WMU inventions
Ultimately, an invention may be licensed to an existing business or could lead to the creation of a startup company that would market it. “The overall goal is that WMU wants to increase commercialization,” Sharer says. The funds allocated are monitored and managed as investments. With licensing agreements for projects funded through this program, for instance, the WMU Research Foundation gets a portion of the royalties and allocates those back to the technology development fund to keep it capitalized. Since its inception more than six years ago, the fund has provided awards to well over a dozen projects, which are in various stages of maturity and hail from across WMU’s campus.
‘Breadth of projects’ Two WMU researchers, Drs. Margaret Joyce and Sam Ramrattan, and graduate student Hemant Bohra, are working on an innovation related to rapid metal casting technology that fabricates intricate metal products.
Joyce
Their methodology is unique in that it does not require a solid pattern to develop a mold. Instead, the process uses computer-aided manufacturing and drawing, and specialized materials and processes—such as synthetic sand, light curing and machining—to create 3-D molds, layer upon layer. A patent is pending on this technique.
“It will allow for rapid prototyping of a variety of industrial parts, such as cast automotive Bohra components,” says Ramrattan, professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering. Continued on page 27
Above: Dr. Sam Ramrattan, industrial and manufacturing engineering professor, places a wafer of composite sand onto a thermal distortion tester. Inset photos: WMU researchers Drs. Margaret Joyce and Ramrattan are working on an innovation related to rapid metal casting. The technique uses specialized materials and processes. Some of the general steps in that process are shown here.
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