Being an Engineer

S1E14 An Engineer’s Engineer | Robert Futch

June 19, 2020 Robert Futch Season 1 Episode 14
Being an Engineer
S1E14 An Engineer’s Engineer | Robert Futch
Show Notes Transcript

Robert grew up building Legos, toy rockets, fixing vehicles, and developing video games…it seemed inevitable that he would become an engineer. As CTO at Delta Development Team, he continues developing his engineering skills going through the MS program for systems engineering at the University of Arizona while running their startup thermal systems/medical device company at the same time. Hear about the pressures & thrills of developing revolutionary life-saving technology (watch out Coleman coolers…your days are numbered).  

Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Aaron Moncur:

Welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Robert Futch, who is the Chief Technology Officer at Delta development team where they innovate and manufacture ruggedized thermal systems specializing in military equipment. Robert is an Eagle Scout and speaks three languages, American sign language, English and German. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert Futch:

Well, thank you very much for that intro. I'll tell you the German was a long time ago. So I wouldn't say speak German anymore.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, that's fair. That's fair. It still counts?

Robert Futch:

Oh, yeah, it was I had learned it at one point, but it's been a long time.

Aaron Moncur:

Very cool. Well, we'll talk about that a little bit. First question I have for you is How long have you been an engineer? And how did you decide to become an engineer?

Robert Futch:

Dang. Well, I can I can trace that. Pretty far back actually. There was a, I can remember a pretty specific moment, when I was probably like, six or seven. When my mom asked me, What do you want to do when you grow up? And I asked her, what makes the most money? Doctor lawyer, right. And I was so her answers were architect and baseball player. Right, which was not the doctor lawyer. Right. So those are some interesting answers. Good answers.

Aaron Moncur:

Nonetheless, actually, I'm sorry to interrupt. I recently went through this exercise with my kids where we looked at all these different professions. We brainstormed like 100 different jobs. And then we looked at the salaries for all of them. And do you know, what by far was the the biggest salary? What was it? entertainers? I mean, celebrity and, of course, outside of like, you know, Bill Gates and that kind of thing. But yeah, celebrity entertainers, which absolutely includes famous, famous athletes. So I think your mom was spot on with the baseball player.

Robert Futch:

Absolutely. So I think maybe, maybe she threw an architect as maybe, maybe someone who could still be creative and still be sort of a celebrity. Right. But that that stuck with me for a while. And I was, I think she could she could tell I was interested in you know, building things and making things. I had plenty of Legos to inspire me early on, right? As I'm sure many engineers have, absolutely. But my dad was also a electrical engineer. He's still an electrical engineer at Raytheon. So there was some of that influence too. We you know, him and I spent a lot of time building model rockets and electronics together. So you could you could see all this influence building up in my life towards engineering. Very cool. Yeah. But but I never really like selected engineering up until I got all the way through high school all the way to college. And they're like, alright, what major Do you want? Hadn't I hadn't thought about you know, actually selecting engineering before that. The architect and the things that engineers do was just kind of in the back of my mind for for all that time.

Aaron Moncur:

And at this point, professional baseball player had been off the table

Robert Futch:

that was definitely off the table. I I tried baseball early on there. That wasn't that wasn't my sport. I did do soccer. Got it? Okay, unfortunately, soccer doesn't pay too much in the US

Aaron Moncur:

here. Yeah, unless you're Pele was that Brazil? Right 30 years ago. Yeah. Okay.

Robert Futch:

But okay, that's how I ended up there. So I finally you know, I had to make the choice there once I got to college and I picked Mechanical Engineering since I picked up that interest in you know, building rockets and electronics and cars and that's that's where I got started with it.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, let's talk more about that. Rockets and electronics and cars what what were you like as a kid growing up were you just always into building things and taking things apart? And you know, model rockets was your dad was was that what life was like for you pretty much all of your, you know, childhood adolescent.

Robert Futch:

That was definitely a huge part of it. There was to me at the time was in unimaginable collection of Hot Wheels, right? And, and Legos and always always building new things. And my dad is one that introduced me to model rockets you know, we're building a new rocket every every other weekend. We'd go shoot rockets with his model rocket buddies. Of course, they're doing their we're doing the real thing at the same time at Raytheon. Right Wow.

