Resume of Mr. Malcolm E. Taylor – Senior Staff Engineer

Mr. Taylor is an accomplished design engineer with over 40 years of experience in the development of automated, high speed machinery, electromechanical devices, and high precision instrument design and high volume molded product design. Mr. Taylor has designed equipment both in England and the United States for use in the manufacture, assembly, and packaging of commercial products under high speed conditions. He has been responsible for the management, specification, acquisition, installation, and debugging of totally automated sequential operations for production machinery.

Mr. Taylor has been involved in the development of safety and arming mechanisms for the military and spent many years in razor product development and production automation. He holds patents for various packaging systems, medical products and food processes. His areas of expertise include: Mechanical design; Materials (metallurgy, polymers, adhesives, etc.); Material forming technology (molding, casting, extrusion, laminating, stamping, etc.); Fluid metering; Materials joining, CO60, electron beam and ethylene oxide sterilization technology; Manufacturing facility integration (start-up, semiautomatic, high speed assembly/packaging, and incoming inspection through automatic warehousing and just-in-time operation).

At Foster-Miller for 28 years, Mr. Taylor's expertise in production systems and product development lies in the automatic assembly or processing of multiple parts, packaging of products, and design/build of medical devices - disposable and reusable. He is responsible for the design and development of production equipment and product development in the following Foster-Miller programs:

Novel blood bag design in which blood collection, freeze drying, and storage can be accomplished in one bag, through the use of a ported diffusion membrane design. The membrane can be discarded after freeze drying and port sealing.

Air transportable equipment to facilitate pilot production of NaOH, LiOH and KOH caustics and H2O2 mixing/storage for use on Air Force COIL lasers. Facility is capable of formulations blended to an accuracy of 0.5 percent with 1600 gal storage. Crystalline caustics are stored and mixed with water on demand.

A needle-less BChE bio-scavenger injector is being developed and is being designed for in-field use. The driving force is from compressed argon, dispensing drug from four cylinders, simultaneously, in quantities of 1/2 cc per cylinder. Foster-Miller has reduced the liquid quantity from 12 cc to 2 cc by reformulation and increased viscosity.

A nano-spinning (or electro-spinning) facility has been developed at Foster-Miller, capable of producing nanometer diameter polymer fibers from solution and forming them into thin mats or membranes. The membranes offer very high surface area for many types of wet and dry filtration applications. We have

demonstrated multi-spinneret capability and feasibility for forming wide web widths at reasonable throughput rates.

Part of team developing a semi-disposable colonoscope, incorporating molded or stamped components and multiple low friction guide wires.

Developed an implantable compliance chamber for use with a fully implanted artificial heart. The flexing membrane and body is largely made up of liquid crystal polymer.

Investigated problems inherent with the foil packaging of inhalable dry drug loaded powders and the accurate dispensing thereof, using compressed air or patient inhalation. Correct handling of tribo-static electric and moisture issues are critical to reliable operation.

Disposable transdermal drug delivery patch development using hydrogels and utilizing both passive and electro-osmotic/phoretic driver methodology, plus a full complement of production machinery for high volume requirements.

Automatic machinery development for razor blade strip handling, clean break and magazine stacking - 1200 ppm.

Laboratory nano-fiber electro-spinning and concept development of various pieces of high volume production equipment.

Multilayer medical diagnostic strip (sensor) development for high speed/high volume requirement, using micro and nano fluids dispensing methodologies. Both laser and automatic press die cutting.

Barrier packaging systems development for the military.

Implantable, live insulin product development, including unique containment/membrane technology.

Dental drug delivery product casting, die cutting, separation and packaging system.

High speed, retort food processing and packaging with optimum heat exposure.

Automatic packaging equipment design and development for thermoplastic, pressure sensitive adhesive product. Packaging consisted of thermoformed and impulse welded modified resorbable polyethylene.

Cylindrical dry powder medication inhalation device for asthmatics, including disposable foil blister packaging system for the powder medication. This patented device is hand held and contains 30 doses of sequentially accessible drug.

Automatic surgical needle and suture packaging equipment, including robotics handling.

Braided catheter development to reduce the number of process steps. Also some work to reduce manufacturing costs of guide wire controlled urinary catheters.

High speed plastic bag manufacturing, stacking, folding and cartoning. Six lanes, speeds to 1000/min per lane.

Fish log distributor automation (80 3-lb logs/min). The design involves conveyor handling from saws, distribution from two-lane input to nine-lane output, and a programmable controller timed gate system.

Two versions of an insulin dispenser product design (high volume). These products are industry "firsts" and patented. Designed for active diabetics, the products are reusable and include injection molded components.

Binary bottle product design (high volume). Design goals of this patented product include dual hostile liquids separation, mixing upon opening, novel sealing, and injection and blow molded components.

