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Akron Ascent dry adhesives go to market: “Pinless Parenting”
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: March 14, 2019
Kevin White looks at the photo on his phone. It is of the granddaughter of a visitor. She is perched on a horse, and the visitor has just sent the photo to White’s phone.
White, the CEO and founder of Akron Ascent Innovations, hits the ‘print” button and out of his office printer comes the photo.
White takes the photo and puts it directly onto the wall behind him. It sticks to the wall. And then he takes it off of the wall and sticks it to another wall.
“Damage-free, clean removal” said White.
After years of prototyping, the company’s dry adhesive products are on the market, designed to replace thumbtacks, push pins hanging picture frames, many household adhesives—especially those materials that can injure children, White said.
“We can turn your whole house into a refrigerator for putting up pictures,” said White, referring to the photo that he had just printed out.
Dry adhesives are a group of polymer-based nanofiber products that stick to surfaces, but are not sticky to the hand, and can be removed and reused without further application of the adhesive.
Akron Ascent Innovations has developed dry adhesive applications designed for the household that the company calls “pinless parenting.”
The inspiration for pinless parenting came from a grandmother—in this case, the grandmother of White’s recently-born child.
As a parent, said White, “the first thing you are taught is to childproof your house.”
At the same time, push pins and thumbtacks pushed into cork boards are a common feature of any house with children.
If Akron Ascent could make products that took these potentially dangerous products out of even the possibility that a child could come into contact with them, that would be a good thing. Hence, turning the whole house into a refrigerator.
Other children’s products are in the works, said White, including printing high contrast images that are suspended eight inches from a child’s face to help with vision control.
Also in the works is a double-sided bulletin board/white board that will stick to a wall and allow other dry adhesive prints attach to it.
But maybe the most impressive, if not transformative, product is the blank, self-stick printer paper that grandparents can use to move their grandchildren’s pictures around the house.
For more information, visit Akron Ascent’s website at http://www.akronascent.com/