Craftsmen Industries Builds an Expandable Athena Mobile Laboratory for MRIGlobal
A new generation of mobile laboratory starts with what the last generation taught. MRIGlobal wanted its next mobile lab to reflect lessons from 15 years of medical and defense technology experience, and Craftsmen Industries customized an expandable container for the Athena laboratory, bringing the platform, interior fit-out and exterior identity together in one unit.
Craftsmen Industries builds expandable mobile laboratories for MRIGlobal. Craftsmen Industries customized an expandable container for the MRIGlobal Athena Mobile Laboratory. The Athena laboratory design draws on 15 years of MRIGlobal experience in mobile medical and defense technology. The Athena unit includes a fitted laboratory interior and branded exterior.
The Challenge: Applying Experience to a New Platform
Craftsmen Industries built the Athena laboratory around MRIGlobal's next-generation brief.
MRIGlobal's brief called for a next-generation laboratory incorporating advances recognized through its past 15 years of work in mobile medical and defense technology. The concept used an expandable container customized with design improvements for operation as a mobile laboratory.
- Expandable container as the laboratory platform
- Design informed by MRIGlobal's 15 years of experience
- Customized interior and Athena exterior identity
Customizing the Expandable Container
Craftsmen Industries customized the expandable container platform for the Athena laboratory.
The Athena unit deploys with its side panels extended, revealing the bright metal framing of the expandable structure. Entry-door details, floodlights, a red beacon and panel latches sit around the container, completing the exterior arrangement.
Why an Expandable Container
An expandable container travels at a transportable size, then opens to give the laboratory more working area once deployed. It suits a mobile lab that has to move between sites and still function as a full workspace on arrival.
Completing the Interior Laboratory Environment
Craftsmen Industries fitted the Athena interior with partitions, lighting and service fittings.
The interior features smooth white wall and ceiling panels, long overhead LED strips and doorways with vision panels. A wall-mounted valve and piping assembly sits alongside electrical panels and outlets, with connection boxes and cabling near the floor.
- Smooth white wall and ceiling panels
- Long overhead LED lighting strips
- Doorways with vision panels
- Valve and piping assembly, electrical panels and outlets
The Athena Identity
Craftsmen Industries applied the Athena and MRIGlobal identity to the laboratory exterior.
The white exterior carries the Athena wordmark and helmet emblem, with the Mobile Laboratories by MRIGlobal identity below. The branding makes the unit recognizable as part of MRIGlobal's mobile laboratory program.
The Result: A Completed Expandable Laboratory Platform
Craftsmen Industries delivered the Athena unit as a completed mobile laboratory platform.
The finished Athena unit brings the expandable container, fitted interior and MRIGlobal identity into one mobile laboratory. The project translates a brief for a new generation of mobile laboratory into a completed physical unit shaped around the expandable-container concept. It sits alongside Craftsmen's other medical builds, including mobile clinics and healthcare coaches.
How Craftsmen Approaches Mobile Healthcare Builds
Craftsmen Industries builds mobile clinics, healthcare coaches and laboratories on trailers, coaches and containers.
Each healthcare build starts with the services a provider needs to deliver and the communities it wants to reach, then shapes rooms, cabinetry, equipment and graphics around that brief. Because design, fabrication and graphics happen in-house, the clinical interior and the exterior identity are developed together rather than handed between separate vendors.
About Craftsmen Industries
Craftsmen Industries brings more than 40 years of fabrication experience to mobile healthcare and laboratory environments. Design, engineering, fabrication and graphics are handled in-house at a 127,000 sq. ft. facility in St. Charles, Missouri, staffed by more than 225 skilled craftspeople and certified to AS9100D and ISO 9001:2015. For MRIGlobal, Craftsmen Industries delivered the expandable Athena Mobile Laboratory, built on lessons from 15 years of mobile medical and defense work.