Aaron Moncur:

Did Did your dad ever take you to Raytheon and show you some of the the actual rockets that were being produced?

Robert Futch:

You know, there was one family day that I have a pretty faint memory of back when they still allowed family days at Raytheon. Right. But that there's not a whole lot that I remember from that, from that visit, because it was a long time ago. But sure, I think probably my, the biggest influence towards actually selecting engineering, once once I got to college was my interest in cars at the time, where I thought if I could just get a mechanical engineering degree, then McLaren would hire me or Shelby would hire me. Right. And that was it was still a pretty lofty goal at the time.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, well, hey, you're you're still early in your career. Maybe that's still in the cards. Right? It could be. Another thing I noticed that was interesting is you're an Eagle Scout. And the the Boy Scout Motto, I believe is be prepared. Has that helped you in your role as an engineer? Do you think? Or were they just, you know, very separate parts of your life?

Robert Futch:

That's a good question. I think it's it's definitely helped me to be prepared. Outside of engineering. Some of the some of the being prepared for engineering skills. I definitely didn't pick those up until going to school for engineering. It's it's a very different kind of being prepared,

Aaron Moncur:

right? Yeah, for sure.

Robert Futch:

So I think in terms of being prepared to, to, to enjoy a camping trip, and be ready for any kind of weather, no problem, you know, I'm ready for anything like that. I can, I can plan all kinds of the trips, thanks to their, you know, their training there. But the being prepared for engineering that I learned in school,

Aaron Moncur:

I had an engineering manager many years ago who used to say that in order to be a good engineer, you need to be a little paranoid. And I think that's just another way of saying you have to be really prepared, right? You have to think about all those possible eventualities and be very detail oriented and know what to do if this happens and what to do if that happens. So I saw that you were an Eagle Scout, and I thought, that's, that's cool. I think the mindset I am also a fellow Eagle Scout, although I didn't get mine until my 18th birthday. I saw you were 16. So you did a lot better than I did in actually being prepared to get your Eagles. I know you got it right on time. Right. You planned it that way. Yeah, sure. I planted though. Yeah. Last possible days when I squeaked in. But the mindset that I think is established, theirs is an important one for an engineer, probably a lot of other professions as well.

Robert Futch:

Absolutely. And I definitely am glad that I had that experience, to do you know, the project planning and being a you know, a team leader for all the different trips we went on, and some amazing, amazingly memorable trips. Like being one of the team leaders when we went to sea bass. I'm sure you're familiar with sea bass in Florida, where they they have a whole bunch of water, essentially miniature pirate ships there. And they

Aaron Moncur:

I am not familiar with this. Now. That sounds amazing. Oh, it didn't eat your pirate ship. It

Robert Futch:

is it is amazing. So it's all Wow, I'll give you the short story. But they have a bunch of miniature pirate ships. And each group of Boy Scouts is trained on how to sail the pirate ship. And then they say go and they send you out and into the sea. And between Cuba and the bottom of Florida there no way. And amazing so cool. Yeah, that was that was tons of fun. And you know, we all we all took turns leading the ship and pretending to be the pirate captain and yelling at our or our fellow our fellow Boy Scouts to rig the sails and things like that.

Aaron Moncur:

I'm guessing no rum was allowed though, on these.

Robert Futch:

These ships definitely no rum.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay. All right. Well, let's jump a little bit into your engineering career here. Early on, you worked with some photovoltaic arrays. And that's something that I have no experience with at all. And I was curious, what what was your design experience like with with these photovoltaics and what were some of the unique design considerations?

