After 5 years housed just off-campus at the University of Minnesota, the Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power has relocated its administrative offices to the Mechanical Engineering building in the heart of the U of M campus. The administrative component of the Center will now be more fully integrated with the Mechanical Engineering department and will benefit from the close proximity to essential departmental services.
The center’s new mailing address is:
Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power
111 Church Street SE, 1100 MechE
Minneapolis MN, 55455
Its physical location is:
111 Church Street SE,
Mechanical Engineering Building, Suite 325
All phone numbers for Center staff and faculty will remain the same.
New machine lubrication concept
Hi It is worthy to note an MIT study calculated that six to seven percent of America’s Gross National Product is spent repairing wear damage caused by poor lubrication. Those numbers are from a dow corning advertisement. Crunching the numbers using 14 trillion x 7% = 980 billion. Figure about 5 million high school seniors per year in the country. If we do the math in round numbers that is about $200,000 per high school senior each year. If we could just save 50% thru better lubricators we would certainly be more competitive. I am in the process of developing a pneumatic frl type machine lubricator that makes it possible to detect, monitor and control each and every drop of oil dispensed into the airstream of a machine using compressed air. It is in the prototype stage and has been demonstrated to work as described. You can understand that it has the potential to impact all of industry since it is difficult to manufacture any product in quantity without using various machines that use compressed air. It should reduce downtime and increase thruput due to extended life of all pneumatic machine components including air solenoids, cylinders and air motors. There should be a residual savings of energy as well due to less air loss from reduction of seal wear and constant lubrication. Is this something that you would have applications for or do you know someone who has applications for it? 610-340-4637 brucesu1@yahoo.com Bruce Sunderland