Granholm Announces First University Commercialization Award Winners
from MEDC, June 15, 2005
University Entrepreneurs Honored for Making High-Tech Research Saleable
Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today announced the first annual Governor's University Award for Commercialization Excellence (U-ACE) has been awarded to Dr. Farnam Jahanian of the University of Michigan and Glen Barna of Michigan Tech University. The U-ACE, which grants a $25,000 prize to each winner, was created to recognize and celebrate the successful commercialization of technology stemming from the research and entrepreneurial efforts of researchers at Michigan's public universities.
"Our world-class university researchers are critical to planting the seeds of the latest technologies here and growing Michigan's economy," Granholm said. "Successful commercialization of cutting-edge research will turn the ideas of tomorrow into the jobs we need today."
The awards were given to lead researchers in each of two categories. Category I participants include universities that have annual research expenditures under $100 million as defined by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System developed by the National Center for Education Statistics. Category II participants are those with average annual research expenditures that exceed $100 million.
Barna, the Category I winner, was a graduate student at Michigan Tech University when his innovative research led to the creation of IR Telemetrics Inc., the worldwide technology leader in wireless data transfer from reciprocating and rotating components. The high-tech firm has $1 million in annual sales and expects to create 30 jobs over the next five years.
Category II designee Jahanian is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. His research led to the creation of Arbor Networks, an innovative software company that protects computer networks against virus attacks and other threats. The company has created 50 jobs in Michigan and anticipates creating another 75 to 100 Michigan jobs over the next five years. Arbor Networks reports $25 million in annual sales.
Category I runners-up were Robert Smart of Grand Valley State University and Ka. C. Cheok of Oakland University. Neal Clinthorne of University of Michigan and Ramani Narayan of Michigan State University were the Category II finalists.
"The U-ACE recognizes the outstanding achievements of Michigan's own," Michigan Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Don Jakeway said. "The winners represent the state's continuing legacy of entrepreneurial excellence."
More than 20 applicants were reviewed by a selection committee of university, government and private industry professionals. Key criteria included the economic impact of the research and its stage of commercialization.
The awards are the result of recommendations put forth at the University Summit on Economic Development and Collaboration held in 2003. Convened by Governor Granholm, the summit brought together the presidents of Michigan's 15 public universities, leaders of private technology companies and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to focus on invigorating university-led growth in technology transfer and commercialization.
Michael Boulus, Executive Director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan, offered praise for the U-ACE program.
"This new awards program has served both to highlight how Michigan's economy is capitalizing on the research being conducted at our universities and to further encourage our university scientists to work with the business community in transferring their technologies to the Michigan marketplace," he said.
The awards are financially underwritten by the MEDC and the University of Michigan.
The Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a partnership between the state and local communities, promotes smart economic growth by developing strategies and providing services to create and retain good jobs and a high quality of life.
Contact: Michael Shore
(517) 335-4590
Governor to Annouce WInners of Cool Business Awards
By Mark Wilcox, The Daily Mining Gazette, August 18, 2004
When Gov. Jennifer Granholm announces the winners of the Cool Business Awards Friday morning, there is a good chance that a winner from the Keweenaw will be announced.
This area is represented with finalists in five of the eight categories for the awards sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Economic Development Alliance. Granholm is scheduled to present the awards as part of Michigan’s Cool U.P. Community and Economic Summit being held Thursday and Friday in Escanaba. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony Friday morning at M-Tech on the campus of Bay College.
UPEDA Vice President Karen Widmar said the awards recognize businesses and organizations that make the Upper Peninsula a ‘cool’ place to live and work. Widmar said that entries for the awards competition were solicited from throughout the U.P. “We had over 60 entries,” Widmar said. “We had two panels of judges, one [consisted of] business people from the Upper Peninsula and the other panel were people we contacted from outside the area.” Widmar said the combined score from the two panels determined the finalists in the eight categories. The winners will be determined by a combination of the panels of judges and participants in the summit on Thursday and Friday.