High speed custom labeler (1000 labels/min). Product features include: continuous and indexed motion, bulk infeed of product, magazine loading at discharge, cam controlled, microprocessor controlled vacuum, sensors and thermal controls, roll fed "heat seal" labels, wax product.

Developed an automatic system for coating P.E.T. bottles with plasma deposited glass.

Mr. Taylor's other accomplishments at Foster-Miller include the following:

Glass Sample QC Machine - Foster-Miller developed a 36 station indexing table with samples on a 30 in. pitch diameter to inspect automatically QC lens samples with a colorimeter and spectrophotometer. The machine cycle was approximately 30 min long with measurements made under ultraviolet light or darkness. The total machine program and resulting QC information storage were handled by an in-house computer.

Filter Assembly System - Foster-Miller was contracted to automate a portion of the assembly system for a major manufacturer of hydraulic filters. Designs were presented for the proposed section of the assembly line and recommendations for the automation of the complete line were made. These recommendations were accepted and approved.

Copier Assembly Line - An optomechanical copy reduction system was designed and tested for retrofitting to an existing copier. Manufacturing engineering was implemented along with assembly area design. Assistance was given in installation, startup and operator instruction.

Orthopedic Bandage Packaging Facility - This facility required a controlled environment with 0.05 percent humidity, temperature and static electricity controls. The system automatically dried, coated, rolled, packaged, weighed, and discharged the bandage through an airlock. The package was purged and filled with N2 before sealing (25 packages/min x 2 lines).

Electrode Manufacture - Designs included a 60/min rotary indexer assembly and a 100/min linear indexing on a pre-die cut web. Other features included on-line printing, labeling, inspection, and ultrasonic welding.

In-house Die Cutting Facility - Automatic feed and rewind with automatic scrap removal to 250 strokes/minute - combination punch and steel rule die.

Beverage Dispenser Redesign - A microprocessor controlled dispenser was designed with built-in refrigerator, water reservoir, pressurized carbonator, pump, mix valves, CO2 bottle and molded components. Facility layout provided throughput of 1 unit/min.

Coax Wire/Connector Assembly Machine - This fully automatic assembly, stripping and inspection system has 48 station rotary indexer base (30 assemblies/min). Size range: 1 ft to 18 ft wire lengths

Wet/Dry Binary Syringe Assembly Machine and Wet/Dry Binary I.V. Bag Manufacturing Machine - These systems employ sterile manufacturing and include fully automatic operation, on-line web sterilization and automatic inspection (45 to 100 units/minute).

High Volume Drug Packaging Line - The system incorporated 11 distinct operations: unscrambling, cleaning, dividing, filling, cottoning, capping, labeling, cartoning, weighing, bundling, casing, etc. (Output: 250/p/m).

Mr. Taylor also managed a program to design, develop, install and place into production a transdermal drug dispensing device for patients with angina. The system produces 200 filled and sealed units per minute from an input of raw materials mixing and reeled materials.

Another filling system for which Mr. Taylor was responsible was a high-speed net weigher. This development involved volumetric dispensing of lyophilized powders through a dual rotary indexed system. One dial weighed bottles and the second weighed bottles plus powder. The system featured 1g fills, 180 bpm output speed, and microprocessor controls.

Mr. Taylor's packaging work has often involved specialized labeling systems as well. Typical programs include:

High speed labeling and label inspection system for placing labels radially on the inside of 3 in. cores of reeled product. The system was designed to travel through 12 reels, place labels and inspect a bar code on each label on the ID of each of the reels. Speeds to 25 labels/min.

Labeling machines for cartridges/cassettes at rates of 80/min.

In earlier employment for Palatine Engineering of Woking in Surrey, United Kingdom, Mr. Taylor was responsible for the construction of a variety of electromagnetic pumps and valve components used in liquid metal cooled atomic reactors. They were largely built of stainless steel for corrosion resistance and to function well in 600°F temperatures. The liquid metal utilized electromagnetic (rather than mechanical) pumps. He also designed and implemented a simulation facility to run tests as part of a study of the corrosion characteristics of many materials exposed to liquid coolants and reactor cores.

While employed by the Plastics Division of Metal Box Company (a major U.K.-based supplier of containers), Mr. Taylor designed automated blow molding machinery capable of producing large quantities of blow molded containers. While there, he also designed extrusion equipment as well as other related thermoplastic processing machinery.

As a design engineer for the International Nickel Company of Hereford, Wales, United Kingdom, Mr. Taylor designed large machinery used in a rolling mill which serviced the aircraft and chemical industries. The machinery was used for producing specialty wire rod, slab, sheet and foil products.

Mr. Taylor's accomplishments include various other designs such as military oil coolers and thermostatic valves, and computer peripheral devices such as magnetic tape and card reading/writing equipment.

Mr. Taylor received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Liverpool College of Technology in Liverpool, United Kingdom. He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers.