Student Business Spotlight

Al, a Centerville native, spent 20 years in the Navy before sustaining a combat-related injury that forced him into early retirement.  Shortly after, Christy became disabled in a car accident and could no longer work either

“I had a really bad fall and went through 53 surgeries,” Kroell said. “When I retired, my wife also got badly injured in a near-fatal car accident and became disabled as well.”

The Kroells had no choice but to move out of their home on base near San Diego. They packed up and moved to Squaw Valley – close enough to Al’s hometown, but far enough from city living that they could focus on rest and recuperation.

As the credit card bills stacked up, Christy and Al found solace in something that brought them joy: making custom laser engraved plaques for military service members. Al said he started making plaques over 30 years ago when he was in the military as a way to honor service men and women departing military bases. He used an engraving machine to produce custom plaques from wood, metal and glass.

It didn’t occur to the Kroells that they could make a living doing it, until they caught wind of Reedley College’s entrepreneurship program two years ago. They each took a few business classes, and Al joined the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Club. He was inspired.

Once they decided to go full-force into the engraving business, Al took classes all over the educational spectrum. He learned to operate heavy machinery in manufacturing class, design computer graphics in art class, and master public speaking in communication class. He said the biggest skill he learned was how to give an effective “elevator pitch,” or pitching his business to a potential investor in under a minute.

“They don’t teach you that in the military,” Al Kroell said. “Everything that we’ve done here at the college has helped us to get this business off the ground. It’s all been trial and error and a lot of hard work, but I know we wouldn’t be where we are today without it.”

Where they are today is a pretty good spot. Nine months ago, the Kroells officially started ChristyAl Engraving. They wrote a compelling business plan that nabbed them a $100,000 loan from a small business investing company, and purchased a highly accurate computerized laser engraving machine.

They now make signs from marble, glass, wood, metal, ceramics and just about anything imaginable, as small as a dime to as large as 4 by 8 feet. Their first love is still military plaques, but the Kroells have also branched out into commercial business signs, memorial plaques, and wood cut-outs.

Their joy in creating custom work is apparent. Even the back of Al’s iPad is etched with their company’s logo. He said he once etched his fingernails, just to see if the machine was capable of doing it. (It was.)

As they’ve built up a solid portfolio and clientele, Christy and Al recently got some more good news. They received a grant from the Sam’s Club Giving Program to attend a lecture in Dallas, Texas earlier this spring, where they listened to nationally recognized speakers in the world of small business. Click on their website careel-tech for more information.

Cape Cod community considers taking down wind turbines after illness

Two wind turbines towering above the Cape Cod community of Falmouth, Mass., were intended to produce green energy and savings — but they’ve created angst and division, and may now be removed at a high cost as neighbors complain of noise and illness.

“It gets to be jet-engine loud,” said Falmouth resident Neil Andersen. He and his wife Betsy live just a quarter mile from one of the turbines. They say the impact on their health has been devastating. They’re suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they’ve lived for more than 20 years.

“Every time the blade has a downward motion it gives off a tremendous energy, gives off a pulse,” said Andersen. “And that pulse, it gets into your tubular organs, chest cavity, mimics a heartbeat, gives you headaches. It’s extremely disturbing and it gets to the point where you have to leave.”

The first turbine went up in 2010 and by the time both were in place on the industrial site of the town’s water treatment facility, the price was $10 million. Town officials say taking them down will cost an estimated $5 million to $15 million, but that is just what Falmouth’s five selectmen have decided to move toward doing.

“The selectmen unanimously voted to remove them. We think it’s the right thing to do, absolutely,” Selectman David Braga said. “You can’t put a monetary value on people’s health and that’s what’s happened here. A lot of people are sick because of these.”

“It’s highly likely that what the voters will be determining is are they willing to tax themselves at an appropriate amount to cover the cost and dismantle and shut down the turbines?” Falmouth Town Manager Julian Suso said.

The dispute has been a bitter three-year battle in the seaside town where officials argue the project was thoroughly vetted, researched and put to public vote multiple times.