“The score from each panel of judges will make up a third of the total,” she said. “Our summit attendees will vote for their choice in each category and their totals will account for a third of the score. We’ll tally it up and announce the winner Friday morning.” Widmar said it was exciting to see so many finalists from the Copper Country.
“We wanted to get as many entries as we could,” she said. “We didn’t limit participation to our membership. We basically opened up our doors and said ‘let us know what’s cool.’ We had a great response from your area, and it was nice to see so many make into the finals.”
Mount Bohemia in Lac La Belle, is a finalist in the Attractions category, competing against such U. P. icons as the International Ski Jumping Competition at Iron Mountain’s Pine Mountain, Lake Superior Community Theater in Marquette and the Soo Locks in Sault Ste Marie.
ThermoAnalytics of Calumet will face two other finalists in the workplace category. Their competition consists of Hetrick and Associates in Marquette and Geoglyphics of Chatham in Alger County. Phil Musser, executive director of the Keweenaw Industrial Council, said the number of finalists is an indicator of the types of businesses that the Copper Country is producing.
“It really points to the fact that this three-county region is a growth node in the Upper Peninsula,” Musser said. “What we have here is an attitude of supporting local entrepreneurs.” Along with the SmartZone, things can only improve.” In the project economic development category, the Michigan Tech University Enterprise Corp. SmartZone, in Houghton, has been named one of the four finalists.
Other finalists include the Marquette County Health Department’s “Fit-Up,” the Northern Lights Energy Project in Escanaba, and U.P. Link Project in Marquette. Perhaps the most intriguing category is the cool product of the year. In this category, some relatively new products are competing with an Upper Peninsula legend. Enstrom Helicopters of Menominee, a long-time world leader in small aircraft manufacturing is a finalist along with Pioneer Surgical of Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie’s Precision Edge and IR Telemetrics of Hancock. Developed out of research at Michigan Tech, the 13-year-old company is the only manufacturer of high frequency wireless data transfer equipment.
Company President Glen Barna said being named a finalist was an honor and a bit of a surprise.
“This is great,” Barna said. “We’re very excited just to be nominated, then to make it to the finals is great.” Barna said competing against a company like Enstrom is daunting but exciting. “Well you’ve got to consider them the favorite, but we’ll see what happens,” Barna said. IR Telemetrics customers include some of the most well known names in engine andmotor manufacturing including GM, Ford, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Cummins, Briggs & Stratton and Renault, to name a few. Rounding out the local finalists is GS Engineering of Houghton, in the company category. Other finalists are Marquette General Hospital, Extreme Tool of Ironwood and EMP of Escanaba.
Granholm’s appearance at the Cool U.P. Community and Economic Summit, coincides with her ‘Governor’s Day’ visit to the Upper Peninsula Stat Fair also being held in Escanaba.
Engine Testing Sees Breakthrough
System monitors hard-to-reach areas at higher levels
by Tom Henderson, reprinted from The Detroit News, August 19, 1999
In a small, nondescript building made even tinier by its proximity to a Coca-Cola warehouse on a hilltop plateau on the outskirts of this upper Peninsula town, a handful of engineers and physicists are doing cutting-edge research into wireless telemetry.
Their headquarters is easy to overlook, but their work isn't. It has caught the attention of big business, big government and industry trade publications, alike, and won contracts from such industrial giants as Caterpillar Inc, Dana Corp. Detroit Diesel Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Mercury Marine and from the U.S. government's Argonne National Laboratory.
The firm, IR Telemetrics, has figured out how to do what has previously been impossible -- allow signals that monitor pressure, temperature and strain to be sent wirelessly from such hard to monitor places as piston heads, turbines, crankshafts, connecting rods, torque converters and other mechanical systems.
Such monitoring is crucial in testing prototype engines under high RPMs or extremely heavy loads to see what continues to work properly and what begins to break down or perform less efficiently under maximum loads. For example, how do the ring seals on pistons hold up after 10 minutes at 7,000 RPMs?
