over the last few years here we just acquired a machine shop that was close to us that was helping do a lot of our larger processing and they're in much bigger industry than we were. They're in Department of Transportation and wastewater and all those sorts of things. But they didn't really like those industries. Those industries were brutal as well and you're not. You know you're not helping people. So all the time I spent in there just talking about the prosthetics industry, I sort of convinced the owner to just move into this field with us and now we've adopted his shop. So we've got tons of space, we've got lots of help and our tooling and componentry and abilities have just gone through the roof in the last few years and that's why we're really able to bring some serious new tools to the market.
Speaker 2:Before we were just kind of simple welded pipe fixtures, just high quality things, but now we've really stepped up into just an amazing ability. We've got CNC lathing, we've got robotic aluminum welding, we've got horizontal vertical benders lathes just you know the whole nine yards and lots of space to do it all in. So it's really been kind of a fun journey here. Since the last time I talked to you guys, we did a couple of new schools Salus University, which is now Drexel, and then Eastern Tennessee State University, their new master's program, which is just top-notch. They really focused on the safety aspect of it with us as well, and so that's really a great safe program for the students. If you guys haven't checked that one out really nice. We've got tepid dust filtration in there. They've got fume extractors at every desk. It's a really nice facility even over oven venting all the kind of good stuff that everybody wants.
Speaker 3:That's cool. And how about, like you know, if you win orders or something? Is it trust? Is it people that know you? Is it a track record Like what makes sense for you guys? Is it a track record what makes sense for you guys?
Speaker 2:It's really a little bit of everything. We've just always focused on customer service. I'm always really available. I try and answer the phones whenever I can so that if there is a question you get right to the owner who can answer it. So yeah, it's about customer service. It's about having a real track record in the industry. You can't make stuff that doesn't work. Even one little hiccup from one person ripples through the industry. Everybody knows everybody. So we try and be really on top of that sort of things. And then you know that's where manufacturing is brutal.
Speaker 2:How do you get to each orthotist prosthetist? They pretty well get stuck in their ways. You know every prosthetist knows the best way to make a prosthetic and every technician knows the only way to make a prosthetic. And so you know. If they're not on social media or they don't regularly attend national shows or state shows, it can be really hard to. You know, short of actually going door to door to these facilities, which we do as well, get everybody's attention as to what is new. You know, prosthetics is slow by nature and that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:If you've had an amputation right, that's probably one of the most traumatic injuries you could possibly have. And you go to a prosthetist. You don't want them to say, hey, let me try something new on you. You know you want them to say I've got 100 patients just like you. They're all walking, they're all running, they're all happy, this is what we'll do, we'll have you out of here in six weeks, we'll have you back up and running, and so that tends to keep everybody in their wheelhouse, right, this has worked for me so far. I've got lots of happy patients. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:So that's really tough for both the clinical side, right when you're trying to convince people how much better 3D printing is. You know I'm the tool guy here. I make all the tools for traditional fabrication. I love 3D printing. I think it's definitely the way of the future and we all have to go that way. I'll be happy to supply the tools along the way as we make that transition.
Speaker 2:But Brent will tell you, trying to get people to switch over to 3D printing isn't easy. Trying to get people to switch over to new, better tooling isn't easy. Trying to get people to use new materials isn't easy. So it's a tough industry, but we're all here because it's super rewarding. That's what I kind of want to say about Autobot because, yes, they may have a very healthy top line there, but it's really impressive that they can do that in our field. However they do that, they might have to take advantage of a few unscrupulous you know ways, but I think staying in O&P and serving the customers is one of the things that we all have to strive to do, because it is not an easy market, it's not a regular market, it's not a huge market, so it's tough pretty much on everybody from all ends.
