Shortly before finishing my engineering studies, I had the opportunity to visit copper mines in northern Chile. One of the things that struck me is that they wear respiratory protection equipment without any communication features. This means they have to pull their masks down in order to speak, defeating the purpose of the protection.

However, most of them have walkie talkie type radios, so I built an original prototype of a mask which would allow connection to the radios like a hands free set, including also connection to the hearing protection. I pitched the idea to management at SoluNova and then at local protective gear manufacturer Masprot, both of which took interest. I quickly transitioned to project managing, recruiting Jorge Morales for industrial design and Erik Atenas as an electrical engineer. Together we built the M900, a mass produced protective gear set which allows fluent speech by connecting hearing and respiratory protection to the users radio. This became Jorge's and my first patent, both in Chile and the US (US9402119B2).