S6E4 Steve Maxson | Catheters, Heat Shrink Tubing, & Medical Device Extrusion Technology

In this episode, Steve Maxson shares his insights on the world of medical extrusion technology, including trends, innovations, and the importance of regulatory compliance. He discusses his career journey, the MEDEX podcast, the Medical Processing Panel (MPP) events, and collaborations that are driving advancements in the industry.

Main Topics:

• Steve Maxson's background and transition to medical extrusion technology
• Business development and technical challenges in the industry
• Trends in medical extrusion, including thin-walled tubing and material science
• The use of heat shrink tubing in medical devices
• Collaborations and innovations, such as the Chamfr platform
• The Medical Processing Panel (MPP) events and their impact
• Balancing innovation and regulatory compliance
• Advice for young engineers entering the medical device industry

About the guest: Steve Maxson is a distinguished figure in the medical device industry with over two decades of experience in extrusion technology and medical device manufacturing. As the owner of Maxson InSight Services, Steve offers technical solutions and consulting services, specializing in medical extruders and turnkey systems. In his role at US Extruders, he leads innovation and business development, focusing on crafting robust, customized extruders for diverse applications. Additionally, Steve is the host of the Med-Ex Podcast, where he interviews global experts in medical device contract manufacturing, sharing valuable insights into extrusion technologies, materials, processes, and broader industry trends. He also plays a pivotal role in organizing the Medical Processing Panel events, bringing together thought leaders in MedTech to discuss advancements in catheter manufacturing, silicone processing, thermoplastic processing, and more.

Links:
Steve Maxson - LinkedIn
Maxson InSight Services Website 

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Steve Maxson's Background and Career Journey
• 3:27 Transition to Medical Extrusion Technology
• 9:38 Business Development and Technical Challenges
• 11:17 The MEDEX Podcast and Industry Insights
• 13:12 Trends in Medical Extrusion Technology Trends in Medical Extrusion Technology
• 15:31 Heat Shrink Tubing in Medical Devices
• 19:26 Collaborations and Innovation in Medical Device Manufacturing
• 23:11 Medical Processing Panel (MPP) Events
• 29:21 Regulatory Compliance and Innovation
• 34:56 Advice for Young Engineers

Transcript

Steve Maxson: 0:00

You know these it takes time at night, during the weekends, but I think before you do all that, you really have to be passionate about it. You have to be really interested in it. And if you're not, I don't know, I don't think that you'd put that work in.

Aaron Moncur: 0:28

Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast today. Our guest is Steve Maxson, a distinguished figure in the medical device industry with over two decades of experience in extrusion technology and medical device manufacturing. As the owner of Maxson InSight Services, Steve offers technical solutions and consulting services, specializing in medical extruders and turnkey systems. In his role at US Extruders, he leads innovation and business development, focusing on crafting robust, customized extruders for diverse applications. Additionally, Steve is the host of the Med-Ex Podcast, where he interviews global experts in medical device contract manufacturing, sharing valuable insights into extrusion technologies, materials, processes, and broader industry trends. He also plays a pivotal role in organizing the Medical Processing Panel events, bringing together thought leaders in MedTech to discuss advancements in catheter manufacturing, silicone processing, thermoplastic processing, and more.I feel like that intro just goes on and on. You're doing and have done so many things already. Steve, welcome to the show, and thank you for being with us today.

Steve Maxson: 1:40

Thanks, Aaron. I'm glad to be on here and look forward to our conversation.

Aaron Moncur: 1:45

All right. Well, you're not doing correct me. If I'm wrong, I could be wrong here. I don't think you're doing a lot of day to day engineering work right now. You're mostly focused on kind of a business development role. Is that accurate? Yeah,

Steve Maxson: 1:59

I am a, you know, the business development that that I'm in is very technical and highly engineered. So I got involved with engineers and engineering all the time.

Aaron Moncur: 2:11

So what, what was it that made, made you decide to become an engineer?

Steve Maxson: 2:16

Well, it kind of runs in the family era, and my grandfather, Donald Maxon, was a very prestigious welding engineer back in the day welding ship hulls during the World War Two. Has a lot of patents on some of those welding processes now expired, of course, but so and my father was an electrical engineer at a company called Davis standard for many years, 47 years, actually, wow, a company that's that was Davis standards, a company that's been around since 18 the 1850s so to speak. So he was an engineer there for 47 years. And I went to school as a mechanical engineer because I knew I was probably going to be an engineer, but I took a drafting course in high school, and had a really good drafting teacher, and he said, if you're good at drafting, if you like mechanical things, then maybe Mechanical Engineering would be a good fit. So that's what I did.