Speaker 3:Okay, super cool, and what is it open for you Like as a company? I mean, is this a big sales moment? Is it a demo thing? Is it like hey Bob, how are you doing? Kind of like a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. It's about kind of trying to stay relevant. If anything else, you know why are the big guys there. We all know who Autobach is, who Phil Auer is. We all know who they are. They don't really have to do anything new. It's just about you know, staying around in O&P is really a badge of honor. We've been around for almost 20 years now, which is, you know, if you can make it an O&P for 20 years, that's pretty good, but you're dealing with companies that have been around for hundreds of years. So I think for us it's mostly about all of those sort of sales things. This one's going to be really nice because we won't just have a display set up. We'll have a functioning display set up so we can show people like how the dust collectors work, how the fume extractors work, what these things look like. And, being in Orlando, we have all heavy stuff. We'll probably bring an entire trailer full of equipment for this. So if it was anywhere other than our backyard, logistically it wouldn't really be feasible for us.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's super cool, and are you going to get any chance to see anything else? Are you excited to see anything else, or are you just going to any chance to see anything else? Are you excited to see anything else, or are you just going to be glued to your own stand?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm always walking around.
Speaker 2:I make it a point to go around and talk to everybody and see everybody and see what everybody's working on.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of O&P people are always trying to make a lot of their own stuff and I think if we all opened up and we're all a little bit more open about our different ideas you know, lots of technicians have lots of great tools that they hand make for themselves and nobody else gets to see them.
Speaker 2:So I'm always trying to pick up all those little ideas, good ideas from all over the industry and try and bring them into one and get everybody, like I said, a little more efficient and a little bit safer. That a little more efficient and a little bit safer, the fact that we still, you know, bend uprights with two metal sticks, that's. You know that's pretty bad, where the way that we still cook plastics and all that stuff is pretty far behind. So just trying to, you know, get all the new stuff and talk to everybody that's there. It's such a rewarding part of our industry is seeing all the people that you help, seeing all the passion and everybody else that they have for what they do. You know, it's such an uplifting thing. It's such a fun part of the industry.
Speaker 3:And there's a lot of like uncertainty about tariffs and stuff like that. Is that something like aiding you or is it making it difficult for you to buy stuff and sell stuff? Do you think it's going to be awesome because we do so much stuff in the States, or are you more worried about uncertainty? What's the situation for you as a manufacturer?
Speaker 2:Tariffs are a double-edged sword. At this point, you know the gain is supposed to be long-term on the long end, but there's going to be a lot of pain in the middle. So people that were going to buy from overseas might now think of buying from us or search from us, but that's a tough one. While we're definitely experiencing the pain of the tariffs on our lower end, our materials costs are all up. We switched to an all-aluminum oven this year, which has been a rough choice. Aluminum was always an easy material to get and it's definitely getting more expensive. Aluminum was always an easy material to get and it's definitely getting more expensive. So, although we are made in USA, designed in USA you know we do all of the stuff here that we can we still require a lot of parts from overseas, and not just China, eu, all over the place. It's a global world, it's a global market, and so I hope to see some gains on the back end. But the short term of tariffs here has definitely, definitely poked and prodded us on the manufacturing side.
Speaker 3:And are you looking to get like a USA only supply chain? Because that could be one of the things you do, and some companies are trying to do this right. They're trying to get like a region specific or country specific supply chain and say, look, we're going to be done with this. Are you looking into that or you just don't think that's possible?
Speaker 2:We're always trying to buy, you know, made in USA. We're always really looking for. Quality is really kind of our main concern. If we're going to build something and put it together, I really like to use the best parts, and then accessibility is important. If you're going to have a part that is consumable or can break, it really has to be accessible, and so those things really dominate our supply chain decisions much more than country of origin. I hope that some prices and things will get streamlined out, but there's a lot of stuff for our oven and things. You know, some of our bigger stuff, a lot of our steel it just isn't made here in the United States, so a lot of that stuff becomes it's not available. If it was available and it was in competitive price range, of course we would do it, but the quality would have to measure up mostly.
Speaker 3:And so you mentioned your oven a couple of times. You were excited about your oven. What's the big deal there?
