Hemdeep (00:12)
Welcome to Big Ideas in Microscale, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking research happening at the microscale where micro innovations makes a big impact. ⁓

We're excited to showcase the incredible work being done by our users from around the world who are pushing the boundaries of microfluidics, lab on a chip, organ on a chip and beyond. Through these conversations, we hope to learn from their experiences, uncover their insight and bring their big ideas to wider audience. So whether in a lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of microtechnology, join us as we dive into big ideas at Microscale.

Robin (01:06)
Okay, I think we're live.

Hemdeep (01:11)
We are live. Wow. This is our second go at this. Hopefully we can get our life organized and we can present the way that we want to present. How are you Robin?

Robin (01:25)
I'm good, nervous. I'm not used to talking, but you know, let's do our best.

Hemdeep (01:32)
And we're in isolated places. We normally work in the one large office space. We've been asked to relegate to a quiet corner. And I think you're at home and I'm somewhere in my factory right now. And, hopefully we can start discussing things that are hopefully important to our clients and, and, and the users and, and all of the people that we hope to reach with this podcast.

Robin (02:00)
Oh, for sure. I mean, that's the whole idea of the podcast really to show, pace our users a bit, see kind of like what they're up to and their research projects, kind of like their journeys, what they are hoping to do and like really, you know, get to know them a little bit better and hopefully other people with similar fields or even if they're not similar, just get a little bit of value out of it. See how 3D printing has, you know, many possibilities in the whole.

microfluidic biotech bioengineering field.

Hemdeep (02:33)
Yeah, podcasting in general has been something I've been very interested in over 10 years or so. And I think especially with the clients that we've had over the last decade or so, I think we've learned so much from them. And I think each one of them brings to the table a very unique insight in terms of their pathway from ⁓ concept and ideas to, you know, developing an idea strategy. And then eventually we sort of come in with.

with our offerings, know, our printers or our materials, and then they're able to package it all together and then put out research papers. And obviously we've got a number of teams that created something on the commercial side. So I'm hoping that this podcast allows us to really highlight some of our users and some of the fantastic work that they've been doing over the last decade.

Robin (03:22)
I before we go more into that, we should really be introducing ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm Robin. I've been at CalWORKs 3D for three going on to four years now as a marketer. I think what really drove me to go to CalWORKs 3D was just like the 3D printing aspect. And even though like I didn't really know anything about microfluidics or anything like

Hemdeep (03:27)
Yes, yes.

Robin (03:49)
It kind of intrigued me and I don't know what really kind of pulled me into it, but it was just such a foreign kind of niche, let's say. And I was just really curious, like, you know, what's there? And I guess that's the same thing for you. Cause like what, your background was in jewelry.

Hemdeep (04:09)
Yeah, I think it was myself, my brother, who's the co-founder, we took over our parents' business, which was now second generation, so we would have been third generation. And I think even when we were in that industry, we really focused on technology. And that was really our, I guess, our niche that we really enjoyed, just trying to understand how to bring technology to bear. then, you know,

both of us come in from very different educational backgrounds, whether, you know, I've got my degree in physics and astronomy and then my brother's got his degree in music and sociology. It's you know, such a wide ⁓ range of experiences. And then you throw yourself into a business that is ⁓ old school, very generational business where it just is passed down from generation to generation.

And then we had to sort of figure out what are the new trends. And at that time, know, the net had just, e-commerce had just started to explode. Marketing was now turning digital, a ton of technology. And then we had this opportunity of learning how digital manufacturing worked. And that was in 2009. And in 2009, we bought our first 3D printer and we just threw ourselves at it. We self-taught ourselves CAD designing.

