Interns at ALMACO get much more than an overview of the company’s custom-built agricultural equipment. They become part of the team.
Brian Carr, ALMACO’s vice president of engineering, said student employees at the Nevada-based company get directly involved in completing projects—from initial design, through problem-solving challenges, to the eventual result.
[Read More ...]A pioneering enterprise formed to treat municipal and industrial wastewater with algae hopes to launch into large-scale operation this summer with construction of its first functional, city-sized test facility in Dallas Center, Iowa.
Gross-Wen Technologies, a company launched by Iowa State University researcher Martin Gross and professor Zhiyou Wen, has been working for roughly two years on plans to turn its discoveries into a two-pronged business. The Gross-Wen approach uses tanks of wastewater, vertical conveyor belts, and a special biofilm to grow and harvest the algae. Once water treatment is complete, the algae can be scraped off the belts and sold as a fertilizer, effectively subsidizing the cost of running a large-scale treatment system.7
[Read More ...]CIRAS’ mission is to improve Iowa industry through research-proven best practices. To do that, we have to stay up-to-date on what’s out there and what works.
Here’s a wrap-up of just some of the things we’ve learned over the past year:
[Read More ...]An Iowa manufacturer of wheelchair wheels and caster forks has begun selling stronger and lighter versions of those products—thanks partly to CIRAS’ help in testing and refining what the company describes as “the world’s first carbon fiber wheel set.”
Ottumwa-based Frog Legs Inc., which has sold aluminum wheelchair wheels and suspensions since 1997, began selling a new carbon fiber version of its products earlier this year.
[Read More ...]Iowa manufacturers need help developing strategies, exploring new markets, implementing proven ways of dealing with workforce constraints, and wielding technology as a competitive advantage.
[Read More ...]Workers at a Des Moines maker of fuel and lubricant delivery trucks now have more efficient workstations thanks to ongoing ties to students at Iowa State University.
[Read More ...]Iowa State University students have gained even more valuable experience with manufacturing technology thanks to CIRAS’ recent purchase of an electrical discharge machine (EDM).
[Read More ...]The Iowa companies manufacturing human and animal food are mostly small firms with well-established histories. Despite that history, some appear to be ripe for large-scale change.
[Read More ...]Thanks to CIRAS and its partners, more than 8,000 Iowans ended October with a greater appreciation for the people who make a living making things.
[Read More ...]Everything seemed to be going great, Dan Svec recalls, until the first hints of a recession appeared and began to expose the weaknesses at PyroGraphics.
In 2008, the West Des Moines printing company, which specializes in business promotional items and souvenirs, was starting to struggle in a declining economy in which most promotion had stopped. By 2012, when the company discovered CIRAS, the end was very much in sight.
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