Source: Taylor Jones, 785-532-0644, tjones@amisuccess.com
Web site: http://www.amisuccess.com
News release prepared by: Katie Cox, 785-532-7044

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

K-STATE'S ADVANCED MANUFACTURING INSTITUTE HELPS HUTCHINSON COMPANY ENHANCE PRODUCT

MANHATTAN -- The Advanced Manufacturing Institute at Kansas State University has helped a Hutchinson company with one of its products.

Seed Research Equipment Solutions, also known as SRES, manufactures seed planters. The company worked with the K-State institute to enhance the structural integrity of the frame on its precision planter.

"A SRES precision planter was experiencing issues with the structural integrity of the frame for a planting application in South Africa," said Taylor Jones, chief engineer at the Advanced Manufacturing Institute. "SRES needed to find a solution quickly to allow them to meet their client's needs before they started to build more planters.

"The Advanced Manufacturing Institute utilized finite element analysis and our experience in failure analysis of weldments to identify the failure mode," Jones said. "This allowed us to rapidly determine a solution without building prototypes and field testing, which is much more cost effective and timely."

"I first contacted the Advanced Manufacturing Institute about our problem on a Monday. By Wednesday, the institute had sent the analysis back to us and the model was verified by what we were seeing in the field," said Stacy Unruh, owner of SRES. "By Friday, a new design was finished and tested in FEA analysis and the customer was convinced and satisfied. The Advanced Manufacturing Institute helped us avoid a problem from blowing up into something bigger by the quick response time and the accuracy of the analysis."

More information on SRES is available at http://www.sresweb.com.

The Advanced Manufacturing Institute is a part of K-State's College of Engineering and a Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation Center of Excellence that provides engineering services. More information on the institute is available online at http://www.amisuccess.com.