Aaron Moncur: 3:15

That's funny. I had a similar experience in high school. I took a drafting course, and it was probably the one of the most interesting courses I took in high school that and there's a physics class that I really liked a lot, but it was so fun just drawing out the, you know, the different isometric views. And I was, I was hooked.

Steve Maxson: 3:34

Yeah, that did it for me.

Aaron Moncur: 3:37

Well, you your career is really focused on extrusion technology catheters. For sure, there are probably other medical device focused extrusion technologies that we'll talk about as well. But how did you get into that area of the industry?

Steve Maxson: 3:56

So as I mentioned, I went to school as a mechanical engineer, and then I followed my father's footsteps and worked at a company called Davis standard as a mechanical engineer. And I noticed there was a guy there that sold medical extrusion systems. And I said, That's pretty interesting. What is this guy up to? And so I took the initiative to try to understand what he did. And after a while, I just I was so intrigued by the medical extrusion aspect that I wanted to work for him. So I was able to work for him as a project engineer, managing the large projects and putting together the all the layout drawings that showed all the utilities. And every once in a while he would invite me to a meeting, and I just said, this is what I want to do. I want to be like this guy, Charlie sparcino, at Davis standard and sell medical extrusion lines. So that was that hooked me. And then I was allowed to go to the MD and M East trade show the first time in New York City. And I've been going to those medical shows ever since, so I've been in that space for a long time now. How

Aaron Moncur: 5:07

cool that you had such a wonderful mentor at a young age. I love that you used the phrase, I took the initiative, because a lot of people maybe would have heard about this guy or observed this guy, what he was doing, and thought that's cool, that's interesting, but then not done anything about it, and you grabbed the bull by the horn, so to speak, and made it happen for yourself. Do you remember what were one of the, or two of the things that were particularly interesting for you is you observed this mentor of yours? Yeah.

Steve Maxson: 5:35

So that's a good point about the initiative. I remember, actually, I had to go in and do this type of work with him on my own time, extra time, my full time job wasn't from the medical but I came in at nights and just to be part of that group. So there is something to be said for that initiative to you know that work ethic. If you really want something, you have to go after it, and that's what I did. And I noticed that when we'd walk around the shop the plant that was before cell phones, he was always being paged Charlie, spare, see no dial, 010, and he was always picking up the phone because it was always a purchase order that he was getting new medical extrusion system, and he'd say the name, and I started to recognize some of the medical device OEMs, and I go into the trade show, and it all started to kind of come together. And I left Davis standard with a couple other people that left to start a company called American Kuna, and I was hired on about a year after they started that organization as an engineer again, and I actually started the the medical division within American Kuna. It was kind of a startup extrusion company, and I started the medical extrusion division, or business unit, and spent over 20 years visiting all the medical device contract manufacturers, OEMs throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and really developed and a huge network of contacts and a pretty good understanding of all the capabilities of All these different organizations.

Aaron Moncur: 7:20

There are a few different types of extrusion. Would you spend just a minute talking about the type of extrusion that you're focused on and just really basic, you know what? What is the core technology of extrusion? How does it work? What kind of shapes are you producing? Yeah.

Steve Maxson: 7:35

So it's a melt process where you starting with a pellet or a resin feeding into a hopper, and you have a single screw or a twin screw where you're putting shear into the polymer and heat, and you're melting it and pushing it through a dye to make in this case, you know, thin wall medical tubing like this, or tiny medical tubing like this. I know you can't see if you're listening, but I'm showing some pictures of different medical tubing samples. That's the area that I focus in. But extrusion is very wide range of different applications, from sheet extrusion for like truck bed liners to profile extrusion for all your rigid PVC window frames, corrugated pipe, rigid PVC pipe, all your synthetic fibers for clothing are extruded. The extrusion is ubiquitous. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 8:33

it's all over the place. We use T slot extrusion for structural framing for machines that we build. What are so specifically in the the medical device area? What are a few common places where extrusion technology is used for manufacturing? Yeah,

