Back to School:
See How Pennsylvania’s Research Universities Can Help Small
Manufacturers
By Walt Mills
Large universities have a reputation for being difficult to work
with, and that reputation has, for the most part, been well earned.
There are six major research universities in the Commonwealth with
expertise in materials, and one or more of them is within a couple
of hours’ drive of every company in Pennsylvania.
Within these universities is a bewildering array of departments,
consortia, centers and institutes, all of them working in quasi-independence.
How does a small company with a limited research budget solve its
pressing problems with the help of an expert inside the university
walls? The answer is: It’s not always easy, but it can be worth
the effort.
Piezo Kinetics, Bellefonte, Pa.
At the Materials
Characterization Lab, one of a number of user facilities at Penn State’s
University Park campus, Jeff Shallenberger is in charge of 40 specialized,
very expensive instruments, about $12 million worth of analytical equipment.
“Most of the work we do for industry is failure related,” Shallenberger
explains. “When a company comes to us, most of the time they
want to know ‘Why doesn’t this product work?’”
That was the case with Piezo Kinetics, a small supplier of piezoelectric
ceramic materials and devices used in sensors, ultrasound and aerospace
applications. One of the company’s sensors, used by cloth manufacturers
in India to detect thread breaks on high-speed weaving machines, was
being returned frequently because the sensor wouldn’t stick to
the machine.
An out-of-state lab spent a couple of months analyzing the material
without succeeding in isolating a contaminant that was causing the
epoxy adhesive to fail. Piezo Kinetics Founder Steve Dynan was growing
frustrated with the delay.
“I knew Jeff from Penn State where we were in grad school together,” Dynan
says. Even so, the university was not his first choice. “The
university’s time table is different than industry’s,” he
remarks.
“Steve called me to see what we could do,” Shallenberger
says. “Right away the failure screamed ‘surface problem,’ which
is one of our areas of expertise.”
Using a $600,000 instrument called an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer,
Shallenberger detected the presence of silicone oil on the surface
of the device. However, that analysis didn’t quite solve the
problem. As far as Steve Dynan was aware, his company didn’t
use any products with silicone oil.
“Their production process was complex,” Shallenberger
says. “There were about a dozen different stages plus cleaning,
maybe 15 to 20 steps in all. I went out to his plant to get samples
from each process, looking for contamination. At one stage I wouldn't
see it, then after a certain point it would appear in all the later
stages. We tracked it down to a cleaner that was supposed to be formulated
for just this material, but the supplier wouldn’t tell us what
was in it. We changed the cleaner and the problem went away.”
“What is difficult for the customer may be easy for us, with
the right tools and knowledge,” Shallenberger says. “Our
combination of very advanced facilities and faculty expertise can be
beneficial to industry in those areas where commercial labs may not
have the resources or depth or knowledge to solve a problem.”
DG Power, Lewistown, Pa.
Reed Hayes owns DG Power,
a small manufacturing company in Lewistown, Pa., less than an hour’s
drive from Penn State. DG Power makes an engine-driven industrial generator
that is designed to provide combined heat and power for small manufacturers
and institutions. Founded in 2002, DG Power has spent three years taking
its design to the point where it is ready to be commercialized.
“Sometimes the university can be hard to reach unless you’re
introduced,” Hayes says. His connection came through Ben Franklin
Technology Partners, a state-supported organization dedicated to assisting
start-up technology companies. “I talked to Ben Franklin about
funding and what our budget could afford. At the end of the day, we
decided we should talk to Penn State’s Energy Institute.”
DG Power shipped their prototype generators to Penn State’s
Energy Institute where Prof. Andre Boehman tested the equipment. “It
was like an operating room with all the leads attached everywhere and
the statistics coming out of the machines,” Hayes recalls. “It
was instant credibility to have Penn State document our equipment.
We were this little company that had just crawled out from under a
rock. We needed third-party documentation to show to serious buyers
of energy that we could do what we said we were going to do.”
In addition, he says, the Energy Institute helped them focus on reducing
their emissions, making it possible for DG Power to meet tightening
state emissions requirements across the country.
“We’re easy to work with,” says Energy Institute
Associate Director Bruce Miller, an expert in combustion and emissions. “We
have a full-time staff that does industrial research. But we’ll
also do service testing, the small scale stuff that only takes a week
or two. We don’t want to do the sort of work that a commercial
service is capable of doing, but a lot of times we have the equipment
they don’t have,” Miller says.
An important consideration for many companies is maintaining confidentiality. “It’s
important to have in-house staff,” Miller explains. “If
the project needs to be kept secret, we don’t let our students
get involved.”
One of the ways that companies find the Energy Institute, Miller
says, is by searching the Web using energy as a key word. “Then
they see the types of facilities we have, and I get calls out of the
blue.” Despite attempts by university research offices to improve
access to faculty expertise, most faculty interviewed say that smaller
companies typically find them by word of mouth, through former students,
or by searching the Internet.
Across the State
At Drexel University in Philadelphia,
Dr. Michel Barsoum, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
in the College of Engineering, welcomes the chance to help smaller
PA companies compete
“Our department is extremely flexible,” he says. “We
run the gamut of industrial partners, from the full-blown research
that’s sponsored at $100,000 a year to the $5,000 or $10,000
kind of approach. If we are troubleshooting, then intellectual property
is usually not a problem. We will assign a post-doc, not students,
to the project.”
Although most large research universities prefer that faculty be
contacted through their research or intellectual property offices,
Dr. Barsoum says that centralization may not be the best way to go. “A
materials scientist is more likely to understand what you need and
who can help. Send me an e-mail and I will see if anyone I know can
handle it.”
At the University of Pittsburgh, Donald Shields is the Corporate
Liaison for the School of Engineering. He can help connect small companies
in the western part of the state with faculty experts. In addition,
Pitt’s Industrial Engineering Department runs the Manufacturing
Assistance Center in Hamarville, Pa., to help small and mid-sized manufacturers
increase their competitiveness without large up-front costs.
Outside Expertise
If Web sites and personal contacts
don’t get you past the academic
pitfalls, you may need some outside help. Experts with one foot in
the university include the previously mentioned Ben Franklin Technology
Partners, PENNTAP, the Small Business Development Centers, and the
seven Industrial Resource Centers located throughout Pennsylvania.
With a little persistence, you’ll find the resources of Pennsylvania’s
world class research universities are at your disposal.
Walt Mills is Associate Editor for Publications
at Penn State’s
Materials Research Institute.
University Resources
Penn State University
The
Materials Research Institute (Click on Material Research
Centers for links and descriptions)
Industrial
Research Office
Drexel University, Philadelphia
Dr. Michel Barsoum
Lehigh University
Industrial Liaison Programs
University of Pennsylvania
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh Office of Corporate Relations
University of Pittsburgh
Dept.
of Materials Science and Engineering
Manufacturing Assistance Center
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