The past two years have been a whirlwind for 19-year-old Mancos resident Easton LaChappelle.
He's given a TED talk, landed a job with NASA, met the president, and last February, founded robotics company Unlimited Tomorrow in Cortez with the financial backing of celebrity motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Last week marked a new chapter for LaChappelle and his two-person team at Unlimited Tomorrow: The fledgling company packed up its Cortez shop and moved to a bigger space in Durango.
"We definitely needed to expand," LaChappelle said. "We saw that we could be more efficient with our processes working out of the Technology Center in Durango. . It's a really great work environment."
Dedicated to using 3-D printing and robotics to make more efficient and lower cost prosthetics, Unlimited Tomorrow's new space gives more room for its 10 3-D printers and CNC machine, LaChappelle says. The new space also better positions it near Fort Lewis College - where LaChappelle recruited his two employees - and other possible industry partners in Durango.
Now that the move is out of the way, the Unlimited Tomorrow team is delving into a crowdfunding campaign for its advanced open source designs for robotic arms. The designs can be used for building prosthetics as well as a STEM learning platform for schools. The company launched a GoFundMe page to raise money to offset development costs.
Another big project is finishing up the patent process for the company's ambitious exoskeleton project. LaChappelle's design slims down the bulk, improves battery life and lowers the price of existing technologies.
Because it is a medical device, the exoskeleton needs Food and Drug Administration approval to hit the mainstream market, and it must go through several rounds of clinical trials. LaChappelle says that when the time comes, he wants to keep the trials in the Four Corners region.
"We're going to try to stay local for the clinical trial. There is an FDA-registered institutional review board at Mercy, so it would be great to do something with them," he said, adding that it's too early to make that partnership.
Next month, Unlimited Tomorrow will make its cable TV debut on the Science Channel entrepreneur competition "All-American Makers."
Every week, the show features four top makers from around the U.S. who pitch their products to a panel of three experts featuring Printrbot founder and owner Brook Drumm, mechanical designer and robotics expert Brian Roe and venture capitalist Marc Portney.
"It's part 'SharkTank,' part 'How It's Made' and part 'Chopped,'" LaChappelle said.
The company's new location is a milestone, but LaChappelle says he doesn't want to grow the company too fast and detract from the mission.
"I think we're playing it smart right now. We don't want to expand that fast, so we can stay true to what we started out to do," he said. "I've traveled all over world, but I still have huge respect for this area and the people who start businesses here and build the industry."