The company's technology -- an offshoot of patented research at nearby Michigan Technological University in Hancock -- solves a problem that prohibited traditional telemetry systems from being used in testing engine components and mechanical processes. Traditional systems have operated at FM frequencies, about 100 megahertz, which require antennas of 30 inches or more. IR Telemetric's newest system operates at the much higher microwave level, at frequencies of 2-3 gigahertz, which allows for a transmitter about one inch square and an antenna smaller than two inches.
Wired devices are out of the question because of the speed and hard-to-reach locations of the parts and systems being monitored.
Last year, IR's technology captured third place of 350 entrants in the MacNeal Schwendler design contest sponsored by the trade publication Design News.
"It's a state-of-the-art way of transmitting data out of a running engine," said John Whitacre, Zollner's vice-president in charge of product engineering, in a trade publication called OEM Off-Highway.
IR Telemetrics is based on research at Michigan Tech by Glen Barna, Carl Anderson and Douglas Brumm. Anderson was Barna's academic adviser when he got his master's degree in telemetry in 1989. Barna's thesis involved proving that you could do wireless measurements of a piston in a moving engine, using an infrared diode shining through a photo pickup.
General Motors provided research funds to improve the process, and the company was incorporated in 1991. Barna ran the company on a part-time basis for four years. In 1995, he quit the university to devote all his time to his duties as president.
Anderson and Barna bootstrapped growth in the early days, putting their homes up for collateral for loans. It now runs on a cash-flow basis and is profitable, says Barna.
Anderson, the company secretary, continues as a full-time professor of the mechanical engineering faculty. The third principal in the company, Paul LaVigne, signed on as a vice-president in 1997 after stints at GM and Ford.
The company has a royalty agreement with the university on the patent it holds. The company has since been granted a second U.S. patent involving the microwave technology, has applied for a third patent involving a refinement in its transponder technology and holds patents in Germany and Great Britain.
While declining to disclose figures, Barna says the company has been growing at 20 percent a year, based mostly on word of mouth. "It really helps when one engineer talks to another and says, 'Yeah, it works,'" he said.
He says the company could easily expand the business faster.
"We don't want unconstrained growth," Barna said. "Our motto has been: One customer at a time, and keep 'em happy."
Says LaVigne: "If we put a strong marketing force out there and beat on doors, we'd swamp ourselves out of business. There are a lot of industries out there where this technology could be utilized."
IR Telemetrics employs eight, including two physicists. In addition, 8-10 university researchers serve as consultants and researchers on a contract basis. They build their own receivers and circuit boards on site. In May, the company expanded to a small business next door, installing a dynamometer lab to do their own instrumentation on-site instead of having to do it off-site at customer facilities, and a new Ford engine has recently arrived for testing.
"The real secret to all of this is having that university -- a knowledge base, an intellectual base," says Barna.
Tom Henderson is a Metro Detroit free-lance writer.
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U.P. Gains Popularity, New Vitality
Technology advances help create, sustain business in paradise
by Tom Henderson, reprinted from The Detroit News, July 18, 1999
The Upper Peninsula, once a Little Appalachia of closed mines, shuttered commercial buildings and boarded-up homes, is thriving again.
Unemployment is less than 5 percent in many counties. The number of people working is a modern-era, post-mining high of 160,000. And high-paid, high-technology jobs have joined the traditional mix of blue-collar labor, lumbering and tourism.
No longer does the long-time model hold -- that if you want to make something of yourself, you have to head south.
The economic revival is most evident in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The highway that runs along its spine from Hancock to Copper Harbor, U.S.-41, is still dotted with abandoned mines, ghost towns and boarded-up buildings. But signs of rebirth are everywhere.
ICE Engineering Inc. is the perfect example of how high technology and advances in communications have created a model where people can live in places like Lake Linden and serve clients in places such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
Tim Endres, a graduate of General Motors Institute in Flint, bought an old farmhouse on the peninsula in 1992, when he was then living and working in Ann Arbor. Two years later, sick of city life and in love with the U.P., he moved his family north. Today, ICE Engineering provides sophisticated computer networking. His most recent project involved writing the entire system that drives wireless trading in the New York options market. He also has worked with the Chicago Board of Exchange, numerous Wall Street firms and is often in San Francisco on behalf of Kaiser Permanente, the giant health maintenance organization.