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for asking. Yeah, so, like I said, this new shop that we adopted was really into aluminum production. They did a lot of handrails that you would see on roads, bridges, overpasses, a lot of Department of Transportation, department of Waste. We've got gantries and stairs and all that. All has to be aluminum, all has to be really well made. Um, and just in my dealings over there at the shop they all look like parallel bars. You know they're selling these things by the hundreds of foot. I said you know you could sell these things by the tens of foot as parallel bars because they're, you know, outdoor grade, really high quality, really well welded, tested, all that good stuff. And it just sort of got us into everything.
Speaker 2:And the oven was really our first tackle for traditional fabrication. It's really the bottleneck right now of traditional CFAB fabrication with plastics. It is slow, it's inconsistent, and so we know that to get more out of every technician we were really going to have to start with the oven. So we just we know that to get more out of every technician, we were really going to have to start with the oven. So we just we went back to the drawing board and looking at how other industries heat the same types of materials that we use For like, for instance, the automotive industry does a lot of the soft foams, the thermoformable foams and things that we use. Plastic packaging industry, you know, they heat up Vivac that's one mil thick, four feet wide, and they heat it up perfectly evenly and do one press and make like a hundred packages all at the same time. And here we are. We can't heat up a, you know, 24 by 32 by 316 sheet evenly or on any repeatable cycle. Meanwhile they're just processing this stuff through. So we really went back and looked at you know, how does everybody else heat these same materials that we have? And we just landed on some some really cool technology and we're just super excited to bring it out. It works more like a microwave, right? There's three types of heat. There's conduction, convection and radiation, and so the automotive industry uses conduction. They just use direct contact. It's a hot plate. You set your foam on the preheated hot plate.
Speaker 2:Foam is a terrible conductor of heat so it absorbs all the heat that it's sitting on, and they set the temperature so that it's high enough to get it to thermoforming, but not high enough where it can actually melt the piece of foam. I don't know if you guys have ever had any bad instances, but I hear stories all the time of people leaving like an Aliplast or a Plastazote in the oven too long. You come back to get it out and touch it, it melts to your hand. The first thing you do is flap it and it rolls around your hand and sticks. So we tried to get away from that sort of dangerous aspect of the ovens where we're heating up our soft foams way too hot. We're actually melting them before we're thermoforming. So we use a lower-heated element that is just a direct conduction heat source for our foams. So you set it on there, it gets it up to temperature and it leaves it at temperature and that opens up our work window. Like you throw a piece of tri-lam in an oven, it's ready to go in 10 seconds, but if you leave it for 20 seconds it's a blistered, hot mess of a pile. So we have like a 10-second work window with our foam and any boss will tell you that leads to a lot of waste, leads to a lot of accidents. Our foam and any boss will tell you that leads to a lot of waste, leads to a lot of accidents, just stuff getting thrown away. So what we tried to do is get that same heat where it brings it up to a heat and it leaves it there, and with this lower heated plate we're able to achieve that where our soft foams just sit there, they get up to temperature and they stay at temperature, they don't get too hot, they don't burn and you've got a massive work window. You can come back in like five minutes and your Trilam is still ready to go, your Alley Plast is ready but it's not burned. So we've had some just really great luck with being safe, not heating up our soft foams too much and just melting them to like a dangerous point so we're able to really open up the work window.
Speaker 2:And then for our plastics, the plastic packaging industry all uses the same ceramic infrared elements. They're flat, they're squares, there's all kinds of different shapes, but the ones that we're used to using are like a glass tube with a cadmium rod rolled up inside of that and that's what gives off the infrared radiation as it heats up. We went away from that because those are so inefficient. They're tubular, they give off in all directions. So we went with the ceramic ones, the flat ones. They're so much more focused, and this is what allows the plastic packaging industry to heat up such thin sheets so perfectly. So we went with that same thing. The only problem is they're really powerful and they were just melting holes, little square holes and everything, without getting the rest of a plastic. So we're able to take some cool technology and write our own computer code and actually zone out the heating so that we heat up like the corners and the edges of the oven more than we heat up the middle, so we never end up with that pool of plastic that's all melted in the middle while you're still waiting for your edges.