Robert Futch:

So we were in a, this is with Sundancer when I was working there, Sundancer development and just a short intro about what their what they were designing their his vaccine refrigerators. So it's these refrigerators that are powered powered by Voltex powered by solar panels. And you can take them out anywhere in the world, even where there's no plugs, no power, and you just set up your refrigerator and the solar panel, and bam, you've got this vaccine refrigerator, that even if a cloud goes over and the power goes out, your vaccines stay cold. So, so that was that was their technology there. And my involvement with that, and probably what I learned the most about it was, was how different it is to design a product that is direct solar powered, right, as opposed to grid tie solar, which is what most of everybody is familiar with, especially around here, right? We have a big electricity grid. If people put solar panels on their house, they add it to the existing power that they have. But what if solar power was the only thing you had? Now? It's a big issue in other places in the world, right? Where they don't have any other form of power. So if if solar power is the only power you have, there's a lot more considerations do you need batteries? Do you need some other form of energy storage to keep things going when the clouds go over? So that was, that was a big learning experience to a totally different side of photovoltaics from, from what they teach in school even.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, we have we have some solar panels on our house now, which was story for another time? Not a great one. But it's becoming a big deal now. Right? We've got Elon Musk and his solar roof panels, do you see that just, you know, continuing the technology continuing to advance as we move forward?

Robert Futch:

Absolutely, I have, I've been watching all that, you know, evolve over time and seeing the different all the different solar technologies and people vying for that extra one in to increase one to 2% increase in efficiency in the solar panels. So it's, it's interesting to see it all evolve, but it was sort of tangential to what I was doing, since everybody in the US is trying to innovate, grid tie solar. And at the same time, we were trying to innovate this, this other standalone, direct solar?

Aaron Moncur:

Is the technology fundamentally the same? Or is the standalone solar technology different than the grid solar?

Robert Futch:

Well, the major difference, and you'll you'll see this, even on your house, too, you've got a big giant inverter on the side of your house, right? Yeah, converting the the direct DC solar energy into AC that you can then power all your electronics with. So with that, in the in the direct solar application, we can eliminate that inverter if you have all DC components. Right? Hmm. Okay. So finding things, making sure that are, it's a refrigerator, right, so we have to have a DC compressor, not an AC compressor like people are used to. And then you could use batteries before for When the clouds go over. Right. Right. But that is what we found that a lot of our donor I, David, what he discovered is that the the battery wasn't a solution for this application. So they were using thermal energy storage there.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, but the fundamental physics are the same between the two technologies. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Your degrees in mechanical engineering, but it looks like you do quite a bit of programming. How did you pick up the programming and how has it shaped your role as an engineer so far?

Robert Futch:

It's it's shaped it quite a lot. I can tell you that. I think I, I had started even in high school, my brother and I were making video games. Just as a sort of a side gig. We even released one video game on that Android store in the Apple App Store. And, and that's where I sort of got really into programming for the first time there. And then when I when I started working at Sundancer, then both Bill and David when I was working for him there, they said, Oh, well, you're a mechanical engineer, and you can program Why don't you just take over all of our programming department? Because it was it was a pretty small business, and it was just the owner that was doing the programming in his spare time. Right. Okay, any any had a contractor doing it? And so, so this was their first experience, having somebody that could do software full time for them. And on a small budget, I guess the the way to do that was with a mechanical engineer who knew some programming, right?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah. How was that for you? I mean, were you bummed because you were Doing more programming and less mechanical engineering? Or was that a great opportunity?

Robert Futch:

I think it was a fantastic opportunity. It's, you know, I think it's a little bit different for, for a mechanical engineer that knows programming, where I'm not just, I'm not trying to take somebody's requirements that they've written and put it into code. So I'm not translating anything. What we were doing there was developing new technology all the time. So I guess I was, I was able to immediately take the mechanical engineering thermodynamics that I was doing to develop the product, and then just write it myself into the code. That's so efficient, it was it was very efficient. So we were able to, you know, quickly change things and, and I was able to identify things in the code that would have to change the way that we, you know, the way that we had planned for the thermodynamics of these refrigerators to work. So it was, it was a real, I think it was a real efficient way to do things. And I think you see that more often these days, right? Where you see, electrical engineers, they know programming, more mechanical engineers know, programming, you have a requires that mechanical engineers take a programming class. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with it.

