Space research helps Kansans
You're a Kansas industry with a problem. Your engineering staff is too small or too busy to solve it for you, and it isn't a design problem consulting firms specialize in. Where do you turn?
In the past year the answer has been to KU, where an organization called BETA is providing simple answers to difficult questions.
Didde-Glaser, an office machine manufacturer in Emporia, needed a special no-spill lubricant for a printing press. Bob Lambour, Prairie Village graduate student, located a company that made just such a lubricant for space capsules.
PRECISION DEVICES. Lawrence, wanted a way to weld radio parts without heat. A KU student found the answer in a technical journal.
The opportunities offered by BETA are spreading even beyond the state's borders. Northern Natural Gas, Omaha, Neb., wants a timing device accurate to one-thousandth of a second and so rugged it can be used in the field. KU researchers are looking, but the search may take awhile.
Northern Natural is sufficiently impressed by the answers KU has provided in the past, however, that it has signed a one-year contract with the Business and Engineering Technical Application (BETA).
Besides Diddle-Glaser and Precision Devices, BETA has supplied answers to firms in Hesson, Hutchinson, Independence, and Kansas City, Mo., in the 18 months since it was created with
the help of a small grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA WANTS TO be sure the fruits of space research reach private industry. BETA wants to be sure Kansas industries have an opportunity to share in the benefits to come from space research, to make a profit for themselves and for Kansas.
Most industries have neither the time nor the resources to keep abreast of the information explosion in their fields.
But a major university has its libraries with their thousands of professional journals, the computers and their tapes of information, the trained personnel.
Cessna Aircraft's Industrial Division in Hutchinson, for example, has renewed its one-year contract with EETA just to study the literature, and has indicated interest in specific research projects. Graduate students systematically search trade magazines, manufacurer's brochures, and government reports for items which might interest Cessna. The company gets digests and complete bibliographies at low cost. The same service is available to every business in Kansas.
IF IT ALL sounds too good to be true, Prof. Bill Barr and Prof. R. R. Gatts, two of the men who created BETA, make no bones about what BETA and KU get in return.
First, some of the business problems make good classroom material. For example, Superior Boiler, Hutchinson, asked for ideas when it began expanding so
rapidly it did not have time to study equipment layout and traffic flow.
"We put an entire industrial design class to work on a real problem requiring a real answer," Barr said. "That's more valuable than the most ingeniously constructed textbook example."
And the students' designs were workable.
ANOTHER BENEFIT for the state is that the program may encourage engineers to stay in Kansas, because they become more aware of what Kansas industry can offer. And a firm which has never hired an engineer may suddenly discover it needs one—or that he can pay for himself in efficiency and new ideas several times over.
"We want to do anything we can to promote the engineering aspect of Kansas firms," Gaetts added. "The stronger the engineering climate in the state the better the engineering school will be—and vice versa."
To Charles B. Saunders, a professor in the School of Business who was the third man involved in BETA's creation, one important benefit is KU's increased awareness of business and industry.
"We want to be a communications link between University research and industry, not only in engineering and business but wherever the requests take us."
BETA will adapt itself to the problems faced by any industry or business in Kansas and the Midwest, in effect bringing to bear on the problems of a private firm the entire resources of a major university.
THAT POINT came home hard when the Vendo Corporation of Kansas City, Mo., asked BETA to do research on the effects of a new vending machine on the Lawrence campus. BETA called in a psychology class, which did a complete study of the machine's psychological impact. To the student who wrote the best report Vendo is giving $250 to attend a professional meeting.
Students working with BETA visit the firm to get first-hand knowledge of the problem, then research the problem at KU.
New York Cleaners
In return, the firm pays transportation costs of the student, plus the average rate for graduate employees—about $3 an hour.
For the best in
• Dry Cleaning
• Alterations
• Reweaving
THE COMPANY needs a scientific check on how the resistor will perform after 10,000 hours of continuous use, but doesn't want to wait 10,000 hours to find out. A search of the literature has not been completed. If the search is unsuccessful, company officials can have BETA design a test.
An example is the Electra Manufacturing Company in Independence, which makes resistors.
THE FIRST STEP, usually, is to search the literature. If the
Barr and Gatts are enthusiastic about BETA's future. Almost 100 search requests have been handled, and more come in weekly.
If the literature doesn't turn up an answer, the firm can commission research, paying the costs of special test equipment.
literature indicates a piece of hardware is needed, a consulting firm can take over from there.
Or it can wait. If the problem is interesting enough, KU students may adopt the problem as a thesis project; every thesis written at KU is available without charge.
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Daily Kansan
Monday, December 5, 1966
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