Steve Maxson: 8:55

one of the more higher volume, although more of a commodity, medical extrusion is tubing that's used outside of the body for fluid management or the delivery of drugs, different reagents, solutions to the body, like IV and then drainage, taking things out away from the body during A procedure. Also respiratory tubing, you know, if somebody is on a CPAP or something like that, or some kind of, you know, gas or reagent or agent during a procedure. So that's kind of the outside of the body medical extrusion, and then inside the body for catheters that are being delivered through the anatomy, those are much smaller, thinner walled tubing made from P Bax, nylon polyurethanes and all these biocompatible materials that are used to develop a composite catheter shaft, nice and

Aaron Moncur: 9:56

going back to business development just for a second. And I imagine there might be some some engineers listening to this, thinking, Hmm, I am an engineer right now. I do the, you know, boots on the ground engineering work, but business development, that sounds kind of interesting. Can you go through just a little bit? What is it like being in business development with an engineering background? You mentioned how a lot of the work that you do is pretty technical in nature, and so having that engineering background, I imagine, is a huge boon to you and your company.

Steve Maxson: 10:28

Yeah, it's helped me a lot through my career. Being an engineer and technical in a commercial or business development role, you have a good understanding of, you know, the technical challenges, and you can come up with solutions and then get engineers involved, higher level engineers than I am, that can, you know, get into more detail. There is a downside to that. You know, there's a saying that if you're ready to close a deal, if you're a salesperson, you have the final meeting with your customer. The last thing you want to do is bring an engineering to that meeting, right? Because we're going to come up with ways to change it and like, now, yeah, we've developed the spec. We're ready to close the deal. We don't need you. Hey, have you considered this or that? So there is a time and place for it.

Aaron Moncur: 11:17

That's a really good point. Yeah, really good point. You also have your own podcast, the MEDEX podcast. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah,

Steve Maxson: 11:26

a couple years ago, at the large medical device trade show out in Anaheim, California, I was having breakfast with a marketing person that works for me, and I said, you know, we should create a podcast where we talk about all the opportunities challenges in medical extrusion and catheter development. And he said, Yeah, let's think about that. I just kind of let it go. And then three months later, he's like, Okay, I figured out how we can do this. I got the software that we need. I'm going to send you a mic and headphones and and we just stuck, Okay, I gotta get a guest. I got a couple guests, and we just, we just dove right into it and learned along the way. And how was that

Aaron Moncur: 12:10

for you did? Was it pretty comfortable for you getting started? Was there much of a learning curve?

Steve Maxson: 12:16

Definitely it wasn't comfortable for me. It was the first time. It's still, you know, there's always learning too, right? We're always learning and figuring out ways to enhance things. But at the end of the day, content is king, right? So, yeah, you might have some not, maybe then not, might have the best visuals or things like that, or editing. But at the end of the day, content really drives the how interesting the conversation is and how many people might be interested in listening to it. Absolutely,

Aaron Moncur: 12:49

I wholeheartedly agree it's I think it's wonderful these days that there's not a huge barrier to entry. I mean, you have a microphone and you have an internet connection and you can kind of get started right. If you have great content, people are going to listen to it. A lot of the people listening to this podcast are in the medical device industry. Not all of them, a good, a good portion of them are, what are some of the most significant trends that that you see in specifically the the medical extrude, extrusion technology,

Steve Maxson: 13:20

yeah, yeah, when you're I talked about the different types of medical tubing used outside the body, inside the body. So if you're delivering a catheter through a vessel, you're limited on the OD of the tubing that's used or the catheter that's used through the vessel. So if you want to put more things into the inner lumen, inner diameter. Drugs, devices, other catheters, you need more space. You want to always maximize the ID, and so you can't change the OD. So that puts pressure on the wall thickness, and we call that profile. And so for catheter development, extrusion, medical extrusion profile is king. We want the thinnest wall thickness we can get while maintaining functionality. So we can put more and more into the lumen or within the catheter. So examples like I showed you, or talked about before, real thin wall, higher diameter tube, like a half inch OD tube with like, a six thou wall. This is, they're really an advancement in medical extrusion. Here's a real tiny, you know, 40 thou ID tube with a two thou wall, so thinner and thinner wall thickness is made from super soft, compliant materials. Is really where things are headed,

