PlastChicks

Lynzie Nebel: Cloud.

Lynzie Nebel: Delightful, alright plastics is an spe sponsored. Podcast Hi.

Mercedes Landázuri: Well, hey! How's it going, Lindsay?

Lynzie Nebel: You know, it's going great. I'm having some computer camera issues. But other than that, we're we're doing. Okay. We're surviving. We're not.

Mercedes Landázuri: And nevertheless she persisted.

Lynzie Nebel: I think that's what they meant.

Mercedes Landázuri: So you got all your all your Christmas shopping done ready for for next week.

Lynzie Nebel: It's all done. It is all in this closet next to me. That my boys are woefully unaware of, and it just has to be pulled out, and I have to go through everything and try and remember what goes to what that's gonna be. My own personal struggle.

Mercedes Landázuri: Well, my my mother just got my son a drum kit for.

Lynzie Nebel: Very kind of her.

Mercedes Landázuri: Which is a couple of weeks after Christmas. And so it's being set up right outside of my office. So things are about to get lit.

Lynzie Nebel: Hmm! Yes, it's I mean, honestly, I feel like, if anyone could thrive in that

Lynzie Nebel: world that would be you. So it it'll make your into meetings a lot more interesting. I think.

Mercedes Landázuri: I surely will. So I'm Mercedes Lynn Dazzri.

Lynzie Nebel: And I'm Lindsey Neville.

Mercedes Landázuri: And with our powers combined, we are.

Mercedes Landázuri: That's just.

Lynzie Nebel: 6.

Mercedes Landázuri: The voices of resin.

Lynzie Nebel: Yeah. And we're we're here. We're here every Friday, 1st Friday of every month.

Mercedes Landázuri: Yeah, we do exist every Friday. But.

Lynzie Nebel: We also exist on the other Fridays and the other days. But we especially exist. The 1st Friday of every month, anywhere, you get a podcast we're also on Youtube, if you're really feeling like watching, what camera struggles struggles look like in real time,

Lynzie Nebel: and today, we have a really fun, guest that we we connected with.

Lynzie Nebel: Well, I think I think I connected with over Linkedin, which is how we find some of our very interesting guests. Sometimes we attack people in public, and sometimes it's on Linkedin. Those are our 2 main pathways, and so today we have Andrew Hamholz, the CEO of Edge precision. So, Hi, Andy, it's really nice to see you.

Andy Kamholz: Hi! Likewise thank you for having me.

Mercedes Landázuri: So do you go by Andrew or Andy.

Andy Kamholz: Either. One's fine. But if you don't want me to call you Mom, you might want to call me Andy.

Mercedes Landázuri: Okay, Andy, that sounds good. I got called mom enough.

Mercedes Landázuri: We both do. So tell us about your journey to edge precision and and what edge precision actually does.

Andy Kamholz: Sure we do contract manufacturing for precision plastic disposables. So that's going to be stuff you might have heard of, like lab on a chip or micro well arrays or custom. Micro well, plates 96. Well, plates, 3, 4. Well, plates, all kinds of things like that. So these are mostly for diagnostic applications. Life sciences

Andy Kamholz: could be for laboratory research. Lots of things in the drug discovery area, sequencing. Digital Pcr, all kinds of things like that. And we started off in a very specialized space. I'm a Phd bioengineer I specialized in microfluidics, which is

Andy Kamholz: kind of one of the main disciplines that touches on a lot of these areas. But over the years we've kind of gotten broader and broader into like, no, there's actually lots of needs in plastic labware and things like that in general. And so we've tried to be less on the real sort of

Andy Kamholz: deep scientific level of the really highly technical products into more generic products. So we're we're now serving pretty broad markets and doing just any case, anytime, someone needs something precision. Hey? I really care about what's happening at the micron scale. That's the kind of precision we're talking about. That's where we come in.

Lynzie Nebel: Like micro molding, but not for micro parts.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah. And so micro molding is a term that is confusing in my world. Because, you know, typically we're talking about micro injection molding where we're talking about people that are doing. You know, they're using

Andy Kamholz: nickel alloy shims that are based from microfabricated master structures. And so they're doing macro parts that might have some microstructures on them.

Andy Kamholz: And we're actually in house doing standard injection, molding. But we're doing compression, molding for all of the micro featured parts. And that's that's a little bit of a different technology which I think we might get into later in our conversation today. So it's a it's a little bit confusing, but, generally speaking, I think you nailed it, Lindsay. It's like macro parts, but that have some micro features on them.