We were able to do pretty much anything, anything engineering, any design we were able to manufacture. And then here we are, know, fast forward many, many years, many interactions with a lot of people in the 3D printing industry learning. And I think that's the one thing that we've managed to do is just learn, absorb as much as we can. I think we find ourselves very fortunate. actually surrounded ourselves with really good

good people. I think all of the people that we brought on board at Creative Cat Works and Cat Works 3D and Resinworks are amazing. People like you, we've got our sales team, Munmeet, and we've got Tech Michael and Mary Frances who's running this podcast, and then we've got Scarlett that does our digital. Then we've got Jody who's now the new person that's come on board. So we're bringing along a ton of people that have

have a wide range of experience and that they are able to bring even more to the table and we learn so much. I think we're really fortunate to have a really good collection of people right now.

Robin (06:46)
Yeah, for sure. It's interesting because like when I came in, I think I was the first proper new employee for what I think five years, eight years, I don't even know. I know Michael's been here for eight years now. And if I've been here for three years, I assume five years. And then I think after that, that's when things started really moving forward as far as the team growing. And then we Scarlett, I think what six months after. ⁓

Another six months after Mary Frances and now Jodie. So it's crazy how things have been growing. mean, it's even the fact that we're doing a podcast straight up is I don't think something you had really thought would happen for Coworks3D.

Hemdeep (07:28)
Yeah,

I remember when I first started listening to podcasts nearly ⁓

what would have been close to 09, 10, so nearly 15 years now. And I remember thinking it was a fantastic platform just to connect and learn and to engage with a really wide audience. It allowed ⁓ users from a wide range of fields without the need of having very expensive technology or anything like that, just to be able to put up content.

And there was a global reach. There's an audience there for you. And I think that's the one thing that I want to do with this podcast series is I know we've got amazing users and I know each one of them have got a fantastic story that I think will serve very, very valuable for the wider audience that sort of understands what we do or has a peripheral understanding of what we do. But I think when they start seeing what our users do, I think there will be, you know,

real eye-opening moment because I think each one of them brings a really interesting story to bear, think.

Robin (08:37)
And I think in general, what we have in mind for this podcast really kind of is in line with our core values. feel like in general, like you're a very curious person and like you did astronomy. So I guess you have some other backgrounds in science. remember going to the Yonker Lab annual workshop, I think it was last year. And we were there as the sponsor or the industry partner, whatever they call it. And then we had like these 45 minute time slots and

were meant or you're meant to present and tell them about the company. But I remember you only did that in like 10 minutes max. And then after that, the rest of the time, it was more so you spent talking to each of like the individual attendees and really trying to like dig deep into like, what are they doing? ⁓ What is their research topic and like their, their fields and everything like that. And I found that super interesting because I think as a business,

It's not, and you're there to like present yourself. They don't really do that really like where they talk more to the users as opposed to talking about themselves. And so like, feel like this podcast is really like, like you said, a great platform to, you know, take that to the next level.

Hemdeep (09:51)
Yeah, that event was really interesting because we got to learn a lot. But then I think a lot of people come and they listen to our pitch or they see 3D printing technology, but they don't know where the connecting point is between what they're doing and what we do. And I think usually it's during these interactions where we start learning about, you know, what is it that they're doing and

You know, is there a material that we could develop that could address their need? Is there a technology improvement that we need to do that could address their need? And so for me, yes, it's a lot of learning, but I also get to really hone in on what the new milestones the company needs to start setting up, like, you know, whether it's a six month project, a 12 month project, or a forever project, one that you know you have to.

continue to evolve in order to help users come along. And I think all of our team, that's the one thing that we've tried to sort of focus on that idea that our users are there to really have a problem to be solved. And we need to do whatever we can on our side to make that as easy as possible.

Robin (11:06)
Speaking more to that, you said before that the Mastermold, that's how you kind of came up with that product, right? Someone walked in and said, hey, do have a material where I could cast, I guess, PMS? You would know better, you tell the story.