Technology has freed Endres and other kindred souls on the peninsula from work environments they hated for ones they love, a major theme on the Keweenaw.
"Civilization had lost its mind," Endres said. "The U.P. represents the America I grew up in. I prefer schools that teach my children how to read, not how to put on a condom.
I prefer to leave my doors unlocked ... I dislike the traffic that people endure in Detroit and Ann Arbor. And I love the winters in the U.P.
"I also hate the idea of paying $6,000 in taxes to Ann Arbor, and I get nothing except roads that destroy my car as I drive over them. (Here) I pay $380 per year in taxes, and for that they pick up my trash, they plow my roads in winter, they grade the roads in summer and they bus my kids to school 17 miles."
Prices are surging
Locals marvel at the surge in prices for lakefront property, from $200 to $800 a linear foot in recent years. They say so much rehabbing of old homes and business is going on you can't find a contractor.
Renovated Victorian mansions are being turned into bed and breakfasts. A large new AmericInn Suites motel and adjacent shopping center and Burger King have been built on the outskirts of Calumet. Wal-Mart, a five-theater cineplex, giant shopping mall and chain restaurants have come to Houghton, and a tract of $250,000 homes is being built south of the city.
Unemployment for the two counties that make up the peninsula -- Houghton and Keweenaw -- is at a combined 4.6 percent, the lowest since copper was king. There are 18,000 jobs in the peninsula, 4,000 more than a decade ago.
Detroit Center Tool of Warren, which makes large robotic assembly systems for the auto industry, opened an experimental engineering office in Hancock on Jan. 1, 1998. The office has been so productive and cost-efficient that the company says the experiment is over and the office is permanent. DCT is hiring engineers to expand the office from nine to 21 by year's end, and is in discussions to take over a second floor at the D&N Bank Building, which will allow an expansion to 42 employees. Further growth is likely, according to vice-president Ron Brown.
That's a dramatic change for young Michigan Tech grads, who until now had to leave the area to pursue their careers.
Vital improvements
What seems routine to down-staters can amount to dramatic progress in the Upper Peninsula. For instance, in 1992 touch-tone phones came to the picturesque village of Lake Linden, 10 miles northeast of the twin cities of Houghton and Hancock.
Without touch-tone phones, Internet access and everything that has meant for high-technology businesses would have been impossible.
In addition to ICE Engineering, Lake Linden is home to Nitrate Elimination, which uses corn-derived enzymes it has developed and other biotechnology to test for and eliminate nitrate pollution in water.
Incorporated in the state in 1993, the company has received grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the EPA and the National Institutes of Health. It is in the second year of a grant with the U.S. Army to develop ways to remove TNT from water where weapons are made and stored.
"The Internet has made a huge difference," acknowledges company co-founder Ellen Campbell. In fact, a summer intern found them from France via the Internet.
Nicolas Plumere of Stasbourg needed field work in nitrate research to complete his master's degree. He came across Nitrate Eliminate while doing an Internet search at home, asked if he could come for the summer and is now busy in the lab.
Bill Wilson, a university researcher in Australia, is testing their products and giving them feedback via e-mail.
Not all Internet activity in the peninsula is high tech. An assisted living center in Calumet called Still Waters Community Elders Home, used to make and sell pasties, a U.P. staple of pastry dough stuffed with meat and veggies, to give the residents something to do. It went online with www.pasty.com in 1995, and today runs a booming operation that airmails pasties to every state in the union and the residents are anything but retired.
High-tech U.P.
Another high-tech, Somero Enterprise Inc., employs 95 people at its Houghton manufacturing plant. About half of them are high-paid skilled jobs, the rest manufacturing jobs that pay far better than prevailing wages. It had sales last year of $37 million.