Mercedes Landázuri: Yeah, I think that you might be the 1st person we've talked to who who actually does compression molding. So that's.

Lynzie Nebel: Going to call that out, too.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah.

Mercedes Landázuri: On the Podcast.

Andy Kamholz: What we do. What we do is really different. And it's and it's. And it's actually one of the things that we we want to chat about today, which is like it's really hard to for us to interface with customers and explain what we do without confusing them and

Andy Kamholz: causing all kinds of weird things. So compression, molding can mean a few different things. What we do is a unique process that we developed and have patented. That involves a conformal elastomeric coating on a hard tool. So the surface that's actually doing the molding, believe it or not is made out of hydrometer elastomer. So it's not stainless steel. It's not aluminum, it's not nickel alloy, it's nothing like that. And

Andy Kamholz: it enables us to be able to. Basically instead of injecting plastic, we start with a piece of plastic in place at room temperature, we heat it, we apply pressure. We might also evacuate or nitrogen blanket, or provide the right kinds of molding conditions, heat it, push on it, thermo, form it in place, cool it, and then eject, and the ejection is the part that becomes really easy, because the tool is ever so slightly deformable.

Andy Kamholz: So now the part is actually the rigid thing that's easy to get off without deforming, because what any injection. Molder will tell you, is microstructures. How can I do microstructures when I'm molding something that's, you know, several inches large, and is going to shrink by a few, thou when it cools, how do I make microstructures that are even smaller than that where our tools kind of deform, and allow that to happen with incredible precision.

Andy Kamholz: And the interesting thing is what we find is.

Andy Kamholz: customers don't really want to hear that they don't even really want to hear compression molding right. They just want to hear.

Andy Kamholz: These are the parts that I need. These are the specifications I need to hit. Can you do it? How much is it going to cost? And how long is it gonna take? And so one of the lessons that I've learned a lot over the years is the more I talk about the technology, the less people are interested because it. It just sounds like something foreign to them.

Andy Kamholz: And you know, I look at the kinds of shows that you 2 attend. And because I've been following you for a while now and following your your podcast actually, I have a, I have an embarrassing admission about that in a moment.

Andy Kamholz: Embarrassing to me, not to you. Don't worry.

Andy Kamholz: you know. You see, a lot of the same standard technologies, you know, really high volume, really? Well, really mature. Right? I mean, you're working in a very mature industry. And we're doing something that's pretty new that not a lot of people are doing that's done in a unique way that we've worked hard to make fit the standards of what the industry expects. But the more we talk about things being different from what you're used to, the more

Andy Kamholz: freaks people out. You know.

Lynzie Nebel: People get. People get a little skittish. But I do love that. You're kind of taking all these processes, especially like the the ones that are less

Lynzie Nebel: less popular. Like the compression, molding and even thermoforming, you know, by comparison, when you're talking injection, molding like finished goods, or when you're talking finished goods. Injection. Molding is probably going to, you know, have more of the market share on that, and like to combine all those

Lynzie Nebel: to make to get what you need, you know.

Lynzie Nebel: figuring out that path forward like my brain. Sorry I'm I'm not even actually asking a very good question or making a very good point, because I'm just so fascinated by the combination.

Mercedes Landázuri: Comment on a question. Lindsay.

Lynzie Nebel: Good question. That's not a question.

Andy Kamholz: I can. I think I can address where you're going with that.

Andy Kamholz: So a real common type of product for us is somebody wants a 96. Well, plate. That's a pretty standard product. There's quite a few companies that mold it. It's a pretty mature technology. They've been around since the 19 sixties, and the people who make those things really know what they're doing. They know how to build molds. They know how to run those things in high volume, excellent quality of vendors across the board making that. But what if now you want

Andy Kamholz: a hundred 1,000 microwells that each can hold a white blood cell at the bottom of that. And those microwells need to be 20 microns plus or minus half a micron.

Andy Kamholz: Right? An injection motor is gonna look at that. And say.

Andy Kamholz: I have no idea what you're talking about, right? And in compression, molding the kind of compression molding we do. It's actually incredibly simple to make those micro features, but it's not straightforward to make the main part of the plate, which is like really well done by injection molding. So that's kind of where we're in is like, how do we make the large piece of the macro structures and the really fine microstructures and mix them together? That's what we've been doing the last 20 years and learning how to be good at.

Andy Kamholz: It's like.

Lynzie Nebel: Assembly without the the intermediate steps.

Andy Kamholz: Exactly. And so it's it's as you were saying, Lindsay, it's bringing in different kinds of technologies and figuring out how to solve a specific problem, but do it in a way that provides high quality product. And when you can meet all the other expectations, can I? Can I say my embarrassing thing now.