Aaron Moncur:

I didn't know that. No, but it makes total sense. I mean, this is a small example. Like any company these days, we have a website. And we have a web design company that we work with, but I know enough, Wordpress, it's not even programming, but I know how to get into WordPress and just, you know, create a new page and put some different pictures in there and throw up the video. And if I didn't know how to do that, it would be so inefficient for me, every time I wanted to make a small change to the website to go to the website, company, web developers and try to communicate, you know, I want this change. And I want that change. In fact, when we first developed the website, that's what it was. And it was so painful, trying to communicate all of that to them, as opposed to just doing it myself, of course, running a business, you have to delegate and balance what you do and what other people do. But it's it's to be able to have several fundamental skills is such a huge benefit, I think not just to engineers, but to any professional these days, but especially engineers. I mean, you're just a perfect case, in point, I think,

Robert Futch:

I think I've been real lucky to have the, the experience that I did so far, you know, going to school as a mechanical engineer, but then learning from some of the best direct solar experts in the world, and also being able to learn all this programming. For developing these machines. It's been a fantastic experience so far.

Aaron Moncur:

I myself am not a programmer. But we have programmers here at pipeline. So I want to dig into this just a little bit more. You program in C and LabVIEW. And Visual Basic, and maybe some others, how do you decide what what platform what language to use? You know, based on the the activities that you're, you're coding for.

Robert Futch:

There's some hardware driving what language we choose, usually right. Like with working at Sundancer, we're using picbasic chips. So we're programming actually in basic there, which was another experience. And then then we eventually upgraded and where I'm working now at Delta Delta development where we're programming in C, because that's what the chips use. So there's some hardware requirements driving the driving the language.

Aaron Moncur:

Got it, okay. We, we use LabVIEW a lot. And sometimes people are surprised to hear that we use LabVIEW. Because we do a lot of automation. Typically, people are expecting to hear, you know, Allen Bradley or Siemens or something like that when it comes to automation, but we found LabVIEW actually, to work really well. Especially since a lot of what we do is is kind of for the r&d environment anyway. Do you do a lot of stuff in LabVIEW? Or do you ever get into some of the more industrial automation programs like Allen Bradley or Siemens?

Robert Futch:

Yeah, I do actually have a little bit of experience with ladder logic. And I can't say it was a lot of fun. But But my view is certainly tuned towards the application where I've needed it so far, in small business, and I'm sure you've probably had a similar experience where you need something versatile, something efficient for quick development, for automation, something that the engineers can, can program themselves and lead these One of the best examples of that, right?

Aaron Moncur:

Exactly, yeah, yeah, we found the same thing. Okay. Well, let's take a really quick short break here and just want to share with our listeners that the being an engineer podcast is powered by our parent company, pipeline design and engineering, where we work with engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures, jigs, or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. And you can find us at test fixture design.com. Alright, so jumping back into some of these questions. Robert, I see that you graduated with your bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, and it looks like you've gone back to school to get a masters, can you tell me a little bit about that? What What prompted you to go back to school,

Robert Futch:

I did just start, I actually just finished my first year going back for a master's in systems engineering. And it's been a fantastic first two semesters, I have to say, this, this sort of ties into what we were talking about earlier with the the widening breadth of experience that engineers are expected to have these days, right, where they're, they're looking for mechanical engineers to know, electrical and software. Well, they're also looking for mechanical engineers to know, project management, right. And systems, though the whole systems engineering side of it, and taking taking these first two semesters, it's really opened my eyes to that.

Aaron Moncur:

Very cool, that that must be a little stressful, and very busy being a CTO at a company that has quite a bit going on and going to school at the same time. How do you manage that?

Robert Futch:

I think it's, it's actually necessary. What I what I found was, we're, when we when we started this company in 2018. You know, it was it was just four of us, me as the mechanical engineer, and Bill was also very, very experienced engineer decades of experience in refrigeration. And also we had Chris and Monty who are subject matter experts for the, their, their medical expertise from from working, they were both in the army from serving in the army. And so there were there were the four of us trying to start this medical device company. And I think I realized pretty early on, that we were missing a systems engineering component. Right? And, and that I think, stresses me out, much more missing, missing that systems engineering component, than then having to go to school and run the business at the same time, at least, you know, now, now that I'm learning all of this, through the, through the masters of science and engineering, for masters of system engineering program, I feel much more comfortable knowing just knowing what I need to learn, right, or knowing what, what our business is missing in terms of systems engineering, so that we can work towards improving that part of the business.

