A New Factory For A New Age

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At first blush, Glenn Beane didn't appear to be the stuff of which industrialists are made. A painter, sculptor and filmmaker, he had studied art at Syracuse University, then returned to Laconia, where he converted an old farm building into a sculpture studio and bronze foundry. There, during the years Alan spent as an entrepreneur, Glenn created his art and took in the odd commercial job, like casting bronze propellers for boats. "That's how I made money and put wine on the table," he says.

Behind the loosey-goosey exterior, Glenn was something of a perfectionist, and found himself growing fascinated not just with learning the art of casting but also with refining it, creating molds that grew more and more intricate and had fewer and fewer flaws--precisely the kind of near-zero-tolerance quality needed in industrial manufacturing. When Alan approached Glenn in 1985 and asked for his help, both brothers figured the collaboration would be a good one. "We started doing together what we'd been doing separately," Glenn says, "me the processes, Alan the materials."

Start the Presses
The Beanes established Mii as a small materials-research firm, spending the better part of 15 years developing and patenting computer systems and other infrastructure for digitally run presses. In 1993 they recruited materials chemist David Lashmore to help them puzzle out the complex chemistry of the powdered metal that would feed the machine they hoped to build. Finally, last spring, they developed a working prototype of a New Age powder press and guessed it just might be the device they were after. They guessed right.

The cabinet-size press the Beanes and Lashmore invented is an astonishingly economical piece of engineering--and an astonishingly powerful one. A traditional 936-cu.-ft. press generates about 440,000 lbs. of force to compress its metal dust. The new 16-cu.-ft. press generates a whopping 920,000 lbs. Four built-in computerized control systems run the press's robotics, monitoring quality and minimizing work-stopping breakdowns. This helps reduce the small swat team of 200 workers normally required to run such a machine to just three. What's more, by keeping quality high and eliminating the extra finishing steps needed by parts produced by cruder presses, the new press can complete a job up to 50% faster. "This means we can lower costs by 30% to 50% too," says Alan.

It's Mii's powder as much as its machine that makes this kind of radical improvement possible. Typical powder presses use alloys made of two or more metals that are sifted together in a process little different from--and little more precise than--mixing flour and sugar for baking. In any single mix, there's always the chance of a clot of just one metal remaining unsifted, ruining the entire batch. Mii's powders don't have that problem. Each tiny particle is made of one metal with a fine rind of the other one coating it--ensuring a denser and stronger alloy. "David helped us understand our work at an atomic level," says Glenn.

Though the Beanes and Lashmore started commercial production only nine months ago, their press is already drawing attention. Mii is manufacturing parts for six industrial customers and is looking for more. While the Beanes and Lashmore will happily run their presses 24 hours a day, seven days a week to serve the clients they do attract, they hope to lease their system and sell their powders so manufacturers can do the work on their own. Mii's robotic presses can not only be shipped around the world, they can also be remotely operated. Thus a supervisor at a computer console in, say, Singapore can monitor a press in, say, Seattle, troubleshooting any problems that come up.

At the moment, Mii is generating revenues of about $10 million for its three owners--real money by almost any measure but mere bus fare in the high-tech world. The Beanes and Lashmore, however, see far bigger things in the company's near future, and many industry types are beginning to agree.

"This is like the airplane or copying machine in previous eras," says Jay Agarwal, an analyst with Charles River Associates, who has advised the Beanes. "How long it takes the market to form will depend on how long it takes manufacturers to change the way they think about their businesses and the laws of physics."

If the new press can really deliver on its promise, the laws of economics will probably have something to say about it too.