Mercedes Landázuri: I was just going to ask.

Lynzie Nebel: We love, that.

Andy Kamholz: Can't wait to embarrass the guest. That's that's 1st on your list, right? So I've listened to quite a few episodes, and it wasn't. It was only when Lindsey and I set up a week or 2 ago that I was actually going to appear, that I listened to a couple more that I heard the voice of resin that finally got the pun.

Andy Kamholz: Because I cause I just took it literally. I was like, Oh, yeah, the voice of resin. They're talking about resin. And then I was. And then I got the pawn. And I was like, Wow, that's so clever. And I just felt dumb because I didn't get it. But

Andy Kamholz: hats!

Andy Kamholz: Whoever came up with that. That's a great point. I mean.

Lynzie Nebel: All Mercedes.

Andy Kamholz: I feel like I'm letting the dads down by not getting the dad joke sort of.

Lynzie Nebel: That that isn't.

Mercedes Landázuri: Think it's part of like the that's it's kind of that's kind of the dad. I mean, that's part for dads, right like maybe a couple of months later.

Andy Kamholz: I may have to turn in my dad card. After this.

Andy Kamholz: My my daughter would be only too happy if I did. I think.

Lynzie Nebel: But we're we're glad we're glad you got the the joke of it. Now that's that's the beauty of it.

Lynzie Nebel: Well, okay, so

Lynzie Nebel: I could go on like a 20 min tangent on actually the technology we're talking about. We got a lot of things to cover today. And so I don't wanna skip over some of that. So we, you know, do some light stocking as we do. And you know we know that your company is kind of at a 50 50 gender split, which is pretty, you know, unheard of in this industry.

Lynzie Nebel: how did you get there? What did you take specific steps. Did it start to happen naturally? And then you're like, Oh, let's like, do this. Let's keep going. Or how did you get to that.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah, it's so. It was very deliberate. And I I think I got lucky

Andy Kamholz: to have a little bit of foresight, and lucky in terms of some of the early hires as well to sort of look at it and say, Hey, when we're very small, it's it's kind of easier to hire

Andy Kamholz: any sorts of candidates who you might want to hire, and it certainly applies to women, or certainly applies to any other group that that somebody might want to focus on

Andy Kamholz: because you're a small company. We weren't hiring people with 20 or 30 years of experience, and and where you're choosing from a very select group of candidates we were sort of looking for, like anybody who's got a good brain and a good attitude, and it's going to be a good teammate, and whatever. And so a lot of you know, many of the people we hired had had bachelor's degrees, and it was much easier to get a really diverse pool of people.

Andy Kamholz: And I just consciously said at the very beginning, Hey, I want to hire for people who are who's

Andy Kamholz: primary focus is being a good teammate is caring about what the goals of the company are, while also caring about doing a good job and taking pride and growing personally, and learning and all the rest of those things. I want a person who's going to appreciate the sort of

Andy Kamholz: two-sided relationship of you're going to give the company some hard work, and the company is going to give you some skills and some training and money and things like that. And so I really made it an emphasis in the early days to focus on trying to keep keep things

Andy Kamholz: sort of 50 50. Try to make sure we

Andy Kamholz: get a nice snapshot of the diversity of of all the people in the area where we are, and sort of represent that in the company. And then what I found over time. Was

Andy Kamholz: it got easier because

Andy Kamholz: people anybody take any person, any color, any gender, any anything. People want to go where there's people like them right? And so if you have a company that's got all kinds of people represented, it becomes very easy to hire any more of anything right, because.

Andy Kamholz: you know, people will tell you. Oh, I'm trying to hire people of color, and we don't have any people of color. And you know, I think, that there are a lot of people would say, I don't really want to go to a company and be the 1st person of color there, or the only person of color. There, you know, I want to go there where there's

Andy Kamholz: more people like me. And so when you make those, you make a really conscious effort to make those 1st few hires. And again, this applies to women, applies to LGBT community members anything like that. You make a real concerted effort to hire those 1st few, it becomes so much easier to welcome more people of any type in. Does that make sense.

Mercedes Landázuri: Absolutely absolutely. Yeah. I know my significant other is always, you know, I've seen. I've seen her go through the interview process a few times and

Mercedes Landázuri: you know, job hunting, and and whenever she's interviewing with a company that has like when, whenever she's interviewed by women that are going to be her boss. She always mentions it to me, is like, Hey, like, this is cool.