Somero began in anything but grand fashion. Dave and Paul Somero, a couple of concrete contractors, thought there had to be a better, more-mechanized way of pouring concrete for large flooring projects than the manual method of workers hunched over pushing 2-by-4s. In 1986, they fashioned a mechanical contraption in a garage in Hancock.
Since then, the company has gotten out of the concrete pouring business and has developed a line of 4-wheeled drive, computer-controlled machines that spread concrete in huge swaths. Their cheapest machine lays 100 square feet in a single pass and sells for $130,000. The monster that lays 240 square feet at a pass goes for $250,000.
This year, as a result of a collaboration between Somero and the Keweenaw Research Center, a contract and development arm of Michigan Tech, Somero has introduced a laser-guided piece of machinery than can do the finely detailed work required in parking lots -- automatically pouring and grading the slight inclines that go down to drains, for example, and building in curbs or speed bumps.
A current research collaboration between Somero and the research center could lead to another line of products, machines for grooming ski trails.
Study in contrasts
Jim Torvinen, Somero's vice-president for manufacturing, is an example of the old and new models of life in the Keweenaw.
A native of nearby Ontonagon, he, as did many boys of his generation, headed to the big city upon graduation from high school. He spent 33 years at Ford, starting in hourly manufacturing and working his way up to manager of logistics and material handling at the Sterling Heights parts plant.
He retired in June 1998 to join Somero. "I feel like I died and went to heaven," he said of life in the Keweenaw. "I don't want to talk about it because everybody'll be moving here."
He talks about shooting, cleaning and eating birds during hunting season without having to leave his back yard. Or how the plant is only minutes away from good trout fishing. Or sitting outdoors on a summer night, where the latest sunsets -- about 10 p.m. in late June -- in the continental United States mean light in the sky until 11:30 p.m.
He recently hired four engineers, and even in a tight national labor market getting people to come to Houghton is a snap. He just takes out an ad in the local Daily Mining Gazette.
"Anyone interested in the U.P. subscribes to it around the country. They're still getting it and looking for ways to come back," he said.
A recent ad landed engineers from Washington, D.C., Detroit, Saginaw and Arkansas, all people eager for the slow-paced, no-crime, no-traffic, no-construction-delays, plenty-of-hunting life of the Keweenaw.
Glen Barna and Paul Lavigne are two of the owners of IR Telemetrics, another Michigan Tech spin-off in Hancock. The firm uses infrared and microwave sensors to wirelessly monitor the performance of engine parts and has R&D contracts with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Mercury Marine, Caterpillar Inc., Detroit Diesel Corp., John Deere and the Argonne National Labs.
Their experience mimics Torvinen's. Barna got a forestry degree from Michigan Tech, then made a living as a steamfitter in a variety of big cities around the country. He returned to school in Houghton and got a B.S. in mechanical engineering and, in 1989, a master's in telemetry.
Lavigne, who took a master's in mechanical engineering at Tech before working in the Detroit area at Ford and GM, became a partner with Barna in 1997.
"Detroit was more and more cars, more and more concrete," Lavigne said. "I went from taking a weekend off and going up north, or taking a week's vacation and going up north to living in the middle of it. I don't have to take a weekend off to go fishing. I can go fishing after work.
"Hey, Glen, did I tell you I saw a bobcat?"
They decline to release revenues, but say the business is growing at 20 percent a year. They employ six people, all of them highly trained researchers, including Mike Chase, an engineer who also graduated from Tech and returned to the Keweenaw after stints with the Navy, Teldyne Inc. and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
They have another cadre of eight to ten virtual employees, university researchers who do work on a contract basis.
"I couldn't wait to get back," Barna said. He tells of fishing off the dock in front of his house one night recently. He caught some fish and cleaned them on the spot. The next day, while sitting outside drinking coffee, he watched a bald eagle eating up the remains.
Tom Henderson is a Metro Detroit free-lance writer.