Speaker 2:And then our cook times. We've now got our cook times like polypropylene three, 16 inches like down to like seven minutes, and it was usually like a 14 or a 18 or something like that in a in a typical oven. So we've really just had some some great luck with that kind of stuff. So it's it's just been a fun one. It's been a really fun one. Stop me if I'm rambling here.
Speaker 1:Well, so one of the things that I think is interesting. That you said is this idea of cycle time. Why is that important?
Speaker 2:So we needed consistency right. Not only do we need speed, right, we got to get pieces of plastic out of the oven faster than 15 minutes. You're paying a technician a lot of time to stand there and literally look through a porthole and watch plastic heat up, which is just a waste. So we had to get everything faster. But it's about being consistent, right. If you hire somebody new off the street and you tell them, cook a piece of three, sixteenths, you know plastic you hand it to them, you show them the oven, put it in there. How long do I put it in there Till it's done? When do I know it's done? Oh, you have to pick it up and feel it or look at it. Well, what's it supposed to feel like? So then the teaching loop for thermoforming is just insane because the oven is so inconsistent. Well, now we've got it down to a consistency where the same piece of plastic, same type of plastic polypropylene the same thickness 3, 16ths always heats at the same time. It's just like a microwave. A microwave heats up water really well, that's all it heats up. That's why the burrito is hot in the middle and the outside is not hot at all. There's no water in the flour tortilla. But it's like you cook your oatmeal in the morning, you always add two thirds cup of water. You always add the same packet of oatmeal and it's always two minutes, because it's the same material, it's the same amount of water, so it's always the same amount of heat, a very measured, easy-to-use heat. We have that exact same principle, because we're cooking with true radiation heating, we're cooking with microwaves or we're cooking with infrared waves, and we dialed in our wave to be exactly the right frequency for our plastic. So if you look at the absorption spectrum of plastics, they're pretty spiky. They really only absorb in a few frequencies, and so we dialed in that frequency just for our specific plastics. And this has given us this microwave-like cook time. So you hand the guy the piece of 316s Polypro, you tell him, hit the button for six minutes. When you come back in seven, you lift the lid and it's totally done Every time, all the time, over and over no flipping, no, none of that stuff. So it's easier to teach. So we'll be able to have a less educated technician in there who's less experienced and will still be able to get more out of them, because their cook times will be so much more repeatable, less handling and faster. So it's really a great direction that we've headed with this guy.
Speaker 2:And you know, aside from all that stuff, now that we're working with a big machine shop, they couldn't believe how unsafe our industrial equipment is. So we added you know, aside from all the O&P tech that we added, we added an emergency stop button which when you push that, it removes the power from the entire rest of the machine. So you can stick your hands in the boxes, you can touch the elements, even if it's plugged in. It removes the power from the whole thing. So that's really important to have. We have signs on it just to let people know it's an oven. I always tell the story of people getting burned by the traditional ovens just because there's no sign. Ups guy didn't know that it was an oven and set his arm right on it got burned. The owner of the facility had to cover that workman's comp claim. So we put signs on our stuff.
Speaker 2:And then I think the most important part that we added is a magnetic starter, and this is a. It's the on-off switch and it has to have power to it and then you physically have to push the button to turn the machine on. And why that's important is, let's say, you have an emergency and the power goes off and everybody gets evacuated when the power comes back on. If your machine has an on-off switch to it, when it's set to the on setting and the power comes back on, that machine's coming back on, that oven's coming back on with whatever was inside it when someone left and for however long it is until someone comes back. So that's a really dangerous thing to have. You don't want your machines to start up with power, you want them to start up with input from a person. So we've even gone through and added a lot of details, things like a magnetic starter, to really make these safer as a facility.