Mercedes Landázuri: you know. And yeah, it can be. It can be rare in this industry.

Lynzie Nebel: Yeah, I when I started at my current job. One of the things I noticed is when I got a tour of the facility we were walking around, and they're like, Oh, like that woman's on maternity leave. And, like, you know, this woman sits over here, and it was just.

Lynzie Nebel: It was very casual. They weren't like specifically pointing out where all the women were. But it there were so many women in comparison to any other place I've worked that it was like, Oh, when I, you know, got pregnant, and was, you know, getting ready to tell my boss about needing maternity leave it? Was it made it so much easier, knowing that, like

Lynzie Nebel: I've been at companies where it's their 1st time having a pregnant, you know, engineer, and they're like, well, we don't know what we offer.

Mercedes Landázuri: Right, yeah.

Lynzie Nebel: It's it's tough, always having to be the one that like sets the rules and makes the policy and does all this stuff. And you know. And then sometimes, if you have unfriendly coworkers towards that or towards whatever you know struggle you're dealing with, it can get really hard. So you're right, like having someone like you in that space means at least, you know, you're not the same people, but at least maybe some of this stuff has been covered, or at least discussed, or at least thought about.

Mercedes Landázuri: Yeah, trailblazing is so fun. But gosh! It gets exhausting.

Lynzie Nebel: Okay, you die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail for a reason.

Andy Kamholz: I mean, it's it's it's also just so insidious, too. Because

Andy Kamholz: if if we look at if we look at the case that you mentioned Lindsay. If if

Andy Kamholz: you're if you're a woman, you know, going into a job somewhere, and let's say you're a manager, and you never really thought about a woman taking maternity leave before it's not unusual for a manager even to subconsciously be like. Well, I better not give Lindsay that long term project, because who knows? Maybe she's going to get pregnant, and she's going to disappear for a while. I better give it to somebody else, you know, which is

Andy Kamholz: not at all appropriate, and not a conscious choice that somebody would make a lot. But but it's the kind of thing where

Andy Kamholz: it can happen right. But if you have an organization where there are people who are coming and going, for whether it's maternity, leave paternity leave, you know, short term disability, or anything like that. If it's part of your organization where these things just happen from time to time, it's easy, right.

Andy Kamholz: It's easy to. It's easy to allow for real life for real people. And I and I feel like.

Andy Kamholz: you know, that's what most people want to see when they're going, when they're considering. An organization like this is a place where I fit in for for whatever it is that people feel like there are people like me. However, someone defines that themselves. That's what people I think want to see, to feel comfortable, so makes sense.

Mercedes Landázuri: So, having this this well balanced team, do you? How? How do you feel that has shaped your company? Do you? Do you see differences in how this team collaborates or or tackles problems.

Andy Kamholz: I mean, there's no there's no question about that. So

Andy Kamholz: I I mean, we don't even have to go into specifics here. I think it's just well known that the more different types of people you get in a room, the more perspectives you get. And that's true. Whether we're talking about personal traits. Or we're talking about work history, for example, right? If we just focus on work history, you know.

Andy Kamholz: There's a happens to be a woman. But her being a woman is not seminal to the story. There's a woman who works for us now who came from a company that was doing a lot of the Pcr. Covid testing during the peak of the pandemic.

Andy Kamholz: And she basically spent all day every day taking these kits that had been sent in and running the Pcr on them. And she's not a biology expert or anything like that. I at the moment don't remember what her degree is in, but she's just a really good, detailed, oriented person, was running as a technician, doing a great job there.

Andy Kamholz: and when she came over to us she had a lot of opinions about how to handle biological samples, and how to do repetitive tasks all throughout the day, where we avoid the common mistakes that come in, or some of the or fatigue or other things like that. It just comes from her background, and she improved our manufacturing processes, and she improved our team practices.

Andy Kamholz: which is not something you ever would have looked at on paper on a resume, and said, Oh, yes, this person is going to come in, and this is an efficiency officer who's going to know. But did she do that? Absolutely right? So I just think that respecting different people's backgrounds is huge, and obviously there are tons of cultural and gender things that are different for different people depending on who they are.

Andy Kamholz: For me. It's about brains in the room, more brains in the room means more ideas, and and the more ideas you have the better your solutions are. It's as simple as that.

Mercedes Landázuri: Love it.

Lynzie Nebel: Yeah, I think I think that makes you know

Lynzie Nebel: it makes so much sense, and especially in the industry

Lynzie Nebel: where you know you're designing stuff, or you're creating stuff, you know, whether that's dictated by your customer, or, you know dictated by the people in your room like you, there still needs to be that perspective that can be gained, not just by the one guy who's designed molds for, you know, 57 years.