Aaron Moncur: 14:41

wow. So there's really kind of a combination there between like a material scientist that's developing the material and then the manufacturing engineers that are working on the equipment that's going to extrude that material. Is that right? That's

Steve Maxson: 14:55

absolutely right. And I'm glad you brought that up, Aaron, because the leaders in this. Ace. The companies that really drive innovation know how to convert material or polymer science to medical extrusion company like Zeus, for instance, you look at look at their web page and all the variety of polymer science and extrusion technologies they have, from Flora polymers to bio reabsorbables to super thin wall tubing, companies like that that convert a polymer science into extrusion technology. Putnam plastics is another one, renegade medical extrusion spectrum plastics. These folks are the leaders. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 15:39

yeah, amazing. Back in the day before I started pipeline, I worked at a company doing medical device development, and I remember we used heat shrink tubing a lot, and I thought it was one of the coolest materials or components, whatever you want to call it, that I had ever worked with. Because for those of you listening who aren't familiar with heat shrink tubing, it's exactly what the description, the name sounds like. You apply a heat, and it shrinks. It starts at a larger diameter. You apply heat, it shrinks to a smaller diameter. And can you tell us a little bit about where? Where's heat shrink tube being used in the medical industry? I I'm guessing that you have quite a bit of experience with that.

Steve Maxson: 16:22

Yeah, good question, and an interesting topic, because heat shrink tubing is very is pervasive within medical device manufacturing and medical devices, and it's it's kind of split up between being a process aid to help you make or fabricate a catheter and heat shrink tubing that actually stays on the product. So for the first set of tubing that would be used as the manufacturing aid only, it's not part of the product. Is FEP heat shrink tubing. That's probably the most popular heat shrink tubing in med tech, volume wise, and it's from Flora polymer or FEP, typically like a 10 thou wall. And it's placed over a composite catheter shaft that has a composite, different a liner, a braid material, different outer jackets. And the FEP heat shrink tubing is placed over that, and it's put through an oven, time and temperature, and it heats and compresses all those materials together to fabricate a composite catheter shaft, and then it's peeled away and discarded. So that's the biggest heat shrink tubing used in med tech. There are other types of heat shrink, like I said, that stay on the product like a P, E, T, heat shrink, which is super thin wall, maybe one and a half, one and a half tents down to one and a half tents, super thin wall that would be used to has really good insulation properties. It might be used to protect the braid wire at the end of a shaft to encapsulate it, and again, that would stay on the Part A P backs heat shrink is another one that's interesting, kind of a newer heat shrink tubing that when it's heated, it little compressed to its substrate and stay on the catheter. It's often used to cover a laser cut hypotube, for instance. And then there's polyolefin heat shrink. That's a polyethylene based heat shrink also used as an insulation cover. So those are a couple of the examples of different heat shrink tubing used in med tech.

Aaron Moncur: 18:35

We worked on a device a little while ago that was a transeptile needle. I think it was, and it's not. It's not really a needle. Those of you in medical devices, you're probably very familiar with that, but when I first heard of it, I thought we're going to be getting something sharp anyway. That's wasn't the case. It's just called a transept needle, but at the tip there's an electrode. And then they used, it was about maybe a three foot long, very thin metal shaft, and they used heat shrink to cover the entire shaft, except for the very distal tip, where, you know, I don't know, five millimeters were exposed as as an electrode to do its business inside the body. That was a recent area I saw heat shrink tubing used in medical devices. That's

Steve Maxson: 19:18

interesting. The transeptile access going to the other side of the heart. Most of these more modern catheters or delivery systems need to have some steer ability so that they can do that, and it starts with access. To access the other side of the heart. You have to do the transeptal procedure, like you said, and that used to be more of a mechanical puncture, but with the this is, now, like you mentioned, it's more of a RF or some kind of energy that's used that's less invasive.

Aaron Moncur: 19:48

Yeah, this one was interesting. It did not have any steer ability. It was a stainless steel shaft. And I don't, I don't really know how they got it in. Maybe, I don't think there was even a guide wire access for. It the interesting, interesting product. Well, let me take a very short break here and share with the listeners that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services, Learn more at Team pipeline.us. The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. Learn more at the wave. Dot, engineer, we're privileged today to be speaking with Steve Maxson. So Steve, one of the collaborations that you have started is with a company called chamfr, and we've actually had Julie from chamfr here as a guest on the show as well. I think what they're doing is very cool. How do, how do these partnerships, in your experience, facilitate innovation and increase efficiency for engineers in this field. Yeah.

