Pluto Mills
Prototype
Thus far we have used 3D printing to print a full sized prototype and have tested the basic working principle. In order to fully evaluate the thermal and structural properties, we need to build a stainless steel/aluminium prototype. We are currently awaiting the arrival of some funding which will allow us to proceed with the prototype testing. The device will be made using CNC milling from a single block of metal (unibody). This limits the number of parts and thus the things that can go wrong/break.
Our Potential
Clients
Our main clients will be research labs in industry and academia. Ball milling has many applications in many different fields (spanning from geology, metallurgy, biology, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, metal alloys, material science and more.), and combined with an efficient and cheap product we expect to gain a competitive advantage over the current products in the market.
Advertising and
Marketing Campaigns
We have carried out a brief patent search for similar inventions and we couldn't find any. However, the services of a patent professional are definitely going to be required to properly evaluate the patentability of our invention. The University's (Heriot-Watt) TTO is going to assist us with this in the coming weeks.
Creative Consulting
Concept Development
A potential disadvantage of our design is that our mill can be used for relatively small scale applications, (<500g), while other planetary mills can accommodate larger grinding jars (<5kg). In theory we can scale up our design to offer larger capacity, but i) Most applications use less than 500g of material and ii) scaling up the instrument will also increase its cost, which is one of its main advantages.
which can be used for routine material processing,
both in academic and industrial labs.