Lynzie Nebel: That's not going to give you the perspective of okay. Well, now that this part is made, how does it fit in men's hands versus women's hands? Or how does it, you know? Is it something that a kid could easily open? And they're not supposed to open? You know, all those different perspectives coming together? Really, really bring a whole new like Avenue that you're right. You can't. You can't get just from looking at someone's resume. I mean, my resume is probably

Lynzie Nebel: like, especially with the amount of jobs I've had in my past, you know. There, it's 1, 2 lines on it, like, if that's not telling you what I did at that company. I mean, it's just giving you, you can guess, but I bet

Lynzie Nebel: I bet I have a little bit more to add to those

Lynzie Nebel: And so you know, you being the CEO, you know you're kind of the the captain of this ship. How how do you see your role in, you know, keeping this culture. And, you know, guiding these projects. And you know, making sure this company steers clear of Titanic type

Lynzie Nebel: culture.

Andy Kamholz: It's, I mean, that's a that's a huge question. Or really, it's a huge issue. And I I think my role is very different

Andy Kamholz: in many different situations. So it's a lot of different things. In your in your show. Prep. You you wrote sort of cheerleading, or you steering the ship or you on the sidelines. And the answer is, I'm sort of all those things at different times.

Andy Kamholz: and the the the culture and steering. The culture is a really big part of it, and

Andy Kamholz: it starts in the hiring process. I mean, we just don't hire anybody. It doesn't have the cultural aspects that we want in terms of company culture. I'm talking about not not personal culture. But you know, if you're not going to be a good teammate, don't even bother applying to a job at our company. If you're not interested in in the company goals, you're only interested in personal goals, don't even bother applying.

Andy Kamholz: You know, if you're not willing to pick up the person next to you and help them over the finish line as opposed to hold them back and make sure you cross the finish line first.st

Andy Kamholz: Don't bother applying right so that it starts there, but from that point forward it's walking the walk, and so it is. It is a hundred percent about.

Andy Kamholz: I don't. I don't ever let little things slip by, but I also don't make a big deal out of them. So a great example. And and and you 2 have such a wonderful focus on on women's.

Andy Kamholz: a presence in our in our profession, and how to continue to work towards equality and make that make that what it should be, which it still is not today. You know, I will never, ever, ever allow a meeting to go where a woman is cut off by someone else?

Andy Kamholz: While she's giving an answer, because I think we know men are much more likely to interrupt women with their ideas. Women are much more likely to be interrupted as they're giving answers. I don't ever I don't ever let it go by. I don't say I don't do a mental note and say, Oh, I should talk to that guy later. I just say, Oh, hold on, let's wait. Let's let's just get back to her point for a second, then, and then we'll hear from you

Andy Kamholz: right again. I don't make it a hey? Now don't do that. You did this, you know. No, no, no, I don't do that. I just I just

Andy Kamholz: exactly as you put it. Just course correct. Right. Just go right back onto it. Now. The person who, I interrupted might be a little bit miffed, or whatever the person who I interrupted, who interrupted the other person might be a little bit miffed, but you know that's a little real gentle correction that they needed to have.

Andy Kamholz: and we just stay right back on course, and everyone else in that room says, Oh, yeah, this person, what they were originally saying person is originally talking. It matters, you know, those are the kinds of little things I always always do. I don't let them slip by ever.

Lynzie Nebel: And that's that's so huge. Because I think sometimes when people think about what can they do or how to help, or you know it it?

Lynzie Nebel: It comes out as like, Okay, what's this huge thing? Do I have to have a lecture? Do I need to, you know, pull people aside, and, you know, publicly shame them or anything like that. But it doesn't have to be. It's the simple things that are probably going to get better results next time, because that person may remember that they got

Lynzie Nebel: kind of called out for interrupting someone. They may be like, Okay, I just have to stop interrupting, and maybe they interrupt like a lot of different types of people. Maybe they're just an interrupter in general

Lynzie Nebel: and worst case scenario. You're just kind of

Lynzie Nebel: putting an interrupter back in its spot. A little bit like that's your worst case scenario.

Andy Kamholz: I mean, that's the thing with Dei, right? Which I I'm I can't believe we're living in a world where Dei is like debated is like. Is this something we should be paying attention to or not? I think the real.

Lynzie Nebel: 2 of this episode.