Steve Maxson: 21:04

You know, chamfer is a great company, and I told you how I love the space. I put my money where my mouth is too, and invest in some of these businesses. Yeah. So there's a couple companies that I've invested in, and I just think they're rock star people, the organizations, and the concept is great, chamfer is really created a paradigm shift in how catheter designers develop and are in New catheters where they can get their hands on 1000s of different components through the chamfer store and have it on their desk, literally the next day if they need it. And so they can iterate and try different prototypes. And maybe once they do that, they can get to kind of a point where they say, where they might be buying a tube or or a component off a chamfer, they can reach out to that customer and said, Hey, I tried some of this tubing, or a hypotube that you had on chamfer. It looks good, but really, I need to change the diameter by, you know, increase the diameter by a couple thou, change a few things, and it creates more of a customized solution for everybody. So it's really a win win, and it's really had a major impact on the industry to really reduce development times. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 22:26

because before, and I remember going through this 1520, years ago, when I was working on a catheter product, in order to get samples, maybe you could find something off the shelf. But if you're looking for anything that was even close to custom. You had to order a short run of this, of the tubing, the extrusion that was expensive, not just in dollars, but in time, a lot of time, right? And so now you can go to chamfer and order off the shelf samples. They might not quite have exactly what you want, but sometimes they do, and if they don't, they probably have something pretty close, at least for R D

Steve Maxson: 23:03

right? Speed is king in R D, speed

Aaron Moncur: 23:06

is king, that's right. Yeah, you have also helped to organize an event called the medical processing panel. I'd love to just understand more what, what has been your involvement there, and tell us a little bit about the event and how engineers are benefiting from it. Yeah, thanks.

Steve Maxson: 23:25

It's kind of a spin off Aaron of the podcast, so let's create content at a nice venue, not a stuffy hotel. We try to do it at a nice golf course or something where there is a lot of good visual displays and nature and things like that, and not like I said in a stuffy hotel. And so we don't, we don't really have any PowerPoint presentations. There's no death by PowerPoint. There's no sales pitches. There's no sales people getting up there trying to sell their products. It's just open conversation like we're having now with subject matter experts in different fields of medical extrusion, catheter technologies, molding and, you know, the miniaturization of medical devices, so there's usually really good moderators that kind of drive everything for each panel session. And we have really great subject matter experts, and we talk about some of the industry challenges and opportunities that we're all facing.

Aaron Moncur: 24:25

We'll have links in the show notes. But for those who are just listening and maybe forget to look at the show notes, where can people go to find out more about MPP? Yep,

Steve Maxson: 24:35

we're going live with the agenda for MPP East next week, probably when this is live. That'll be June 1 at UMass Lowell in the Boston area. And we're going to have four different panel sessions, catheter technologies, thermoplastic and thermal set processing. So we're going to combine the thermal. Plastics with like the silicone and the and the polyimide with other, you know, melt processes. And we're going to have a panel session on the miniaturization of med tech, so micro extrusion, micro molding, micro 3d printing. And then we're going to have a new panel session dedicated to Nikki. Is the most magical material ever, right? And it is. It's like magic, not just the material. There's all these different processes that go into night and all. So we're going to have subject matter experts related to melting, gun drilling, tube drawing, laser processing and chemical processing as well. Very

Aaron Moncur: 25:41

cool. And there are, I think, three different MPP events. Is that right east, west and Minnesota? West

Steve Maxson: 25:49

east and Minnesota. And then soon, we'll be heading out to Ireland.

Aaron Moncur: 25:53

Fantastic. So what? What kinds of engineers would benefit the most medical device, especially those working in catheters, any other discipline of engineer that would be particularly well suited to attend,

Steve Maxson: 26:07

yeah, anybody, leaders, engineers that are involved in med tech, interventional catheter technologies would be would learn a lot. Like I said, there's no sales pitches. There's no death by PowerPoint. It's all content and some pretty good food.

Aaron Moncur: 26:26

Good food. You had me there, okay? And I think that you have some information there about like, venture capital as well. Is that accurate?

