> When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles.

Most chem labs re still like this — ours certainly is. Certain instruments you might buy (gas chromatograph, micrometer) but it’s hardly unusual to find them adapted as well. There’s lots of blue tape in the fume hood too.

And our prototypes are all hand made because it’s simpler. Once we’ve worked out the physics of the device (with lots of tweaks along the way) we can then start to think about DFM. You’ve seen a picture of one of those prototypes: the boards were sent out but mostly we did the welding, bending, assembly, firmware etc all ourselves.

And as a startup a small team can move faster and more flexibly than a bigger organization when making these kinds of things.