Hemdeep (11:20)
Yeah, no, it was exactly that. They walked into our office and they knew that we sold 3D printers. They just said, hey, do you guys have a material that could possibly do this where we can print a negative device and you would be able to cast PDF mouse on it. And he had.

you know, a list of things that he needed to accomplish, you know, without using any release agents, you need to be able to pour your PDMS on it. It's got to withstand a fairly high temperature of around anywhere from 80 to 100 degrees Celsius. It's got to bake. It's got to be usable. to be toxic as well. got to be everything, right? And then we had materials that we'd been developing that we just did not know what the application was. you know, my brother, who does a lot of our material formulation, he said, hey, why don't...

I can possibly modify this material and it definitely would address their need. And that was the first one. And that, you know, we got a paper in the Journal of Oncology published and that rolled into a project with the University of Sydney in Australia with the MAJA team. And, you know, that just got everything started. And we really had amazing users at the start who really provided us a ton of feedback. And we were able to then.

develop even more material and find improvements on our platform, understand what improvements we had to do on the software side. So all of that together, we were able to present a far more better solution set than what we had even going in at that point. Yeah.

Robin (12:54)
And even then I feel like we're always still working on trying to figure out more applications for 3D printing in lab settings, right? Like we have the PDMS pretty much establish everyone, it's like a core process in everyone's lab, but they know how that works. So it's very easy for them to like, I guess as a gateway to get into 3D printing, but I feel like there's so much more untapped potential there that even we like as the industry experts, like we're

We don't fully understand all the different ways we can use things. For example, a lot of times the devices that we have, they've been fully 3D printed, but I know that that's not necessarily what you need to do. I know, I think it was UBC and they were making a biosensor and it was like the chip was sitting in a machine recessed aluminum plate. And the only part that was related to 3D printing was a PDMS gasket, for example.

There's so many different ways that 3D printing can even be incorporated into like creating a full device, right? It doesn't have to be completely 3D printed, but there's like little components here and there. And so I feel like you need a lot of like creativity and a lot of experimentations to like really get a better understanding of the potential of 3D printing.

Hemdeep (14:17)
during this podcast series, I think I'm really gonna be interested in presenting some of our users who've been able to take our tech and then take their ideas and what their application that they needed and the unique ways that they have sort of rejigged our solution set to fit their needs. And I think all of them will provide some sort of spark that moment of aha, ⁓ I could actually...

It's not just to make a specific, you know, a PDMS device or a master or a monolithic device, but if you rejig the solution set in a particular way, you can address other things as well. And ⁓ I'm really looking forward to this. The guests that we have lined up already, I think will provide us a very good start. And I think some of the other guests that have already indicated their ⁓ interest, I think will provide.

a really good platform for us to launch off this series on.

Robin (15:16)
Yeah, for sure. And it's nice. We already have like a couple of people scheduled for a recording session, I think next month. So yeah, looking forward to that. I think that pretty much wraps up everything unless there's something else you want to like talk about maybe.

Hemdeep (15:34)
No, I think we'll get a chance to do this again, but now with all of our users and I am sure that as we start recording a podcast, we'll have a lot more of our personal insight or the company insight or even the user side insight that might be valuable to the audience out there, wherever you guys may be.

Robin (15:55)
Alright, looking forward to talking with everyone, all the guests and hopefully share some valuable insights and hopefully really just spark inspiration for some of our other users or future users. Let's see where this goes.

Hemdeep (16:12)
Take care of yourself. We'll see you on the other side.

Robin (16:17)
Thanks for tuning in to Big Ideas of Microscale. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to follow us and stay up to date. You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch the full video on YouTube. You can also follow us for more updates and behind the scenes content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky, and X. We're Cadworx3D across the board. Let's spell C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S-3D.

show notes, paper references, and bonus resources on today's topic, visit our website, catworks3d.com. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S 3D dot com.

Hemdeep (17:01)
Thank you for tuning in and as always stay curious, keep exploring and never stop asking the big questions that are shaping our world. Whether you're in a lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of technology, join us as we continue to dive deep into big ideas at Microscale.