Aaron Moncur:

And that goes back to the whole efficiency thing, right, especially as as kind of a smaller, newer business. The fact that you can have all of these different expertise under your belt and do all these different things makes you and thus the the company you're working for or that you're running really a powerhouse.

Robert Futch:

It absolutely does. And there was a fantastic chart that my very first class the you know, Introduction to systems engineering, that I really wish I had seen this earlier on. The professor showed a chart of how much systems engineers are expected to know in each of the different engineering categories. And they're expected to know everything about system engineering, right. And then they're also expected to know a little bit about every single other discipline of mechanical, electrical, and industrial and all, you know, software, all the other disciplines. And that's, I think that was a really powerful way to describe how important knowing Systems Engineering is for any kind of engineer that wants to be a leader.

Aaron Moncur:

That's a really good point. I don't think I've heard a systems engineer describing in quite those terms. It makes me think of kind of like the the radiologist of the engineering world having to know, a little bit or even a lot about a lot of the different branches of engineering? Very interesting. Absolutely. Let's see, you worked at a company called Ventana for a little while. And while you were there, I'm sure you did a variety of different things. One of the things you did was work on a tissue standing project, automated, I guess, robotics project, and you worked in combination with a group of scientists, is that right?

Robert Futch:

That's right. That was a wildly different experience from my previous job, right?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, in particular, I'm really interested to hear what it was like working with a group of scientists, and how that differed from working just with a group of engineers.

Robert Futch:

Absolutely, you know, working at Sundancer there were at most, I think there was probably 50 of us, you know, including all the production team and all the management everybody. But at Ventana, there's 1000s of people that work there, right. And if you include their parent company, Roche, its global, hundreds of 1000s of people, it's huge, huge company. So it was a total shift from one end of the spectrum of working in a small company working in one of the biggest companies in the world. Bet I bet. Yeah. So the the team that I was working with there was developing a brand new tissue staining robot, you know, they have their, their standard tissue standing robots that they've been developing over the past many years now, where, essentially, what it does is you, you get some sample of something that you that the doctor thinks might be cancerous, and you put the sample in the robot, and then the robot, the robot tells you, whether it's cancer or not. So they were, they were having us develop a brand new machine, that'll be faster, could process more samples at one time. And that's the team that I was working with there. And the team for just that one development project was 50 people, whereas, you know, the previous company was, it was 50 people total.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, so this is an environment in which you might not have individuals that have multiple areas of expertise, maybe you just have people who are specifically devoted to one really narrow subject is was that how it was or were there people who were, you know, kind of subject matter experts across a wider variety of topics.

Robert Futch:

There were definitely subject matter experts there. And I got this again, when I was working in the lab, and I was I was expecting or I was expecting that I would just be allowed to, you know, change the change the code myself, since I knew enough code to work on the robot. And then the software engineers are like, alright, well tell me what you want me to write, like, Oh, I could just do it myself. And like, wait, but you're a mechanical engineer? How do you know software?

Aaron Moncur:

Right. That's not supposed to be how the world works.

Robert Futch:

Exactly. And so a lot of them were surprised by that. But they were also relieved, right? They're like, Oh, finally, somebody that understands software in the mechanical engineering department, they're not going to make up some crazy requirements that I won't be able to meet. Interesting. Okay. So they welcomed it. I think I think they absolutely did. You know, it's not I'm not trying to take over their job, definitely. But the the increased communication was was certainly a boon to them. I could tell it's, it's similar to the relationship like, the really common one that people complain about is, oh, the, the engineers don't know anything about how to use a CNC machine. So they're going to design something that won't, that the, the guys on the production line, won't, won't be able to make, right. But it's becoming less of a problem now that the schools are teaching the engineers design for manufacturing and how to use the CNC machines. And then even on the other side, too, they're teaching the technicians, a little bit of engineering so that we can all meet in the middle with this wider breadth of information.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, it's things are changing, I guess. I mean, for a long time, everyone wanted to specialize in just one thing. But it seems like these days, that is no longer the case. And more and more individuals are having to take on, you know, multiple areas of skills. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about delta development team. So you folks design thermal systems there. And is it fair to say that because of the nature of how these thermal systems are used, that the lives can depend on the reliable reliability of the system?

