Fluid Power World

CCEFP and the power of working together

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In case you hadn’t noticed the story this week, the DoD announced a new Advanced Robotics Manufacturing center in Pittsburgh. It’s great news, for sure, but you may not be aware of the interesting role that fluid power played here.

According to Kim Stelson, Director of the Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (CCEFP), the  grant will enable $80 million in government funds to be matched with $173 million in cost share—for a total of $253 million over five years.

A team of CCEFP researchers from universities and industry is part of the ARM Institute. What’s more, four CCEFP universities are listed in the grant: Marquette, Purdue, Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Vanderbilt. And six CCEFP supporting organizations are also on the grant: Bimba, Eaton, Enfield, Innotronics, NFPA and Parker Hannifin.
Eric Barth, Deputy Director for Human-Scale Fluid Power at the CCEFP, has led this effort. Of note is that Barth persuaded the academic robotics research community of the advantage of using fluid power for human-scale applications because of its high power density.

Stelson said that this award validates the CCEFP research strategy in three ways:

1. It shows the wisdom of using pooled industry funds to support CCEFP administration. This can facilitate obtaining research funding from the government, greatly increasing the impact of the funds.
2. It shows that it is possible to team up with a larger group of universities and companies to secure Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute funding. It  may not be feasible for the fluid power industry to commit such large sums by itself.
3. It shows the potential of human-scale fluid power research to open up new markets for fluid power.

Much has been written about the great research that the CCEFP has been doing over the past decade. But I’d like to applaud the organization for helping the fluid power industry in the U.S. figure out the sometimes difficult road to getting grant money. Creativity isn’t just an important aspect of designing an engineered system, it’s also called for in the business of getting business done.

 

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Paul Heney

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