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Microwave technique takes telemetry to new heights
Microwave methods enable engineers to gather and send data from cramped, sealed components, such as torque converters
by Charles J. Murray, Senior Regional Editor, reprinted from Design News, March 2, 1998
Gathering operating data from moving machine parts is no easy task. Crankshafts, turbines, pistons, torque converters, connecting rods, and hundreds of other mechanical systems can't be hard wired to external data-gathering sources. Worse, most of these devices are too tightly packaged to allow for installation of conventional wireless telemetry systems.
Using a new microwave technique, however, engineers from IR Telemetrics, Inc. can now gather operating data from a long list of mechanical systems that never before lent themselves to data gathering.
The Model 4000 Microwave Telemetry system, as it's known, solves the problem by going outside the traditional envelope of telemetry methods. Using a wireless radio frequency technique, it sends temperature, pressure, strain data, or any transducer signal to a remotely located receiver. But instead of operating at traditional FM frequencies (about 100 MHz), the Model 4000 operates in the microwave realm, at frequencies ranging from 2-3 GHz.
By doing so, the Model 4000 opens up a wide range of data-gathering possibilities that most engineers never dreamed would be available. Gas turbines, jet engines, crane load cells, Indy car tires, and even medical equipment can now be monitored for pressure, strain, or temperature, whereas they never could before.
The key to the success of the product is its use of microwave frequencies. In the past, the need for large antennas often prevented engineers from using conventional RF telemetry systems. But the new system solves that problem because the higher microwave frequencies dramatically reduce the size of the transmitting and receiving antennas. Instead of the 30 inch or longer antenna needed at a 100-MHz frequency, the microwave technique employs an antenna measuring less than two inches long.
To send data, IR Telemetrics' system uses a small transmitter that measures slightly more than one inch square. Inside, it contains specially designed printed-circuit boards for conversion of the signals so they can be sent to the receiver.
During operation, the Model 4000 employs a "double-FM" technique. In this mode, transducers send analog data signals to a voltage-to-frequency converter. That board converts the signals to frequency-modulated square waves in the 10-50 kHz range, which contain the data. The square wave is then used to modulate a microwave carrier by way of a VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator), and this signal is sent to the transmitting antenna. A microwave receiver then demodulates the data to square waves, and a frequency-to-voltage converter demodulates the square waves back to analog signals. The analog signals can then be stored for later use.
IR Telemetrics recently gathered data from the turbine of a torque converter for Ford Motor Co. The system used several small slots in the torque converter housing, along with fiberglass reinforcement and epoxy in the slots. "You couldn't do an application like that with a 100-MHz telemetry system," explains Glen L. Barna, president of IR Telemetrics and a developer of the technology. "You would have such a big antenna that you'd have to cut a slot all the way around the housing just to accommodate it."
Additional details…Contact Glen Barna, IR Telemetrics, Inc., Box 70, Houghton, MI 49931, 906-482-0012.
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Get Piston-Ring Data from Within an Engine
by Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor
reprinted from Test & Measurement World Magazine, February 15, 1998
Computer technology helps automotive engineers develop models of vehicle parts. After designing a part such as a piston ring, engineers need to measure the part’s performance and use the data to refine the part’s model. Unfortunately, getting the data is difficult because the sensors must mount inside an engine block and bring data out. And sensor wires can fail at high engine speeds. Engineers at Dana Corp. Perfect Circle Sealed Power Division (Muskegon, MI) and Ford (Dearborn, MI) developed two wireless data-acquisition systems, one infrared (IR) and the other microwave, that eliminate wire failures.
The engineers needed to measure a piston’s ring dynamics-how well the piston ring seals the combustion pressure from leaking into the crank case. To do that, the engineers must take gas pressure measurements from between the piston rings and compare the data to what they expect from the computer models.
