Wichita State announces second innovation campus joint venture

A second company has agreed to a joint venture with Wichita State University for its innovation campus, President John Bardo announced at a Kansas Board of Regents meeting Thursday.

French company Dassault Systemes will create a 3D additive manufacturing research center using CATIA software on the innovation campus that includes six robots. Those robots will be able to complete a 9-by-4-by-4-foot machine, including all wiring, Bardo said.

The downside, he said, is there would be “no blue collar labor on the floor.”

The agreement makes the campus “world class in advanced manufacturing,” Bardo said.

A few months ago, the university announced that Airbus will leave its current office in downtown Wichita in order to move to the innovation campus.

However, this is the first company to bring a new presence to the community at the innovation campus.

CATIA stands for Computer-Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Applications: teaching how to make aircraft and their parts.

In November, John Tomblin of WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research told the Wichita Aero Club he was heading to Las Vegas to meet with Dassault Systemes, maker of CATIA industrial design software, about coming to WSU’s campus as an industry partner. Dassault, he said, was looking at creating a center of excellence in the U.S.

The announcement also was being made at the Paris Air Show, Bardo said.

The Wichita Eagle requested copies of any agreements or contracts between the company and the university, but Ted Ayres, general counsel for WSU, said he was advised by Bardo that there may not be any written documents to share at this time. The Eagle was referred to Tomblin, who did not return phone calls.

University officials said a $1.9 million federal grant the university received from the U.S. Economic Development Administration was key to landing the deal.

Last fall when the grant was announced, Bardo said it could help draw as many as 500 jobs.

At the time, WSU administrators said they would find $2 million in matching money from university funds and business partners to shop for high-tech lab parts and software.

“What we’ll build, you can’t buy,” Tomblin said in an interview last fall.

The equipment will be set up in WSU’s planned Experiential Engineering building, Tomblin said. But until that building gets built, the new lab will be set up at WSU’s laboratories at the National Center for Aviation Training.

What they plan to invent and build next year is a lab that’s never been built anywhere, he said in the previous interview.

One room will be a large, virtual-reality space where scientists can invent and virtually assemble complex products – from lawn chairs to tables to new bicycle models to aircraft interiors to new versions of flying drones. For now, they are calling it the “Flex Cave.”

“In that space, we’ll put together designs of products in a virtual world,” Tomblin said last fall. “And when you like it, you go in the lab room next door ... and hit ‘print.’ ”

Which brings us to the second room: It will be what amounts to a room-size 3D printer, only far more complex, with multiple, high-tech robots assembling big, complex products.

Prep work on the $43 million Experiential Engineering building has already started, at the former Wheatshocker residential site on 17th Street.

University officials say a groundbreaking will take place in the next few months.

The Partnership Building 1, which will house Airbus, also will be started this summer, next to Experiential Building.

Infrastructure work on sewer lines, fiber network and roads will begin this summer and fall.

During the next 20 years, if things work out as Bardo hopes, WSU and its partners will build business buildings, residence halls for students and graduate students, apartments for retirees wanting to live on a college campus, a 600-space parking garage, a hotel, ponds, fountains, walking paths, another student center and more, all constructed on the university golf course, which borders Oliver from 17th to 21st streets.

This story was originally published June 18, 2015 at 9:26 AM with the headline "Wichita State announces second innovation campus joint venture."