Speaker 1:So I mean, and the other thing though. So seeing is believing, right. So you've done a couple of videos and you had the seven minute deal, which is pretty cool, and people are going to definitely be able to see it at the show. But let's just say and I think you're right, I mean a lot of people it's 15 to 18 minutes. You know, they throw a timer, like a kitchen timer, on it and they go back and check and that sort of thing. But let's just, let's just call it 20 minutes for for for the sake. So if you go from 20 minutes to seven minutes, it's a savings of 13 minutes. Okay, so I don't want you to skip over that part. So let's just pretend and I have no idea how much your oven costs, but I would say it's probably in line with what's what else is out there yep, you know it.
Speaker 1:You know, we don't overcharge yeah, and so you go from being able to do three pieces an hour to nine pieces an hour. That's a pretty significant uh, and time is the most valuable part of the technician's cycle, and handling and handling right In that 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:You usually have to get in the oven halfway through the cycle and flip the entire giant sheet of plastic over as it's getting soft and not ruin it or stretch it out or deform it. So we've taken all of the handling out as well, which is another important industrial kind of adaption. Which is another important industrial kind of adaption, you know. So yeah, we did one show in Florida and basically all the big guys, all the CFABs, were like, excuse me, cycle time. So yeah, it is the big deal that it's really fast and I think the big guys are going to really appreciate that. All the CFABs absolutely love that as it's the bottleneck.
Speaker 2:But the mom and pops, the smaller places, have really loved the consistency because as it stands now, we have a lot of technicians kind of I don't want to say holding us hostage. But if they don't feel like adapting a new tool, if they don't feel like adapting a new material, that office can't really do that. A lot of these practitioners don't have the opportunity to say, well, if you don't do this, I'll find somebody else. Too many places they just don't have that opportunity. So I don't want to say the technicians are holding us back, but I think we've really got to arm this next generation with some consistent tools that the practitioners can learn on and teach their technicians, so that the practitioners are a little more in control of their entire workflow rather than, you know, being beholden to somebody else's technical skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I love that aspect of it. I mean I remember back in the day when OTS was in Barnardsville in the skating rink and Rich was pulling plastic and I think they had three or four ovens going just so he would just continue pulling plastic. But just imagine you could do the same thing with one oven. I mean that's kind of crazy. What are the dimensions? What's the max plastic size?
Speaker 2:So we've got a couple of different models. Our first model that's out right now, we've got the Wave, which has a 32-inch by 24-inch pulling surface and that's a total 100%. You can put that piece on there and it cooks edge to edge. We don't have those cold corners because we really move those elements out and heat it up the edges. And then we have the big wave which will do the 24 by 32, but the whole lower heating plate can be moved down 20 inches so it can do a 21-inch diameter by a 20-inch drop bubble, so it can do a gigantic bubble in that same oven. And then, coming out here, hopefully before AOPA, we'll have the double barrel wave, which will be our KFO monster, and that guy does a full 32 by 48, but it actually works kind of like two ovens side by side. So when you're not pulling a giant piece, you've actually got two independent ovens with two independent lids, so you're not ruining one project while you're doing the other. So it's really all about being modular and knowing how we use these ovens to try and squeeze the efficiency out of these guys. And we also, because we're using a microwave technology, we're not using nearly as much energy because we're heating up in seven minutes, not in 20 minutes. So we're using a whole lot less energy and a whole lot less heat generated, which means we're also not giving off so much heat.
Speaker 2:So these things aren't nearly as hot as a typical convection oven because we don't have 375 degree air in a giant pocket trying to burst its way out into your beautiful air conditioned facility. It's more like a microwave. When you open up the door to the microwave there might be a little steam from the water, but it's not like we heated up the air to heat up the food. We use the infrared to go directly through and heat up the food. So this is true infrared technology.