Robert Futch:

Absolutely. I'll give My my little delta development description here, we're working on two products right now. It's a blood transport system that will go further and survive in more environments than anything else that's out there right now. So a portable refrigerator that can deliver blood anywhere in the world, right? And, and the other one is a blood and plasma warming and thawing device. So once the cold, cold blood gets to the location where they need it, they have to take out of the refrigerator and warm it up before they put it into the body of somebody that needs it. Right. So it's the right okay, these these two products is our the offender foundation of what delta is working on right now. The ability to deliver Cold Blood and warm it up to anybody that needs it in the whole world.

Aaron Moncur:

Does that put any pressure on you? I mean, the fact that what you're developing has to be so reliable because it could save a person's life someday. But what are your thoughts on that?

Robert Futch:

It does, it does make me think a little bit more carefully about making sure that we're following best practice, right. And that's part of the motivation for going back to school for systems engineering to is what I what I started learning in, in 2018. Before, before I started going back to school, but when we were starting the company, is I found, hey, all of this regulation, this looks familiar, this looks like what they're what the course list is for System Engineering, right? The the regulation for you know, ISO 1345, the medical device regulation, all of that can be you know, you don't have to just read the standard to, to figure out how that works. A system engineer would know ahead of time, without having to read the standard, the best practice,

Aaron Moncur:

what's what's been maybe one of the most exciting or memorable projects that you have worked on to date not even necessarily a delta, but it could be just in general, one of the most exciting or memorable projects you've worked on to date.

Robert Futch:

You know, of the the few projects I've worked on so far, and I've only only worked with these three companies. So far, I'm only 28 I'm thinking I'm most excited about what we're working on right now at Delta, because it is it is related to that being able to save lives. We're really trying to change how, how lives are saved right now we're currently, you know, when somebody gets injured, and they and they need blood, they, the hospital sends out the ambulance, and then the ambulance tries to keep you alive on the way back to the hospital. Right. But this, this is really game changing technology that we're working on right now. Where instead of trying to keep you alive on the way to the hospital, they could just bring the hospital to you, essentially, is what this blood transport good is.

Aaron Moncur:

So there's no product right now that will take the blood to the patient out in the field that so what you're working on a Delta isn't like, you know, an iterative improvement of something that's already out there. This is kind of a revolutionary new piece of tech or hardware. Is that accurate?

Robert Futch:

It really is. There's no there. There are some similar products out there that have attempted this before, but nobody's really nobody's gone all the way. And sort of a striking example of this is that there exist, you know, portable, refrigerated coolers, you can buy one for $50 on Amazon right now and put it in your car. Of course it's not medical grade, right. And but but that's what these hospitals are dealing with. I saw a report from the American Association of blood banks ABB and and they have pictures in there of hospitals transporting blood around in Coleman camping coolers right there and it was just extremely surprising that they're still using camping coolers to transport you know life saving blood organs, they're still moving hearts, livers in organs with ice from the refrigerator. Right I can

Aaron Moncur:

pretty much guarantee you that the assembly line worker in China did not intend for it to be used for that purpose.

Robert Futch:

Absolutely. And there's there's no accountability there. And they you know, they even describe in the report that the you know, these hospitals don't have any other choice. There's no technology out there to solve this problem and even the similar products that are out there, you know, this $50 cooler from from Amazon that you can plug in your car. You know, it's it's not that's not the intended use. It doesn't meet the It doesn't meet the need for medical grade products for a medical grade product that these these hospitals need.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, let's sobering. Good luck with all of that development. Very exciting. Yeah. How about any personal projects any any personal engineering ish projects, you're working on a large model rocket perhaps?

Robert Futch:

You know, it's I'm sure my life is consumed right now by you know, you're right going going to school to do system engineering and, and also also starting up this business since since 2018. I have had the time to do some some fun little side projects here and there. My brother and I are still trying to make video games in our spare time.