“To say ‘let’s let the voters decide’ — it sort of flies in the face of what we went through all these years,” said Megan Amsler of the Falmouth Energy Committee.

“We never tell somebody ‘hey, you’re going to have to take that coal plant down or you’re going to have to stop mining the mountain tops.’ These are very visible and a lot of other ways that we get our energy are invisible to the average American,” Amsler argued. “People don’t even know how much energy they consume on a yearly basis so I think it’s good for people to be able to see where their energy comes from and know that it’s coming from a clean source.”

“I think if we end up taking these turbines down it will be a shame. It will be an embarrassment for the Town of Falmouth,” said Amsler.

Town leaders say the state bears some monetary responsibility for the situation because Falmouth was granted renewable energy credits and received advice from state level energy officials through an ongoing partnership.

“They certainly have been involved and have a tremendous stake in this process,” said Assistant Town Manager Heather Harper. Harper said the Mass Clean Energy Center “provided the technical assistance to conduct all of the feasibility studies.”

“I feel the state is responsible because they were really pushing for more wind power which, believe me, the whole board of selectmen are supportive of renewable energy. I am. Maybe wind, but not in this location,” said Braga.

Ultimately, town leaders are hoping the controversy will be resolved and the community will find a way to move forward together.

“It’s imperative to the community that we do have a coming together and a healing and find a resolution one way or the other,” said Suso. His advice to communities considering a similar project to the one causing strife in Falmouth is “move cautiously, communicate well, have extreme public dialogue and listen well.”

MetLife, GE Team Up To Provide $247 Million To Kansas Wind Farm

MetLife and an arm of General Electric that finances energy projects have teamed up for the second time this year as investors in a major wind farm in the Great Plains.

This time, GE Energy Financial Services and MetLife Inc. joined Union Bank to invest $247 million in a wind farm near Wichita, Kan. The Post Rock wind farm has been up and running since Nov. 14, developed by Wind Capital Group. The 22,900-acre wind-energy farm is about 80 miles outside Wichita, in Ellsworth and Lincoln counties.

This was an equity transaction, meaning the investors bought a stake in the wind farm as opposed to financing debt. The investors would not provide additional details about the financing.

The 201-megawatt Post Rock facility has 134 wind turbines churning enough electricity to power more than 70,000 homes. The electricity is sold to Westaro Energy, the largest electric utility in Kansas. The wind turbines are made by General Electric, and each is a 1.5 megawatt windmill with blades that swing around in a 271-foot-diameter circle. General Electric also provides operation and maintenance services for the Post Rock facility.

Steven J. Goulart, chief investment officer of MetLife, said in a prepared statement, “We are proud to support endeavors like Post Rock, which align with MetLife’s overall high-quality investment approach and build upon the more than $2.5 billion we’ve already invested in renewable energy projects.”

The Kansas wind farm is similar in energy production to one in central Oklahoma where MetLife, GE Energy Financial Services and other investors announced a combined $220 million in investment in June.

The 235-Megawatt Oklahoma facility, called Chisholm View Wind project, involves 140 wind turbines across 45,000 acres.

A federal tax credit for companies that invest in wind energy has helped drive record level of wind-turbine installations this year in the U.S., according to the trade group American Wind Energy Association.

The U.S. wind industry in August surpassed a 50,000-megawatt mark for total capacity of all wind farms installed. That is enough to power 13 million homes. As of Oct. 18, the industry had installed 4,728 megawatts of wind-farm electrical production with an additional 8,430 Megawatts in ongoing construction, the trade group said.

GE Energy Financial Services has about $9 billion in renewable-energy investment commitments globally, most of which is wind, out of a $20 billion overall energy investment portfolio, said GE Energy Financial Services spokesman Andy Katell.

MetLife has major operations in Bloomfield. GE Energy Financial Services, headquartered in Stamford, is part of General Electric Capital, which is headquartered in Norwalk and is part of the General Electric Co. of Fairfield.

