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To: richardred who wrote (2156)	7/10/2006 11:39:59 AM
From: richardred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7944

TAYD getting a little buzz lately for a possible new Earthquake residential application. A ways off, but new sales potential for a company of this size. Picked up on this over a year ago. Still a story stock for now. Last qtr earnings were somewhat of a disappointment. No volume yet on the move up. The UB connection by: rreding1 12/27/05 11:24 am Msg: 7843 of 9882 buffalo.edu Shaken, not stirred By JOSEPH GALANTE News Business Reporter 7/7/2006 Click to view larger picture Bill Wippert/Buffalo News Goran Josipovic and Chris Zwierlein monitor effects of a 6.7 magnitude quake on a wood-frame house equipped with seismic dampers Thursday in UB's Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory. In 10 seconds of violent shaking, a 1,800-square-foot townhouse at the University at Buffalo withstood a simulated 6.7 magnitude quake Thursday as students, professors and media watched. For the professors at UB's Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory, the event marked another step in a four-year international research project aimed at understanding how wooden structures react to earthquakes. The goal is to build safer structures. For Douglas Taylor, president of Taylor Devices Inc., the undamaged house represented a business opportunity. The North Tonawanda maker of seismic dampers for commercial buildings and the aerospace and automotive industries is preparing to enter a potentially lucrative field - the California residential market, with its proximity to the quake-prone San Andreas fault. The move could double the firm's annual revenues, the company said. "It's a tremendous growth opportunity," said Taylor, but cautioned, "Don't get too excited yet. We've still got a long way to go." But Taylor Devices has already come a long way. For nearly two decades, the company has been funding research at UB to better understand how to protect buildings from seismic activity. During the Cold War, the publicly traded company's seismic dampers protected ballistic missiles. When its technology was declassified, the company partnered with UB, one of the nation's premier earthquake research centers, to transition into the commercial arena. Since then, Taylor Devices' dampers have been installed in 180 commercial projects, including the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and California's San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. NASA's Discovery shuttle, which launched Tuesday, had about $2 million worth of the company's equipment on it, Taylor said. Now the company is readying to transition into residential homes, which Taylor said are notoriously ill-equipped to deal with earthquakes. "The design of a wood house isn't earthquake friendly," Taylor said. "The contractor's idea of throwing together a few nails and some boards isn't going to work." The company said it will cost around $15,000 to install its technology in the framing of a new house. Taylor believes the company can handle 1,000 homes a year - an influx of $15 million in revenues annually, or double the revenue the company currently sees. The unharmed townhouse in UB's earthquake simulation lab showed that the product was nearly ready. Now, it's just a matter of fine-tuning the process, Taylor said. The dampers, triangular steel frames that sit between the housing frame's two-by-fours, absorb the kinetic energy of the moving house and convert it to heat, which then dissipates. The dampers can heat up to 200 degrees during a quake, but cool within 15 minutes, research has shown. One damper is installed into each exterior wall of a house to absorb the energy from the movement, said Michael Symans, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rensselaer Polytech Institute in Troy. The four-year NEESWood project is being conducted by a consortium of university researchers supported by the National Science Foundation. Taylor Devices' dampers are being used in the second of a six-phase research project. Researchers plan to travel to Japan to study a six-story building during the project's final phase. buffalonews.com