Speaker 2:Remember, if your oven is measuring air temperature, it's a convection oven. If it's using infrared elements to create that heat for that convection oven, it's a really inefficient convection oven. If you're going to make a convection oven, use gas, use electricity If you're going to be heating up the air. There's a thousand different ways to heat up of cooking here and it will really help us save space, save energy, streamline our production and and get a lot more out of each individual person. Like you said, we get three ovens worth of space and three ovens worth of production. So, like I said, the big guys out there um are all all pretty interested in how this works, so I really can't wait to, you know, break some hearts at AOPA.
Speaker 3:Okay, have you thought of doing like an air fryer with plastics?
Speaker 2:We definitely do the toast tests. I don't know if you do the toast test on your oven. Take a loaf of bread and set it all out on the tray and heat up your oven and you can see all the hot spots and all the cold spots in your oven.
Speaker 3:That's super short, I'm going to do it in my own oven.
Speaker 2:I can't take credit. That's Chad McCracken at ETSU. All the way he sent me a picture and I said it's the Chad McCracken toast test. There it is. That is hilarious.
Speaker 1:You've got to spend $10,000 to ISO certify your toast, though.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's expensive toast, you know.
Speaker 3:That's right, this is brilliant. So it's just a white loaf of bread. You put it in the center of the oven, like on the ground or on a where.
Speaker 2:No, you spread it out. You spread the whole loaf, all the pieces, all out in a whole bunch of different spots. A nice little even grid, you know, a 10 by 4 grid of each individual slices of toast. And then, when your oven heats up, you can see where the hot spots and where the cold spots are, based on how toasty each piece of toast is.
Speaker 3:This is Brian, by the way. I'm going to try this in my SLS.
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to do the toast test and ours not only burns it nice and evenly on the top, but we get a beautiful, nice, evenly toast on the bottom of our toast as well. So our oven actually speaking of you know, convection if you're measuring the air temperature, it's a convection oven. We don't measure air temperature. Our measurement, our heat measurement, is actually the plate, the surface which becomes the underside of the piece of plastic, which is really what you want to monitor. Because getting heat on the top surface of the plastic, where all those infrared sensors monitor, is actually pretty easy. That heats up very fast.
Speaker 2:Plastic is a terrible conductor of heat, so your surface can be liquefying. In fact, in PETG you can boil the surface where you're getting bubbles and everything, and the bottom of it isn't even soft. So that's why you really want to measure the underside of it. That's why you really want to measure the underside of it so we can actually see when that infrared heat has gone through the whole piece of plastic and it's now starting to warm up the bottom of the plate. So we're a true infrared oven where our infrared is controlled exclusively by time. Our infrared elements are not on unless you turn them on for a time and then our lower plate is always heated and that's kind of like our pre-heat and our post-heat. So when your plastic is done and we've stopped adding infrared heat right, we've stopped adding heat the lower plate keeps it at a nice, smooth, workable temperature.
Speaker 2:So let's say you get a phone call in minute five of your six-minute cycle, which always happens, by the way, your PDQ will keep adding heat, right, it will keep adding heat and melt it. When you come back, ours turns off. When your cycle time is off, the infrared goes off automatically, just like a microwave. But unlike a microwave, we have a nice heated floor to our microwave so your food doesn't get cold while you're on the phone and come back. So when you come back, that piece of plastic was heated and is now left at a workable temperature. And I mean polypropylene, polyethylenes. They stay good for like five, 10 minutes of a work window. So it's really made our plastic so much easier to cook, faster, to cook better on the front end and so much better on the back end. Our work window is really remarkable. That's another like kind of different piece about having the active heating from both the top and the bottom.
Speaker 3:That's cool and have you a lot of experience like annealing, like 3D printed end use parts on this as well?