Steve Maxson: 26:35

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. But we just started to do that at the last event MPP West that was held in the Salt Lake City area, and I was a little reluctant to do it, but the private equity involvement in med tech and contract manufacturing, it's integral, right? It's a huge part of raising capital, bringing resources in to grow, to meet the demand. And we had the first private equity panel, and it was really good. Actually. People loved it, because these folks there, they own companies that are in the space. They see the tailwinds, they see the headwinds. And they were able to share a lot of those, you know, trends, and most all of them are really optimistic, too. About 2025,

Aaron Moncur: 27:23

so you talk about a variety of things. You the panel. The panelists speak about a lot of different things. At MPP, catheter manufacturing, you mentioned the minute, miniaturization, micro through D printing. What are some of the technologies or trends that that you are most excited about over the next several years in med tech.

Steve Maxson: 27:43

Yeah, there's, there's a lot going on right now. I wouldn't say it's exciting to me, but it's important. The the flora polymers, and the P, T, F, E, and the P fast potential regulations. Everybody's kind of waiting to see how that'll turn out. We all believe that, you know, there'll be an exception for medical when you think about PTFE. It's one of the most American, amazing polymers ever, and it's used to cover stents, for instance, and all kinds of minimally invasive applications, implantable. And when we implant a PTFE component as part of a catheter, we want it to maintain its integrity throughout its life. So they say it's a forever chemical. That's the point. We want it to stay. You know, use it patent. We want to maintain its integrity for the life while it's in the in vivo. So we're hoping that that'll be an exception. But in the meantime, a lot of people are looking at alternatives to PTFE for for some of those properties. So there's a lot of work and development going on to look at these alternative materials. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 28:54

So you, you do a variety of things, right? You have your own consultancy, you you work in business development, a technical aspect of business development. At US extruders, you have the podcast you have, I shouldn't say you, I guess, but you're heavily involved in the MPP conference, I imagine. At US extruders, this, this next topic is something that you have to deal with, and I'm curious to hear if you and your team have come up with some best practices that you can share, but there's always this kind of pull and tug between innovation on one side and regulatory compliance on the other side, and the two at times can be at odds with one another. Have you found any best practices to kind of accommodate both at the same time? Yeah,

Steve Maxson: 29:40

I think you know how we had the conversation of being an engineer who really helps in business development for technical products. The same time you have to be have a pretty good understanding of the regulatory landscape and how device devices go through these different. Phases in order to get approved, five, take five. Can 10, k1 approval, and OQ, pq, all these different regulatory aspects of a medical device. You really need to understand that so that you can see the whole picture. Because if you don't, then you're kind of in the dark. So it's, I would highly recommend. I mean, I have, there's a lot of smart regulatory people that I work with. Luckily, I'm not one, but I have really smart people that are in that space. But you have to understand that regulatory process for approval of a device, because it it's not like a more industrial application. If you develop something, get it on the market, there's a pathway that has to be followed very strictly in order to get to that next phase to go into production, and that could take two to three to five years. So you need to understand that regulatory path. And more and more the medical device OEMs are pushing more activities and services onto the contract manufacturing manufacturers, including more regulatory

Aaron Moncur: 31:05

Oh, that's interesting. Okay, that's a good segue into this next question. If I'm a young engineer really interested getting into medical devices, what are some of the skills or traits or industry knowledge that I should start developing to be successful?

Steve Maxson: 31:22

That's a good question, because, you know, I wanted to learn as much as I could, and I couldn't find a lot out there until I discovered Google patents. And, you know, you think about reading patents, not the most exciting thing thing in the world, but there's a lot of good information if you want to learn about simple procedures like angioplasty, to start with. Basically all the patents for angioplasty were came out of a company called sign that, which is Boston sign now in Minneapolis. So it just, you just got to look into you got to research these things, talk to people as much as you can, and learn as much as you can, because it really is an awesome space to be in. I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be in any other space. What

Aaron Moncur: 32:04

are a couple of your favorite things about being in the medical device industry?

Steve Maxson: 32:10

The people you can't beat, the people that we work with, from the engineers, the commercial people, the organizations, there's just some beautiful blue chip medical device companies out there, Siemens, Boston, scientific medtronics, WL, Gore, Abbott, Edwards, life sciences. These are all great companies to do business with, and they all these companies, treat their customers and their contract manufacturers with a high level of respect.

Aaron Moncur: 32:39

I can attest to that, without naming names, we do work for some of these companies, and they really have been wonderful to deal with. One of the questions I like asking all of our guests is, what is one thing that you have done or observed to accelerate the speed of engineering? There's

Steve Maxson: 32:59

a couple things now, you know, we talked about chamfer that's one right have access to components very quickly for the development or engineering of medical devices. There's, there's a lot of different simulation tools that you can use to simulate how a catheter will function for its given application, their software tools, you can build a catheter base, basically on a computer with a program and understand how it'll deflect, understand the the torsional aspects, the how it, you know, torque and the tensile strength. And then you can actually build a prototype from that and test it out on some pretty good fixtures and things. Companies like machine solutions have really good ways to test out catheters where there's load cells in different areas. You can look at the force at different areas within the tortuous anatomy, and what's happening now. Contract manufacturers like told you how everything's being pushed down from the OEMs to the contract manufacturers, and one of the major aspects is bio simulation. Companies like switchback medical and Minnesota area resolution medical, they have full suite of the ability to test devices on real cadavers with full visualization fluoroscopy, MRI, CT, so that you can really take things to the next step. Because you there's kind of, you know, the animals are kind of falling out of favor. People don't want to use animals for different clinical reasons. So the biosim Labs is another area where, you know, the contract manufacturers are going beyond extrusion and molding and building catheters to being able to really test these devices on real cadavers, under pumping blood and you know, those type of situations.

Aaron Moncur: 34:56

Yeah, yeah. So having access to Phantom. Environments in which you can quickly test your product, right? Right? I want to bring up one other thing that I thought of earlier, when you were talking about the early days in your career, and you had this mentor, and he kind of took you under his wing and showed you some things, but you were doing a lot of this on your own time. It wasn't, uh, paid work, right? And I think I sound old saying this right when I was a kid and this generation, this and that. But about I young engineers approach me a lot, and they ask me, How can I? How can I get better, really fast? And I a lot of them, the answer they don't want to hear, is spend more time. But that's, I think, a huge part of it is, one way to accelerate the speed of engineering is to spend more time. I'm not suggesting that everyone should go out and work 60, 7080, out or we that, obviously that's not sustainable or healthy. But you know, if you put in an extra five hours over time, that really adds up to to a lot, just like you did. And I'm sure the time that you spent putting in the work at no charge you know you weren't being compensated for, that probably opened up a lot of doors and opportunities that otherwise may not have been available to you.

Steve Maxson: 36:16

That's a good point, and that work ethic that I had back then I still have, now, right doing things instead of have the side business you mentioned, and you know these, it takes time at night, during the weekends, but I think before you do all that, you really have to be passionate about it. You have to be really interested in it. And if you're not, I don't know. I don't think that you'd put that work in if you didn't,

Aaron Moncur: 36:45

yeah, yeah. You need to have some kind of purpose that's driving those activities. Yep,

Steve Maxson: 36:52

absolutely.

Aaron Moncur: 36:56

One more, one more point on that. I also thought about this author, Earl Nightingale, who's passed away for some he's been passed away for some time now, but he has this wonderful book or audio program called lead the field. And one of the things he talks about, I think, he makes this really beautiful analogy about putting the work in before you get the result. He uses the analogy of a fire, and the heat from the fire would be the result that you're looking for, but you don't get that heat until you put the fuel in, right? Put the logs into the fire. You're never just going to have the heat without putting the logs in. And I always thought that was such a nice analogy for life, right? You're never going to get the success that you're looking for until you put those logs in, the work, the time, the effort,

Steve Maxson: 37:43

yeah, and sometimes, you know, a lot of times, you don't get paid for that 100%

Aaron Moncur: 37:49

Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. All right, Steve, Well, thank you so much for for being on the show today. What a delight it's been getting to know you and hearing some of your industry insights and wisdoms. How can people get in touch with you? Yeah,

Steve Maxson: 38:05

they can look. They can check me out on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there, posting at least once a week. You could look at my website, Max and insight services.com, and you could also email me at S max and 909@gmail.com

Aaron Moncur: 38:22

wonderful again. Thank you so much.

Steve Maxson: 38:23

Steve, this has been fun. Aaron, thank you for having me.

Aaron Moncur: 38:27

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave. Dot, engineer, thank you for listening.