Providence is getting three new wind turbines that will be used to power a city wastewater plant.

U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse were on hand Monday to celebrate the completion of the turbine project at the Field’s Point Wastewater Treatment Facility near the city’s waterfront.

“We’ve got to keep it up. It means environmental quality. It means the future,” Reed said. The Narragansett Bay Commission built the turbines at a cost of $14 million. Federal clean water funds were used for the project.

“This facility will reduce our carbon footprint by more than 3,000 tons and with the good Lord as our partner because he’ll make the wind blow. We should generate electricity to the extent of $1 million a year to the benefit of our ratepayers,” said Vin Mesolella of the Narragansett Bay Commission.

Laser puts bang in company’s profit margin

Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. is one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of high-quality firearms for the commercial sporting market, and the only full-line manufacturer of American-made firearms, including the award-winning SR1911 pistol. This gun, along with all other Sturm, Ruger & Co semiautomatic handguns, is manufactured at the company’s almost 250,000 ft2 Prescott, AZ, manufacturing plant.

To meet regulations of the U.S. government’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the company has to mark several components in each handgun with information about the gun model, caliber, manufacturer, serial number and other details. Initially, these marks were all done by roll marking, which involved “rolling” a cylindrical die made of metal across a secondary surface made of a softer metal to create a mark, serial number, or logo.

“Like automobiles and aircraft, firearm designs have become lighter, using harder metals and thinner-walled designs,” explains Michael Scoggins, chief manufacturing engineer at Sturm, Ruger & Co. “Historically, we roll-marked everything, but as our parts became harder – we started specifying the hardness of our firearms components into the mid-40s of the Rockwell C Scale and beyond – we had to push harder on the parts to make a mark. This was problematic for the components and fixtures as well as the roll die. We had to go to exotic die materials to get 250 impressions from a single die, and sometimes, we only got two impressions for a $275 die on top of having a well-paid specialist at the machines to correctly install the die on the roller, which is sort of an art.”

With regards to marking serial numbers with mechanical roll marking heads, “For numbers like 1s and 7s that had room on each side to push the material, the dies worked pretty well,” he continues. “But we were breaking 0s on a regular basis because there’s nowhere to push the material in the center, and additionally we’d have to polish down the splash-up material from the roll mark. On top of that, the roll markers that hold the die are about $900 per digit. The parts and labor, changeovers, and downtime were costing us a lot. When we began to explore a laser marking solution, we realized we could eliminate tooling replacement costs, and reduce our changeovers to 15 to 30 seconds – mainly the time required to key up a new program.”

The ATF specifies that the markings be at least 1/16thof an inch high with a minimum of 0.003-inch penetration. To avoid any regulatory issues, Sturm, Ruger & Co. pushes it to 0.008-inch penetration. After considerable research, Scoggins selected a ytterbium-doped pulsed fiber laser marking system from Telesis Technologies Inc.

“When we first started working with Telesis, their fiber laser marking system had only been on the market for a year, but what most attracted me to Telesis was their willingness to listen to my requirements and to work together as a team to develop a solution without a bunch of sales pressure,” adds Scoggins. “The lasers we use today – and we have about 20 here at this facility and are adding more to our Newport, NH, facility – are not standard products. This was really a cooperative venture between Telesis and Ruger.”

Scoggins needed a laser marking system that could work around the clock with high uptime and minimal maintenance. “We’re not making key rings here,” explains Scoggins.

The first laser paid for itself in less than a year. “We saved tens of thousands of dollars a year by moving from roll marking to laser marking and thousands more in labor savings because we don’t need a specialist to replace aging and broken dies.”

After the success of the first laser systems, Scoggins returned to Telesis Technologies, saying he needed a smaller system to fit on the shop floor – preferably a mobile laser marking system with a drawer fixture for small gun parts coupled with higher laser power. This request eventually led to Telesis Technologies’ ProStation integrated laser marking system, which is housed in a mobile enclosure and offered with a higher power (30W) laser for higher throughput at the laser marking stations.