The best work doesn’t always happen sitting behind a desk…meet the Mobile Design Lab.

When we think about our primary goal, it’s to provide our customers the best product development experience. We do that by thinking outside of the box and sometimes outside of the office. This philosophy inspired the creation of our mobile design lab, a fully-functional working lab that allows us to provide better customer service while nourishing our love of travel. 

What exactly is a mobile design lab? We’re glad you asked. 

It’s Not Just An RV

From the outside it looks like a typical RV. The front half is our living space, but it’s the back half that provides us the space we need to fully conduct our business. 

Our workspace has everything we need: a desk, 3D printers, a cleaning station, welder, mini mill, a giant toolbox, solder station, and an assembly table. It’s also 100% solar powered with no generator. Using solar energy allows us to be completely independent. We can park in front of any facility without relying on an outside power source. We have developed a deployable 2500 watt solar array that allows us to charge our 15 KiloWatt-Hours of Lithium Iron-Phosphate batteries even in cloudy conditions. And when it is time to move, we can stow the solar array and be on the go  in a matter of minutes. This makes our mobile lab fully off grid and allows us to provide a climate controlled workspace while being ecologically sound and sustainable. 

Recently, we traveled to visit our customer Jaia Robotics to work on a prototype. We went directly to the owner’s facility. Using the equipment in our mobile lab we were able to put together a prototype JaiaBot and deliver it to them in real time. Being onsite allowed us to facetime directly with the customer which provided us with immediate feedback resulting in a faster turnaround time. 

Another added benefit of the mobile lab is bringing different engineering disciplines together in one place. In this case, we designed the housings, mechanisms,s and related hardware while Jaia developed the circuits and software internally. Being in the same place at the same time allowed us to work hand-in-hand to integrate the prototype. 

In situations where we aren’t responsible for the complete design, working in a single location to get the initial builds completed helps speed up the learning curve on these first prototypes.

Having a mobile shop provides us with the tools needed to make design changes in real-time while working to integrate our customer’s or third-party components into our design. 

But wait. There’s more. 

We can provide all of Catania’s services straight from this mobile lab – including project management and product integration services. For example, Instead of a customer taking a product piece to a machine shop to be repaired, we can fix it for them in our design lab. This real-time help provides solutions that save our customers time and money. 

Travel is something we are truly passionate about, and the mobile design lab allows us to do that while still letting us work “from the office”. The inspiration we gain from new locations not only fills our creative wells, but it also makes us more productive for all of our customers, both near and far. No matter where we are, Catania is open for business. 

Being there for our customers when they need us is just part of our service, now thanks to our mobile design lab we can also be there wherever they need us.

Learn more at: https://cataniaenterprises.com/ or call direct (321) 236-0007

MDL Technical Specifications

Length Overall (Solar Array Stowed)	24’8″
Length Overall (Solar Array Deployed)	31′ 4″
Empty Weight	4490 lbs
Payload capacity	3509 lbs
Payload Area	127″x81″
Solar Array	6x 420W 72 cell Monocrystalline panels
Battery Bank	3x 5300 Whr 48VDC LiFePo Batteries
Inverter	3000W Growatt Integrated Inverter / MppT Charge Controller
Equipment	Formlabs Form3 SLA Printer
	Grizzly 3/4hp 3-Axis Milling machine
	Primeweld 225A Tig Welder
	Solder Station with ESD Mat
	72″x24″ Work/Lab Bench
	Assembly tools, vice, drill, saws etc.