Andy Kamholz: I think the real thing that we're that we're debating is actually what I call the Dei stick, which is like whacking someone with the Dei stick, which is what you're indicating. Lindsay. Right? Which is, you know. Let's correct you. Let's have a lesson. It doesn't have to be that way. Right. Let's just focus on the really small things and keeping things going where they're going. So like another thing that I would often do. And this is a piece of advice I would give to anybody

Andy Kamholz: is, if you're running a meeting, and the meeting's got a number of people, and I don't care if I don't care if it's all men or women. I don't care if they're all one color. I don't. It doesn't matter what any group of people

Andy Kamholz: I will go ahead and give my summary of whatever we're talking about. Maybe we're talking about a quote that we're putting together for a customer. And okay, this is where we are. This is what we heard. These are the requirements. These are the concerns. But I'll say I'm gonna tell what I know. And then I'd like to hear from each person in the room.

Andy Kamholz: And and I'll go like that right? I'll actually basically say, this is the order we're gonna go in. And I'm pointing with my hand to to people. And then everybody knows that they're gonna get a chance to speak, that they are. Gonna get the same rules as everyone else that okay, we listen to this person. Now we're gonna listen to this person. Now we're gonna listen to this person. And then I just make sure that it happens

Andy Kamholz: so. The advantage there is no one's being called out. I'm not saying, you know, Mary, what do you think. Or Gary, what do you think? Right? You know I'm I'm giving them warning that I'm gonna be asking for their opinions. But I'm also giving them that platform that they can basically take as aggressively and vigorously as they want or say. You know, I agree with what she said. I don't really have anything to add. That's fine, too.

Mercedes Landázuri: No. Andy, you studied. I think. First, st biomedical engineering at Johns hopkins is that right.

Andy Kamholz: Right.

Mercedes Landázuri: And then and then you were husky, as you mentioned. Right? You studied.

Andy Kamholz: Yes.

Mercedes Landázuri: You got your Phd. At University of Washington in bioengineering and microfluidics? What drew you to plastics? I mean, plastics? Get a lot of buzz. Maybe not all of it. Positive right? What really kind of took you in this direction.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah. So when I was doing microphilics in college. And this is now in like mid nineties, not to date myself too much. It was still all being done using semiconductor technology. So silicon and glass, right etching channels and silicon, and bonding them with glass and things like that which is a an enormously laborious way to build these kinds of devices.

Mercedes Landázuri: Hmm.

Andy Kamholz: And when I went into the workforce I actually went to work at my second job

Andy Kamholz: for a branch of Tcam, which is still a very large and successful company that will be known to many people who use plastics. They had a sort of offshoot branch in the Boston area that was doing a plastic microfluidic device, so that industry sort of moved towards plastics as a what's a way to do mass production of these kinds of parts that's going to be at a reasonable cost and reasonable capacity.

Andy Kamholz: which is still kind of a challenge for a lot of a lot of the products that people are trying to develop out there, but it, nevertheless is really where that industry has gone to. I took a real shining to the prototyping technologies that the small group of Tcan had developed before I arrived.

Andy Kamholz: and when T. Can decided to sort of shutter that little branch of what they were doing, I said. 1st I said to my wife like, Hey, do you think it'd be a good idea if I started my own company? She's like, yes, and we were the what do they call it? The the Dink double income? No kids at that time.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah.

Lynzie Nebel: Yep.

Andy Kamholz: So my wife's a Phd psychologist. So like we were doing pretty well in terms of earning and all that. And she's like, Yeah, go for it, and and of course her support is the thing that actually gave me the confidence to do it.

Andy Kamholz: But so I acquired a bunch of the machinery. And I sort of carved out a nice IP space where we could have freedom to operate and started the company. And I've been working ever since to basically provide plastic solutions to these challenging problems, did I actually answer your question? Mercedes.

Mercedes Landázuri: You did. You did? Yeah.

Andy Kamholz: Sorry I felt like I might have gone off on a tank.

Lynzie Nebel: We listen. We love a good tangent, so we are always always on board with tangenting. But you did. You did answer the question. It's almost more disappointing for our tangent string.

Lynzie Nebel: But I I love. I love that you had. You know

Lynzie Nebel: I love that a company is closing. And you're just like, Yeah, I can do this. I'm going to do this. That's

Lynzie Nebel: I think that's such a especially when you are looking at something where you don't have

Lynzie Nebel: you don't have anyone else in the industry doing it like your options are. I can do this, or this goes away, and I think, making sure that it still exists, and like you're the one doing it.

Lynzie Nebel: I don't. I don't think I would be brave enough to do that. But I love that you did that.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that I think that at the time I didn't really understand what I was taking on, I sort of looked at the technology and the capability. And I thought, Oh, this is really cool. You can thermoform really cool stuff with this, it's got to be useful. It's gonna have to definitely be successful. And all the rest of that. And you know, it's been a long process. It's been. This is our 20th year. Now that we're in.

Andy Kamholz: And yeah, we've you know, we grew. And we were. We eventually took on investment. And then we were bought 100% wholly about 2 years ago by by a large plastics manufacturer. And so we're now part of that

Andy Kamholz: that company. We've had success, but it has come with

Andy Kamholz: every mistake you can possibly imagine me making. I have made every oversight, every failure to offer the wrong, the failure to offer the right kind of services, or sell things the right way, or package things the right way, or you know, it's just been. When I look back at it. All, all I can see, are an incredible number of diverging paths that were in the wrong direction from where we actually are now. And you know I don't know that there's any other way. I wish I could turn the clock back 20 years and

Andy Kamholz: do it again, knowing what I know now. But that's not how life works.

Mercedes Landázuri: So go ahead. Lindsay.

Lynzie Nebel: Well, I was. Gonna I was. Gonna ask about the other direction of the clock.

Lynzie Nebel: If you were, gonna look into the future. You know what's what's something? What's a plastics innovation, you know, especially something that you guys could be involved in, that you're you're looking

Lynzie Nebel: to develop, or you think is going to be around the corner, or maybe not so close. Corner. What's what's going on in the future? In the

Lynzie Nebel: Edge precision world.

Andy Kamholz: It's a great question, and I think in general, when you look at the not even specific to edge. But when you look at sort of this market for these micro scale precision, plastic disposables.

Andy Kamholz: the the challenge, I mean, it's sort of been the next big thing in the industry of plastics, but for like 30 years now, right like next big thing, next big thing, you know. But it hasn't ever really landed in the way that people have been predicting for quite a while, and you know, if people will go and tell you well how big is the how big is the sort of microfluidics or microstructured plastics. Market people will tell you like it's 8 billion.

Andy Kamholz: But the truth is, almost all that's reagents and or hardware. The actual plastic components is maybe 10% of that, right? So it's it's an overstated and inflated number. And so what we've seen is like, there haven't been a lot of really large scale successes

Andy Kamholz: with a large scale, low cost, manufacturing method that has the quality necessary for things that are often in regulatory or regulated situations. So we're not talking about, you know.

Andy Kamholz: a pen cap or something like that we're talking about in many cases a medical device or something that's got to pass class 2 or better standards. And there's just has not been a real mature

Andy Kamholz: market there in terms of successful products. So what we've been trying to do at edge is, say, what are the simpler forms of these products that actually are enabling at the biological level, or at some other level that can be produced to a very high quality standard at high capacity, with the kind of pricing that's necessary to make it a successful product, and the and the pricing part of it has been one of the biggest

Andy Kamholz: challenges for us over the years, because, you know, 10 years ago we were making these in onesies and twosies, and these parts were all 50 bucks and higher. And it doesn't fly right. And today we're talking to customers saying, You know, well, we can make these for you in the hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions. And it's going to be 50 cents, or maybe even less than 50 cents, and that required all kinds of things to to wrap into that. So a really good example is

Andy Kamholz: is these micro poor films that we've been making.

Mercedes Landázuri: Right? Yeah, we wanted to ask you about those.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah. So you know, filtration is a pretty mature, pretty, mature industry. And there's kind of there's kind of 2 big areas that they exist in one is sort of

Andy Kamholz: a fibrous membrane that a lot of times has, you know, fused, fused silica fibers, or whatever that's sort of creating average pore sizes. That's what a lot of the filters used to separate plasma from whole blood are made out of a lot of like the lateral flow assays even like a home pregnancy test, for example, is basically using a chromatographic filtration type technology to

Andy Kamholz: to move the fluid across the the test area or they're doing something like a track etched membrane where you're doing a a you know, a a

Andy Kamholz: bombardment of a material and doing etching at at the sort of subatomic level. And we're saying.

Andy Kamholz: Hey, we can make these membranes where we've got, you know. Pick your size, 5 micron, 10, micron, 20 micron 100 micron, 300 micron. Whatever we can do, absolutely perfect, regular pores of a monodispersed size, really densely packed. And we can have a film that's only 5,000 couple 100 microns

Andy Kamholz: thick. So we're doing now, if you want to separate cells of a very specific size, suddenly, there's a way to do it that doesn't involve this sort of gross average of a bunch of fibrous material.

Andy Kamholz: and it took us several years to figure out how to make them and make them well and make them reproducibly, have them come out properly, and then to figure out how to make them inexpensively. But now what we have is basically an off the shelf material people can just buy. That's just a film. It looks sort of like Saran wrap, but it's got whatever the size pores are in it that people want with the spacing that they want and the size that they want.

Andy Kamholz: And so now it's we're getting it almost to where it's just a commodity

Andy Kamholz: that people can simply buy and use and build into their devices, and put them at the bottoms of wells, or put them as a filtration membrane that has a higher efficiency of separation. That sort of thing. So I feel like, that's

Andy Kamholz: that's where I see the industry right now, where it's. You know we're not going to get to the point of. Let's have really complex parts that have many assembly steps. And and you know, we're really working hard to try to bring our cogs down, but we can't get it down below 20 or $30 a part. It doesn't fly. We need. We need components that provide value, but that are very cost effective to make. That's the bottom line. So that's that's where we're really focused.

Mercedes Landázuri: and so there, there are a lot of different applications. I mean, you mentioned, a few few applications for the for the micropore films. What? What's like? What are some more quirky? What are we like, quirky? What are

Mercedes Landázuri: this ones you've seen.

Andy Kamholz: It's funny that you you put that on your list because I think you know this. But we've had recently inquiries from 2 different beverage companies, one of them specifically relating to. Do you know that in some in some restaurants you might go into, there's like these machines where you can kind of on a touch screen. Choose any kind of soda that you want, and they have a lot of different flavors.

Andy Kamholz: So.

Lynzie Nebel: Always have some.

Lynzie Nebel: Moe's restaurant always has the little.

Lynzie Nebel: I don't know mo's. I'm sorry it's fast casual, like Tex-mex.

Mercedes Landázuri: Next week. Yeah.

Andy Kamholz: Oh, okay, alright, I'm with you. I got, I remember.

Mercedes Landázuri: Will we?

Mercedes Landázuri: It's an item you can get there. Get that going.

Lynzie Nebel: Nobody.

Mercedes Landázuri: Yeah.

Andy Kamholz: I don't know.

Andy Kamholz: I don't know. I I'm i i don't know. I guess I'm partial to other restaurants, anyway. Apparently there's some pretty advanced filtration technology in those machines in terms of how they get different kinds of

Andy Kamholz: different kinds of you know, flavors or components to move and control them in a really precise and fast way. And we've actually had a couple of inquiries from 2 unrelated companies who are both saying, Yeah, we need to use something like this for some, you know, some sort of advanced filtration stuff. We've even had them talk about the

Andy Kamholz: the user experience with bubbles that are coming out of the soda material. And you know, how does this membrane affect, how the bubbles express themselves? And what is the what is the sound, and what is the feeling, and what is the smell even to the customer? And how does this? How do these micro pore membranes affect that user experience? So it's.

Mercedes Landázuri: Oh, that's fascinating!

Andy Kamholz: You know, coming from a world we've been heavy into, you know, just like really into biotech and biology and clinical diagnostics, and all that having a conversation about, you know, how does your soda smell and like? Does it make

Andy Kamholz: happy.

Lynzie Nebel: Game.

Andy Kamholz: Yeah, it's I mean, it's super cool, right? And it's funny because our our chief of engineering and technology who ran the meeting. I was like, invite as many people on your team as you can, because, like what a fun meeting to sit in and talk to these folks. And and it's just it's just a cool fun thing to be involved in.

Mercedes Landázuri: Very cool.

Lynzie Nebel: I love that.

Lynzie Nebel: Well, we absolutely love anything that's fun and new and exciting in this industry, especially when sometimes things don't seem as fun and exciting. So we really appreciate you coming on here today, I think, a lot of what you're doing is really awesome. And

Lynzie Nebel: like, I said, my brain is still spinning. I'm like, Oh, I have all these questions, so I will just. I'll just live in that regret later, and I'll just message you on the side every time I I think of a question. But, Andy, it was so nice to have you here. We really appreciate you? You know, reaching out, and, you know, connecting on Linkedin and we really look forward to, you know, seeing what your company is doing.

Andy Kamholz: I appreciate it.

Andy Kamholz: Thank you so much for having me. Your your podcast is amazing. And I've really enjoyed following it. And you know. Maybe you'll have a like jeopardy like you can have a best of later. You can have me back in a couple of years and ask me a couple more questions if you want. So you're doing great work and and thank you for what it's adding to our community. Really appreciate it.

Lynzie Nebel: Thank you.