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, good for you. Yeah. So

Robert Futch:

we're, we're still doing that. When we have the time.

Aaron Moncur:

Fantastic. Something to, I guess, distract your mind from the very serious nature of the rest of your work, I guess. Right.

Robert Futch:

It is. It's it's serious. But it's still exciting.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah. How about vehicles? I mean, you mentioned that you were into vehicles at a young age. Are you doing anything these days with the cars or anything like that? Oh, sure.

Robert Futch:

I can't believe I forgot about that one. But that's, that's always a constant project, right. I've got a car that I like to take to the racetrack here in town all the time. So there's always something to do with that nice. You know, there's there's always kind of cars that Oh, it's a 135 BMW, so it's just, it's the smallest BMW but it's also the most fun one, right.

Aaron Moncur:

And by most fun, you mean, by most

Robert Futch:

fun. I mean, it's, it sort of acts like a go kart on the racetrack, you know, it's got a it's got a very short wheelbase. So. So when you're on on the racetrack, you can really whip it around the corners. But there's, there's always something fun to do with that, like, you know, making making carbon fiber parts for it, or trying to fashion or 3d print some kind of duct and thankfully, I have the skills from engineering and just from my other hobbies to be able to put that all together and, and have some fun with it.

Aaron Moncur:

You You are the quintessential engineer, Robert, you're into all this stuff, Legos and robotics and programming and cars and mechanical design. As a business owner, you are the kind of engineer that I would want to hire. Where Where do I go to find someone like you? Well,

Robert Futch:

I'm really sorry.

Aaron Moncur:

Like, do you meet somewhere? Is there a Starbucks that you guys hang out at? Where do I find? Find you guys?

Robert Futch:

I'm really flattered. I think it's it might be part of our nature as engineers that you know, all the people that that are like this. We don't we don't frequently gather in one place, right?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm the same way I love sitting in a quiet room by myself, there's almost no place I'd rather be for a lot of the time.

Robert Futch:

You know, it's it's that or, or the quiet room by myself for me is on the racetrack. It is just me in in the, you know, the room by myself inside the car. But that's that's one of the one of my favorite places to be.

Aaron Moncur:

I love it. I love it. Okay, well, what? One more question here before I let you go? What is? What are what are two of the biggest challenges that you have at work these days?

Robert Futch:

biggest challenges? I'd say. We're all learning a whole lot right now. In how to run a business, I think. And how to develop medical devices is is really what we're doing. Developing medical devices running medical device business. It's it's a lot different from from other types of engineering that are probably less regulated. If you were to if you were to pick the you know, the top two most regulated engineering business, which would you pick?

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, I'd probably say medical and aerospace.

Robert Futch:

Absolutely. You know, and maybe maybe I'd throw in any any type of thing that has to do with ATAR to like weapons or missiles, right. Yeah, sure. Defense. Oh, yeah. Defense, all those types of things. So, yeah, so definitely, it's it's one of the most heavily regulated industries but we're trying to use that to our advantage right now, where we're taking on this, this big challenge as a way to set us apart from the competition to set us apart from the you know, the the Coleman coupe lawyers that have their place. Right. But sure, but I don't think in the woods Right, right. But the I don't want the hospitals to have to rely on Coleman to please guys, can you make us some type of medical grade cooler? With what I think they really deserve? Is this dedicated medical grade technology?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, that's terrific. Robert, how can people get a hold of you? If they want to learn more about delta? Or they have questions for you? What's the best way?

Robert Futch:

We can go to our website? Delta, Dev team.com. That's delta d v. team.com. And there's a contact form on there. Or you can email info at Delta dev team calm.

Aaron Moncur:

Excellent. Robert, is there anything else that you'd like to share before we end?

Robert Futch:

I just really appreciate the time, and thanks for letting me join you today.

Aaron Moncur:

Absolutely. I really appreciate your time as well, Robert, it's been wonderful getting to know you hearing about your background. And best of luck with Delta dev team. That's phenomenal work you guys are doing there. Thank you very much. I'm Aaron Moncure, founder of pipeline design, and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixture design.com Thanks for listening