Gas Guardian
Welding is an inherently risky activity — among other safety issues, a high-pressure oxygen or acetylene tank can become a missile if a valve is accidentally damaged. In the early 2000s Dell Barritt, director of the Vandenberg AFB Training Device Design and Engineering Center (TDDEC), was aware of that problem, as well as other safety issues surrounding the use of welding carts.
He set out to do something about it. Along the way he found a manufacturer that brought his invention to the world.
The TDDEC is part of the 30th Operations Support Squadron of the U.S. Air Force at Vandenberg Air Force Base; its mission is to design, engineer, fabricate, repair and prototype training devices, interactive simulators, models, and other specialty items. A versatile shop of six, TDDEC is a “concept to delivery” work environment that requires all employees to interface directly with customers, do their own design and engineering utilizing SolidWorks, and preform all aspects of the fabrication processes.
There were several problems Barritt wanted to solve in the design of a welding cart. At the time, most carts used loose-fitting chains to secure two high-pressure bottles containing toxic, flammable gases to an unstable two-wheeled cart. Hoses were often in the way. Regulators were not protected. A typical cart could not be lifted and, to meet OSHA regulations, the cylinders had to be stored in separate locations when not in use for a period of time because there was no firewall separating them.
Barritt had seen designs that addressed one or two problems, but not all—and none were what you would call user-friendly.
The cart he designed has a five-foot triple-ply firewall between the gas cylinders; a mechanism that secures the cylinders to the cart; regulators housed in a vented cabinet; and a self coiling reel to store the hose when not in use, preventing trip hazards and possible damage to the hose from hot metal. Four heavy duty wheels with locking front casters keep the cart stable, and a work surface and cradle for the torch allow for it to be safely secured and within reach.
“We have one design principle we use around here for everything,” Barritt says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re designing a toaster or a shopping mall: if you don’t make it convenient people will never use it.”
Part of the need for convenience in a design is to assure users won’t circumvent the safety features. “The problem with a lot of safety stuff is that you can make it absolutely safe but it can be so difficult to use that people will start taking off the safety stuff,” Barritt says. His welding cart was sleek, with simplified functions, and assured safety in use.
Response from the Air Force to Barritt’s design was quick and positive. The Vandenberg Safety Office recommended the cart be “pushed up” to the Air Force Safety Office, and the design was awarded a “Best Practice” during the 2004 Headquarters Air Force Space Command Inspector General Compliance Inspection.
Barritt was awarded a patent in 2007 (with the USAF as a signee) and went in search of a commercial welding company interested in licensing the design and selling the cart. Barritt had shown his invention to many entities in the military and already had more than 50 interested buyers. Meanwhile, he worked through the long process to obtain a national stock number, which would help streamline the process for military purchases.
Finding the right company to shepherd the welding cart into the market was the key. At that time, the Technology Transfer Office at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base was helping Barritt with the licensing project. An Ohio company that was initially interested backed out when it learned the cost of manufacturing the cart. It would have to sell for several times more than the cost of a typical cart on the market.
Enter the Montana State University TechLink Center, a U.S. Department of Defense partner that structures license agreements between DoD labs and U.S. industry to facilitate manufacture of DoD inventions. Joan Wu-Singel, TechLink senior technology manager and chief technology scout, thought that the cart would have a market, but it would be relatively small and she would need to find a manufacturer with experience in oxyacetylene welding, along with the infrastructure to service the high-end market. A small aluminum fabricating and manufacturing company based in Lewistown, Montana, Spika Design and Manufacturing, was a TechLink client. She brought the idea to CEO Tom Spika, who immediately saw the potential for the welding cart.
Wu-Singel helped Spika through the licensing process and helped with the commercialization plan and license application. She also helped in negotiating the license and royalty agreements, first with Kirtland AFB and then with the Technology Transfer Program Office at Wright Patterson.
“Tom Spika and the inventor got along pretty well,” Wu-Singel remembers. “The impetus was to allow the greater community to buy this device and I think that mission was accomplished.”
Barritt remembers designing the cart and moving it through the legal process to commercialization as a “long drawn-out process,” but then there was a great feeling of success. “It got all the way through the process—just to get it patented was a big deal because nobody on this base gets anything patented—and then to finally get a manufacturer who’s making them and selling them.”
Spika made a few changes to the design, mostly cosmetic and gave it a name—the Gas GuardianTM—and a mascot—a bulldog. “We considered a lot of things,” Tom Spika says. “I came up with the bulldog image—guarding something like a bulldog would. Back in 2007 I was wearing a lot of hats—and that’s the best I could do at the time,” he laughs.
Spika keeps one or two Gas Guardians on the floor and makes more carts as orders come in. The company has sold more than 80 welding carts, with about 75 percent of the sales going to the military.
Tom’s daughters, Bekhi and Katie Spika, are marketing director and chief operations officer (in that order) for the company. With Katie taking over as COO, Spika was able go back to his main love, design.
He credits his daughters’ marketing abilities and the rise of the Internet as a main reason he has been able to successfully market the Gas Guardian. “With any of our products, if you look back 20 years—how would we have ever reached the customers that we’re reaching now (without the Internet)? Our product ships globally and we have customers contacting us from the other side of the world. How do you market products that go into so many different industries? This Gas Guardian is something that is very much like that. It would be a hard thing to market if you couldn’t stick it on a website.”
One repeat customer is one of the largest baking goods companies in the world that makes and markets Thomas English muffins and bagels, Entenmann’s bread, Sara Lee and Oroweat products, among others. Spika sells the Gas Guardian to the company for use in repairing equipment at its various maintenance facilities.
Spika has nearly tripled its staff since 2007—to 60 employees—and now focuses on designing and fabricating aluminum work platforms, maintenance stands and ground support equipment for military and commercial applications. Customers include Lockheed Martin, The Boeing company, Space Systems Loral, Solar Turbines, and the U.S. and foreign militaries.
Tom Spika has come a long way from his first career as a sheep rancher who did welding for his neighbors on the side. Now his wife, Carol, runs the family ranch that his father started in 1935.
As agricultural jobs have declined in rural Montana, a key drive for Spika has been to provide other opportunities for his neighbors. “That’s been a big part of our motivation for starting the company and growing it—to contribute to the community and have the opportunity for people to stay here and have jobs to raise a family on.”
Lewistown is the seat of Fergus County, about 11,500 population. “Our congressional delegation and some of the state folks like to hold us up as an example a company that really shouldn’t exist but does,” Spika says. “We’re succeeding from rural Montana. I’ve always been more than happy to help them tell that story because I believe that there’s a lot of communities that could foster the growth of companies like this and really contribute to their local economy. We’re creating jobs and bringing in wealth in from outside of our area and so it’s a story that I think needs to be told.”
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