HEARING A BABY'S HEARTBEAT

Sometimes, Spencer Newman, president of The Newman Group, wishes he had discovered Protomold and First Cut Prototype a little sooner.

"A while back, we were developing our first product and we were not yet aware of all the available tooling options.

We thought we had completed the prototyping stage, so we went ahead and had very expensive steel tools made," Newman says. "It turned out that we were not quite there and needed some minor changes in the design. Unfortunately, when it comes to steel molds, little changes can have big price tags, so it was a difficult lesson learned." Now, however, The Newman Group goes to great lengths to make sure that their design is fully tested and reviewed before they even begin to consider steel tooling. However, they also needed one thing that they did get from steel molds, and that was prototypes that are as close as possible to the product they will be taking to market.

Knowing they could not count on that with additive prototyping methods, and not wanting to spend more on steel tooling, the industrial design group they worked with directed them to Protomold, which gave them parts that are injectionmolded, just as they would be in steel molds, but at a fraction of the cost.

The Newman Group's first product was the BabyBeat Doppler, a fetal ultrasound system designed for home use. "Our goal was to come up with a user-friendly system specifically designed for a mother, not a healthcare professional," Newman explains.

Like most modern medical devices, the ultrasound system depends heavily on plastic components. Newman readily admits that he is not a plastics expert, but has gotten a lot of useful information and personalized feedback from Protomold's ProtoQuote on-line quoting system.

"ProtoQuote is great for speedy quotes, but I especially appreciate the free design analyses it provides," Newman says. "Well before I was ready to have prototypes made, I started submitting designs to ProtoQuote for feedback.

Our outside design group could have given us feedback, but they have to charge us every time they evaluate a design. ProtoQuote, on the other hand gives us detailed feedback overnight, and it does not cost a cent. ProtoQuote certainly will not replace our engineers, but it does stretch our design budget."

THE PRODUCT

The task Newman had taken on was a substantial one. "We had looked at existing ultrasound systems for some time and began to wonder whether the basic designs could be improved," Newman states. "Most of the systems out there are fairly similar in design; they use a sensor head consisting of both transmit and receive components, which is placed against an expectant woman's belly to pick up the heartbeat of the developing fetus. Because of the way sound waves travel through tissue, the design of the sensor head is essentially a geometric exercise; its performance is affected by the parameters at which sound is generated and captured. We had looked pretty thoroughly at the electronics and were wondering whether the mechanical aspects – the geometry – could be improved." Newman's redesign of the sensor head began on graph paper and then progressed to spreadsheets. "Performance depends on the depth and area of intersection for transmit and receive signals to pick up the fetal heartbeat," Newman explains. "In looking for a design that would work across that entire range [of a pregnancy], we did calculations and considered different cross sections of the sensor head to see what made the most sense on paper.

We also had some questions on how some different configurations of adding or subtracting plastic might affect the performance, but no spreadsheet could provide that answer." Numbers on paper are fine for a start, but Newman needed to actually test prototypes to see how they work in the real world – they needed prototypes that would be as solid as actual molded production parts.

"While we were working with Protomold, we had gotten an email from their parent company, Proto Labs, about First Cut Prototype, Protomold's sister division. Unlike Protomold, which works from molds, First Cut produces prototypes directly by milling them from blocks of solid material," Newman says. "These milled parts are very similar to molded parts, but less expensive if you just need a few of each part.

"We had narrowed our design choices down to a handful of combinations of transmit and receive angles along with a variety of wall and cavity configurations. I do not remember exactly how many different total parts First Cut made us, but the cost let us test every combination we thought might work. By the time we were done, we felt we had a clear winner that outperformed competitive offerings." Now that The Newman Group has finalized the design, they are having Protomold make parts for the product launch, and will continue to have them manufacture the parts, at least for the time being, as the product is rolled out.

"We think we are very well-positioned in this market. Our value proposition is simple: professional performance at a consumer price. The system is easy to use, which is important both because the application is so important and because the folks who will be using it already have a lot on their minds," Newman says.

QUOTE/ANALYSIS

The Newman Group uses First Cut's FirstQuote online quoting system along with Protomold's ProtoQuote – uploading a 3D CAD file and getting a quote and analysis the next day. Examples of the analysis The Newman Group gets from ProtoQuote as they ran several CAD models through ProtoQuote were suggestions regarding undercuts, wall thickness and draft. The Newman Group's approach after that was to work with their mechanical engineers to work the suggestions into final designs.

The next step was sending it to First Cut for the test prototypes so that when they went back to Protomold for the initial production run, they were confident that they had the right design, and that they had addressed any potential moldability issues as well.

"We know there are other molders and other CNC machining shops out there, but we have not found anyone who makes it as easy as First Cut and Protomold do," Newman states. "We are a small shop and we get pulled in a lot of different directions by the demands of the development process.

We appreciate anyone who can make things easy for us. We foresee a lot of growth in our future, both with consumers and, potentially, into the professional market. It is nice to know that partners like First Cut and Protomold will provide us with the resources we need to do that."