MOBILion HRIM Explainer: Animating a 13-Meter Ion Path

MOBILion's HRIM platform moves ions along a 13-meter path, and that path fits on a printed circuit board. Here at Motion Giraffx we started from the path itself. The audience was biopharmaceutical researchers, analytical chemists and drug development scientists, who needed to see how the platform pulls apart molecules that have the same mass but different structures.

The 2:24 animation opens on the limits of speed and resolution in biopharma analysis and on why a protein's three-dimensional shape matters, with terms like glycosylation and isomerization on screen. Then the platform appears: ions travel a serpentine route of electrode arrays, sorting by size and shape as they go, and the readout resolves into distinct peaks. The film closes on fast monitoring of critical quality attributes, the instrument itself, and the line "Revealing What Others Leave Unseen."

The craft call was to draw the route as a long folded track and let the ions race along it. Because they travel at different speeds, you can watch molecules of different shapes separate, which is the product's whole claim, and the length of the path becomes something the eye can follow instead of a number.

A molecule cannot be filmed, which leaves drawing it. If your instrument's value is something no camera can capture, 2D animation is where we would begin.