Pressure Between Rings
The Sealed Power staff makes the pressure measurements between the piston rings of an internal combustion engine. They need to measure the pressure between each piston ring, at the piston lands. Unfortunately, there’s no space to attach a pressure transducer at each land. A test bed consisting of a modified Ford 4.6-1, two-valve, V-8 engine was developed. To take the measurements in the piston lands, the engineers modified the engine by machining three canals-one for each land-into the piston in cylinder 4. The canals intersect into a common canal, which opens to a chamber. At the chamber, a Kulite XTE-140 absolute pressure a transducer was installed on the top side of the piston’s pin boss. Measuring the pressure at each of the three piston lands requires three sets of measurements, one for each piston land with the other two canals plugged.
With the transducer in place, the engineers needed to get the signals from the XTE-140 to an engine analyzer. Traditionally, automotive engineers have attached these wires on arms-called grasshopper linkages-to relieve the g forces on the wires outside the engine. Without the grasshopper linkages, the wires would break from g forces even at low speeds.
These hard-wired systems usually fail from excessive g forces at engine speeds above about 2600 rpm. When a grasshopper linkage fails, it can rip the wires out of place. To circumvent the problem, the Sealed Power staff replaced the hard wiring with an IR telemetry system from IR Telemetrics (Houghton, MI).
Voltage from the pressure transducer connects to a V/F converter, and that output connects to a modulated infrared transmitter.
Get the Signal Out
The IR transmitter required a receiver, or photo detector. The photo detector receives the IR signal, converts it into a series of voltage pulses, and carries the signal outside the engine to an F/V converter that converts the frequency back to a voltage. An engine analyzer then reads the voltage and converts it back to pressure units. To mount the photo detector, engineers drilled a hole in the engine block directly below the cylinder. The engine analyzer samples the pressure measurements every one-half crank-angle degree and stores the data on a disk. The engineers then process these data into ASCII form and import the data to a spreadsheet. Because the system measures pressure at one piston land, the plot requires two tests.
The pressure measurements also require two other pressure sensors. A Kistler 6123 differential pressure transducer measures the cylinder chamber pressure. The differential pressure measurements require normalizing with the pressure in the intake runner at exactly 180 degrees before top dead center. A Kistler 4045 absolute pressure transducer measures the intake runner pressure. These two sensors mount outside the engine.
While developing this measurement system, the engineers ran into difficulty with the infrared signal being interrupted when the piston was at top dead center, farthest from the photo detector. The signal had to travel through a harsh environment of engine oil to get to the photo detector. To solve the problem, Sealed Power’s engineers had to change oil viscosity, use oil additives, and adjust the oil level until the system was robust enough to yield good data.
Infrared telemetry isn’t the only solution for wireless data acquisition. On a later project, Sealed Power’s engineers needed to measure pressure date from all three piston lands at once. Installing three IR transmitters and photo detectors was impossible, so they used a microwave telemetry system. With the microwave system, it’s possible to collect data from three absolute pressure transducers by multiplexing their signals into one telemetry channel. The microwave downconverter and the data feeds the engine alalyzer. With this system, Sealed Power’s engineers can measure the pressure on three piston lands with three sensors.
copyright © 1998 Cahners Business Information, used with permission.
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Interior Health
IR Telemetrics found new methods for measuring engine operating parameters
And to help head off the dangers of disintegrating pistons.
by Iris Polaski, reprinted from OEM Off-Highway, January, 1998
In the world of off-road components, there is a small but important niche that involves equipment for testing temperature, pressure and strain on reciprocating and rotating components such as pistons, connecting rods, turbines and clutches. Design, development and product engineers routinely measure these operating parameters, and IR Telemetrics in Houghton, MI, has devised wireless data transfer systems to make the process more efficient.
IR Telemetrics president, Glen Barna, points out that such testing concerns both the off- and on-highway industries. "Most of the folks," says Barna, "are doing piston work, and pistons are notoriously hard to get measurements from." IR Telemetrics' system typically links conventional thermistors, thermocouples, pressure transducers or strain gauges to a transmitter and lithium battery pack mounted on the component. A "double" frequency modulation (fm) is performed on the electrical signal from the sensor, and transmitted off the component using an infrared LED or a microwave oscillator. Essentially, IRT provides customized installation of transmitters and battery packs. It's a turnkey operation. Its customers then install their component, mount the receiving device, connect the receiver and start collecting data.