Speaker 2:We actually started 3D printing. We 3D printed quite a few parts for you know, testing pieces for this, and then we even went as far as like, 3d print our own box. Our brain box is our own 3D printed box so that we can put our custom you know chips and our custom code and all the parts that we have in it. We just started 3D printing. So, yeah, I'm pretty impressed with us having handled that. And you know, we've got so much experience heating metal right, we're welders over here and metal are very different, you got. Steel is very different than stainless, steel is very different than aluminum. So everybody's pretty well versed at heating technology over here. So when we put plastic in front of these people, they saw a lot of things that I don't think anybody in our industry just sees because we're so in our own industry. So it was, it was really great to pull people from outside our industry in and get their opinions and strengths as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's cool, but no, I mean, like a lot of people, like, for example, in peak and other, like polymers like that you can anneal it to change the properties after the fact, you know, and then so that is like something that I think maybe it's a if you have it already. Yeah, so that is like something that I think maybe it's a if you have it already, if you have like a program for that. You know, if you had a program for annealing, like certain polymers that are commonly 3d printed, omp, that could be like another use for that same print, the same oven, you know absolutely, since we've really gotten going on on this infrared.
Speaker 2:You know infrared is great for plastics, but we do use a lot of prepreg in our industry as well, and infrared is just the wrong kind of heat for prepreg. You really just want to use convection. You can't use conduction because you can't touch all sides of it equally, so you just want hot air. So we've actually worked with a couple of companies and developed different prepreg oven systems as well, where we build the oven, we build the rack and then, like you were saying, our ability to change the heating cycles based on our computer code. It really helps us keep the electricity down and it helps us smooth out, you know, any type of heating that we want to add to it.
Speaker 2:So if we wanted to add like a pattern where we do like five minutes of infrared, three minutes of sit time, one minute of infrared, one minute of sit time, we can add that in as it stands. Now we even have like one-touch buttons on our brain box, like a popcorn button on your microwave. We have like a polypropylene button, a polyethylene button, we have an add minute and an add 30 seconds, because the heat is so even right If you put it in there and it's not ready and you just wanted a little bit more. It's just like a microwave you just punch the add one minute button and just get it going again and then you come back when it's done and it's. It hasn't added any more heat than you've, than you've asked it to add this is really cool.
Speaker 3:Now your enthusiasm is infectious. I'm about to like buy this thing, and I don't even need one, that's what I like to hear that's what I like to hear.
Speaker 2:That's what I like to hear. Well, I won't stop?
Speaker 3:Well, I won't stop, then. Let me just keep going. Niles, thank you so much for for for for being on the show today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I I really appreciate being the guest. I I sport my O and P podcast shirt all the time when I'm traveling for these different shows and I get asked about O&P everywhere I go because of my podcast shirt. So many people like they're. It's a proud parent. Oh, my daughter just started CPO school. You know I get all of those sorts of things or I get people with. You know, with amputations and things, that I'm on a bus, on a you know airport shuttle bus here and somebody's asking me about what kind of BK they should get. You know, I'm like I just make the tools, but what city are you in? I know a great person, you know. So it's uh, it's the field that that really keeps us here. So, uh, yeah, I appreciate being on the show. I appreciate all that you guys are doing to help spread the good word. I love all these shows. I listen religiously. So super excited to be your first two-time guest. Woo Go Leonard Industries.
Speaker 3:All right, Awesomeness. And thanks again, Brent, for you being here as well. I think you enjoyed it right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was good and I think it's neat. It's something practical Cycle times, it's a tool. It's going to be cost-effective. And then Niles and I are going to have to get together and take a look at testing some of these sockets annealed in his special oven. I think that would be a good next step well, we've got so much technology.
Speaker 2:If anybody needs anything made, we've really got a whole new host of technology. We really have a powerful machine shop that we can access for O&P needs. So if anybody's got anything they've been holding on to and they want to see brought to life, we've really got some capabilities.
Speaker 3:Awesomeness. Hey, Niles, thank you for being on the show today and thank you for listening to another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. Have a great day.
