About us
Employee Owned and Proud to Serve Our Customers
For over four decades, Sawbones, the originators of "hands-on" workshop models, continues to be the leader in medical models for orthopedic and medical education.
Pacific Research Lab was founded in 1975 by Foss Miller, a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Washington State University.
The company’s first products were prepreg composite parts for the sporting goods industry. Soon a connection was made with Dr. Frederick Lippert who was the Chief of Orthopaedics at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Seattle and Associate Professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Dr. Lippert was concerned that the orthopaedic resident training programs did not include enough hands-on training. Lippert’s vision was to have a plastic artificial bone that cut, drilled, and felt like real bone to be used to practice all the various procedures of orthopaedic surgery. With the aid of Dr. Lippert’s enthusiasm and guidance, the right combination of materials was formulated at PRL and SAWBONES was born.
The company, headquartered on Vashon Island, now has over 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space and provides Sawbones products to customers all over the world.
Foss Miller and Denzil Miller of Sawbones at an early trade show.
