Xplosafe Chemical Safety Badges

I just found that some of my consulting work for Xplosafe has been featured in The Oklahoman! As you may have noticed, I have been so busy with real life, that I have been neglecting my website. Yet I am still among the living, and this article is proof of that. One of the things that have been taking up my time has been my consulting work designing the badges pictured in the Xplosafe article.

3D printed badges being used by Xplosafe
Images courtesy of NewsOK article. All rights belong to them.

The technology that Xplosafe has developed is really cool. There was lots of overlap between the Xplosafe work and what I was working on in my graduate work. I had a chance to become intimately familiar with their work. Essentially, they have developed a novel material that has properties which work wonderfully for adsorption related applications. One of those applications is chemical detection. The material readily adsorbs many compounds in the air with a strong binding constant. This means that when a contaminant sticks to the material, it stays there. Then, when energy is applied to the material, be it by heat or solvent, the adsorbed material is desorbed. This means we can analyze whatever was adsorbed over the course of a day.

Xplosafe has grants to make chemical safety badges with the novel material. My job has been designing the actual badges for them, since I have experience with CAD as well as the chemistry background to make appropriate design decisions. The article in the Oklahoman shows off some of the 3D printed versions of some of my designs. It has been loads of fun working with the Xplosafe guys on this project. I’m really excited that they are getting to show off in the media.

Edit: Fixed the link to the Xplosafe article going to the gallery.  Added photo from the article.