New and less new
Previously, companies used the grasshopper linkage, a four-bar linkage that connects directly to the piston and eventually routes externally to the engine. It carries a wiring harness right off the pistons. It requires a lot of work, is somewhat speed-limited and takes a lot of time to shift equipment from one engine to another. Detroit Diesel, Zollner Piston, Waukesha Engines and Caterpillar are some of the companies that make use of IRT's systems. Nearly all are using them to measure piston temperatures.
"As far as I know, we're probably the only telemetry company that has focused on this piston measurement. We targeted this piston measurement problem."
System variations
Multiple channel applications are easily accommodated and in the case of infrared telemetry, the signal, picked up by a photo detector probe on a nearby stationary component, is processed by a receiver and is available in analog or digital form for data analysis. And the microwave system, wherein the received signal is fed into a down converter/demodulator prior to processing, is not limited to line-of-sight transmission.
"We've dealt with everything from R&D guys developing new pistons or engines to the product engineer that wants to figure out why an existing part is giving him trouble. Maybe it's a new engine; maybe he's calibrating an engine, and a way to calibrate it is to monitor temperature for pistons; pistons and valves are the hottest parts in there."
Word of mouth
"We were doing a general review for temperature," says Quintin Wilson, project engineer for Detroit Diesel. It used the infrared version of the testing system on Detroit Diesel's 60 Series engine; over the course of a year, the company did several iterations.
IR Telemetrics provides its customers with equipment, "But the important part of what we offer is the ability to mount transmitters and battery packs on pistons. And put pressure transducers on pistons, so they'll survive." The company steps in with its knowledge of what epoxies to use, what fasteners to use, how to route wires and so forth so that they will survive the high temperatures and the high inertial loads (2,000 g's @ TDC.) They do all the mounting and the machining of the piston, expoxying and so on.
"We turn over to them a piston ready to put in an engine and run; we also provide technical support to get them up and running. So when the data search is 'coming out' they know what to look for." Impact on the customer's personnel time is kept to a minimum. Zollner Piston used the infrared version for a few weeks to test piston temperatures in a John Deere diesel 10.5 liter engine.
John Whitacre, Zollner vice president of product engineering, reports that some oil spray had to be negotiated and that Telemetrics was "intimately involved with the process," which did the job for them. "It's a state-of-the-art way of transmitting data out of a running engine." And Caterpillar used a microwave system version to transmit data from a two piece piston.
Along those lines ...
Adds Barna, "We're focusing on a niche market now but over the last year, we've developed some new technology that's going to expand our market (microwave frequency for fm transmission). We're not restricted to piston work; we're doing measurements on torque converters, and offroad people use torque converters a lot." There are plans to expand into a full scale engine-testing facility, to let IR Telemetrics run engine or transmission testing on site in Houghton and provide data output there. The Houghton connection stems from the local university, Michigan Tech.
The technology was initially developed there and Barna cites Carl L. Anderson and Douglas B. Brumm, members of the mechanical and electrical engineering faculties, respectively, as important contributors. IR Telemetrics purchased the license for the patents (shared with Anderson and Brumm) from Michigan Tech, to whom it pays royalties, but IRT owns the foreign patents outright.
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IR Telemetrics Receives Third Place Award in DESIGN NEWS Contest
IR Telemetrics has received a third place award in the DESIGN NEWS Excellence in Design contest. The following was received from DESIGN NEWS Chief Editor Paul E. Teague:
Congratulations on your entry in the DESIGN NEWS Excellence in Design contest and being chosen one of our third-place prize winners. Our editors were very impressed with your technology.
A story on your award-winning entry will appear in our March 2, 1998 Engineering Awards issue.
As a third-place winner, you will be receiving an Edmund Scientific Astroscan telescope, including an image erector, tripod, additional RKE eyepieces, and other accessories. It will be sent to you directly from Edmund Scientific.
Once again, thank you for your interest in DESIGN NEWS and congratulations on your award-winning entry.
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