E-16: Precision Prototyping

<p>Durham-based NCMEP partner, Hangar6, is working to assist North Carolina manufacturing in achieving their product design goals.</p> <p>Hangar6</p> <p>Imagine you manufacture a product advertised to help install doorknobs. Customers order the product, but there’s a major problem. It doesn’t work. Embarrassingly, you recall the product and your organization’s customer loyalty suffers. You do a deep dive and track all your product’s defects back to the fact you missed steps in the prototyping and testing process. This is why prototyping is so important. Proof that a product works as intended in the form of a prototype is the foundation of every successful product. Today, we’re talking to an organization that helps inventors get their designs off of the napkin and onto the assembly line.</p> <p>Hangar6, a First Flight Venture Center program and NCMEP partner, is the Research Triangle region’s premier prototyping and design assistance space for technology-based companies. Hangar6 enables designing, building and modeling product prototypes using tools, such as 3D scanners, CO2 lasers, metal fiber lasers, CNC mill, 3D printers and more. Hangar6’s partnership with NCMEP provides North Carolina manufacturers access to Hangar6’s additive manufacturing machines with various design capabilities.</p> <p>In this installment of Clocking In, I speak with Hangar6 shop manager, Sam Dirani. Sam manages the day-to-day operations, equipment at Hangar6. He also trains and works directly with all members to help ensure their project success. In the latter part of the episode, we talk to the program manager, Emil Runge from Hangar6’s parent company, First Flight Venture Center.</p> <p>In this episode, we discuss the services and technologies Hangar6 provides, what to expect when working with Hangar6, the steps it takes to create a prototype, First Flight Venture grant initiatives and more.</p> <p>LINKS <a href='https://www.ncmep.org/'>NCMEP</a> <a href='https://hangarsix.org/'>Hangar6</a> <a href='https://www.ffvcnc.org/'>First